September 10, 2021 • 44 mins
Joey Ayoub joins us to discuss living in the periphery of empires, the crumbles in Lebanon, and the challenges of organizing in the face of weaponized unreality.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Holy shit, it could happen here it in in this
case being being the podcast that you're listening to, and
in fact it is it is happening here in your ears.
But you know what else is happening here? The world's
kind of fallen apart. Well, I don't know, not the world,
but the structures in the world that we all relied
(00:26):
upon for uh, you know, existence and ship sure are
crumbling anyway. I'm Robert Evans. This is a podcast about
how things are falling apart and how to deal with
that ship. Um, if you're new to the show, maybe
check out our first five episodes. They'll catch you up
there Evergreen. But this week we have a special guest
and a special conversation to have that I think is
(00:48):
going to be edifying for a lot of people. I
would like to introduce Mr Joey. Ayub Joey. You are
a writer and a researcher in the host of the
Fire These Times, which is a fantastico cast. Um, Joey,
how are you doing today? I'm fine, I'm up. I'm
operating with the Norman parameters. As I said before. Yeah,
(01:11):
I'm I'm impressed by that because I'm I'm constantly in
the process of falling apart, which is why I was
late to this call. Joey, you want to give our
listeners a little background on yourself? Sure, Um, emotionally from Lebanon.
It's why I go up. My family is kind of mixed,
a bit of Pedestinians, but of your Talians, but of Argentinians,
(01:32):
kind of fall over the place. Uh. And I'm currently
in Switzerland continuing my PhD, which one day will actually
be done, I hope. I have been told that there
is a life after the PhD. Yeah, So that's what
I do. And I do podcasts and I write and
I stuff that I probably forgot. And uh, you you
(01:53):
wrote a column that I I quite admire for a
website called Lausan, which was based on a term that
I think it was the Mangol media folks came up with, right, um,
and that term is the periphery. And and one of
the reasons I think this is useful. So when I
grew up, and I suspect it was the same. I
don't know if it was the same for Garrison because
(02:13):
he grew up in a weird cult, but it was
probably the same for Christopher. Um. The terms we heard
a lot for different like it was either basically the
United States or Europe, or it was the third world. Right,
those were the terms that I grew up with, and
I wasn't I was like probably seventeen or eighteen before
I actually learned that. The terms first and third world
kind of came from the Cold War, where like the
US is the first World, the Soviet Bloc is kind
(02:34):
of the second world, and then everyone else it's the
third world. Obviously, that's not a great collective nown for
referring to any group of anything. We try not to
use third world. And the new term has kind of
become more I don't know, vogue, maybe the wrong word,
but people have started using the global South to refer
to um everywhere that's not the US and Europe and
(02:56):
you know, UM a handful of other countries and kind of, uh,
that's not great either, um because for one thing, a
lot of those countries aren't South, and also it isn't
North either. Yeah. So I'm interested in this because there
is a use in having kind of collective nouns to
refer to groups of people from multiple nations. UM and
(03:19):
in the West isn't going to do for most places um,
And I like this term the periphery because kind of
the way that you in the Mangal folks kind of
have described it makes a tremendous amount of sense to me.
And it makes a tremendous amount of sense because it's
not trying to group people together based on their relationship
to of a Western centered kind of like international power
(03:43):
dynamics understanding that even a lot of people on the
left here kind of fall into where you know, um,
you're either imperialist or anti imperialist, but being anti imperialist
means supporting a lot of imperialist powers because they're against
whatever imperialist power you were born into. Anyway, I wonder
if you if we could start by kind of getting
your your explanation of what is the periphery? Um? And
(04:05):
and and how do you see that? Yeah? Yeah, I
mean so I'll just say it like up front that
I don't expect that term to work every time and
in all contexts. For example, I know someone who who
like works in development studies and who we had a
pretty informative chat about the terms global South and global
Note and she was pretty convincing that they can be
(04:27):
useful in in in a certain like in the materials
analysis of certain things. So I'm not I'm not kind
of here to say it like it doesn't work ever basically, um,
but I think what really clicked with me, or the
number of things that really clicked with me in one
is that conversation with fl Event on Margin Media on
their on their own podcast as well I've written for them,
and then we had a chat about it was like
(04:49):
about the explosion in baby Wood last year, and at
some point the topic of the periphery, which they coined,
I didn't coin it came about. And the best way
he described it, which is a bit ignic given the
podcast I'm on now, is that when anti authority in
Turks he's from Turkey, see protests in for example Lebanon
(05:11):
of Hong Kong, which was what happened. They were happening
at the same time in two thousand nineteen and Iraq
and other places, child and so on. They sort of
think that it could happen here, like you know, it
could happen in Turkey essentially, which is not the case
often with like French leftists or American leftists, so usually
leftists that are broadly speaking in the West. Now the
(05:31):
obviously exceptions to all of these rules. Not every Turkish
leftist things like that, not every Western leftist things like that,
but it's kind of a general trend. And for me,
for example, the way I can explain it is that
a podcast like it could happen here, where you're sort
of describing a situation that might happen here here in America,
let's say, wouldn't necessarily be needed in for example, Lebanon,
(05:52):
because it's already happening, it's been happening for some time now,
and that that tension in some sense when I would
because nowative in Switzerland, so I mean, I mean, you know,
in Geneva, which is as international as at the center
in some sense as it gets almost It's this tension
between my daily life essentially here and what's happening back
(06:13):
home on a daily basis is what sort of led
me to think about this other terms the periphery, because
I just felt that at least on an emotional level,
global stuth wasn't working as well. That makes sense, And
one of the things I really find so useful and
and admirable about this term is that it it is
a it's a collective now and for referring to a
group of people, but it separates those people from the
(06:36):
state from their government. So when you're when you're talking
about the periphery and you include people from lebanon Um,
people from from Palestine, people from Syria, you're not including
the government's you know, it's not the states, it's the
because the people are peripheral to the power of those
states and to the blocks that those states find themselves,
and which is why they, you know, any any efforts
(06:59):
at autonomy the communal level are crushed so violently. Um. Yeah,
that's why for me, global South in the term includes
the states from the SOCOL Global South that are crushing
the activists from the SOCO Global South. And so I
just felt that I just needed this other layer, this
other term that explains that dynamic as well. Yeah. Um,
(07:20):
And you know, one of the things you you just
were talking about was kind of the way in which
a lot of leftists in the United States and chunks
of the West, we'll kind of disregard liberatory struggles overseas
that don't neatly fit into a very simple ideological category.
I'm kind of wondering, is you know a kid who
(07:41):
grew up in Lebanon and kind of I'm going to
assume mostly focused on the regional kind of politics. When
did you start to realize that that was something that
was going on internationally? Like when did you when did
you realize kind of like, you know, I think a
lot of folks were taken surprise by the reaction of
a lot of the international left, like the Arab Spring,
And I'm kind of wondering was that when it it
(08:03):
kind of hit home for you? Where did you start
to see stirrings of those problems at an earlier day. Yeah,
two thousand eleven is when it kind of became very
concrete in some sense. But I grew up having to
visit Switzerland actually because my dad is a Swiss national,
and I would do so on the Lebanese passport obviously,
so I would always need to apply for visas beforehand
(08:24):
and so on, you know, like two or three times
a year sometimes, and that sort of it. In the
in the retrospect, it was those early experiences just meeting
the border, just experiencing a border all the time. That's
sort of I think anyways, one of those things that
I've been thinking I can get respect, like planted the
(08:45):
seeds of what was to come, if that makes sense,
because I was always peripheral. Whenever I would go to Switzerland,
I was never allowed to stay there longer longer than
let's say, three weeks if they gave me three weeks,
or three months if they gave me three months. And
it sort of felt weird coming to Europe all the time,
because I'm actually born in France, but I don't have
the citizenship, and so it was there was the sense
that I felt it weird having to ask permission from
(09:07):
someone to go to the place where I literally started
my existence. And so from on a on a very basic,
basic level that's never quite always like squared with me,
and that like led to a number of things that
from Lebanon I was seeing the rest of the world
in that sense, and it took me sometime. I think, yeah,
I think after their spring, especially when I started seeing
(09:29):
that Lebanon is perificult or I didn't. I didn't really
have a term for that before. And the quote unquote
real things were happening in in the West. Obviously that's
all problematic, and I don't mean that literally because the
real things are happening every all the time. But in
the sense of what gets to matter, whose lives get
to matter more, and so on and so forth. Now,
(09:49):
one of the things I think about a lot when
I read your work, UM, and when I consume what
with Mangal Media puts out Mangal media is UM. I
guess you called the journalistic collective UM made up of
of people A lot. I think a lot of them
were or are have worked as like fixers in uh
in in you know, the periphery in parts of the
Middle East, UM. And they're What I find so vital
(10:10):
about their voices is that it was as as an
American journalist who has worked over there, it was always
those folks who had the best stories. It's just that
those stories got published with the New York Times or
with the New Yorker, the Washington Post under somebody else's byline. Right, UM.
That's the way journalism actually works. And you have you
do have some some reporters like um, I'm spacing on
(10:31):
his name. But the fellow who wrote no good Men
among the Living, who uh yes, yes, who has done it?
