 in my opinion, humbly with all due respect, what's going on in Gaza is the equivalent of BLM in the States. What do I mean? So black on black crime, every single weekend in Baltimore, in DC, in Chicago, you name the city, there's black on black crime. Let one cop kill a black guy, George Floyd, national international news in the Middle East, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, you name it, Iraq, every day Muslims are killing other Muslims. A lot of it is Islamists, fundamentalists. There's no, there's no marches, there's no protests, but Israel defends itself after October 7th, and I've seen you condemn Hamas for October 7th, but you've also sympathized with the Palestinians as you should. But all of a sudden, that's the biggest story in the news. Why the distinguishment? Brace yourself, friends, because we're about to experience a lot more conservative brain rot. So you just listened to conservative PBD podcast co-host Adam use the black on black crime trope against Palestinians in an effort to downplay the ongoing genocide taking place against the people of Gaza. Now I could explain the difference between violence among peers and state sanctioned violence against people, but I don't have to do that because Bassem use of handles this question perfectly and even calls out the racism embedded in that question. Why can't Muslims say? There's a difference between comparing conflicts, civil war, and then allowing another country to bomb you from the sky every single day for 100 days. You cannot compare the both. And actually your tone of voice when you say, oh, there is like black and black, Arabs killing each other in your undertone is saying, yeah, they don't deserve to live. So let's Israel. This is exactly what I'm saying. No, no, this is what I'm saying. I asked a question. You're reading into my tone. You have absolutely no sympathy for the Palestinian killing because that's not true. Don't put words my way. No, no, no, seriously. I have 100% of sympathy. Your your your entrance into this conversation is extremely racist because you say the Arabs have been killing each other. First of all, the Arabs have been killing each other. These are called either proxy wars or civil wars. But you this is different because, A, the America is not standing behind Saudi Arabia, voting every single UN resolution like like Israel. Israel is killing Palestinians. And nobody can do anything for them in the UN or the Security Council, right? You can talk about how Saudis are killing the Houthis or the Yemenis or how Iran. But when they go to the Security Council, America doesn't use the vote, the veto. You know how many vetoes did America use since the inception of the Security Council? How many? Tell me. 88. How many of those were they used in order to protect Israel from a veto? 56. Oh. The superpower of the world over 50 years used more than 65% of its veto power to protect one country. You cannot compare both. Perfectly said. We are talking about power dynamics here and a power imbalance in particular and imperialism. And I don't know if you caught it, but they revealed how ignorant they were to this fact. And I want to play it again just in case you missed it. How many of those were they used in order to protect Israel from a veto? 56. Oh. Isn't that amazing? Yes, America exercised its veto power on the Security Council zero times to protect Israel. What? Imagine thinking that. Imagine being so uninformed that you've never heard that the U.S. has been running cover for Israel for decades. It's just, it's baffling to me. They're so uninformed. And as a result, they're basing their arguments purely on emotions, whereas Basim Youssef is speaking about facts. So you begin to understand why the host Adam here used the argument that he used, because he doesn't have facts, so he's trying to deflect. This tactic is used in debates to just change the conversation. And I see why he wants to talk about this on his own terms, because he knows nothing about the Palestinian struggle. But in order to understand why he specifically invoked that argument against Palestinians, the black on black crime trope argument, we first need to understand why conservatives played the what aboutism game in the first place, whenever institutional violence against black Americans comes up. So in an op-ed for Teen Vogue published during the 2020 George Floyd protests, Jamila Nishid addresses the dangerous black on black crime myth by pointing out some basic facts. First and foremost, black Americans are three times as likely to be killed by police compared to white Americans. Second, black on black crime rates are comparable to white on white crime rates. Third, there is a direct link between racism and poverty that's enforced institutionally to stifle growth of black people. So what does this all mean? Well, if you are statistically more likely to be impoverished because you're black, well obviously you're going to live in a more poor neighborhood. Poor neighborhoods are usually overpoliced or at a minimum police more than affluent white neighborhoods on average. And if there is just more civilian encounters with police in black neighborhoods because they're overpoliced, despite comparable levels of crime, by the way, that is just going to lead to more arrests in black neighborhoods because it's basic math, which also explains the higher rate of police killings against black Americans compared to whites. Now when you put aside statistical realities and factor in just human psychology, well, police are conditioned to racially profile black Americans more than whites because they are literally trained to look for crime exclusively in poor neighborhoods where black people and people of color disproportionately live. All of these things are interconnected and when black Americans try to educate white Americans about these institutional biases that lead to state sanctioned violence, well, they're hit with a what about black on black crime. But that's not what we're talking about here. That's an entirely different conversation. But here's why they use that non sequitur. Now she continues, when a white person commits a crime against another white person, it's just called a crime. Race isn't a factor. And that's intentional. Using language like black on black crime perpetuates the myth that intraracial violence is specific to the black community. A myth that implies black people are inherently more violent. This tactic has been used to justify the mistreatment of black people since the abolishment of slavery. White supremacists will justify colonization, slavery, and the Confederacy all while saying black