Bad Hasbara
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We Got One
🕑 Added 2025-06-24 05:31:01 +0000 UTCHi everyone. Thanks for all your thoughtful feedback on the Shaiel episode. I knew it would ruffle some feathers, and it sounds like it cut even deeper than that for some of you— some were disturbed, disappointed, turned off by the presence of someone with his track record of both belief and behavior, on their favorite anti-Zionist comedy podcast that's built its brand, at least in part, on making fun of liberal Zionist equivocators and half-steppers.
I get those objections, and I'm not going to try to talk you out of them. Certainly he has a problematic past, and everyone can judge for themselves whether he's done the personal and ideological repair work sufficient to have you open your ears to what he has to say. Personally I found him personable, humble in his own way, and open-minded. And I enjoyed stepping into a different role, a different part of my persona, briefly going back to my Fall of '23 days on Instagram when all I was doing was trying to talk sense into insane people online, a kind of ideological courtship for fence-sitters. ("Get offa the fence, baby / It's creasing your butt" -Rolling Stones, "Mixed Emotions")
(I'll admit I'm biased here: anyone we've mercilessly mocked on the show who then listens to that mockery and reports back that we're "very funny" and "not nasty about it" and that our satire is "based on ideas" and that what we said about them was "mostly true" and calls themselves "a moron" who was "wrong about a lot of things", I'm going to let that person at least cop a feel in the back seat, if not cook them breakfast.)
I certainly don't recommend that everyone engage in convos like this; like I alluded to after the break, we do what we do on this podcast so you don't have to. By the same token, that means we're going to sometimes try things that step outside people's comfort zones.
The screenshot above is from a tweet he posted less than 24 hours after our episode dropped. Now, look: as Alec Baldwin said in Glengarry Glen Ross, “A man don’t walk on the lot lest he wants to buy.” Shaiel was primed when he walked onto the lot, in the market for a more coherent worldview, having done a lot of that work already. And I don’t want to exaggerate the importance of helping convince one Twitter guy who, for all I know, could be partly motivated by opportunism along with conscience. That’s his business, and time will tell. But it does feel good to have this happen publicly within 24 hours of our interview dropping, and I do think it makes a difference. It's one domino.
I'm sure Matt and I will have more to say about this on the next episode. Thanks as always for giving a shit. Such a beautiful, beautiful shit.
-Daniel
Comments
Antechinus
I have to believe that people are capable of dragging themselves up from the abyss to find their soul waiting to welcome them.
Antje Kühn
I LOVED the episode! Thank you thank you thank you both for this really interesting and constructive talk.
H Haltam
To keep the momentum going we have to invite Dan Bilzarian. Sure he has some problematic beliefs but he’s just confused and is against dead Palestinian babies. Fair no?