I mean I think just I'm sure has local sources
in Afghanistan, but also speaks the language, and it is
just an accept but for the most part, especially when
you see somebody with my complexion reporting from over there,
if they're getting good ship, it's because of it's because
of a local UM. And what I like about Mangal
(10:53):
is that it it breaks down kind of that barrier
between that kind of that kind of white person filter,
but when the actual people living on the ground and
understanding the situation the person who's trying to package it UM.
Which is not to say that I think there's no
value in having a local package. And I think anytime
you're trying to translate a story across there is some
reason for that. But I also think it leads to
(11:15):
I mean, I know it leads to problematic kind of
Americans said. There's a lot of problems that it leads to.
It that we don't have enough time to discuss all
of it. But what I'd like to talk about with
you is is kind of how is consumers of of
media in the United States and in in in the West. Um,
which most people listening to this are everyone on this call,
but you was born in the US or a place
(11:37):
that is the same as the US but with a
better hat. Um, I'm talking about Canada. UM. So how
do how do how do you recommend we if we
if we're if we aspire to be internationalists and to
to avoid falling into that trap of of flattening the
struggles of other people to fit inside of a simple
(11:58):
ideological rubric, how do you recommend people try and cut
out or or minimize the extent possible, um, the bias
of of whatever region they live in when reading news
for another part of the world, Like, how do you
do that? Well? Imperfectly right, Like it's never gonna be,
(12:20):
never gonna be you know, there's always gonna be flaws,
there's always gonna be some learning curve to all of
that as well. One thing that's worked for me, um,
because you know, I did grow up in Lebanon, and
so there is that dimension. But I was I had
a pretty sheltered child childhood. You know, media was mostly
on the Internet, and so I could kind of go
wherever I want, and I was pretty is up until
(12:41):
the certain point. I was pretty um, let's say, sheltered
from what was happening even around in Lebanon, around Lebanon
up until let's say that before just before the air sprain.
So I do know what it's like to kind of
have biases against you know, other places and have certain Yeah,
just it's just human flaws at the end of the day.
(13:01):
The main difference I think is just what gets centered
and what gets peripheral. I mean, just to use that
same term again. One thing that I've been doing to
kind of help myself, and so I'll just speak from
personal experience, is go to some websites like Loves and
I've been I've been I read what Loves and regularly
mangel media as well. And there are a number of
other websites that are trying as much as they can
(13:25):
to actually write for one another. Like they're actually trying
to write with the assumption that most people who are
going to read are not from the West. And that's
not easy to do for language barriers. For example, if
they're if they're mostly writing in English because the dias
progress of the world, if there is some sense and
kind of connecting to one another, we're probably going to
do it in English. I'm just realistically speaking, and so
(13:47):
maybe Spanish, but like you know, probably English. And that's
that's that's something that we have to sort of contend with.
It's not easy because it could be that I can
spend all of my time having conversations with let's say,
other people in the diasporas of other groups, let's say,
and because I'm doing it entirely in English, then I'm
actually not conversing with people back home, and so that
hates another problem, and it's there's no easy solution. Basically,
(14:11):
there's no I don't really have a A A how
do you say this? Like A yeah, like a solution
that can fit he can fit any scenarios. So I
don't really have a good answer to that. Actually, I
just think that heating diverse sources is the best way
to do things, but with a critical eye as well,
although I feel like that's kind of a boring answer.
(14:32):
And for me, the thing that has been quite refreshing
is seeing projects like Love Side, which is why I've
published like a an interview with like they. We did
an interview conversation thing where we were exploring parallels and
contrast between Hong Kong and Lebanon, for example, and that
for me was a piece where I was entirely thinking
about the people I was talking to, like people from
(14:53):
Hong Kong, and that's it. We had a diaspora experience
in common, but I wasn't thinking and we were speaking
in English, but I wasn't thinking about how is this
going to be received in New York or Paris or
London or whatever. And I feel like these more of
these probably will help because it centers different voices rather
than the ones that were used to But even though
its center, I'm sort of saying it with like an asterisk,
(15:15):
because my entire point is that I'm actually uncomfortable with
certain situations where I risk being the center of his
story when there are so many things happening to my
periphery as well, and so it can happen, it can
happen on different layers. If it's what I'm trying to say. Yeah,
I mean that's sort of the problem of being as
you are, kind of a child of two worlds, where
you you have the benefit of it makes it easier
(15:37):
to explain both places to the other. Um, but you also, uh,
you have a wall kind of or at least a
couple of them up up inside you, um, which yeah,
um yeah, And it is like there's no there's no
kind of gaining perfect perspective on any place, including the
place where you live. But I do think it's important
(15:59):
to talk about kind of at least de centering to
the extent that's possible, like Western voices when we're trying
to understand places that are not Western. M So I
(16:21):
think think with fair amount, just be a chat over
the year, particularly during some of the nonsense last year.
Is um internationalism, which is is a real concern I
think of everybody on this show, and something that used
to be in a lot stronger state than it is
in the left. Um. And I what do you see
(16:42):
as the primary barriers to functional internationalism at the moment um? Well,
West centrism is I think a primary one. Racism Islamophobia
are pretty common as well. Um, Islamophobia is a pretty
massive one, uh, to the point that even non Muslims
like me can be swiped kind of kind of just
(17:04):
taken with it as well. And I just I just
think that when I say West centerism, I don't even
only mean people who are fromwhat from the West and
are thinking about the West as the center of the world,
but I also mean, like left is from other parts
of the world. I think that the only enemy is
is the West, or the only enemy is America for example.
(17:24):
And uh, you know, Christopher and I had chats about
this as well on my own podcast actually about the
channel men, the the legacy of channel men as well. Right, Like,
it's not just misunderstood or um yeah, misunderstood among let's say,
White Americans, but it could also be misunderstood among Chinese
American for example. There are these multiple like these multiple
(17:46):
layers in which something can be misunderstood on different layers
as well, if that makes sense. And I for me,
the problem with the West centrism is that it takes
up so much oxygen in the room. It's just take stup.
So we people like me and others, And like I've
I've met folks from like the Balkans and in the
Middle East and Southeast Asia, and like almost any group
(18:10):
I can think of, I've met them, they have complained
about pretty much the same thing that they ended up
spending so much time on the Internet debunking disinformation or
debunking tankies or de punking campus and or debunking what
have you, or just misinformation sometimes and this this ends
up being pretty exhausting, Like this ends up being like
ship is happening on the ground, like things are actually
(18:31):
happening on the ground, and activists from let's say by route. Oh,
they didn't happen as much in Bayhood, but you know
from Iraq or Syria, Syria especially obviously, but Hong Kong
as well. You know, they have to deal with concrete
problems on the ground, but at the same time they
have to worry about how this is being perceived on
the internet, because usually it's assumed that how it's perceived
(18:52):
on the internet, So, especially in the Anglophone online media,
escape can have real life consequences on the ground. And
this is something that is very difficult to tackle because
it's not enough to just fight them by having more
allow sense and more mongel media. For one, we just
don't have the resources to challenge a Fox News or
CNN or what have you. Um And for two, it's
(19:14):
just exhausting the main the main I think the main
thing that has stopped most activists I can think of,
or at least they've taken a break or what have
what have you. It's just burned out more than anything.
It's not even well in many cases. Obviously it's also
therex threats from the state and stuff like that, but
more often than not, it's just being exhausted from having
(19:35):
to spend so much time dealing with what's happening on
the ground at the same time making sure that what's
happening on the ground isn't being misinterpreted or you know,
having to deal with this information or what have you.
And so basically the responsibility ends up being on people
consuming these kinds of media. And I don't want to
make it to individualistic either. That are structural problems to
(19:55):
these things. As I said, CNN, the resources all of that.
But given the I can't Lena is not gonna listen
to me. The other the next best thing is trying
to just speak to just people who are willing to listen. Essentially,
and you talked a bit about I mean the situation
in Lebanon right now. If people aren't aware, Um, there
(20:17):
was a massive explosion UM a year or so ago,
and everything's kind of been in free fall sense, and
and what's happening, what's happening in Beiruts and across like that.
There have been massive wildfires that have destroyed a huge
chunk of the of the country's forests. UM and a
lart like just kind of society, uh, seems to be
(20:40):
breaking down in a lot of areas. The stores don't
have food, people don't like the inflation has has reached
kind of a nightmarish level. What do you like we're
we're talking about? You know, these are all kind of
the same problems that we're talking about everywhere. It's just
it it's much more severe at the moment there, and
it's it's in a much more advanced state for variety
of reasons. Do you do you have any hope for mitigation?
(21:04):
How could the situation improve? I guess, like I I'm
looking at at Lebanon and I'm thinking about like what,
not even like what I could do, because I don't
think there's anything I can do, but like how how
things could possibly get better? And yeah, I'm wondering if
you if that's any clearer to you, Um, maybe only
(21:24):
slightly more, but yeah, it's it's. Yeah, it's really bad,
I mean crumbling, you know, welcome to the combos that
actually fits there? There there, What's what's been happening for
something at least a couple of years, if not a
bit more than that. Pretty well, Um, there is a
mass exodus happening on a slow depending on the seasons. Basically,
(21:48):
sometimes it's faster and summer and then whatever. But basically
most of my friends, for example, like them, are now
abroad um and there is definitely a sense of um collapse.
