"Israel’s Rave Music Drowns Out the Sound of its Victims" (w/ Zenab Ahmed)

We interview Zenab Ahmed, who wrote the story "Israel’s Rave Music Drowns Out the Sound of its Victims" for Current Affairs. Their story covers the evolution of the Israeli rave scene alongside the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.

[00:00] People saying that I deny peace like that I deny humanity it's like oh well is dancing for peace right Zanab isn't engaging with them dancing for peace but what this means I have no idea right like a lot of people say they're dancing for a lot of things obviously most people are dancing to you know celebrate or to participate in community or even just to exercise but you know in the recent time period Post October 7th, many of us witnessed Israelis throwing raves dancing to block aid trucks into Gaza. Yes. And when those kinds of dance events are happening, when those kinds of raves are happening, it no longer is tenable to simply say that that that is the only way that these events and that this mode of expression and this music and medium is is used in society

[01:01] Is used in Israel is is weaponized. I would also call attention to some people in the United Kingdom who are using dance music to do the exact opposite to try to blockade weapons being sent to Israel. I introduce a handshake as just kind of like a conceptual device for all of you and for the audience. Like a handshake can do all sorts of things, right? You can shake hands with somebody and buy weapons. You can shake hands with somebody who's like an aranged father that you are now having a new loving relationship with. By itself, these things can do all sorts of things, right? But what they do is reliant on the context that they're in. We are very lucky to be joined today by Zanab Ahmed who wrote a amazing recent article for current affairs titled

[02:04] Israel's rave music drowns out the sound of its victims and then under that is for decades a combination of EDM and drug culture have helped to numb the horror of occupation apartheid and genocide. right away. I mean, in the title itself, I really appreciated that it wasn't wasting any time. It wasn't messing around. It was getting straight to the point of this really important issue. It connects very much to what we at Psymposia do. So, today from Psymposia, I am joined by Brian Pace, Russell, and Normie. I'm Nishay and we were very interested in reading this piece and noticing a lot of the parallels between our usual topics which relate to psychedelic medicine and the themes that you were discussing with rave music, rave culture and the ways that they can feed into a kind of spiritual bypassing of the material realities in the Middle East.

[03:00] And so just to start up top here, I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about your background in general. I know in your bio mentions that you're an activist, raver, freelance writer, and editor, and PhD student in comp in comparative legal theory, but if there's anything else you'd like to share, and also as part of that story, if you could lead up to what brought you to the topic of this article in particular. Well, I'm a PhD student in a program that will never end, like as is often the case with PhD studies. That's at SOASS University of London. I've studied in Canada and the United States and other places in the past, including in the Middle East. I'm Canadian by birth and Pakistani heritage.

[03:47] People often ask like where are you really from? And I have been doing various things with Palestine Fallstine organizing since I was a teenager and then into university studies where I did various different organizing tasks. That was around the time that operation cast le became a new reference point. And then after that I began doing grassroots organizing. I had a lot of issues with grassroots organizing as people who were in grassroots organizing often do. And what happened after that is that raving became more and more a part of my life as it had been since I was a teenager.

[04:35] And then with October 7th, I saw maybe for the first time a very obvious overlap between what had previously been two different sections of my life. Although I was aware of Palestinian electronica and electronica more widely in the Middle East, Arab, Turkish, Iranian, Pakistani, you could say in the greater Middle East and so on. So the article arose in response to October 7th which brought together what had previously been two very different strains of my life. Palestine organizing as well as electronic music appreciating. And my own academic work is on the Afghan Pakistani border and border making and border maintenance with a colonial legal code called the frontier crimes regulation which helps stabilize the Afghan Pakistani border especially in the Bashon dominated areas that are called formerly the northwest

[05:36] Frontier province. And the article sort of has bits and pieces of all of that, as well as my own personal dis disappointment with how electronic music has not just responded to October 7th, but how deading and depolitical it often is. I say depolitical because it's like it's more than apolitical. Like you're actively discouraged from talking about politics. And that's true for queer and trans organizing as well, which overlaps with an in addition. I didn't really have time to talk about that, but it's this article is a first step in a broader engagement that brings together many different sides of my life.

