News Brief: The Disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil and the Phony “Campus Safety” Panic
Citations Needed | March 12, 2025 | Transcript
[Music]
Nima Shirazi: Welcome to a Citations Needed News Brief. I am Nima Shirazi.
Adam Johnson: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: You can follow Citations Needed on Twitter and Bluesky @citationspod, Facebook Citations Needed, and become a supporter of the show through Patreon.com/CitationsNeededPodcast. All your support through Patreon is incredibly appreciated, as we are 100% listener funded, and we do these News Briefs in between our regularly scheduled full-length episodes. And today, Adam, we really wanted to talk about not only the detention of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, but also the media and political coverage and fallout from that, and how disingenuous, surprise, surprise, many of these statements have been.
Adam: Yeah, so this story has really shown the degree to which we have completely entered an alternate universe that has no bearing to reality, where a discussion about the suppression of people opposing a genocide and the genocide of their people is now being framed in these mushy, liberal anti-racism terms in the most dishonest and cynical way possible. So we’ve officially reached the nadir of this discourse. And we wanted to discuss how this has become a co-crime, a co-conspiracy between liberalism, or sort of institutional liberalism in the US, and the fascist, overtly fascist, I think it’s fair to say at this point, Trump regime. And this is truly a co-production. And we’ll sort of explain why that is, and why it’s important to maintain that focus as groups like the ADL team up with Trump to, frankly, disappear people for having wrongthink on the so-called Israel-Hamas war, as the New York Times puts it.
Nima: Yeah. So just a little bit of background before we dig in here. Mahmoud Khalil, who, I should say, is being described across media as a quote-unquote, “Palestinian activist,” rather than a Columbia student who is studying international affairs, is in the United States with a green card. He lives with his pregnant wife in Columbia University housing, and he was a visible leader and spokesperson and negotiator for the Columbia University anti-genocide protests, and was targeted by the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and also Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the weight of the Department of State of the United States, and was arrested by agents of the government outside his apartment earlier this week. We’re recording this on March 12, in front of his pregnant wife, and has already been whisked away to a detention center in Louisiana.
And so, look, this is so beyond a violation of free speech because he was, of course, arrested because of his role in the anti-genocide protests, in the actions and advocacy against the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza by Israel and the Israeli military. This is totally like speech crime territory, overt fascism. There have been protests all over the country, ongoing, calling for his release, not only on campuses across the United States, but also in front of city halls, in front of government offices. And unsurprisingly, there has been a lot of media coverage and a lot of liberal handwringing about the Trump administration’s arrest of an activist based on their speech, turning, you know, anti-genocide advocacy into pro-Hamas thought crimes, and every article, every political statement, has mentioned, you know, anti-terrorist policy, anti-, you know, support for terrorist groups, obviously muddying the antifascist waters of these statements. And so we just wanted to cover this a bit. That’s a little bit of background, and we’ll get into more as we go along.
Adam: So Mahmoud Khalil was disappeared by the Trump regime for what they themselves admit, and this is really important, is not breaking any laws, but expressing political speech that they viewed as undermining foreign policy. This is why Rubio is supposedly the point man on this. And because he is a permanent resident, a green card holder, he is viewed as someone who is unsympathetic, again, Arab name, right? Sort of spooky Arab name, right? This is a country where one-third of Republicans and 20% of Democrats, when polled in 2015 by PPP, agreed that the US should bomb Agrabah, the fictional country from Aladdin. So anything that’s kind of vaguely Muslim-coded is sort of seen as low-hanging fruit.
Nima: That’s why so many of these articles start by saying that Khalil and his pregnant wife were returning after breaking Ramadan, fast. Ooh, Ramadan. Scary. Piss yourselves.
Adam: Right, the more spooky and oriental you can make it, the better. The point is, of course, that they want to disappear all critics of both the Trump regime and the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which, despite a tentative temporary pause, is still very much ongoing in key ways. What this signals is that they’re planning on going for broke. This should shock and outrage all these kind of supposed liberal values, but because it is being spearheaded by liberal institutions, Democratic Party and Zionist groups like the ADL, what we get is a lot of tepid, kind of wishy-washy handwringing, without much firm pushback. There have been notable exceptions. Chris Murphy released a statement that was pretty decent, pretty good, pretty unequivocal, but mostly from Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, people who, again, take tons of AIPAC money, you’re getting this really kind of, Look, while I deplore everything he’s, I’m paraphrasing here, but this is actually a totally accurate paraphrase of the official Democratic Party line for most of these people: While I disagree and abhor many of his policies, while I agree he’s a total piece of shit who supports Hamas, the judge and the White House need to provide evidence of actual criminality. That was kind of the extent of the solidaristic support from Democratic leadership. Or we got silence.