That's you know, in here is the term that we
would use. It just feels like a state of collapse essentially.
And what's kind of interesting, I think is that this
(22:10):
was being predicted for some time now. It's been a
couple of years I would say, I mean towards the
end of two thousand nineteen with the revolution, not that
long after you already had a lot of people within
Lebanon like kind of you might call it the initial
phases of counter revolution in some sense, or that's probably
a bit simplistic, but basically saying that if we continue
taking to these heats, the country is going to collapse.
(22:31):
And that's obviously not the reason the country is going
to collapse. There is that is collapsing. The reason is
a combination of COVID, last year's pot explosion, corruption at
the states, septainosum war loads, basically control controlling most of
the country and so on and so forth. As to
what can happen next, I mean, it does seem that
at least for the foreseable future, it's going to continue
(22:52):
more or less their way. It's been continuing. It feels
like basically a decline that's sometimes steeper and sometimes less steep. Uh.
The stories on a daily basis are like, you know,
if friend took her like five hours to to fill
up gas and it's not even she can't, you know,
fill the entire tank, and electricity went out for like
three days, and so people you know, their fridge was useless,
(23:13):
you know, stuff like that. Um, And it is definitely
it's it's I don't have the percentage with me, and
those are just data and data without stories or can
be misleading as well. But something like I'm going to
say of the population is below the poverty line now
compared to before, stuff like that, it's it's pretty dire,
and it's it's it's pretty It happened at such a
(23:37):
speed that I'm gonna say that I haven't been back
since January for various reasons COVID and security threats and
other stuff. And um, I can't quite picture it in
my mind. It's not that easy. But friends obviously speaking
to them, and photos and videos that I see, it's
just fair to say that everything that I can think
(23:58):
of on most things that I can think of from
before two nineteen. Basically most of my life is essentially gone,
and there is there is no way of getting over
that quickly, if that makes and you probably never get
over it anyway, but you might get to at some
point where you you kind of regain enough energy to
actually maybe act on it, if that makes sense. But
(24:20):
there is a period in which now people are basically
still grieving, and they're still heaving from last year's explosion
as well because the Silion investigation and the usual stuff,
and so yeah, no, it's it's it's a game, and
it's gonna be game for some time. I think, uh
that that being said, I don't think that people back home,
you know, aren't doing anything. They are if a number
(24:40):
of initiatives, you're a number of basically mutuate societies or
no one really calls them that, but they just pop
up on their own, and these things function to certain extent.
Often it's they don't last too long, you usually due
to resources or burnout or what have you. And so
it's it's um, Lebanon is one of those things. I
this um. I think it was after the explosion last
(25:04):
year as well. I was on another podcast, the Auds
of Travel is called I think it was on that
one where he basically said that he thinks that for him,
the apocalypse looks like what happened in Lebanon, and I
think I know what he meant. But the problem with
that analysis is that often we think that the apocalyps
just happens and then that's it. But there's most of
(25:25):
the story is actually the day after that makes sense.
And in in Lebanon, as it happens, the apocalypse looked apocalyptic,
you know, that one day, that explosion that took just
a few seconds and I destroyed so much of the
capital and beyond. But the real story is what's been
happening since then, And there, I think is where Lebanon
does have lessons, well for Lebanon first and foremost, but
(25:47):
also for the rest of the world. You know, I
think we're all kind of in this position of watching
the place, seeing the place, most of us at least
seeing the places where we live in stages, you know,
(26:10):
and and mostly at the moment in earlier stages of
what what Lebanon is going through not as severe, but
but also kind of inevitably, inevitably approaching that right UM,
Like I think most you know, I I have a
couple of friends who are school teachers who are like
just kind of going to work with the absolute certainty
that a bunch of people are going to get infected
in the very near future. I have people who work
(26:31):
at hospitals that are no longer able to handle uh,
basic medical procedures for a lot of people that are
triaging care. You know that that just came out that
Idaho was going to have to start triagng like medical
care based on who they think might be able to
survive UM years. Yeah. Yeah, We're all living through stages
(26:53):
of that, and the the the overwhelming question is like,
how do we pull out of the tail spin? Um?
And this is you know, not a question I expect
us to have. I've put up forward, and I think
sometimes online people are like, oh, you know, you it's
naive to think that, like, you know, a general strike
or mutual aid could avert the tailsman. I I don't
(27:14):
think those are complete solutions to to pulling out of
the tailsman. I know they're aspects of what the solution
will be. Nobody knows what the solution is because we're
still in a tailspin. UM. In your mind, what do
you what do you think might be part of that answer?
With the knowledge that and and please people on Reddit,
nobody's nobody's saying this is the complete solution to the problem.
(27:35):
But like I'm hoping by gathering people together who think
about stuff, we can arrive at aspects of it. Yeah,
I mean for me, it's it's it's a combo. So
in my own person experience is basically what I could
well against speak of to the most, it's a combo
of reaching out to people in similar situations. So in
my case dis pogres especially, but like more broadly, Yeah,
(28:01):
for me, I think it has to be a combination
of pragmaticism. So I do believe in lesser evilism, for example,
when that's the only option. Sometimes I feel like I
need to choose and that's the only option I have,
And so I do that at the same time doing
so without the you know, so Biden versus time to
use that simple example, but at the same time knowing
(28:21):
that that's not gonna change much, if anything, It just
it might slow slow the collapse down. And that's actually
the metaphor that I prefer to think about, like slowing
things down gives me time to do other things, if
that makes sense. It gives me time to do more
things rather than always having to defend myself constantly the
other like. More broadly, I think it is it's a
combination of trying to build dual power, trying to build
(28:42):
mutual aid as much as possible. This is not going
to solve things. But I just don't think there is
anything that's going to solve everything. I just I don't
see how that's going to be possible. And the lack
of that is what I think many people it's scared.
I mean, it's scary, right, It's just scares the number
of people scares most people. I mean it scares me
(29:02):
as well. And I do understand that the instinct to
sort of go towards well, you know, we have the EU,
we have the US, we have those grant structures, and
we're going to just try and reform them and change
them and so on and so forth. I understand that,
And I don't judge people who who believe that and
who genuinely think that they can change things. You know,
I wish them good luck, basically, I don't. If they succeed,
(29:25):
good for everyone, Right, it's just that I think due
to structural factors, primarily due to related to power and
help power, power corrupts in almost every single case I
can think of, and pretty much all of them. I
just don't think these are solutions either. And I view
my role as as trying and and be critical as
(29:47):
much as I can, trying to be honest as much
as I can, saying when I just don't know something,
that I just don't know something, and having a healthier
a balance on how to deal with this. But that
being said, I I don't have that the answer. I
don't have them, you know. I think it is like
ninety episodes on my podcast now and there are a
(30:08):
number of episodes in which this also, this topic comes
up and some people have some answers, some people don't
have an answer and just becomes an open question. But
I would hope that at least the fact that there
are no clear answers doesn't discourage people from at least
trying to find these answers, because I do think most
of the time the solution is going to be found
(30:28):
while trying, while attempting to solve something else that makes sense.
It's it's the act in itself for the acts in
themselves are going to produce some of these solutions. Because
most of these solutions don't exist yet, we have to
literally create them, come scratch often. Yeah, yeah, I really
I think that's an important thing to accept that in
a lot of cases, you know, we don't know how
(30:51):
to fix the problem. I think the people who claim
that it's whatever whatever book they read, uh, you know,
written a hundred years ago, as the perfect solution, I
tend to think that's pretty arrogant. But I do think
that what's not arrogant is like getting your hands dirty
and trying to fix problems and hoping and understanding that
(31:13):
kind of the solutions to broader problems will come UM
in part through dealing with and trying to improve the
situation on a day to day basis. You know, we
just did an episode about UM self managed abortion, where
the source was definitely more on the liberal end of
things than the left end of things, and and somebody
who UM politically I would probably have a lot of
(31:35):
disagreements with, but she spent the last twenty five years
trying to train communities of people to provide to take
control of of of reproductive health and like enable other
members of their communities to take direct control of that.
And that is something I very much, um believe in,
and I think that's like, that's that's part of the solution, right.
Part of the solution to why the fucking coronavirus has
(31:56):
gotten so god damn out of hand is everything to
do with our broken health care system. And it's it's
it's not just the fact that healthcare is expensive, it's
the fact that people are kind of alienated, um from
an understanding of their bodies. They're not properly educated about
the way things work, and they don't feel like they
have that kind of the consistent lack of a feeling
(32:16):
of like medical autonomy leads people eventually to embrace nonsense
and and so there you have and kind of this
very focused solution to to one really specific problem, a
part of I think a larger solution to the problems
that that um that confront us. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
that makes sense. And you know, I mean, speaking of COVID,
(32:36):
I think that, I mean, we know that part of
the reasons why it's lasting so long as well, other
than local dynamics for demination, is that get your nations
are basically holding the vaccines at this point, were you
talking about like the third booster shot in in Switzerland
for example, and most of the words it doesn't have
the first one. Uh, you know, those are political decisions.