[06:24] There's the academic and organizing work I speak about in my biography, but there's also my own personal life has its continued to evolve and my suspicion that a lot of these things have been co-opted and that's what I'll say for now. Yeah. Thank you. And there's a lot of overlap I think from with our background story in the sense that we, you know, came from the psychedelic community that was like part of our lives and then we became aware of all of these dynamics. And so it's an expression of concern from within the community and not you know some outside perspective. So I really appreciate that that you have that kind of lived experience lens to it as well. And to ask a moment about the form and the structure of the piece because I found it very interesting how the argument was interwoven with the material the historical material conditions that gave rise to the Israeli rave scene and that this design choice served as a contrast to that scene's

[07:26] Avoidance of material realities as you describe it in the article. So I was wondering if you could speak more to Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. I interrupted you. Could you speak more to your approach to writing this piece, including your decision to arrange these details in this way? Well, what I thank you for finishing your question. What I was going to so rudely interrupt you by saying is that so analytical with military affairs, which is something that's not often done. I think there's this line that is established often between what the military is doing and its logics and the other aspects of material conditions that I've tried over the PhD to really decipher where there can be overlap where military tactics are themselves a part of the changing material conditions in society. there's not always going to be overlap but I try to sort of experiment with that also.

[08:24] Yes, you are correct. there's an element of it where it's avoiding the material reality, right? And on the Israeli side in particular, on the Zionist side in particular, there's an avoidance of material reality. But what I was trying to convey in not so many words is also say that it's partly enabled by this, right? But the way that it is enabled is not always straightforward. It's not always clear-cut. There is a very complicated relationship between Antonio Groshi talks about this in the Marxist tradition right like that base superstructure relations he calls it that culture and the changing material relationship of capitalist social relations that it's complicated how those things go together right and I try to avoid something as simplistic as to say that this happens explicitly because of this right because my own experience with raving a night life shows that it's

[09:27] Not always that simple right like what I can say with confidence is that as the material relationships change including what can be analytically understood through the military and its frameworks of structuring reality happens at the same time that the electronic music scene as it is which you have makes heavy use of psychedelics and other drugs as it takes its evolution. Whether it's A to B, it's hard for me to say, but it's definitely true that they happen at the same time. And I hope that there will be more work on this to discuss what the exact relationships are, right? Whether it is that one, the material relations causes the ability for electronic music to take the form that it does, which a lot of these responses to my article accuse me of saying this, right? like rather simplistically, but I took care not to say that actually like I would I wrote

[10:29] The article like I'm I want other people to step in as well to think about why this happens in the way it does and how these flanks relate. Right? It's a very old question in Marxist theory that I'm not going to present myself as knowing the answer to. Yeah. That was one of my favorite parts about the article was the interweaving of that the whole history of the conflict in that area with the development of the electronic music scene. I feel like it did a really good job of educating on the broader issues of the space as well as kind of that development of the scene too. I really appreciated that. Yeah. And I did also think that there there was also, you know, aspects like where were the raves able to happen due to the ongoing nature of the conflict and even things like where bases were built or where walls were built, you know, allowing for gatherings in certain spaces as opposed to other spaces, for example.

[11:31] So it did seem like there was some shaping even if it wasn't a reductive you know all of this is due to X sort of an argument. Well, it's all and it's there. It's a question of land, right? Like it's a question of land which land being a basic unit of Marxist inquiry. You see in the anti-colonial tradition various different thinkers trying to grapple with this question of lenon tried to do it. France Fenon in the case of Algeria and Martineique and other parts of the French Empire. indigenous Marxists where you people are in the Americas, they have a lot of different interventions about land, about the centrality of land, how you conceptualize land, how land relates to other forms of capitalist and imperialist social relation.

[12:24] And land is also a big question in China, in South Asia, especially as it relates to agricultural production. into Japan as well there's a question of land and I think in raving culture the idea of land on one end and the idea of security and policing on the other end are huge in terms of where you even stage these things what you have access to rather realistically anything is going to happen to you especially from law enforcement but also from other people right and how these supposed utopias structure themselves. They need access to resources and there's the material resources, the speakers, the pe the fact that you need people to go.