Now 30 or so New York lawmakers, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. issued a statement of support. 14 members of Congress issued, including Al Green and Rashida Tlaib, issued a statement that was later followed up by others, issued a statement of support. But for the most part, Democratic leadership has been very wishy-washy, relying on process criticisms, while frontloading their statements, as Chuck Schumer did, by reinforcing the premise that what Khalil did was somehow antisemitic, or was deliberately harassing or targeting Jewish students.
I’m going to read you Chuck Schumer’s tweet here, okay, where he heavily implies that Khalil committed harassment against Jewish students. Again, something that he provides no evidence for. Something the White House has provided no evidence for. Something Columbia University has provided no evidence for. Quote,
I abhor many of the opinions and policies that Mahmoud Khalil holds and supports, and have made my criticism of the antisemitic actions at Columbia loudly known.
Again, implying Mr. Khalil is engaging in antisemitism.
Mr. Khalil is also legal permanent resident here, and his wife, who is 8-months pregnant, is an American citizen.
While he may well be in violation of various campus rules regarding how the protests were conducted last year, that is a matter for the university to pursue, and I have encouraged them to be much more robust in how they combat antisemitism and maintain a harassment-free campus that protects the safety and security of Jewish and other students.
Well, okay, so he’s just saying he could harass Jewish students with no evidence.
Nima: Doesn’t much care for the safety and security of, say, anti genocide Jewish students, let alone Palestinian students.
Adam: No, no, that they’re not important. They don’t count. That’s assumed. So when we talk about antisemitism on campus, and I think it’s important to be very clear with our language here, because no one’s being clear with our language, no one’s citing any evidence, no one’s no one’s showing any documented cases. Chuck Schumer is not linking to some story where Mahmoud Khalil went up to a Jewish student and called him a slur, a racial slur, or harassed him. The reason why no one’s ever specific, and the reason why, and we’ll get into other statements of vague claims of antisemitism, is because they have no evidence that this is the case, and that when you dig into these supposed cases of antisemitism on campus, with very rare exceptions, again, millions and millions and tens of millions of people engaging in online and real-world protesting, you’re going to have cases of genuine antisemitism. Obviously, that’s the case. But 99% of the time, when you dig into these claims, what you see is a conflation of pro-Zionist or pro-Israel activity with Jewish activity, right as sort of per se a Jewish act. And therefore anti-Israel or anti-Zionist speech is per se antisemitism, is per se anti-Jewish racial hatred.
And this, by the way, is the ADL’s definition, the ADL’s definition is that to existentially criticize Israel’s right over Palestinian land, however they deem it fit that week, whether it’s within the 1967 borders, or Gaza or the West Bank, whatever it is, they view that as per se antisemitism. So we want to play, this is just what sort of one example when you Google anti-Jewish or antisemitic hate crimes on campus. This is a report by NBC Chicago, the city I live in, headlined, quote, “‘A horrendous crime’: 2 Jewish students attacked at DePaul University speak out,” and we’re going to play the first 33 seconds, okay, just to give you a sense of what we mean when we talk about this, because unlike Chuck Schumer and all these other vague innuendo about about Mahmoud Khalil being antisemitic or committing antisemitic hate crimes, we want to actually be specific about what they mean. So we’re going to play this 33-second clip, and we’re going to dissect the conflation at work here and why it matters and why it matters a lot. So listen to this clip from NBC News Chicago. This is from November of last year. This is an NBC report about hate crime on the DePaul campus.
[Begin clip]
Regina Waldroup: Two Jewish students attacked at DePaul University are speaking out and taking a stand against hate. They shared their story with our Vi Nguyen.
Vi Nguyen: Days after being attacked at DePaul University, Max Long and Michael Kaminsky are sharing their stories, saying they won’t be silent.