(32:57):
Those are political decisions being made on behalf of the
rest of the world. As we see what climate change
is one, it's the same story. Yeah, I don't know
what to do about that at this stage, Like it
seems like kind of at every level we've given up
on handling this the right way, you know, the the
the clear best solution would have been to treat the
(33:18):
rollout of the vaccine, you know, the same way we
treated World War Two as like a logistical hurdle on
on on par with getting a couple of million of
men to Western European we do that to get the
vaccine to everybody. So we could have hopefully fucking stopped
the variants from hitting, but we didn't do that, and um,
we're not going to do that, And so I guess
we're all left with mitigation once again, which is too
(33:41):
often the story with with climate change too. And I
don't know we've we've already kind of trod on that
territory garrison Christophers or anything you wanted to get into
before we close out. Well, I think I think one
thing specifically with COVID that I think is really interesting
is if you look at the places where COVID like
you know, it was ad but like it didn't you know,
(34:02):
kill six people. Um, you know, particularly looking at China
and Hong Kong with this, so you know, China both
both the government, China government, Hong Kong's initial state response
is really bad. And what happened was, you know, in China,
it's sort of you know, you have a bunch of
people who don't trust the government, and so what they
(34:24):
do is you can you get hundreds of thousands of
people sort of just mobilizing and forming these sort of
volunteer things to to you know, to enforce lockdowns, to
enforce restrictions, to give people food, and you know, it's
part of some of its state back, so it's not
and some of it's you know, you get this sort
of hazy lying between the sort of mass mobilization between
(34:45):
just people doing stuff on sort of state a line
directors and then in Hong Kong, you know, and people
like people like torch border crossings, people like you know,
there's this huge thing to get everyone masks is this
huge Like then this stuff is like entire against again
sort of against against the sort of government. But what
I think is interesting about both of them is that
it's like, you know, it turned out to be possible
(35:09):
to make dependent to make the pandemic less bad if
you mobilized. And it wasn't really the state that did this.
It was you know, people who didn't really trust the state,
and we're like, okay, so we're just we're gonna take
this into our own hands. And I think, you know,
and somebody's like that that seems like the thing that
can be done is you have to get people moving first,
(35:31):
like before everything completely collapses. I guess I guess something
I was. I also think it was interesting about that
was that the way that and I think this is
going going back to the internationalism part we're talking about,
is that there's this way in which that is particularly
in China, to the story of of this this hundreds
of thousands of people doing these mass mobilizations just never
(35:52):
reached the West at all, Like you know, everyone everyone
looked at China and went, oh, this is how the
state is reacting, And it's like, yeah, the state did
a lot of extremely weird things. Some of them were good,
some of them were bad, but the sort of mass
popular mobilization beneath it gets erased. And I think I'm wondering,
if you think about this, Joey, looking at even even
(36:13):
how the left worked in the nineties, we're looking looking
at the Zapatistas and looking at the people's coobal Assembly
stuff that they set up on how about how that
stuff was about social movements. It wasn't about sort of
it wasn't about states, it wasn't about necessarily political parties.
It was you know, you'd bring about social movements together.
And I'm I'm wondering what you think about the extent
(36:36):
to which part of what went really wrong in the
left in the last ten years is that they kind
of they abandoned that and it became sort of everything
became like internationalism became almost completely state and party based. Um, yeah, yeah,
I mean for me, the Arab swing is is where
I mean, this is I mean, my sound a bit
(36:57):
of an exaggeration. That's why the left sort of buried
it sound like for me, it's it's it's like I
still hardly called myself on the left just because it's simpler.
But I have a lot of problems with a lot
of people who are on the left when it comes
to so many different things. Um, I don't. I don't
quite know where it started. Um some people trace it
(37:18):
back to like the you know, I don't know, like
the Hungarian Revolution in fifty six, you know, stuff like that.
So I don't, I don't quite know where you start
or where you ended. But it does seem that at
some point the I don't know, it's a combination of
the huntings from the Balkan Wars and then the genocides
there and and the Denis m that was allowed to
essentially be just grow and be normalized to the point
(37:42):
that some guy like at the last few or two
years ago he got the Nobel Prize for literature even
though he's a boss in genocide denier and just these
these things are becoming have become in the past um
decade or two, I suppose, more normalized, and now we're
sort of back to the mitigation section of things. For me,
(38:04):
they're springing it to use. The method of the candy
in the coal mine was sort of that. But I'm
sure you can go further back, and some people will
say it's actually started with Bosnia Rwanda or something, but
I wouldn't say that. I'm I can say like full
certain words started, if that makes sense. But yeah, for me,
it's obviously it's there Spring. That's that's been the center
of my world for a long time now, and it's
(38:25):
it's where I felt that the lack of support that
was needed. And it's ongoing. I'm talking about it in
the past stance, but it's ongoing. Like the guy is
being bombed right now. Yeah, they just bombed it live too, right, Yeah,
so you know it's ongoing. The humiliation is ongoing. The
regime is putting out the green buses, which every Serian
knows what they're about, the humiliation ones where you escorte
(38:48):
people out of their homes basically, and they they they know,
like the regimes I think at this point know what
they can do and what they can't do. They're they're
pretty confident in what they can and can't do. So yeah, sorry,
I'm ending another pretty positive note on that. Unfortunately, I
don't know, man. I guess As a last question, I'm
kind of curious we we've you've analyzed the problem of
(39:13):
the left kind of aligning themselves with parties and with nations, um,
and how that leads to a tremendous amount of blind
spot spots, a flattening of of conflicts, and a flattening
of the humanity of people who don't live close to you, um,
which is you know, all part of the problems that
we that we are in right now. What do you
(39:34):
think we ought to be aligning ourselves around, like if
you're getting you know, if we're if we can if
we can come to see ourselves as all in the
periphery and and in the periphery at least and sort
of as relates to these states, because in a way
we all are, right, Um, people in the United States
certainly like benefit more from imperialism and from the might
of the United States, but we're also peripheral to the
(39:56):
power of that state, which I think a lot of
people may have ex experienced for the first time when
they got tear gas last year, or or as kind
of the different state effects or attempts to deal with
the coronavirus have failed disastrously. This really really but what
do you what should we be aligning ourselves around? Like
what do you what do you sort of give. I mean,
(40:20):
even the example that you gave is for me, it's
a pretty good one because that's also sort of the
point that like centers and peripheries are everywhere, and they're
they're also within nation states. So like Lebanon is peripheral
to America, but many Americans are peripheral to other Americans,
if that makes sense, and to other Americans in power,
especially Like for me, one of the primary thinkers behind
(40:40):
my own thinking is James Baldwin, you know, African Americans
or like, he is technically a Westerner, but I would
consider a lot of his writing to be peripherally essentially,
and that's because he has this amazing coats that I'm
gonna probably butcher. But it's something along the lines of, like,
the oppressed don't only know the oppressors better than oppressor.
Is no, they oppressed, but they also know them better
(41:03):
than they know themselves. That they like the oppressed know
the oppressor is better than the oppress is no, the
oppressors essentially, which is I think Phinon said something similar
as well. And for me, this this is the sort
of inside this is kind of the thing that blew up,
that blew my mind and this is this thing that
I would say, in the past few years have really
shaped everything as to what to sort of like ally
(41:24):
ourselves with. I mean, the problem is that it's it
sounds very cheesy to say to have actual principles and
maintain them, but the problem is that we don't do
it often. We don't actually maintain this principle often enough.
I don't know if I'm not going to speak for everyone, obviously,
but in my experience it's it's it is difficult to
maintain them. And often what I see is very seasoned
(41:44):
activists basically dealing with burnout and kind of retiring from
public life and from activism and just kind of doing
their own thing and whatnot. And for me, the question
is how do I continue doing what I'm doing but
in the long term, And there is a time component
to this, there is a resource component to this. And
the more we are able to add these different um
(42:05):
frameworks to understand things we like, for me, that perfectly
is just one framework. You know. Feminism is another one,
Anarchism is another one. Uh, none of these things explain
everything all the time, right, But it's it's just different
lenses from which I can understand the world. And my advice,
which is not an easy one I still struggled with it,
is to just try and have as many different lenses
(42:26):
as possible. And that's sort of my advice that it's
not a you know, it's not a it's not a
very quotable one. You're not gonna find this on a
T shirt. I think, Well, Um, Joey, I that's that's
I think all I had to ask and get into today. Um,
did you have anything else you wanted to talk about
before we before we roll out and leave our audience
(42:49):
to I don't know, go uh, grow some cabbage or whatever.
We'll going cabbage and community is always the best thing
to do to be honest. Yeah, make food, make food,
make food to community gardens. That's the best thing anyone
can do to be honest. Um yeah, I don't know. No,
I I can talk about solo punk, I can talk
(43:09):
about a bunch of stuff, but um, yeah, I guess
my advice to everyone would be going a bunch of veggies. Okay,
all the time. We'll we'll have a more We've been
meaning to. I had been meaning to include a lot
more solar punk stuff in the first five episodes of
this we got a bit at the end, but it's
um yeah, um, I wanna I want to do a
(43:30):
more detailed, uh meaningful exploration, so we'll have you back
for that. But Joey, I thank you so much for
coming on um your podcast the Fire this Time, um
times Fire these times. Sorry, And also check out mangal
Media uh in Lausanne, You've written for both places, um
and also both great sources for people to check out
(43:52):
if you want to de westify your reading about other
parts of the world. UM all right, that's gonna do
it us here as it could happen here. Um until
it does uh yeah. Like Joey said, start a fucking garden.
