The Banality of Violence.
Our troubling indifference to suffering.
Watching Sean Hannity casually ask Curtis Sliwa to turn the cameras toward Sliwa’s Guardian Angels crew “taking down” a person they perceived to be an undocumented migrant in the streets of New York stuck with me. This particular moment falls so far down on the list of horrifying takes from Hannity and Fox News but for some reason it hit a nerve. The detached indifference of the brief affair prompted me to revisit the writings of Hannah Arendt, one of the great 20th Century philosophers who tackled totalitarianism and morality. This sent me on a journey to examine the way in which the tragedy in Gaza is covered, how we speak about undocumented migrants in this country and our relationship with violence in general.
Show Notes
Clips
Episode Timestamp + Link | Clip Link
- 00:10:27 | Forbes Breaking News: President Biden And King Abdullah II Of Jordan Give Remarks Amid Concerns For Rafah
- 00:12:34 + 00:14:20 | Off Leash with Erik Prince: US Border is a Ticking Time bomb
- 00:18:02 | Fox News: Eric Adams is giving ‘illegal aliens everything’: Curtis Sliwa
- 00:20:38 | The Daily Show: House Impeaches Secretary Mayorkas & Suozzi Wins Santos’s Seat
Resources
- Al Jazeera: Israel-Gaza war in maps and charts: Live tracker
- Democracy Now!: Israel Shoots Dead 17-Year-old Palestinian American in Occupied West Bank
- The New York Times: The Decline of Deaths in Gaza
- CNN: At least 16 cemeteries in Gaza have been desecrated by Israeli forces, satellite imagery and videos reveal
- ABC News: Netanyahu ahead of Rafah ground invasion: 'Victory is within reach'
- The Intercept: Coverage of Gaza War in the New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Heavily Favored Israel, Analysis Shows
- The Guardian: Hannah Arendt's challenge to Adolf Eichmann
- The Intercept: Erik Prince Calls for U.S. to Colonize Africa and Latin America
- U.S. Department of State: U.S. Relations With El Salvador
- NPR: Why the 'world's coolest dictator' is on course for a landslide win in El Salvador
- Vox: Ecuador’s political instability, explained
- BBC: Has Honduras become a 'narco-state'?
- The New York Times: On Live TV, Guardian Angels Tackle Man Sliwa Misidentified as Migrant
Book Love
- Chris Hedges: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
UNFTR Quick Links