[13:14] There's that side of it, right? The artists, the DJs, the visuals, but there's also the basic questions of where you hold this thing, the security and policing guarantees, and a whole other medley of forces that I will only allude to. So I would ask people who are listening to this who are watching this to consider the question of land as it relates not just to raving but also to Marxist theory and the imperial system as it's evolved over the last six or seven centuries. If I could talk just for a moment or pick your brain about land. You spoke in the piece about one particular place in its role in current and past Israeli electronica evolution and that was Goa in India and yes yeah Goa and you know this is a place that has a lot of history of its own which I really appreciated you pointing to that this Goa trance a music

[14:16] That's known worldwide is not referencing any of the local struggles of that that people in that region but you know a coastal place in India that is not predominantly Muslim that is cheap that meets all of these criteria it's tropical people you know want to go and attend it's not that far from a major you know port it has some connection to historical psychedelia like you mentioned the Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band having some recording there and you know Goa is a it's a mainstay in the scitrant scene in terms of where these influences come from but having been to Goa myself at many many years ago the Israeli influence there is is huge and you can see this you know annual influx of tourists from Israel just out of the IDF and I

[15:17] Really appreciated this piece because of the language, the history, the ways that this is so a part of Israeli culture, even down to having names for the falupes, the people who, you know, after the IOF service then come out and take a bunch of drugs and lose their mind, the flip out kind of thing. So I just wanted to talk have you expand a little bit on on the Goa side of this land question. Yes, thank you. Well, I will be perfectly honest with you that I wouldn't necessarily consider myself qualified to speak about Goa even though I'm in South Asian studies. And I will be honest about that partly because I'm trying to be critical of an issue that I have, which is that I don't necessarily know as much about nonBritish imperial structures in South Asia.

[16:15] That's still something that I'm trying to understand. Goa was a port Goa was a Portuguese colony until some of the people's lifetimes that are watching and listening to this. And that's a lot of where the imperial structures that are in Goa come from originally in including forced baptisms and the expansion of the Catholic Church. And there are also other dynamics between Marathi and Konkani as languages that I am still learning about that I really welcome someone who knows more about Goa politics to intervene there. Where I'm more qualified to speak is about how the tourism and leisure industries overlaps with Israeli military adventurism.

[17:04] And it's not just an Israeli problem. It's something that I think is a deeper question about tourism and leisure like a Marxist critique of tourism and leisure that hasn't really been done properly like the resorts that someone in the United States or Canada would go to on the Turks and Caos Islands. Mayorca as a symbol of decadence and retreat for people in the United Kingdom and in France and Spain into North Africa, right? And the israelis aren't the only ones that are doing this with Goa either where it is specific with the Israeli tourists that are there is the state backing one which I think is clearly there through capital investment through the discharge bonuses the understanding that the military discharge bonuses to individual soldiers would be used in places like this and the involvement by people on the ground for example in A as is the case with

[18:06] Other places into Southeast Asia to welcome these people in to ensure that that money goes into the local economy but in the process creating a neoc colonial retreat experience for those people. It's not that different from tourism and leisure diff generally. But in this case, it's an attempt to come to terms with something that is a fundamental contradiction, which is that you can have a Zionist utopia where people are able to comfortably be Jewish and be Israeli in the Zionist frame of reference. But what it requires from people through drafted military service in many cases is the ability to kill to the ability to subject others to oppression to violence that nonviolence would be built on violence that that the utopia would be built on dystopia.

[19:03] It's a fundamental contradiction in the in Zionist frame of thought. The Zionist utopia requires Zionist real politique, right? that can't be squared away is is my basic argument here. I don't say it explicitly, but that's what's guiding the piece. You can't do more with that. It's just in your mind it doesn't work. The two just clash together. So, if you're accepting that the two have to clash together, that logically it doesn't make sense. That logically you have to erase one to erase the other. Well, you can't erase the Zionist real politique. You can get rid of the concept of military service, of killing for Zionist utopia, of denying it afterwards. That's essential.

[19:49] That's part of how the machinery works. So the next best thing is to give people the opportunity to forget about it. And then that's sort of left on to the individual people. And those tourism and leisure hotspots become pulled into that. And then increasingly over time it becomes built into the local economy that Israeli soldiers would backpack and do this in that particular spot. And Goa has become a hot spot for that in addition to other places into Indonesia and East Africa. And Goa, I think has its own long half ccentury history that I would welcome people to study and even tell me more about because that's what I have to say about it.