Holy shit, it could happen here it in in this
case being being the podcast that you're listening to, and
in fact it is it is happening here in your ears.
But you know what else is happening here? The world's
kind of fallen apart. Well, I don't know, not the world,
but the structures in the world that we all relied
(00:26):
upon for uh, you know, existence and ship sure are
crumbling anyway. I'm Robert Evans. This is a podcast about
how things are falling apart and how to deal with
that ship. Um, if you're new to the show, maybe
check out our first five episodes. They'll catch you up
there Evergreen. But this week we have a special guest
and a special conversation to have that I think is
(00:48):
going to be edifying for a lot of people. I
would like to introduce Mr Joey. Ayub Joey. You are
a writer and a researcher in the host of the
Fire These Times, which is a fantastico cast. Um, Joey,
how are you doing today? I'm fine, I'm up. I'm
operating with the Norman parameters. As I said before. Yeah,
(01:11):
I'm I'm impressed by that because I'm I'm constantly in
the process of falling apart, which is why I was
late to this call. Joey, you want to give our
listeners a little background on yourself? Sure, Um, emotionally from Lebanon.
It's why I go up. My family is kind of mixed,
a bit of Pedestinians, but of your Talians, but of Argentinians,
(01:32):
kind of fall over the place. Uh. And I'm currently
in Switzerland continuing my PhD, which one day will actually
be done, I hope. I have been told that there
is a life after the PhD. Yeah, So that's what
I do. And I do podcasts and I write and
I stuff that I probably forgot. And uh, you you
(01:53):
wrote a column that I I quite admire for a
website called Lausan, which was based on a term that
I think it was the Mangol media folks came up with, right, um,
and that term is the periphery. And and one of
the reasons I think this is useful. So when I
grew up, and I suspect it was the same. I
don't know if it was the same for Garrison because
(02:13):
he grew up in a weird cult, but it was
probably the same for Christopher. Um. The terms we heard
a lot for different like it was either basically the
United States or Europe, or it was the third world. Right,
those were the terms that I grew up with, and
I wasn't I was like probably seventeen or eighteen before
I actually learned that. The terms first and third world
kind of came from the Cold War, where like the
US is the first World, the Soviet Bloc is kind
(02:34):
of the second world, and then everyone else it's the
third world. Obviously, that's not a great collective nown for
referring to any group of anything. We try not to
use third world. And the new term has kind of
become more I don't know, vogue, maybe the wrong word,
but people have started using the global South to refer
to um everywhere that's not the US and Europe and
(02:56):
you know, UM a handful of other countries and kind of, uh,
that's not great either, um because for one thing, a
lot of those countries aren't South, and also it isn't
North either. Yeah. So I'm interested in this because there
is a use in having kind of collective nouns to
refer to groups of people from multiple nations. UM and
(03:19):
in the West isn't going to do for most places um,
And I like this term the periphery because kind of
the way that you in the Mangal folks kind of
have described it makes a tremendous amount of sense to me.
And it makes a tremendous amount of sense because it's
not trying to group people together based on their relationship
to of a Western centered kind of like international power
(03:43):
dynamics understanding that even a lot of people on the
left here kind of fall into where you know, um,
you're either imperialist or anti imperialist, but being anti imperialist
means supporting a lot of imperialist powers because they're against
whatever imperialist power you were born into. Anyway, I wonder
if you if we could start by kind of getting
your your explanation of what is the periphery? Um? And
(04:05):
and and how do you see that? Yeah? Yeah, I
mean so I'll just say it like up front that
I don't expect that term to work every time and
in all contexts. For example, I know someone who who
like works in development studies and who we had a
pretty informative chat about the terms global South and global
Note and she was pretty convincing that they can be
(04:27):
useful in in in a certain like in the materials
analysis of certain things. So I'm not I'm not kind
of here to say it like it doesn't work ever basically, um,
but I think what really clicked with me, or the
number of things that really clicked with me in one
is that conversation with fl Event on Margin Media on
their on their own podcast as well I've written for them,
and then we had a chat about it was like
(04:49):
about the explosion in baby Wood last year, and at
some point the topic of the periphery, which they coined,
I didn't coin it came about. And the best way
he described it, which is a bit ignic given the
podcast I'm on now, is that when anti authority in
Turks he's from Turkey, see protests in for example Lebanon
(05:11):
of Hong Kong, which was what happened. They were happening
at the same time in two thousand nineteen and Iraq
and other places, child and so on. They sort of
think that it could happen here, like you know, it
could happen in Turkey essentially, which is not the case
often with like French leftists or American leftists, so usually
leftists that are broadly speaking in the West. Now the
(05:31):
obviously exceptions to all of these rules. Not every Turkish
leftist things like that, not every Western leftist things like that,
but it's kind of a general trend. And for me,
for example, the way I can explain it is that
a podcast like it could happen here, where you're sort
of describing a situation that might happen here here in America,
let's say, wouldn't necessarily be needed in for example, Lebanon,
(05:52):
because it's already happening, it's been happening for some time now,
and that that tension in some sense when I would
because nowative in Switzerland, so I mean, I mean, you know,
in Geneva, which is as international as at the center
in some sense as it gets almost It's this tension
between my daily life essentially here and what's happening back
(06:13):
home on a daily basis is what sort of led
me to think about this other terms the periphery, because
I just felt that at least on an emotional level,
global stuth wasn't working as well. That makes sense, And
one of the things I really find so useful and
and admirable about this term is that it it is
a it's a collective now and for referring to a
group of people, but it separates those people from the
(06:36):
state from their government. So when you're when you're talking
about the periphery and you include people from lebanon Um,
people from from Palestine, people from Syria, you're not including
the government's you know, it's not the states, it's the
because the people are peripheral to the power of those
states and to the blocks that those states find themselves,
and which is why they, you know, any any efforts
(06:59):
at autonomy the communal level are crushed so violently. Um. Yeah,
that's why for me, global South in the term includes
the states from the SOCOL Global South that are crushing
the activists from the SOCO Global South. And so I
just felt that I just needed this other layer, this
other term that explains that dynamic as well. Yeah. Um,
(07:20):
And you know, one of the things you you just
were talking about was kind of the way in which
a lot of leftists in the United States and chunks
of the West, we'll kind of disregard liberatory struggles overseas
that don't neatly fit into a very simple ideological category.
I'm kind of wondering, is you know a kid who
(07:41):
grew up in Lebanon and kind of I'm going to
assume mostly focused on the regional kind of politics. When
did you start to realize that that was something that
was going on internationally? Like when did you when did
you realize kind of like, you know, I think a
lot of folks were taken surprise by the reaction of
a lot of the international left, like the Arab Spring,
And I'm kind of wondering was that when it it
(08:03):
kind of hit home for you? Where did you start
to see stirrings of those problems at an earlier day. Yeah,
two thousand eleven is when it kind of became very
concrete in some sense. But I grew up having to
visit Switzerland actually because my dad is a Swiss national,
and I would do so on the Lebanese passport obviously,
so I would always need to apply for visas beforehand
(08:24):
and so on, you know, like two or three times
a year sometimes, and that sort of it. In the
in the retrospect, it was those early experiences just meeting
the border, just experiencing a border all the time. That's
sort of I think anyways, one of those things that
I've been thinking I can get respect, like planted the
(08:45):
seeds of what was to come, if that makes sense,
because I was always peripheral. Whenever I would go to Switzerland,
I was never allowed to stay there longer longer than
let's say, three weeks if they gave me three weeks,
or three months if they gave me three months. And
it sort of felt weird coming to Europe all the time,
because I'm actually born in France, but I don't have
the citizenship, and so it was there was the sense
that I felt it weird having to ask permission from
(09:07):
someone to go to the place where I literally started
my existence. And so from on a on a very basic,
basic level that's never quite always like squared with me,
and that like led to a number of things that
from Lebanon I was seeing the rest of the world
in that sense, and it took me sometime. I think, yeah,
I think after their spring, especially when I started seeing
(09:29):
that Lebanon is perificult or I didn't. I didn't really
have a term for that before. And the quote unquote
real things were happening in in the West. Obviously that's
all problematic, and I don't mean that literally because the
real things are happening every all the time. But in
the sense of what gets to matter, whose lives get
to matter more, and so on and so forth. Now,
(09:49):
one of the things I think about a lot when
I read your work, UM, and when I consume what
with Mangal Media puts out Mangal media is UM. I
guess you called the journalistic collective UM made up of
of people A lot. I think a lot of them
were or are have worked as like fixers in uh
in in you know, the periphery in parts of the
Middle East, UM. And they're What I find so vital
(10:10):
about their voices is that it was as as an
American journalist who has worked over there, it was always
those folks who had the best stories. It's just that
those stories got published with the New York Times or
with the New Yorker, the Washington Post under somebody else's byline. Right, UM.
That's the way journalism actually works. And you have you
do have some some reporters like um, I'm spacing on
(10:31):
his name. But the fellow who wrote no good Men
among the Living, who uh yes, yes, who has done it?