people are an inherently more violent race. Think about that. Crime within black communities is comparable to crime within white communities. But white people aren't being killed by police at the alarming rate that black people are. Still, people like former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani felt justified in saying after the killing of 18 year old Mike Brown, quote, the white police officers wouldn't be there if you black people weren't killing each other. This type of language is an attempt to justify the killings of Brown, Taylor, Floyd, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, and the ever growing list of black victims of police brutality. It takes the blame from the officers involved and places it on the victims simply for being black. We're not asking for special treatment. We're asking for equal treatment to call the fallacy of black on black crime. Anything other than anti black racism is an injustice in itself. In other words, this whole black on black crime narrative is being used to straight up just flip reality on its head. And the goal here is to justify violence by the oppressor against the oppressed all in an effort to victim blame and make it seem like the people who are actually perpetrating the violence have no choice. It's a matter of self defense. That's literally what they're priming you to believe. So since these people who they've deemed violent are the ones who started the violence, violence against them is therefore justified. So if we take what we've learned about the black on black crime myth and apply that to the situation in Palestine, you begin to get a sense as to why Adam invoked the black on black crime trope. He wants you to turn off your brain and assume that Israel is justified in killing violent Palestinians in the same way that cops are justified in killing violent unarmed black Americans. It is explicitly racist and a twisted way of thinking that doesn't take into account the history of colonialism and imperialist violence against Palestinians. Now, another way that Adam tries to victim blame Palestinians here is by reducing the situation down to a matter of economics. But you're going to see Bassam use of try to explain why that's not that simple, right? It's not as simple as saying, well, why don't they just like pick themselves up by their bootstraps and do better? Now, as Bassam use of is trying to explain this, he gets interrupted and you'll see why the bottom line is this, what I've seen in the Middle East, it comes down to socio economics, then you sprinkle in a little Islam is Islamism in there. Why is every rich country in the Middle East have no problems, but all the poor countries are suicide bombings, terrorists, Gaza had the opportunity to invest billions of dollars into infrastructure and into infrastructure, but they built tunnels and bombs. But my question is no, no, here's my here. You're wrong. You're wrong. Gaza has not built tunnels and bombs. You're wrong. You're wrong. You said like as if they just there was like some sort of a prosperous source of economy. And all of us, I said, took that and put it on in terms, what you're missing here is Gaza since 2006 is under blockade. And even the medicine, even the water, even the electricity is controlled by Israel. They don't have. I'm not asking you about Gaza. I'm asking you, but no, you want to focus on Gaza and then you want to turn it back on Israel. I'm asking you specifically. Let's not talk about Israel. If that would make you a little bit nervous. We could talk about Israel for the next two hours in the Arab world, so we can prove that Arabs could be bombed at any time because we're fucking poor. No, that's not what I'm saying. That's exactly what you say. No, they're just like poor people killing each other and we're just like there watching. No, I'm sorry that, dude, I like you. But seriously, your undertone is fucking racist from the beginning until the end. You are looking at those people, a lesser people who have made bad choices and because they are poor, they are okay to be fucking bombed by Israel. Okay, this is the third time you've used the racist word. I've never said that once about you. Your undertone is very, very, very offensive. So when I read stats, you don't like my tone. When I read stats, you read the stats basically telling people like you see because they're rich. They got this to themselves. The rich people are better. The poor people are okay. So we can have to kill them every now and then. That's not what I said and you're putting words in my mouth and it's actually super disrespectful. I'm reading stats to you. I'm saying how can we uplift the poor countries in the Middle East? How can we turn- Remove the bluekate. That's number one. No, no, no. I said the Middle East, funny guy. Remove the bluekate. I said the Middle East. You're talking about Gaza. So you see the problem. The conservative here, Adam, is trying to pinpoint certain economic indicators to address them in a vacuum. But that's not how the world works. Statistics without context are meaningless. It goes back to the black on black crime trope, right? And Basim is trying to contextualize the situation here. Gazans have no self-determination. They can't choose to invest in their economy. 80% of Gazans relied on foreign aid before the siege. They have no control over their own water supply and electricity. No freedom of movement. They are in an open-air prison. What do you expect out of them? How can you possibly victim blame here? But as you saw, Basim was cut off when he tried to educate Adam. And I suspect that the reason why is that he didn't like that Basim was kind of undermining his point here. And on top of that, he probably also didn't like that his racism was being called out. But Basim did what he needed to do. He shut down this notion that Palestinians are somehow responsible for their own subjugation. That is madness. But Basim entertains Adam's argument here for a moment and talks about other Middle Eastern countries. And let's see how that goes too. I'm naming all these countries that are thriving. Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Israel, Silicon Valley of the Middle East. What can be done with the countries that are quote-unquote shitholes? Okay. Give me a country like a shithole. Give me an example. I'm looking at the unemployment rates in all these countries. Give me one country. Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon. Why have I understand that it became a shithole country? Because they endorsed the Taliban. They did. They did. Isn't that a little bit of a reductive way to tell history? Because at the beginning, there was no Taliban. And then the Soviet Union came in. And then America came in, supported the Taliban, make them bigger than they were. And then at the end of the day, they supported, if you remember Rambo 3, Rambo 3 was supporting the Taliban. So Taliban was really cool. And even they were, they were even hailed by right-wing Christians as freedom fighters, anti-communists. And then what happened? America, some people like the Richard Wilson Wall wanted in to come in to put some schools that now, now, now we spend, we spend all of this money of tanks on weapons. We don't need to put them schools. What happened? Taliban flourished all because of America interfered, made it shitty, left everything. Taliban forged it. And then America went in again, spent $2 billion making it even, two terrarium laws made it even worse. So when you tell me like a country is not surviving, it's not because, oh, because they're bad people then on it. You have to come into the root cause. Every single country that you said, I can bring you the root cause of how America and the West has fucked this country to become. Go to Syria. Mic drop. Devastating arguments here by Basim that Adam just can't counter because facts matter. Now if you keep watching, Basim explains that the countries that Adam deems as shitholes have become battlegrounds for proxy wars between larger powers. These are details that literally matter. You can't disaggregate specific statistics from the overall situation. The context matters here. And it is the height of Western chauvinism to blame these countries for the predicaments that they're in while not acknowledging the ways that our government destabilize these countries. Geopolitics matters. Imperialism matters. The context matters. And that's what Basim is providing Adam with here. And it's not just the Middle East that the United States has destabilized. U.S. imperialism has destabilized so many Latin American countries, so many. And after destroying these countries, ironically, Americans then have the audacity to turn around and complain about immigration crises that our country created in the first place and then fear monger about the potential for terrorism on the border. Excuse me? Our government is the terrorist motherfucker. I am begging Americans to have just a tiny bit of self-awareness for once. Most of us can't actually comprehend the fact that most of the world views us as the bad guys. And that's what you kind of see here with Adam, right? It's cognitive dissonance. But as frustrated as I felt watching this, since Adam was obviously arguing in bad faith, I did feel a lot better after looking at the comment section because it seems like Basim Youssef was actually getting through to the PBD viewers. Here's some of the most popular comments that I saw. Quote, Adam called Basim intellectually lazy after he gave him a whole history lesson about his own people. Exactly. Adam never disappoints me in being the dumbest person on the panel. So this is clearly a regular viewer who is conservative, I'm assuming, since they watched the show. And yeah, they're one over by Basim. Basim with others made me look at this whole thing differently. Once you research how much influence a foreign power Israel has over the U.S. and U.K. politics, you will be stunned. Thank you, Basim, for another informed interview slash debate. Adam came across like an unformed bully. Basim came across like an educated and also wise person who speaks logically. Adam has single-handedly put a stain on the reputation of the PBD podcast. This is another person who's very clearly a regular viewer because like to care about the reputation of this podcast in the first place, you know, it suggests that you're a fan. Adam is the definition of you don't need to be smart to be successful. This one is just brutal. Did Adam come straight from APAC camps? How was he indoctrinated so badly? I don't think it was possible for Adam to look more like an establishment fool than he already did, yet here we are. I'm embarrassed for Adam, well done, Pat, for letting this one play out and letting Adam expose himself yet again. And trust me when I say this, there is so much more where that came from. You would be hard-pressed to find a single comment in support of Adam. And I never thought that I would say this, but reading the comments under a YouTube video from a conservative channel actually gave me hope. What's happening here? I mean, the comments section just, they were with Basim Yusuf. And I'm sure that many people like myself showed up just to see Basim. Still, you can't deny how powerful Basim was throughout this conversation. And he changed minds. Like, there's no doubt in my mind that he changed minds of people in the PBD audience, which is important. Now, there's so much more that I would like to address from this podcast. For example, there was a weird moment where Patrick Bet David chose to take a phone call from Chris Cuomo on air and disrupted the entire conversation. Like, why would you do something like this? It's incredibly unprofessional, but since it's Chris Cuomo, it's like, hey, I know Chris Cuomo. Let me answer the phone for him. It just, it was really weird. So I had to point that out. He also tried to portray Trump as a dove on foreign policy, which is just delusional to me. But I mean, if we keep going, we're going to be here all day. What we talked about here in this video, in my opinion, is the most important because the way that Basim discusses Israel, Palestine is how you want to discuss it as well. Because this is the blueprint that you need to actually change hearts and minds and shift the dialogue here, which matters the most, in my opinion, currently when it comes to these types of debates. So I'll link you to the full thing just in case you want to watch it. But if you're going to watch something from Basim Yusuf, I would actually recommend the full length interview, interview that he did with Pierce Morgan. I think that one was much better because he's able to articulate himself better at length without getting interrupted. But overall, just getting back to Basim Yusuf in this interview, he is an amazing communicator and he is proving in real time that facts still matter and educating and informing people can still win them over. And that in my opinion is cause for optimism in my book, because I thought that people couldn't be won over with facts. And it was all just opinions formed based on emotions. But Basim is disproving that in real time. And I think that's a that's cause for celebration in my book. I get the bars low, but I'm optimistic because of it.