Michael Kaminsky: It was, it was a horrendous crime, horrendous assault, and it was clear that it was because we ere Jewish. We were showing our Israeli pride. We were holding up a sign encouraging people to come up and talk to us about the IDF, about Israel.
[End clip]
Adam: Okay. They had signage where they were actively promoting the IDF.
Nima: Yeah.
Adam: In their own language, right? A country, a nation-state, just as Saudi Arabia, just as you know, Morocco, as the Philippines, whatever have you.
Nima: The genocidal military of a nation-state.
Adam: A military that is committing genocide, according to Human Rights Watch, according to Amnesty International, according to potentially, depending how you define it, the International Court of Justice, at the UN, the UN’s highest court. Okay, so this is a country that is committing genocide.
Nima: And these students were literally wearing Israeli flags as capes, like draped around their bodies.
Adam: And then someone attacked them. But they were not attacked because they were Jewish. They were attacked because they were supporting a nation-state, and that can lead to conflict when said nation-state is committing genocide. Again, not saying it’s okay to beat people up for that reason, but that’s not the same thing as beating someone up because they’re Jewish. But in the way it’s being told, these things are interchangeable, which itself, of course, is antisemitic. Assuming that someone is Jewish because they support Israel, or assuming that because they’re Jewish they should support Israel, is itself an antisemitic canard.
And when you drill down on these supposed cases of assault, again, something that Politico in their coverage of Mahmoud Khalil referenced this, right? They vaguely alluded to assault on Jewish students. Nine times out of 10, this is what they mean. They mean people who are actively supporting and again, they’ll say this. They’re pro-Zionist, pro-Israel factions who go, and you saw this in the most conspicuously on the UCLA campus, when the so-called counter-protesters started firing fireworks and lighting things on fire and assaulting people, some of whom actually were charged by the district attorney. These are pro-Israel, pro-Zionist, what Vanessa Redgrave called in her 1978 Oscar speech, Zionist hoodlums. These are people who are there to fuck up people they view as being threatening to Israel and Israel security. This is not a protected ethnic class. This is an ideological support for a nation-state, and this is just constantly conflated in this coverage, and they’re not remotely the same thing.
Nima: So for instance, since you mentioned UCLA, Adam, in a recent article from NBC News covering the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, there is this section buried midway through the article. Quote,
At UCLA, students gathered at Dickson Plaza on campus, where megaphones and rattling drums punctuated calls for Khalil’s release.
This is what follows. Quote,
UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk announced Monday that the university would launch an “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism” that will include recommendations on how it can combat anti-Israel bias, he said in a message to the UCLA community.
“UCLA is at an inflection point,” Frenk said. “Building on past efforts and lessons, we must now push ourselves to extinguish antisemitism, completely and definitively.”
End quote.
Adam: Antisemitism being opposition to Israel and Israel’s policies.
Nima: Right? I mean, it says it right there.
Adam: Right. And they do this over and over again.
Nima: None of these initiatives are about opposing genocide or opposing US military and state funding for the ongoing occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine. That is, of course, we’re not going to see any initiatives to combat that. We just see the ongoing conflation of criticism of a nation-state that is committing crimes against humanity, horrific war crimes against a people, as being the same thing, synonymous with antisemitism.
Adam: And if you feel like this is driving you insane, or you feel like you’re losing your mind, you’re not alone, because this is how every single of these squishy, useless fucking university administrators, and of course, much of the so-called liberal media, or centrist media, is framing this. They’re framing this as an issue of antisemitism, when all they have is guilt by association, vague innuendo, and this War on Terror language.
I mean, so much is laundered through this terrorist, terrorist, terror, terror. Again, only certain groups can be terror. You can commit a genocide and drop 2,000-pound bombs on apartment buildings and kill tens of thousands of people, thousands of children, probably tens of thousands of children. And that’s not terrorism. Why we don’t know? We’re going to debate that later. That’s an academic question. Let’s just move on. Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. Antisemitism, antisemitism. Terror, terror, antisemitism, antisemitism, terror, terror, terror. Until you look up and you go, Wait, what are we even talking about anymore? Right? Like, what’s being adjudicated here? I can’t even keep track of what we’re talking about. Are we talking about the people starving in Gaza who’ve had their electricity and water cut off? That are in month 17 of complete destitution and annihilation? No, we’re not talking about that. We’re not talking about US support for that. We’re talking about these alleged mushy feelings of a bunch of fucking college kids, which has nothing to do with anything.