I mean I think just I'm sure has local sources
in Afghanistan, but also speaks the language, and it is
just an accept but for the most part, especially when
you see somebody with my complexion reporting from over there,
if they're getting good ship, it's because of it's because
of a local UM. And what I like about Mangal
(10:53):
is that it it breaks down kind of that barrier
between that kind of that kind of white person filter,
but when the actual people living on the ground and
understanding the situation the person who's trying to package it UM.
Which is not to say that I think there's no
value in having a local package. And I think anytime
you're trying to translate a story across there is some
reason for that. But I also think it leads to
(11:15):
I mean, I know it leads to problematic kind of
Americans said. There's a lot of problems that it leads to.
It that we don't have enough time to discuss all
of it. But what I'd like to talk about with
you is is kind of how is consumers of of
media in the United States and in in in the West. Um,
which most people listening to this are everyone on this call,
but you was born in the US or a place
(11:37):
that is the same as the US but with a
better hat. Um, I'm talking about Canada. UM. So how
do how do how do you recommend we if we
if we're if we aspire to be internationalists and to
to avoid falling into that trap of of flattening the
struggles of other people to fit inside of a simple
(11:58):
ideological rubric, how do you recommend people try and cut
out or or minimize the extent possible, um, the bias
of of whatever region they live in when reading news
for another part of the world, Like, how do you
do that? Well? Imperfectly right, Like it's never gonna be,
(12:20):
never gonna be you know, there's always gonna be flaws,
there's always gonna be some learning curve to all of
that as well. One thing that's worked for me, um,
because you know, I did grow up in Lebanon, and
so there is that dimension. But I was I had
a pretty sheltered child childhood. You know, media was mostly
on the Internet, and so I could kind of go
wherever I want, and I was pretty is up until
(12:41):
the certain point. I was pretty um, let's say, sheltered
from what was happening even around in Lebanon, around Lebanon
up until let's say that before just before the air sprain.
So I do know what it's like to kind of
have biases against you know, other places and have certain Yeah,
just it's just human flaws at the end of the day.
(13:01):
The main difference I think is just what gets centered
and what gets peripheral. I mean, just to use that
same term again. One thing that I've been doing to
kind of help myself, and so I'll just speak from
personal experience, is go to some websites like Loves and
I've been I've been I read what Loves and regularly
mangel media as well. And there are a number of
other websites that are trying as much as they can
(13:25):
to actually write for one another. Like they're actually trying
to write with the assumption that most people who are
going to read are not from the West. And that's
not easy to do for language barriers. For example, if
they're if they're mostly writing in English because the dias
progress of the world, if there is some sense and
kind of connecting to one another, we're probably going to
do it in English. I'm just realistically speaking, and so
(13:47):
maybe Spanish, but like you know, probably English. And that's
that's that's something that we have to sort of contend with.
It's not easy because it could be that I can
spend all of my time having conversations with let's say,
other people in the diasporas of other groups, let's say,
and because I'm doing it entirely in English, then I'm
actually not conversing with people back home, and so that
hates another problem, and it's there's no easy solution. Basically,
(14:11):
there's no I don't really have a A A how
do you say this? Like A yeah, like a solution
that can fit he can fit any scenarios. So I
don't really have a good answer to that. Actually, I
just think that heating diverse sources is the best way
to do things, but with a critical eye as well,
although I feel like that's kind of a boring answer.
(14:32):
And for me, the thing that has been quite refreshing
is seeing projects like Love Side, which is why I've
published like a an interview with like they. We did
an interview conversation thing where we were exploring parallels and
contrast between Hong Kong and Lebanon, for example, and that
for me was a piece where I was entirely thinking
about the people I was talking to, like people from
(14:53):
Hong Kong, and that's it. We had a diaspora experience
in common, but I wasn't thinking and we were speaking
in English, but I wasn't thinking about how is this
going to be received in New York or Paris or
London or whatever. And I feel like these more of
these probably will help because it centers different voices rather
than the ones that were used to But even though
its center, I'm sort of saying it with like an asterisk,
(15:15):
because my entire point is that I'm actually uncomfortable with
certain situations where I risk being the center of his
story when there are so many things happening to my
periphery as well, and so it can happen, it can
happen on different layers. If it's what I'm trying to say. Yeah,
I mean that's sort of the problem of being as
you are, kind of a child of two worlds, where
you you have the benefit of it makes it easier
(15:37):
to explain both places to the other. Um, but you also, uh,
you have a wall kind of or at least a
couple of them up up inside you, um, which yeah,
um yeah, And it is like there's no there's no
kind of gaining perfect perspective on any place, including the
place where you live. But I do think it's important
(15:59):
to talk about kind of at least de centering to
the extent that's possible, like Western voices when we're trying
to understand places that are not Western. M So I
(16:21):
think think with fair amount, just be a chat over
the year, particularly during some of the nonsense last year.
Is um internationalism, which is is a real concern I
think of everybody on this show, and something that used
to be in a lot stronger state than it is
in the left. Um. And I what do you see
(16:42):
as the primary barriers to functional internationalism at the moment um? Well,
West centrism is I think a primary one. Racism Islamophobia
are pretty common as well. Um, Islamophobia is a pretty
massive one, uh, to the point that even non Muslims
like me can be swiped kind of kind of just
(17:04):
taken with it as well. And I just I just
think that when I say West centerism, I don't even
only mean people who are fromwhat from the West and
are thinking about the West as the center of the world,
but I also mean, like left is from other parts
of the world. I think that the only enemy is
is the West, or the only enemy is America for example.
(17:24):
And uh, you know, Christopher and I had chats about
this as well on my own podcast actually about the
channel men, the the legacy of channel men as well. Right, Like,
it's not just misunderstood or um yeah, misunderstood among let's say,
White Americans, but it could also be misunderstood among Chinese
American for example. There are these multiple like these multiple
(17:46):
layers in which something can be misunderstood on different layers
as well, if that makes sense. And I for me,
the problem with the West centrism is that it takes
up so much oxygen in the room. It's just take stup.
So we people like me and others, And like I've
I've met folks from like the Balkans and in the
Middle East and Southeast Asia, and like almost any group
(18:10):
I can think of, I've met them, they have complained
about pretty much the same thing that they ended up
spending so much time on the Internet debunking disinformation or
debunking tankies or de punking campus and or debunking what
have you, or just misinformation sometimes and this this ends
up being pretty exhausting, Like this ends up being like
ship is happening on the ground, like things are actually
(18:31):
happening on the ground, and activists from let's say by route. Oh,
they didn't happen as much in Bayhood, but you know
from Iraq or Syria, Syria especially obviously, but Hong Kong
as well. You know, they have to deal with concrete
problems on the ground, but at the same time they
have to worry about how this is being perceived on
the internet, because usually it's assumed that how it's perceived
(18:52):
on the internet, So, especially in the Anglophone online media,
escape can have real life consequences on the ground. And
this is something that is very difficult to tackle because
it's not enough to just fight them by having more
allow sense and more mongel media. For one, we just
don't have the resources to challenge a Fox News or
CNN or what have you. Um And for two, it's
(19:14):
just exhausting the main the main I think the main
thing that has stopped most activists I can think of,
or at least they've taken a break or what have
what have you. It's just burned out more than anything.
It's not even well in many cases. Obviously it's also
therex threats from the state and stuff like that, but
more often than not, it's just being exhausted from having
(19:35):
to spend so much time dealing with what's happening on
the ground at the same time making sure that what's
happening on the ground isn't being misinterpreted or you know,
having to deal with this information or what have you.
And so basically the responsibility ends up being on people
consuming these kinds of media. And I don't want to
make it to individualistic either. That are structural problems to
(19:55):
these things. As I said, CNN, the resources all of that.
But given the I can't Lena is not gonna listen
to me. The other the next best thing is trying
to just speak to just people who are willing to listen. Essentially,
and you talked a bit about I mean the situation
in Lebanon right now. If people aren't aware, Um, there
(20:17):
was a massive explosion UM a year or so ago,
and everything's kind of been in free fall sense, and
and what's happening, what's happening in Beiruts and across like that.
There have been massive wildfires that have destroyed a huge
chunk of the of the country's forests. UM and a
lart like just kind of society, uh, seems to be
(20:40):
breaking down in a lot of areas. The stores don't
have food, people don't like the inflation has has reached
kind of a nightmarish level. What do you like we're
we're talking about? You know, these are all kind of
the same problems that we're talking about everywhere. It's just
it it's much more severe at the moment there, and
it's it's in a much more advanced state for variety
of reasons. Do you do you have any hope for mitigation?
(21:04):
How could the situation improve? I guess, like I I'm
looking at at Lebanon and I'm thinking about like what,
not even like what I could do, because I don't
think there's anything I can do, but like how how
things could possibly get better? And yeah, I'm wondering if
you if that's any clearer to you, Um, maybe only
(21:24):
slightly more, but yeah, it's it's. Yeah, it's really bad,
I mean crumbling, you know, welcome to the combos that
actually fits there? There there, What's what's been happening for
something at least a couple of years, if not a
bit more than that. Pretty well, Um, there is a
mass exodus happening on a slow depending on the seasons. Basically,
(21:48):
sometimes it's faster and summer and then whatever. But basically
most of my friends, for example, like them, are now
abroad um and there is definitely a sense of um collapse.
That's you know, in here is the term that we
would use. It just feels like a state of collapse essentially.
