News Brief: 2028, Israel's Progressive Rebrand and the Risk of "Genocide" as Rhetorical Box Check

Nima Shirazi (0:04)

Welcome to a Citations Needed News Brief. I am Nima Shirazi.

Adam Johnson (0:07)

I'm Adam Johnson.

Nima Shirazi (0:09)

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We are 100 percent listener funded, so all your support through Patreon is so incredibly appreciated. It allows every episode to remain free for everyone while being a member gives you all sorts of goodies like extended show notes, a periodic newsletter, and other things. We are now in our 10th season of Citations Needed, so look out for more goodies coming your way. Adam, today we are seeing a renewed kind of flurry of news articles, interviews, former Biden administration officials doing the rounds and claiming that, oh man, they were always hand-wringing about supporting genocide. They really thought they could do more, but they're unable to. And in the wake of all of this, we're also seeing something that we're calling the genocide rhetorical box check. Let's start there, and then we can get into recent New York Times pieces about Brett McGurk and also Jake Sullivan doing the media rounds and ringing about shit. But let's start with the recent news about Troy Jackson in Maine and the kind of media flurry around that and your thoughts on that. Can you start by kind of teeing this up for us?

Adam Johnson (1:36)

So the word genocide has implications and obligations, as we've mentioned on the show before. It's not just a label you throw out to look maximally angry. It actually requires the person making the claim or the institution making the claim to follow through on a certain set of obvious and implied commitments. Twenty-two members of Congress and all Democrats have said that Gaza is a genocide. That's only 8% of Democrats in Congress versus the 77% of Democrats who believe it's a genocide. But that aside, what we're seeing emerge now is candidates, especially those who are either running right now in competitive midterms and need to not upset their base, but also those who are very clearly running in 2028 We've discussed this before, Chris Van Hollen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ro Khanna. Now, Chris Van Hollen has not called it a genocide somewhat conspicuously, but he does say it's ethnic cleansing, which I think also has certain implications and obligations.

And they're checking the box of outrage, but not necessarily following through on the logical implications of what that word means.

Nima Shirazi (2:38)

Van Hollen also has been fairly consistent throughout, not always rolling over and doing hand wringing, I think.

Adam Johnson (2:49)

Yeah, he's been decent, but he has still held on, he has still grasped on to the axioms of liberal Zionism, which matter because in the event that there's a president, Van Hollen, and let's say there's another October 7th style attack or something, even 10 percent of that, we're still going to commit to quote unquote eliminating Hamas and quote unquote, securing Israel, all these bromides that necessarily inevitably lead to mass carnage, in the event that the occupied people decide that they're going to do something besides vote for Mahmoud Abbas or whatever safe expression of politics they're permitted to have, and that they're just going to be met with pure annihilationism versus a genuine solution involving equal rights. And so, this is all to say, there was recently an article I wrote for The Real News, where I detail how the Democrats are, when you actually look at their statements, are not really breaking from Israel.

We talked about this a few months ago, I think about six months ago, maybe even a little longer ago, about these pseudo breaks from Israel. Because what's important to understand is that support for Israel among Democrats is a fringe issue. It is no longer some 50-50 issue. It is a 80-20 at best. Their poll showed that 13 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of Israel. That is less than the amount of Democrats who are young earth creationists, who believe in full abortion bans, and who support Christian prayer in school. It is a fringe right-wing issue. Nevertheless, 80 percent of Democrats in Congress have the inverse opinion.

And so what they understand is that when they need to have legitimacy and credibility, they need to look like they're breaking from Israel, and so enter public relations. Enter the whole point of this podcast, which is the necessary cognitive and epistemological frameworks to paper over the thing that is obviously in contradiction. Which is, I'm acknowledging these horrible war crimes in this instance. I'm acknowledging these horrible war crimes in Gaza. Usually, I'll call it a genocide, I'll call it ethnic cleansing, but I vaguely gesture towards this unprecedented level of death over the last three years, but in particular, in the first two years. But also, I need to keep the weapons flow to Israel going.