So let’s read the University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham. So if you go to, you know, management school or public relations school, or you kind of become polished in the ways of high academia, you really learn the master class of saying absolutely nothing meaningful, saying nothing remotely subversive or interesting or significant. But you need to sound liberal, you need to sound open-minded. You need to sound, you know, worldly, right? Cosmopolis, right?
Nima: This is comms jargon 101.
Adam: This is so, we’re going to read this whole statement. And the reason why is because I think this kind of sums up the combination of cowardice, but also corruption, and I think racism. I think, frankly, a lot of this just fucking anti-Arab racism, to be quite honest, at work here, which is to say racism only goes in one direction. It only matters in one direction. And we’re going to use the language, the squishy, sort of post-George Floyd language of anti-racism to defend a genocide in real time, and that’s what we’re going to do, it’s what we’ve been doing over the last 17 months, in the most cynical way possible. Again, everything’s vague. Everything’s about feelings. Nothing’s in reference to any specific thing that happens.
Nima: Yes, so this is University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham, who sent this message, this statement, to the university community earlier this week. Here it is, quote,
Dear students, faculty and staff,
As President, there is no greater responsibility than to ensure each and every member of our community feels safe, valued and respected. Regardless of your race, gender identity, disability status, sexual orientation or religious beliefs, we are fully committed to ensuring that everyone feels welcomed and protected here at the University of Minnesota.
I am writing to you today, as our Twin Cities campus is now the subject of two federal investigations involving allegations of antisemitism: a U.S. Department of Education investigation and a pending U.S. Department of Justice task force campus visit. We also received a failing score on the Anti-Defamation League’s latest campus antisemitism report card.
Adam: Oh, the totally good-faith ADL, who’s working with the Trump regime to disappear students. We’re working with them to fight antisemitism on a totally good-faith, neutral definition of antisemitism that has nothing to do with defending Israel. Sorry. Go ahead.
Nima:
During the first eight months of my presidency, I have been working closely with members of our University community to foster a safe, welcoming environment for everyone.
Unfortunately, harassment, discrimination and bias — including antisemitism — continues to exist across the globe, negatively impacting people and communities. Here at the University of Minnesota, we take these issues very seriously.
As a leadership team and a University, we are strongly committed to enhancing support for members of our community who are Jewish. We are in regular communication with Jewish students and faculty groups, who have been advising us to better understand their lived experiences in this time, and augment their experience on campus.
Adam: We got a “lived experience,” Nima.
Nima: That’s right, you can’t talk about the myriad death experiences of the people who are being, you know, genocided, but no, the lived experience.
Adam: We just need bodies and spaces, and we’ll have the hat trick. Go ahead.
Nima: President Cunningham continues, quote,
In response to their advocacy, the University recently joined the Hillel Campus Climate Initiative — a nationwide program that equips campus administrators with strategies to counter antisemitism and foster an environment where Jewish students feel safe expressing their identities.
Adam: An explicitly pro-Israel organization being laundered through the language of anti-racism in Jewish identity. Go ahead.
Nima:
Over the past year, the University has made substantial improvements to its Bias Response and Referral Network to ensure that reporting is easier, intuitive and effective. We have also worked to clarify and communicate our policies regarding time, place and manner for events, demonstrations and civic engagement.
Adam: Translation: We’ve more easily broadened the definition of racism into opposition to Israeli policy, in alliance with a bunch of Zionist bullies. Go ahead.
Nima: And therefore made it harder for people to protest on campus.
Adam: And of course, made it hard to protest, because any protest that isn’t again, I guess a polite visual is seen as per se racist harassment. Okay, go ahead.
Nima: The statement continues, quote,
Let me be clear. Any and all forms of harassment, intimidation and bias against any member of our University community will not be tolerated. Decisive measures will be taken to end any hostile actions based on shared ancestry or any other protected characteristic, and University leaders will continue to work diligently to prevent their recurrence.