And what's kind of interesting, I think is that this
(22:10):
was being predicted for some time now. It's been a
couple of years I would say, I mean towards the
end of two thousand nineteen with the revolution, not that
long after you already had a lot of people within
Lebanon like kind of you might call it the initial
phases of counter revolution in some sense, or that's probably
a bit simplistic, but basically saying that if we continue
taking to these heats, the country is going to collapse.
(22:31):
And that's obviously not the reason the country is going
to collapse. There is that is collapsing. The reason is
a combination of COVID, last year's pot explosion, corruption at
the states, septainosum war loads, basically control controlling most of
the country and so on and so forth. As to
what can happen next, I mean, it does seem that
at least for the foreseable future, it's going to continue
(22:52):
more or less their way. It's been continuing. It feels
like basically a decline that's sometimes steeper and sometimes less steep. Uh.
The stories on a daily basis are like, you know,
if friend took her like five hours to to fill
up gas and it's not even she can't, you know,
fill the entire tank, and electricity went out for like
three days, and so people you know, their fridge was useless,
(23:13):
you know, stuff like that. Um, And it is definitely
it's it's I don't have the percentage with me, and
those are just data and data without stories or can
be misleading as well. But something like I'm going to
say of the population is below the poverty line now
compared to before, stuff like that, it's it's pretty dire,
and it's it's it's pretty It happened at such a
(23:37):
speed that I'm gonna say that I haven't been back
since January for various reasons COVID and security threats and
other stuff. And um, I can't quite picture it in
my mind. It's not that easy. But friends obviously speaking
to them, and photos and videos that I see, it's
just fair to say that everything that I can think
(23:58):
of on most things that I can think of from
before two nineteen. Basically most of my life is essentially gone,
and there is there is no way of getting over
that quickly, if that makes and you probably never get
over it anyway, but you might get to at some
point where you you kind of regain enough energy to
actually maybe act on it, if that makes sense. But
(24:20):
there is a period in which now people are basically
still grieving, and they're still heaving from last year's explosion
as well because the Silion investigation and the usual stuff,
and so yeah, no, it's it's it's a game, and
it's gonna be game for some time. I think, uh
that that being said, I don't think that people back home,
you know, aren't doing anything. They are if a number
(24:40):
of initiatives, you're a number of basically mutuate societies or
no one really calls them that, but they just pop
up on their own, and these things function to certain extent.
Often it's they don't last too long, you usually due
to resources or burnout or what have you. And so
it's it's um, Lebanon is one of those things. I
this um. I think it was after the explosion last
(25:04):
year as well. I was on another podcast, the Auds
of Travel is called I think it was on that
one where he basically said that he thinks that for him,
the apocalypse looks like what happened in Lebanon, and I
think I know what he meant. But the problem with
that analysis is that often we think that the apocalyps
just happens and then that's it. But there's most of
(25:25):
the story is actually the day after that makes sense.
And in in Lebanon, as it happens, the apocalypse looked apocalyptic,
you know, that one day, that explosion that took just
a few seconds and I destroyed so much of the
capital and beyond. But the real story is what's been
happening since then, And there, I think is where Lebanon
does have lessons, well for Lebanon first and foremost, but
(25:47):
also for the rest of the world. You know, I
think we're all kind of in this position of watching
the place, seeing the place, most of us at least
seeing the places where we live in stages, you know,
(26:10):
and and mostly at the moment in earlier stages of
what what Lebanon is going through not as severe, but
but also kind of inevitably, inevitably approaching that right UM,
Like I think most you know, I I have a
couple of friends who are school teachers who are like
just kind of going to work with the absolute certainty
that a bunch of people are going to get infected
in the very near future. I have people who work
(26:31):
at hospitals that are no longer able to handle uh,
basic medical procedures for a lot of people that are
triaging care. You know that that just came out that
Idaho was going to have to start triagng like medical
care based on who they think might be able to
survive UM years. Yeah. Yeah, We're all living through stages
(26:53):
of that, and the the the overwhelming question is like,
how do we pull out of the tail spin? Um?
And this is you know, not a question I expect
us to have. I've put up forward, and I think
sometimes online people are like, oh, you know, you it's
naive to think that, like, you know, a general strike
or mutual aid could avert the tailsman. I I don't
(27:14):
think those are complete solutions to to pulling out of
the tailsman. I know they're aspects of what the solution
will be. Nobody knows what the solution is because we're
still in a tailspin. UM. In your mind, what do
you what do you think might be part of that answer?
With the knowledge that and and please people on Reddit,
nobody's nobody's saying this is the complete solution to the problem.
(27:35):
But like I'm hoping by gathering people together who think
about stuff, we can arrive at aspects of it. Yeah,
I mean for me, it's it's it's a combo. So
in my own person experience is basically what I could
well against speak of to the most, it's a combo
of reaching out to people in similar situations. So in
my case dis pogres especially, but like more broadly, Yeah,
(28:01):
for me, I think it has to be a combination
of pragmaticism. So I do believe in lesser evilism, for example,
when that's the only option. Sometimes I feel like I
need to choose and that's the only option I have,
And so I do that at the same time doing
so without the you know, so Biden versus time to
use that simple example, but at the same time knowing
(28:21):
that that's not gonna change much, if anything, It just
it might slow slow the collapse down. And that's actually
the metaphor that I prefer to think about, like slowing
things down gives me time to do other things, if
that makes sense. It gives me time to do more
things rather than always having to defend myself constantly the
other like. More broadly, I think it is it's a
combination of trying to build dual power, trying to build
(28:42):
mutual aid as much as possible. This is not going
to solve things. But I just don't think there is
anything that's going to solve everything. I just I don't
see how that's going to be possible. And the lack
of that is what I think many people it's scared.
I mean, it's scary, right, It's just scares the number
of people scares most people. I mean it scares me
(29:02):
as well. And I do understand that the instinct to
sort of go towards well, you know, we have the EU,
we have the US, we have those grant structures, and
we're going to just try and reform them and change
them and so on and so forth. I understand that,
And I don't judge people who who believe that and
who genuinely think that they can change things. You know,
I wish them good luck, basically, I don't. If they succeed,
(29:25):
good for everyone, Right, it's just that I think due
to structural factors, primarily due to related to power and
help power, power corrupts in almost every single case I
can think of, and pretty much all of them. I
just don't think these are solutions either. And I view
my role as as trying and and be critical as
(29:47):
much as I can, trying to be honest as much
as I can, saying when I just don't know something,
that I just don't know something, and having a healthier
a balance on how to deal with this. But that
being said, I I don't have that the answer. I
don't have them, you know. I think it is like
ninety episodes on my podcast now and there are a
(30:08):
number of episodes in which this also, this topic comes
up and some people have some answers, some people don't
have an answer and just becomes an open question. But
I would hope that at least the fact that there
are no clear answers doesn't discourage people from at least
trying to find these answers, because I do think most
of the time the solution is going to be found
(30:28):
while trying, while attempting to solve something else that makes sense.
It's it's the act in itself for the acts in
themselves are going to produce some of these solutions. Because
most of these solutions don't exist yet, we have to
literally create them, come scratch often. Yeah, yeah, I really
I think that's an important thing to accept that in
a lot of cases, you know, we don't know how
(30:51):
to fix the problem. I think the people who claim
that it's whatever whatever book they read, uh, you know,
written a hundred years ago, as the perfect solution, I
tend to think that's pretty arrogant. But I do think
that what's not arrogant is like getting your hands dirty
and trying to fix problems and hoping and understanding that
(31:13):
kind of the solutions to broader problems will come UM
in part through dealing with and trying to improve the
situation on a day to day basis. You know, we
just did an episode about UM self managed abortion, where
the source was definitely more on the liberal end of
things than the left end of things, and and somebody
who UM politically I would probably have a lot of
(31:35):
disagreements with, but she spent the last twenty five years
trying to train communities of people to provide to take
control of of of reproductive health and like enable other
members of their communities to take direct control of that.
And that is something I very much, um believe in,
and I think that's like, that's that's part of the solution, right.
Part of the solution to why the fucking coronavirus has
(31:56):
gotten so god damn out of hand is everything to
do with our broken health care system. And it's it's
it's not just the fact that healthcare is expensive, it's
the fact that people are kind of alienated, um from
an understanding of their bodies. They're not properly educated about
the way things work, and they don't feel like they
have that kind of the consistent lack of a feeling
(32:16):
of like medical autonomy leads people eventually to embrace nonsense
and and so there you have and kind of this
very focused solution to to one really specific problem, a
part of I think a larger solution to the problems
that that um that confront us. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
that makes sense. And you know, I mean, speaking of COVID,
(32:36):
I think that, I mean, we know that part of
the reasons why it's lasting so long as well, other
than local dynamics for demination, is that get your nations
are basically holding the vaccines at this point, were you
talking about like the third booster shot in in Switzerland
for example, and most of the words it doesn't have
the first one. Uh, you know, those are political decisions.
