Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael

On this edition of Parallax Views, Jewish-American journalist Abe Silberstein joins the show to offer his commentary on the events unfolding in the Middle East. This is part of an ongoing series with different guests and was recorded on Monday.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Prof Stephen Zunes, noted Middle East scholar and politics professor at the University of San Francisco, returns to discuss the latest events unfolding in Israel/Palestine with a focus on the Hamas attack and the Israeli response. Prof. Zunes will also offer a history lesson about how Hamas originally gained power and political prominence in the Middle East. This will include an examination of U.S. foreign policy under George W. Bush. We'll also be discussing a number of other issues such as Iran, the ideology of Hamas, the Israeli far-right, and much, much more!

On this edition of Parallax Views, Prof. James M. Dorsey of the Turbulent World of MidEast Soccer blog returns to discuss the latest news on Israel/Palestine, specifically the deadly attack on Hamas and what it pertains for the future of Middle East geopolitics. The attack has been described as "Israel's 9/11" and incurred civilian causalities. Among the issues tackled in this conversation: - Hamas' motivations for the attack - Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morrocco, Egypt, and what this means for Middle East relations and the shattering of many notions about geopolitics in the Middle East - Israel cutting off access to water, electricity, and food - Hezbollah in Lebanon - Netanyahu's government focus on the West Bank; failure to prevent attack and intelligence and operational failure - Possibility of escalation into a conflict with Iran - U.S. decision to send an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean - Israeli far-right ultranationalist movements led by figures like Religious Zionist Party's Bezalel Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit's Itamar Ben-Gvir - Netanyahu's coalition government and the polarization of the Jewish community over the current Israeli government - Effect of Hamas attack: hardening of anti-Palestinian sentiments in Israel while also calling into question the efficacy of Israeli security forces in the public sentiment - Relationship between Hamas and Iran; it hasn't always been a comfortable relationship re: Syria - Hamas was preparing in the open for a moment like this; the explosion between Hamas and Israel should not be surprising, but breaking through the fence into Israel should be; Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri's comments about "total war" over the summer - Question of Saudi recognition of Israel and whether these unfolding events will kill that - Erdogan's Turkey and whether it will try to take a role/position as mediators - Arab social media backlash against Hamas' way of conducting the attack; Turkish support of Israel on social media and the reasons for it - Palestine Authority's Mahmoud Abbas and potential succession struggle - Possible future negotiation between Hamas and Israel? - Difference between Hamas and Fatah - Hamas' miscalculation on two fronts - U.S.-Israel relationship rift prior to the attacks; Biden administration - Israeli blockade of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank - Occupation cannot be sustained indefinitely - Biggest risk going forward for Palestinians and Israelis - The strange points-of-commonality between Hamas and Israeli ultranationalists - Netanyahu's warning telling Gazans to leave areas that Israel is targeting; misconceptions about that warning; density of Gaza's population and importance of that fact - Israeli and Palestinian trauma - What will it take to end the conflict? - Question of failure of the international community in regards to Israel/Palestine - How will China react to this? - WWIII? - James article on the subject of this episode: "The Middle East may never be the same"

On this edition of Parallax Views, Jonathan Marshall, author of the book Dark Quadrant: Organized Crime, Big Business, and the Corruption of American Democracy, returns to discuss his recent Lobster Magazine piece "The Watergate break-ins and the Howard Hughes connection" as well as, briefly in the latter portion of the program, his scholarly article in the Journal of Cold War Studies entitled "U.S. Cold War Policy and the Italian Far-Right: The Nixon Administration, Republican Party Operatives, and the Borghese Coup Plot of 1970". Over the years many have pondered the question of "Why" when it comes to the Watergate break-in. What was the motivation, the end goal of breaking into the Democratic National Committee? It's no doubt an important question to ask. What brought down the Nixon administration, however, was the cover-up rather than the crime. So, in many ways, the question has remained unanswered or only speculated. Jonathan Marshall offers his assessment in this conversation in which we delve into what could be called the "Secret History" of Watergate. For Marshall, the motivations for Watergate, can be tied into issues related to money-in-politics, blackmail, and, believe it or not, the figure of the notoriously reclusive 20th century business tycoon Howard Hughes. Marshall takes us through the history of the Howard Hughes empire's attempt to gain political favor, including with regards to his relationship with Richard Nixon over the years. Additionally, Hughes had ties to Larry O'Brien, the then chair of the Democratic National Commitee. It's a story that will lead us down rabbit holes of political subterfuge involving publishers, reporters, political organizers, and other social power players as well as the CIA, Watergate plumber G. Gordon Liddy, and many other. It also, Jonathan argues, has relevance to today. All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views!

