Dispatches from the Race War Podcast

In this commentary, I respond to RFK Jr.’s recent anti-Arab rant in Michigan, in which he claimed that 500 million Arabs worldwide contribute basically nothing to the world. It was a shockingly racist and ignorant diatribe, made all the worse by the virtual silence of the media and mainstream commentators in calling it out. The fact that nothing of this nature could be said about any other group without it leading to calls for the speaker to be fired should be obvious. But anti-Arab bigotry, and the implicit Islamophobia that runs alongside it, is apparently still acceptable, even as mere condemnations of the government of the state of Israel result in charges of antisemitism.

In this commentary, I analyze the “male loneliness epidemic” and place it alongside the male backlash to feminism and women’s growing power in the labor market, politics, and society. In all these cases, what men are complaining about is their inability to fulfill the expectations—to women’s attention and bodies, and to institutional dominance over wome…

In this commentary, I remind listeners of the sordid history of Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for Governor in Ohio. From ripping off investors in a biotech scam to now lying about his opponent, Amy Acton, in his campaign for the state’s highest office, Vivek has no shame. He has mocked her for talking about being sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, and now has platformed her mother—who stood by the rapist after he was indicted—as she tells the people of Ohio not to vote for her daughter because Acton, presumably, is dishonest and of bad character.

Ironically, Vivek will likely be undone, not by his venality and cruelty—MAGA voters have no problem with that, obviously—but by their racism, which will probably keep them from voting for a brown-skinned Hindu like Vivek for Governor. He will likely be defeated by the very forces he joined when he cast his lot with the right.

Never before have I been rooting so hard for a little racism to triumph, just this once.

In this commentary, I point out the inconsistency of those who condemn anti-poverty programs for supposedly promoting “dependence” on government. The fact is, these folks don’t dislike dependence at all. They love it, so long as it’s dependence on men under patriarchy, or the church, whose charity can be dispensed under threat of withdrawal unless one meets its strict moral code. Ultimately, the right loves for women, in particular, to be dependent on men because it reinforces male dominance. This is why they tell poor women that instead of receiving “welfare,” they should just “get married” as a way to overcome their impoverishment. In this scenario, the women would still be “dependent,” as the right would prefer they stay home with their children rather than work—but at least they would be dependent on a male authority figure. So long as the dependence being promoted serves the proper ideological function (patriarchal power), the right will endorse and promote it. But if that dependence might dovetail with an ideological function it rejects, such as the promotion of collective responsibility for one another, as with a public anti-poverty program, the same people will rail against it for its dependency-promoting features, as if dependency itself were evidence of a character flaw!

In this commentary, I respond to JD Vance’s recent attacks on Abdul El-Sayed, in which he accused the Senate candidate of being insufficiently “grateful” for all America had “given him,” even though El-Sayed has repeatedly done just that in interviews and campaign speeches. The demand for gratitude, especially given the actual record, suggests his saying it is about something else: namely, a dog whistle to remind his audiences of El-Sayed’s “otherness” as a Muslim and child of an immigrant. It’s a pattern with Vance. He has also used the “lack of gratitude” charge with others in the past, but only with people of color: Ilhan Omar, Kamala Harris, Zohran Mamdani, Joy Reid, and now El-Sayed.

The demand for these individuals to express gratitude in ways he never demands of white politicians — even quite liberal ones — or white people with recent immigration histories, suggests a belief that people of color owe something to white people for making their lives better—that they should be grateful to us, because without us they would be living in worse conditions—a racist belief by definition because it ignores not only the way that white countries exploited countries of color, impoverishing them in the process but also how people of color helped build this country into what it is, so that whatever greatness we have attained is just as much theirs as ours anyway.