(32:57):
Those are political decisions being made on behalf of the
rest of the world. As we see what climate change
is one, it's the same story. Yeah, I don't know
what to do about that at this stage, Like it
seems like kind of at every level we've given up
on handling this the right way, you know, the the
the clear best solution would have been to treat the
(33:18):
rollout of the vaccine, you know, the same way we
treated World War Two as like a logistical hurdle on
on on par with getting a couple of million of
men to Western European we do that to get the
vaccine to everybody. So we could have hopefully fucking stopped
the variants from hitting, but we didn't do that, and um,
we're not going to do that, And so I guess
we're all left with mitigation once again, which is too
(33:41):
often the story with with climate change too. And I
don't know we've we've already kind of trod on that
territory garrison Christophers or anything you wanted to get into
before we close out. Well, I think I think one
thing specifically with COVID that I think is really interesting
is if you look at the places where COVID like
you know, it was ad but like it didn't you know,
(34:02):
kill six people. Um, you know, particularly looking at China
and Hong Kong with this, so you know, China both
both the government, China government, Hong Kong's initial state response
is really bad. And what happened was, you know, in China,
it's sort of you know, you have a bunch of
people who don't trust the government, and so what they
(34:24):
do is you can you get hundreds of thousands of
people sort of just mobilizing and forming these sort of
volunteer things to to you know, to enforce lockdowns, to
enforce restrictions, to give people food, and you know, it's
part of some of its state back, so it's not
and some of it's you know, you get this sort
of hazy lying between the sort of mass mobilization between
(34:45):
just people doing stuff on sort of state a line
directors and then in Hong Kong, you know, and people
like people like torch border crossings, people like you know,
there's this huge thing to get everyone masks is this
huge Like then this stuff is like entire against again
sort of against against the sort of government. But what
I think is interesting about both of them is that
it's like, you know, it turned out to be possible
(35:09):
to make dependent to make the pandemic less bad if
you mobilized. And it wasn't really the state that did this.
It was you know, people who didn't really trust the state,
and we're like, okay, so we're just we're gonna take
this into our own hands. And I think, you know,
and somebody's like that that seems like the thing that
can be done is you have to get people moving first,
(35:31):
like before everything completely collapses. I guess I guess something
I was. I also think it was interesting about that
was that the way that and I think this is
going going back to the internationalism part we're talking about,
is that there's this way in which that is particularly
in China, to the story of of this this hundreds
of thousands of people doing these mass mobilizations just never
(35:52):
reached the West at all, Like you know, everyone everyone
looked at China and went, oh, this is how the
state is reacting, And it's like, yeah, the state did
a lot of extremely weird things. Some of them were good,
some of them were bad, but the sort of mass
popular mobilization beneath it gets erased. And I think I'm wondering,
if you think about this, Joey, looking at even even
(36:13):
how the left worked in the nineties, we're looking looking
at the Zapatistas and looking at the people's coobal Assembly
stuff that they set up on how about how that
stuff was about social movements. It wasn't about sort of
it wasn't about states, it wasn't about necessarily political parties.
It was you know, you'd bring about social movements together.
And I'm I'm wondering what you think about the extent
(36:36):
to which part of what went really wrong in the
left in the last ten years is that they kind
of they abandoned that and it became sort of everything
became like internationalism became almost completely state and party based. Um, yeah, yeah,
I mean for me, the Arab swing is is where
I mean, this is I mean, my sound a bit
(36:57):
of an exaggeration. That's why the left sort of buried
it sound like for me, it's it's it's like I
still hardly called myself on the left just because it's simpler.
But I have a lot of problems with a lot
of people who are on the left when it comes
to so many different things. Um, I don't. I don't
quite know where it started. Um some people trace it
(37:18):
back to like the you know, I don't know, like
the Hungarian Revolution in fifty six, you know, stuff like that.
So I don't, I don't quite know where you start
or where you ended. But it does seem that at
some point the I don't know, it's a combination of
the huntings from the Balkan Wars and then the genocides
there and and the Denis m that was allowed to
essentially be just grow and be normalized to the point
(37:42):
that some guy like at the last few or two
years ago he got the Nobel Prize for literature even
though he's a boss in genocide denier and just these
these things are becoming have become in the past um
decade or two, I suppose, more normalized, and now we're
sort of back to the mitigation section of things. For me,
(38:04):
they're springing it to use. The method of the candy
in the coal mine was sort of that. But I'm
sure you can go further back, and some people will
say it's actually started with Bosnia Rwanda or something, but
I wouldn't say that. I'm I can say like full
certain words started, if that makes sense. But yeah, for me,
it's obviously it's there Spring. That's that's been the center
of my world for a long time now, and it's
(38:25):
it's where I felt that the lack of support that
was needed. And it's ongoing. I'm talking about it in
the past stance, but it's ongoing. Like the guy is
being bombed right now. Yeah, they just bombed it live too, right, Yeah,
so you know it's ongoing. The humiliation is ongoing. The
regime is putting out the green buses, which every Serian
knows what they're about, the humiliation ones where you escorte
(38:48):
people out of their homes basically, and they they they know,
like the regimes I think at this point know what
they can do and what they can't do. They're they're
pretty confident in what they can and can't do. So yeah, sorry,
I'm ending another pretty positive note on that. Unfortunately, I
don't know, man. I guess As a last question, I'm
kind of curious we we've you've analyzed the problem of
(39:13):
the left kind of aligning themselves with parties and with nations, um,
and how that leads to a tremendous amount of blind
spot spots, a flattening of of conflicts, and a flattening
of the humanity of people who don't live close to you, um,
which is you know, all part of the problems that
we that we are in right now. What do you
(39:34):
think we ought to be aligning ourselves around, like if
you're getting you know, if we're if we can if
we can come to see ourselves as all in the
periphery and and in the periphery at least and sort
of as relates to these states, because in a way
we all are, right, Um, people in the United States
certainly like benefit more from imperialism and from the might
of the United States, but we're also peripheral to the
(39:56):
power of that state, which I think a lot of
people may have ex experienced for the first time when
they got tear gas last year, or or as kind
of the different state effects or attempts to deal with
the coronavirus have failed disastrously. This really really but what
do you what should we be aligning ourselves around? Like
what do you what do you sort of give. I mean,
(40:20):
even the example that you gave is for me, it's
a pretty good one because that's also sort of the
point that like centers and peripheries are everywhere, and they're
they're also within nation states. So like Lebanon is peripheral
to America, but many Americans are peripheral to other Americans,
if that makes sense, and to other Americans in power,
especially Like for me, one of the primary thinkers behind
(40:40):
my own thinking is James Baldwin, you know, African Americans
or like, he is technically a Westerner, but I would
consider a lot of his writing to be peripherally essentially,
and that's because he has this amazing coats that I'm
gonna probably butcher. But it's something along the lines of, like,
the oppressed don't only know the oppressors better than oppressor.
Is no, they oppressed, but they also know them better
(41:03):
than they know themselves. That they like the oppressed know
the oppressor is better than the oppress is no, the
oppressors essentially, which is I think Phinon said something similar
as well. And for me, this this is the sort
of inside this is kind of the thing that blew up,
that blew my mind and this is this thing that
I would say, in the past few years have really
shaped everything as to what to sort of like ally
(41:24):
ourselves with. I mean, the problem is that it's it
sounds very cheesy to say to have actual principles and
maintain them, but the problem is that we don't do
it often. We don't actually maintain this principle often enough.
I don't know if I'm not going to speak for everyone, obviously,
but in my experience it's it's it is difficult to
maintain them. And often what I see is very seasoned
(41:44):
activists basically dealing with burnout and kind of retiring from
public life and from activism and just kind of doing
their own thing and whatnot. And for me, the question
is how do I continue doing what I'm doing but
in the long term, And there is a time component
to this, there is a resource component to this. And
the more we are able to add these different um
(42:05):
frameworks to understand things we like, for me, that perfectly
is just one framework. You know. Feminism is another one,
Anarchism is another one. Uh, none of these things explain
everything all the time, right, But it's it's just different
lenses from which I can understand the world. And my advice,
which is not an easy one I still struggled with it,
is to just try and have as many different lenses
(42:26):
as possible. And that's sort of my advice that it's
not a you know, it's not a it's not a
very quotable one. You're not gonna find this on a
T shirt. I think, Well, Um, Joey, I that's that's
I think all I had to ask and get into today. Um,
did you have anything else you wanted to talk about
before we before we roll out and leave our audience
(42:49):
to I don't know, go uh, grow some cabbage or whatever.
We'll going cabbage and community is always the best thing
to do to be honest. Yeah, make food, make food,
make food to community gardens. That's the best thing anyone
can do to be honest. Um yeah, I don't know. No,
I I can talk about solo punk, I can talk
(43:09):
about a bunch of stuff, but um, yeah, I guess
my advice to everyone would be going a bunch of veggies. Okay,
all the time. We'll we'll have a more We've been
meaning to. I had been meaning to include a lot
more solar punk stuff in the first five episodes of
this we got a bit at the end, but it's
um yeah, um, I wanna I want to do a
(43:30):
more detailed, uh meaningful exploration, so we'll have you back
for that. But Joey, I thank you so much for
coming on um your podcast the Fire this Time, um
times Fire these times. Sorry, And also check out mangal
Media uh in Lausanne, You've written for both places, um
and also both great sources for people to check out
(43:52):
if you want to de westify your reading about other
parts of the world. UM all right, that's gonna do
it us here as it could happen here. Um until
it does uh yeah. Like Joey said, start a fucking garden.
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