[20:36] Yeah. To those points, I wanted to highlight a quote that you had in your article that I think speaks to kind of like the bonuses you were mentioning that this person Guy Shuso in the documentary flipping out who works on the Hummus Trail, which maybe you can expand upon a little bit too that features pretty heavily in the piece. But he says after 3 years of totally destroying their identity, of causing their self-destruction and of profoundly changing their view of the meaning of human life, they are given I'm assuming that's like Israeli $15,000 as a discharge bonus to go wherever they want to take all of this crap out elsewhere. I think that's a powerful quote. Yeah. No, and this is a commando like he was a commando in Kaza. Like this is this isn't just anyone. And he's there partly. The documentary doesn't say it, but you see like this is quite a bitter and cynical quote.

[21:27] He's there partly because of his own experiences, right? Like I would imagine like I don't know this man, right? But the quote here is about you just kind of give them like however so many shekels to be like, "Okay, you go leave." Right. Right. like you're traumatized from doing this thing that's fundamentally reordered your way of seeing the world. The it's brutal and it's predatory, but now you're out like go take that somewhere else, right? For him, it's like they're basically taking out the trash and then like just leaving it for those people to have to deal with and then they come back as if it never happened, right? Like I think I would imagine that he understands this as a technique of power that's hypocritical, but like in a way it accepts the hypoc hypocrisy and I really latched on to this quote because I think it gets down to basics about not just what is happening here,

[22:29] But what is happening with tourism and leisure generally that people need to be refreshed after long periods doing something that they may find alienating. that they may find laborious, oppressive, that the system that they're in doesn't actually have a way of dealing with the effects of what these people are doing. And here it's militarily. So the solution ends up being not actually a solution. The solution ends up being, okay, well here you go, right? Deal with that yourself, right? Go get married and have kids. Then your wife or your husband, like they'll be the ones to deal with your insanity. then your children will be the ones to bear the weight of your insanity into your elder years. Like the system that produced that insanity in the first place, it has nothing to do with it.

[23:16] Like these are the methods that you have. You have vacation, you have family units, you have other things, right? We like as a society this has been enabled to you. You have consumerism, consumption. These are the ways that you have to deal with the emotions that this summons in you. Why are you even trying to have those emotions publicly? Right? So like what he's saying here is that there's a whole system of repression, a whole system of emotional and social repression that requires leaving for a place like Goa to embibe drugs and then push everything down. And then pushing it down is what becomes the way for the system to keep going. and that every so often there's another wave of people that does this that pushes everything down and keeps going.

[24:08] In a way it's like confession like in the Catholic form of doing right it's like in a way it's like that right like you are giving people the opportunity to manage their guilt to manage other things by doing this other stuff right but you know this isn't actually seen as repressive for some reason and I say that somewhat bitterly as a Muslim them as someone with very conservative Pakistani parents who are quite often frustrated that they're being told that they're almost preodern in societies that think they're above everybody else and their understanding of how the west quote unquote functions.

[24:58] I mean this is repressive I in a way that I never experienced from my parents frankly but if I say that my parents are religious I'll be like told oh well that's too difficult for you have these she they and it pronouns that must have been so hard but like you see this is considered social progress this is considered more open-minded the Zionist project includes propaganda that takes these details and makes it seem like Israel is the place to be, right? Because you have a society that's ba built on people doing this. I don't see it as particularly different from the sort of oppression that I would have grown up with. But if I said that too openly, I would be told that I'm in denial. How fair is that?

[25:43] Yeah. What it sounds like to me, I mean, you've said so much, but the externality of this endeavor, the that that the Gaza project and its occupation, the occupation of the Palestinians, the violence that it takes to do that and the toll that it places on all participants, obviously more on on those who are being oppressed, but that to maintain this system, there must an escape valve or as you referred to it taking out the trash and that is what makes a place like Israel still seem functioning and desirable. It reminds me of the ways in which we are seeking raw materials and sacrifice lands in other countries so that in you know industrialized countries we have the shiny gadgets and the polished furniture and all of that.