On this edition of Parallax Views, Matt McManus, a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan and the author of The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism, joins the show to discuss his new book The Political Right and Equality: Turning Back the Tide of Egalitarian Modernity. Matt gives a sweeping history of the political right that tries to grapple, from a left social democratic perspective, with conservative thought since the French Revolution. In doing so Matt gets beyond the talking heads on FOX News or flamboyant characters like Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson, instead focusing on the most serious intellectual elements of the political right and how the left should/can respond to those elements. Moreover, Matt discusses the most reactionary segments of the political right in this conversation and their beliefs. Among the topics discussed in this conversation: - Aristotle and the Aristotelian universe in the political right; order and hierarchy in the thinking of the political right; modernity and the radical break from antiquity - Conservatism's relationship with liberals; conservative discomfort with liberalism - English conservative philosopher Roger Scruton's unpacking of liberalism; Roger Scruton and "The Unthinking Man"; agency and critical thinking as an entitlement of the higher orders of society (within the thought of the political right); - Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, the sublime quality of the "Sun King", and monarchy - The thought of uber-reactionary Joseph de Maistre and his response to the events of the French Revolution - F.A. Hegel as conservative? and right-wing Hegelianism - Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his turn from Christian socialism to conservatism, his critique of socialism and liberalism in books like Demons, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky Contra Leo Tolstoy - Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and Dostoyevsky's critique of scientifically-oriented material ontologies and utilitarianism; psychological reactions to ontological materialism - Utopianism vs. Anti-utopianism, hierarchy and social order/organization, and strawman arguments - The political right in the 20th century and particularly after WWII - The far-right and the transition to fascism from its antecedents on the right; anti-democratic thought amongst elements of the political right; blood and soil ideology - Nietzsche and the political right - Edifying myths, charismatic cults of personality, and fascism; brief discussion about Mussolini - Right-wing anti-capitalism; right-wing rejections of economistic worldviews - Noblesse oblige and the political right; an exploration of the emergent postliberal right - The New American Right of the 1950s; the three-legged stool of American conservatism: muscular anti-New Deal free market capitalism, anticommunist foreign policy hawks, and social conservatives (specifically white evangelical Christian social conservatives); American right-wing opposition to Civil Rights; the breaking down of the three-legged stool after the end of the Cold War and fall of the Soviet Union - The new formation of the American political right: National Conservatism, Postliberalism, and the Eugenicons or Nietzschean Right - The Peter Thiel/Curtis Yarvin segment of the 21st century American Right and Richard Hanania; Hayek's anti-conservatism, the political right, and neoliberalism; Ayn Rand - Ideological diversity of the 21st century right-wing - Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari, Michael Lind, and postliberal oppositions to figures like Bronze Age Pervert and white nationalist/eugenicist segments of the right - The possibility of a multiracial political right? - The thought of Russian philosopher/geopolitical thinker Aleksandr Dugin and the far-right

On this edition of Parallax Views, Alfred de Zayas, a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and the UN Independent Expert on International Order from 2012-18, returns to the program to discuss the current worrying situation of Nagorno-Karabakh from an international law and human rights perspective. In the course of this conversation de Zayas offers sweeping history of why Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh fear aggression by Azerbaijan enough to flee. We delve into the history of Turkish and Azeri persecution of Armenians going back to the 1915 genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire as well as the Istanbul Pogrom of September 6-7 1955. Additionally, Alfred de Zayas talk about Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine and what he argues is the hypocrisy of the international community on the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Mark Movsesian, Director of the Center for Law and Religion at St. John's University, joins us to discuss his Compact Magazine article "The Second Armenian Genocide". The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has come to a close with Azerbaijan taking control, thus leaving many Armenians to flee the region in what many are calling an ethnic cleansing. Mark argues that these events unfolded due to 21st century Great Power competition and that Armenians are the ones that are paying for it. In relation to this we discuss Russia, Turkey, Israel, and the U.S. in relation to Nagorno-Karabakh. We also delve into why U.S. foreign policy has had so little interest in the plight of Armenians despite claiming to being in favor of human rights and R2P (Responsibility to Protect Doctrine), how this incident and the U.S. response reveals American foreign policy hypocrisy, the belief that Armenia is a puppet of Russia, Russia's issues with Armenia and the end of their peacekeeping efforts in the region, the Armenian genocide of 1915, Azeri lobbying efforts guiding the narrative about Nagorno-Karabakh in the West, the response (or lack of response) to Nagorno-Karabakh by American Christians and secular Leftists, Armenia as the oldest Christian civilizations in the world and the role religion plays in the conflict, Turkey's Erdogan, and much, much more!