In this commentary, I respond to JD Vance’s remarks in Michigan this weekend, as he campaigned for Republican candidates, including Mike Rogers in his race against Abdul El-Sayed. In his remarks, Vance accused “the far-left” of advocating for and then implementing “defund the police,” and pushing slogans like “No One Is Illegal On Stolen Land” or “Aboli…

Although rape culture is bigger than fraternities, and indeed far larger than a problem of colleges and universities, with fraternity men three times more likely to commit sexual assault than men who aren’t in frats, it seems obvious that for guys, Greek life is a major part of the problem. In this commentary, I explain why banning frats is a valuable step, not for the men who are the most likely to be predators — they will be dangerous with or without them, and will need to be protected against in other ways — but for men who would likely never engage in sexual assault, but for the toxic environment of fraternities and the sick pressures they create for men to perform masculinity for the approval of other men.

Just as particular environmental conditions and contexts explain other forms of criminal offending, so too with rape, such that if we can change those environments and contexts, we may well reduce the number of offenses. Although the underlying problems of misogyny and toxic masculinity will remain and require a broader cultural reckoning, this step—which schools could take immediately—could produce immediate results with virtually no downside, as fraternities provide nothing of tangible benefit to campuses that can compensate for the damage they clearly do.

Recently, it was revealed that Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, who calls himself a devout Christian, insists the country is a Christian nation and wants the Ten Commandments posted in schools, doesn’t regularly attend church, and cannot name the last church he attended. It’s just one more example of a religious right-wing evangelical saying one thing while doing another. But as I explain in this commentary, it is fully consistent with a longstanding evangelical pattern. Such “Christians” are often the worst people in terms of how they treat others — and they surely ignore the teaching of Jesus regularly — which raises the question: do they feel free to be such awful people because their faith tells them all they have to do is believe in Jesus as their savior in order to enter the Kingdom of God? I mean, if that’s all it takes, and one’s “works” don’t matter, these folks can feel free to be horrible people and still have a workaround, so to speak.

It’s almost as if evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity is an emotional protection racket for antisocial personalities and all-around a******s—a way for them to tell themselves that no matter how horrible they are, God will still reward them, while sending the Jews, Muslims, and everyone else, no matter how many poor people they feed, or sick people they care for, to a lake of fire. With people like Ken Paxton and Donald Trump garnering the votes of these “good Christians,” it pretty well blows up the facade that they were ever a religiously motivated movement. They are just grifters and power-hungry zealots. Nothing more.

For this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I take on the issue of Jewish “indigeneity” to the land of Israel/Palestine, or the broader Levant region. Zionists claim that our ancestral connection to the land confers a right to it, thousands of years after our diaspora began, but as I explain in this commentary, at least for Ashkenazi Jews, this position has several problems.

First, I note that, yes, modern Ashkenazi Jews (about half of all Jews, and the vast majority of American Jews), as with their Sephardic and Arab Jewish counterparts, can often trace at least some of their ancestry back to the Levant. Claims to the contrary, popularized largely by antisemites (and by some Jewish leftists who had far better intentions but no better information), have been debunked conclusively by genetic research. However:

* Those links are less solid than Zionists believe (there is also a lot of non-Levantine admixture, especially on the mitochondrial line).

* Those links are irrelevant anyway to the issue of whether or not Jews have more right to that land than Palestinians, as they are indigenous too, and in fact are genetically very close to the Jews who trace their lineage there.

* Also, whatever indigeneity can be claimed is ancient and irrelevant in the modern moment

* Indigeneity does not confer a right to establish a particular form of government or oppress others who are also indigenous, or even those who are not. And finally,

* The fact that converts to Judaism with absolutely no Jewish ancestry at all can claim full Jewish citizenship under the law of return and benefit from all the rights and privileges of Jewishness in Israel proves indigeneity has no meaning in the Israeli context. Conversion can not confer ancestral lineage.

In this commentary, I address the unwillingness of many in the Jewish community to accept Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to address antisemitism, as well as the anger directed at him by some in the Palestinian liberation movement for being a “sellout” to their cause. In the first case, many Jews reject Mamdani’s plan because he continues to condemn Israel…