Adam: Does it ever occur to University of Minnesota officials or any officials that perhaps Trump disappearing Palestinian students was in part due to their being Palestinian, was in part due to their being Arab? No, that’s not racism, right? You know, disappearing fucking students and putting them in undisclosed locations in Louisiana where they cannot speak to their family or lawyer, that is not racism, by an overtly racist and Islamophobic and anti-Arab president. That’s not racism when, in fact, we’re going to work with the group, the ADL, explicitly cheering that on and supporting that, tweeting out support for that. So that’s not racism. That doesn’t count as racism. No, no, no. The solipsistic, self-identified perceptions of certain students matter, but the actual disappearing of Arab students is irrelevant.
Nima: The statement continues, quote,
There is absolutely no place for antisemitism at the University of Minnesota. In accordance with our institutional values, we firmly and aggressively reject any and all forms of hatred directed toward members of our Jewish community.
Since the Anti-Defamation League issued its report card, we have unfortunately learned the University did not provide updated information that informed our grade. We are actively working with the ADL to address this matter and clarify the many actions we have implemented over the past year to prevent and combat antisemitism, which were not reflected in their report card.
The allegations under investigation and scores on the ADL report card do not reflect our strong systemwide commitment and comprehensive, proactive approach to ensure that everyone feels safe. As we have said from the outset, the University will fully cooperate with any reviews or investigations involving these important matters.
For individuals who believe they have experienced any type of bias or discrimination, I strongly encourage you to report this activity to the University’s Bias Response and Referral Network.
Adam: Translation: We have completely capitulated and agreed with and submitted to these Zionist bullies, so please don’t cut our federal funding, Trump. We beg you, Marco Rubio and the Department of Homeland Security, please don’t cut our funding. And also please, if you need to arrest our students in exchange for not cutting our funding, please arrest whatever faceless Arab you want to arrest, because, frankly, we don’t give a fucking shit about them, because they don’t really matter. That’s what that’s saying. I mean, really, that’s what that’s saying.
Nima: The statement continues to talk about how students can refer incidents of bias and harassment. The president, quote, “encourage[s] each and every member of our University community to stand in firm opposition to every form of harassment, intimidation and bias,” end quote, so that, quote, “inclusivity is celebrated, and where every individual is treated with dignity and respect.”
Adam: Unless you’re Palestinian or Arab, at which point the government can disappear you based on that and pretty much based on that alone. And we will smear you as a terrorist, and we will coddle–
Nima: So remember, this statement is released in response to the arrest of a Palestinian student in New York City, who is the more public face of anti-genocide protests, was a spokesperson and negotiator with Columbia University and so what schools all over the country, what politicians all over the country, what media all over the country are doing in response to that, is issuing statements about antisemitism, not genocide.
Adam: Right. So here’s what we have, which is this sort of finalized version of what we had leading up to this under Biden, which is, you know, over 3,000 students arrested, prosecuted for their involvement in campus protests in the spring of 2024, and summer of 2024. When this happened, people would say, Okay, well, Trump is escalating, and people blaming the Democrats for this are really kind of missing the mark here, because this truly is an escalation, and it is, to be clear, it obviously is. I think it’s fair to say, under a Harris administration, we would not be disappearing activists. That’s absolutely true.
But I think when people say that this is a sort of a bipartisan co-production, what they mean is that they, aside from the fact that these universities are staffed with and are being supported by supposed liberal institutions like the ADL, and that these supposed liberal institutions that are going to defend us against Trump’s authoritarian overreach have completely either capitulated or just agree with them. And we can discuss that delineation at a different time, that they laid the groundwork in key ways. And that is true, but it’s also true that we do recognize that this is a meaningful escalation and that this is not something that would have likely happened under Harris. Of course, the genocide would have, but the sort of protesting of the genocide, as feeble and as ineffective as they may view it, would not have been criminalized to this extent, and certainly federal funding wouldn’t have been pulled from, you know, Columbia and other universities, until they got in shape. So there is a meaningful escalation.
But at the same time, the Democrats are supposed to be the opposition to this. In theory, right, in theory, they’re supposed to represent freedom of speech liberal principles. They’re supposed to represent ethnic minorities, and they’re not. So obviously a lot of ire is going to be directed towards them in disproportionate fashion, because they’re supposedly supposed to represent the Left, or the Center-Left, the liberal state, the liberal institutions, and they don’t, or they’re simply just going along with Trump and supporting them as again, as groups like the ADL and members of Congress have.