[26:43] It's another dumping ground. It's another form of externalizing the costs or socializing the costs and centralizing the whatever benefit there may be to an oppressive structure. And it is and it doesn't work within the supply chain as it's analytically understood, right? Like because from a bure if you're a bureaucrat, you're just like, "Oh, you know, the problem is the problem's gone." Like it's off the books, right? like there's been a solution. This is the solution right to send it over there. Right. Like that like then everything is out of this defined territory defined remitt. So therefore that that's that problem solved. Coloss right. Right. Right.

[27:28] Like that's it. Right. Like you have to actually have a full view of capitalism and imperialism as world systems to really piece together the reality of what's going on. Yes, that these are different kinds of dumping grounds, but in so far as it is a dumping ground, that the dumping ground itself has a long history that far predates its designation as a dumping ground, right? like that. It became a dumping ground for reasons that for politically definable historical reasons that need to be understood. That the fact that things are dumped there, even if it's just trauma and emotion, the fact that it's dumped there has a whole historical trajectory of its own, a whole material trajectory of its own.

[28:18] And I would welcome anybody who's an expert on Goa again to step in here to really interview how people in Goa feel about this and the effects of having this sort of experience be built into the Israeli tourism and leisure economy to the point where I would argue it's state subsidized through these discharge bonuses not just in Goa but elsewhere. It does recall the history of pollution of as you said about electronics. E-waste ends up in other places and that has its own huge trajectory that becomes in some cases even centers of whole economies to manage this waste to figure out what to do with it that it poisons the locals.

[29:06] I would imagine that something very similar happens here. I just wasn't able to fly out to Goa and interview people myself with somebody who knows Marathi and Conani and is able to help me discuss things with local people. I would have loved to be able to learn and understand more about that and challenge my own prejudices and preconceptions and introduce it into the article. The article is pretty long already [laughter] and glad to have this ability to discuss it. Yeah, a whole book for sure on these topics would be really fascinating to read and you know all the tendrils and that relates actually to the next question. Speaking of tendrils just we noticed that as we mentioned before broad parallels between your analysis of the Israeli rave scene and other adjacent topics including yoga and psychedelic medicine.

[29:57] So I was just curious to hear if you have any thoughts about how these other topics relate to your argument. So here like I would actually site there was a Harets article recently. The this article was released in the last Fortnite but it's kind of engineed this whole counter response. It's really interesting to watch. In Harets there was somebody who wrote a response to it and cited well I'll back up a second. They didn't cite this. It's my reading of it. The term is art for art's sake. like going back to an understanding of art and literature a French position in the late 19th century going back 150 150 years that something like a rave in its current application in that article isn't actually something that you can solely understand politically which is not what I say but this is what the author accuses me of saying that

[30:59] Like that there's something about the rave that exists outside of social and historical context like to have fun to experience togetherness. Which again I at no point did I but I think when you say about psychedelics and yoga and other strains of this I think there you have to go back to that position right that it's enough not to engage with the reality in front of you because you're experiencing something that is for its own sake. Right? Art for art's sake, yoga for yoga's sake. In this case, you are reminded of the political economy of yoga. I'm currently traveling to California.

[31:45] There is a huge industry up and down the North American coast of yoga studios and all sorts of yoga ayurveetic things that tends to appeal especially to white women of means or at least of their husband's means but also of other ethnic and religious backgrounds. And to do yoga is to come down to yourself to be grounded to be toned. There's this notion of sexual desiraability attached to it, stretching and so on, being stretchy and all of that is supposed to exist outside of the political sphere, outside of an awareness of economics of the imperial reality. If somebody brings it up, there might be a tacid acknowledgement, but then after not that much time, there will be a backing away because ultimately there is a desire not to engage with that stuff. that's explicitly defended if it has to be right that the point of this isn't

[32:46] To engage with the reality of the world. The point of this is to get closer to yourself, to experience joy. And I didn't have time to talk about this in the article, but I have an issue with queer and trans politics often because I feel like it goes down the same road of saying, "Oh, you know, the community needs to come together to be itself, right? to give people a chance to be who they are. But that's explicitly divorced from politics, even if it pays tacet mention to it. And if you push too hard with politics in any of these spheres, particularly in yoga, which has its own imperial history, especially in places like California into Europe, then you'll be shot down not through an intellectual argument, but through a very raw position that to be intellectual is to take things too seriously.