On this edition of Parallax Views, Mike Rothschild, a journalist specializing in the topic of right-wing conspiracy culture, joins us to discuss his new book Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. A follow-up of sorts to his previous book The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything, Jewish Space Lasers delves into the history of virulently antisemitic conspiracy theories concerning the wealthy Rothschild banking family and the popularity of those theories within the American right-wing and it's media ecosystem. How did the Rothschilds become public enemy No. 1 of the fringe right in America? How does the Rothschild conspiracy theory feed into conspiracy theories about George Soros and Black Rock's Larry Fink? And how has the Rothchild conspiracy theory crept from the dark corners of the fringe right into, in many ways, the mainstream of U.S. conservatism? Hopefully this conversation will help answer all of those questions and more! And no, Mike is not related to the famed financial family. In the course of our conversation we'll discuss the history of Rothschild conspiracy theories going back to the era of Napolean and Waterloo, the lucrative grift of antisemitic conspiracy theory peddling, the John Birch Society and Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy, the modernist poet Ezra Pound and how his protege Eustace Mullins created an antisemitic narrative around the formation of the Federal Reserve (and how well-known figures like Glenn Beck have picked up on this particular conspiracy theory), the Mormon conspiracy theorist Cleon Skousen and his influence on the American right-wing, David Icke's reptilian conspiracy theories and the New Age/Wellness connection to antisemitic conspiracism, Marjorie Taylor Green's conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds and weather modification, Bill Cooper's UFO conspiracy tome Behold a Pale Horse and the strange hoax known as Quiet Weapons for Silent Wars: An Introductory Programming Manual which claimed to be a top secret document, the Rothschilds and Zionism, Cold War anti-communism and antisemitism, the 1930s movie House of Rothschild starring horror icon Boris Karloff and Hollywood's WWII-era reluctance to alienate Nazi Germany, Nazi propaganda films like The Eternal Jew and Die Rothschilds (aka The Rothschilds' Shares in Waterloo), how antisemitic conspiracy theories distract from truly addressing issues like wealth inequality, the role American evangelist and 700 Club host Pat Robertson had in promulgating Rothschild conspiracy theories, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and much, much more.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Noah Kulwin joins us to discuss the fourth season of his and Brendan James's highly lauded podcast series Blowback. In previous seasons Noah and Brendan have covered the Iraq War, the Cuban Revolution, and the Korean War. For season four they're tackling the mammoth topic of Afghanistan from the era of the Cold War to the U.S.'s invasion of the country after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks and eventual withdrawal 20 years later. In the course of our conversation will discuss the covert intelligence network known as the Safari Club and the scandalous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), Afghan warlords, the mujahedeen and D.C. foreign policy heavyweight Zbigniew Brezinski, Rambo III, the metaphor of the ouroboros (snake eats its own tail) in Blowback Season 4, the influence of Hideo Kojima's acclaimed video game series Metal Gear Solid on Blowback season 4, Clinton/Bush-era Counterterrorism Czard Richard Clarke's curious comments about 9/11, Peter Dale Scott's The Road to 9/11, conspiracy theories and parapolitics, Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, sources used for Blowback season 4, the deep state, torture programs, al Qaeda, jihadism and intel agencies, Seymour Hersh, the double agent Ali Mohammad, and much, much more!

On this edition of Parallax Views, Samuel Moyn, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University, joins the show to discuss his new book Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times. Samuel examines and dissects the beliefs of Cold War intellectuals like Karl Popper, Judith Shklar, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lionel Trilling, Isaiah Berlin, and Hannah Arendt to argue that liberals of the Cold War in many ways ended up undermining the progressive and Enlightenment principles of the liberal tradition in their attempts to combat communism. In doing so, he makes the case, they helped paved the way not only for modern equivalents/heirs of the Cold War liberalism like Anne Applebaum, Timothy Garton Ash, Paul Berman, Michael Ignatieff, Tony Judt, and Leon Wieseltierm, but also the reigning power of the current neoliberal order and the withering of the welfare state. A note that this conversation is talking about liberals and liberalism in a very academic sense rather than it's colloquial usage. Among the topics discussed are Judith Shklar's After Utopia (and why Shklar is a guiding force throughout Liberalism Against Itself), Sigmun Freud and the politics of self-regulations, decolonization and paternalisitic racism in the Cold War era, Jonathan Chait's scathing review of Liberalism Against Itself and Samuel's response to it (excluive, thus far, to this show), Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed and Samuel's critique of the burgeoning postliberal right, thoughts on Sohrab Ahmari's Tyranny Inc., Karl Popper of The Open Society and Its Enemies fame and the problem his critique of historicism, the Mont Pelerin Society and neoliberalism, F.A. Hayek, Gertrude Himmelfarb and the Christian thinker Lord Acton, the Cold War liberals' critique of romanticism and Samuel's response to it, the Soviet Union and the idea of Progress and who lays claim to it, the concept of emancipation and the French Revolution, and much, much more!