Nima: Well, and that’s why, as you said, Adam, you know, even the nominal opposition to this clear fascist disappearing of Khalil is always kind of coupled, and oftentimes led, with the disavowal of him almost like having a right to be a person because of his political view. So you have, you know, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in his statement, the second sentence of which is this, quote,
To the extent his actions were inconsistent with Columbia University policy and created an unacceptable hostile academic environment for Jewish students and others, there is a serious university disciplinary process that can handle the matter.
End quote.
Adam: Yeah. Again, they keep implying that he’s going around harassing students because of their ethnicity or their religion, which is an extremely libelous claim, like, you’re claiming someone’s basically committed a hate crime, but then say, well, maybe it’s not enough to deport them. You have to show evidence of that, and they don’t do that. They don’t point to anything in particular. They don’t link to anything.
Nima: And it’s describing anti-genocide, anti-occupation, anti-apartheid, anti-ethnic cleansing protests with creating a hostile environment, rather than the hostile environment being the existence of ongoing genocide, supported not only by the US government, but by these institutions. You can tell it’s supported by these institutions themselves, because they’re partnering with close allies of the IDF like the ADL.
Adam: Because the subtext here is that they view criticism of Israel, or even just accusing Israel, not even criticism per se, because they’ll say, Oh, you can criticize Israel around the margins, or, like, talk about their transportation policy. So to keep it safely within the kind of liberal Zionist domain of criticizing a particular party versus the project of Israel as such. If you make existential criticisms of a state which is an apartheid state, which is a supremacist state by its very nature, or something sort of viewed as existential, that that is seen again according to the ADL’s own definition, and a definition passed by Congress, right, as per se antisemitic, as per se, anti-Jewish, that’s really the huge Venn diagram overlap here. That is simply not talked about, that is not being adjudicated. It’s not being discussed.
And when you say criticizing Israel in existential terms, which is saying they are committing, even saying they’re committing a genocide, right, simply saying Israel is committing a genocide, again, something that Amnesty International, the founder of Human Rights Watch, again, various human rights organizations, Doctors Without Borders, have all claimed, both in legal and moral terms, that that is per se, a form of racist incitement and hatred, I don’t know what to say to that. Then you’ve entered into a realm of pure feelings. It feels like it’s racism. Well, it’s how, I mean, in other words, if Israel was to commit a genocide, and I was to say, This is a genocide, what would it look like for me to say that in a non antisemitic way? It’s impossible, because, again, the whole point is to indemnify every action of Israel’s in a meaningful way. And so you’ve entered this total bizarro land, this upside-down land, where simply stating matters of fact, right, sort of pointing out reality, is somehow a form of inciting a pogrom. And I’m here to tell you that that’s completely fucking insane. This is completely divorced from reality.
Nima: Because the other side of that, not the opposition, but kind of the other side of this, seeing this kind of from the opposite standpoint, is the conflation of Palestinian existence as being inherently antisemitic, right? That as long as there are Palestinians who are alive, who exist, their ongoing life, their beating hearts, the fact that they have children, the fact that they have homes, that is seen as being inherently, by definition, antisemitic. And if you, you know, say that Palestinians deserve to be alive, deserve to exist, have a right to live in their land or elsewhere, have a right to say what they want about a genocide of their own people while they’re students at a university, that is then per se antisemitic, because Palestinian existence is now being defined as anti-Jewish, which is itself wholly antisemitic.
Adam: And meanwhile, you have the Trump administration hiring outright antisemites. The Pentagon hired Kingsley Wilson, who had a long history of, again, supporting antisemitic parties in Germany, but like deep, deep cuts about the, well, which is actually why the ADL was founded originally in 1915, about the lynching victim Leo Frank as being, you know, sort of correctly lynched. I mean, these are tweets she sent out just recently, in 2023, this is like a deep Nazi cut. So we have Pete Hegseth at the Department of Defense hiring outright internet Nazis to go work at the Defense Department. Sorry, some tweets are from 2024, from last year. So those are sort of outright antisemites being hired by Trump. And the best we get is some, like tepid like, Ah, they should be more careful. We certainly aren’t asking these people to be disappeared or put into detention facilities in Louisiana. It just creates a little bit of a dustup because the tweet is, again, too overt to deny, and then we just kind of move on. And no one, no one views Pete Hegseth as existentially antisemitic, even though he obviously is, and hires antisemites, because all that matters is that he’s pro-Israel. This is the John Hagee carve-out. You can say the most antisemitic shit on Earth, but as long as you support Israel, it doesn’t really matter. Doesn’t really rise to something that ADL gives a shit about.
