cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24191015
Dave Smith is Part of the Problem. He’s a Jewish, anti-Zionist, libertarian comedian who makes a lot of people mad – but today he’s on Useful Idiots to make us laugh. And you’ll see very quickly how his no-nonsense approach to foreign policy matches almost perfectly with the progressive anti-war mindset.
“My beef with Israel,” Dave explains, “has nothing to do with how I feel about Jewish people. I just think you can't occupy a group of people and then indiscriminately slaughter them. That's not cool.”
And here’s where the libertarian comes in: “And why on earth should I be forced to fund that, especially when it's so clearly at the expense of my country and my country's interests? Syria is the perfect example of this. On one side you have Al Qaeda, the enemy of the American people. And on the other side, you have Bashar al-Assad, the enemy of the Israeli government. And who are we picking? We're picking the enemy of my country's people. It's such an outrage.”
But as Useful Idiots knows all too well, speaking out brings a flood of outrage and name calling. But outrage and names, Dave explains, is about all they’ve got.
“If that's the counter argument then you really must be on weak ground. You know whatever I'm a Putin-apologist or I'm a terrorist-lover or a self-hating Jew or a Nazi or whatever you want to say. It's just so dumb, are we in the third grade?”
But his common-sense, anti-war argument is far from mainstream, especially in places where the government can dominate thinking in both the media and the culture itself. “It’s the dynamic under the U.S. dominant culture,” he says. “If joe Biden or Donald Trump or Barack Obama were to drone bomb a wedding in Yemen, which is something they tend to do, and they kill like six children and fourteen adults and a couple hundred others were wounded; and then that same day they gave a press conference and they said ‘I don't believe [x culture issue],’ what would be the big outrage of the day?”
Subscribe for the full interview with Dave Smith for his takes on Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Jake Shields, how Israel has created more antisemitism, and a progressive vs libertarian debate on welfare.
Timestamps:
- 00:00 Intro
- 01:58 Ro Khanna admits Dems sold out workers
- 07:37 LA mayor cut LAFD funds (and gave them to the LAPD)
- 12:22 Trump thinks Canada should be honored to be annexed
- 18:37 Biden makes the wildfires about himself
- 20:56 ABC reporter's wardrobe trick busted during LA fire
- 23:16 Dave Smith interview
- 24:09 Trump and Obama BFFs
- 27:45 Dems are changing their messaging
- 31:04 Is MAGA a cult?
- 35:31 Trump is untouchable
- 41:21 Chomsky or Trump?
- 43:45 Why Dave rejected Zionism
- 50:25 Welfare: Progressive vs Libertarian Debate
Click here for the full interview with Dave Smith: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/dave-smith-a-jewish-libertarian-comedian
About Channel:
Useful Idiots is an informative and irreverent politics podcast with journalists @aaronjmate and @kthalps
Edit: fixed format of timestamps