Nima: Because this actually isn’t about antisemitism. This is about anti-Arab racism. It’s about anti-Palestinianism. It’s also namely about ongoing imperialism and colonialism, not to, like, drop a bunch of fucking isms and be all dorm room about it. But let’s not forget that the father of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, said in his 1896 writings, called The Jewish State, calling for a Zionist state in Palestine, he wrote, quote, “There [in Palestine] we shall be a sector of the wall of Europe against Asia, we shall serve as the outpost of civilization against barbarism.” End quote. That was his appeal. Like, that is the pro-colonial appeal for support for creating a Zionist state on Palestinian land. This appeal to, you know, quote-unquote, “Western values,” right? In this case, European, but obviously easily now transferred to the United States, which is Israel’s, you know, number one benefactor and supporter and kind of lawyer on the international stage. And so this is about control. This is about racism. This is about power. So it’s not ever about antisemitism, but it is used, weaponizing the horrific reality of the Holocaust, weaponizing history against, now, Palestinians in favor of more control, kind of using antisemitism as this bludgeon. Because, as you said, Adam, it kind of feels right, like, no one wants to be antisemitic. That’s terrible. I should say a lot of people want to be antisemitic because there are a lot of active antisemites. And as you said, a lot of them actually have, you know, roles in the government now.
Adam: Right. And so again, this whole thing is bizarro land. The Trump World is infested with antisemites. Musk says the most antisemitic shit on Earth all the time, but because he does his events with the IDF dog tags and does his little tour of Israel and shakes hands with Netanyahu, again, you get a free pass. And so what we have is an alternate universe now where any meaningful criticism of Israel on college campuses or anywhere is seen as a form of racial hatred. And that’s the way it’s being framed. That’s the way it’s being teed up by Democrats who even are ostensibly supporting Khalil.
Nima: Right, or at least supporting him in order to oppose Trump.
Adam: Right. And so we’ve entered into a Bizarro World where up is down, black is white, opposing genocide is a form of racism, and liberals and these totally useless, feckless, cowardly university administrators who are literally just paid to be cowards. I mean, that’s their job. Their job is to be as cowardly as possible. It’s to believe in nothing, say nothing, but kind of traffic in this vapid sort of anti-racist claptrap language. They just got to roll with it. And they’re going to work with Trump to disappear several more activists in the coming weeks and months, and they’re going to do so under the banner of anti-racism, and again, it makes people feel like they’re losing their minds, because obviously disappearing anti-genocide activists who no one can show any evidence at all, did anything remotely inciting or promoting racial animus, let alone criminal. It doesn’t matter. He’s got an Arab name, and that vaguely sounds antisemitic and vaguely sounds horrible, so we’re just going to disappear him and move on. And every single liberal institution, university administrator, is either going to put up this tepid, qualified defense, or they’re going to go along with it and reinforce every premise of the Trump regime’s crackdown.
Nima: So that will do it for this Citations Needed News Brief. Of course, you can follow the show on Twitter and Bluesky @citationspod, Facebook Citations Needed, and become a supporter of our work so we can keep doing our episodes and our News Briefs and our live shows and interviews through Patreon.com/CitationsNeededPodcast. All your support is so incredibly appreciated, as we are 100% listener funded. We will be back very soon with more full-length episodes of Citations Needed. So stay tuned for that, but until then, thanks, everyone, for listening. I am Nima Shirazi.
Adam: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: Citations Needed’s senior producer is Florence Barrau-Adams. Producer is Julianne Tveten. Production assistant is Trendel Lightburn. The newsletter by Marco Cartolano. The music is by Grandaddy. Thanks again, everyone. We’ll catch you next time.
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This Citations Needed News Brief was released on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.