[33:41] And quoting many people that I've known over the years, it's not that deep. Yeah. In the these new age spaces, we so often see there's just this deep, especially in like the western yoga traditions, all that kind of stuff, this deep like individualist undercurrent as opposed to any kind of like collective understanding. Yeah. I was just going to say butism that has collectivism, right? Exactly that. Yes. Yeah. these there. We saw I know I saw a lot of parallels between the projects that you're in embarking on in this article of trying to situate these cultural things that are associated with rave and raving in Israeli electronic electronica in to a material and historical and political economic reality as it has been as it continues to be And I very much relate to the, you know, the sense that others who just

[34:42] Enjoy electronic music or want to go to a rave are resistant to that. It is part of what hedonism and escapism is is is about is is not engaging in that. But it when we're talking about something like yoga or psychedelics or just tourism and leisure, one of the common threads is is escapism and escape from a rejection of materialism, a rejection of material reality and material analysis. And so you really do sort of spoil the party when you drag people back into where all this come from comes from and how it is who is benefiting and who is getting paid and who is not who is at the table who is not that sort of thing.

[35:28] There's a lot of parallels when looking at and you're desexual like yeah like I will say as a woman you're desexualized actually like there there are whole meme subcultures where it like you'll have someone that's just like oh I was on a first date and I won't get a second one but now I've explained everything about israeli rave colonialism right and it's like play for laughs like right but like but implicitly there's this understanding being reinforced in that sort of meme that like you can't really have it both ways, right? Like you have political awareness a life of enjoyment. You can't do both. Why not? But why not? Like why can't you? No disagreement here, right? I mean that that was our experience in the psychedelic space.

[36:16] If we raised politics, we so for instance, I don't know at this point, seven, six years ago, one of the big events in the psychedelic industry, psychedelic community, whatever you want to call it now, was Rebecca Mercer. She gave a million dollars or something. She was behind the Cambridge Analytica. I recall she's been a major Republican sort of a donor, financeiered Trump early on Trump Parlor as well. I think she was a major funer of the Parlor app, that rightwing Twitter, one of the biggest supporters of global fascism. And then when that was called out, the people who called it out were then blamed for making it all political. Keep your politics out of this space. We psychedelics are a safe space where sort of politics are prohibited. the psychedelic scene in the United States resisted this so much that resisted the talking about it.

[37:13] Yeah. Yeah. So, like a lot of our work has been to call out these like the complicity of the industry with right-wing forces and they've resisted this so much that it was only several days ago that the New Yorker is finally coming around to positions that we years ago at this point there might be a right-wing problem here. So yeah, just inherently I don't think they like they don't like the incursion of politics into their small little utopia, I guess, is the point I'm trying to say. Well, see as secular, right? Yeah. Is that that's partly what's interesting about it. What you're I refer to North America more broadly when you talk about these figures in the United States.

[38:02] Thank you for explaining that. I didn't actually know who that was. the history of evangelism in North America and I include Mexico and Central America because Latin America is having its own evangelical moment that is partly behind the far right explosion especially in South America into Argentina. Right? So what's interesting about it is that the apocalyptic dimension of evangelical thinking I little e evangelical I will say here is is often at odds with these sorts of engagements with political reality and it has its own framing of what is religious and what is secular that lines up with that. Right? And the apocalypse is rapturous, right?

[38:48] Like it's ecstas it's ecstatic. Ecstatic, right? You feel it in your body. You feel it in your bones, right? That the congregation rises up and moves together, right? If you look at the North American frontier going back two centuries, I mean it wasn't psychedelics, but the concept of the camp meeting for example, like going into Ontario, expanding westward into the Canadian Great Plains, going to Illinois, like going into the United States South, the Baptist tradition you could argue gets part of it into Latin America, which I don't know as many details about like Christianity expanding through into Mexico, Central America, South America.

[39:35] But I want I would welcome somebody to step in here also to think about this, right? that the history of just ecstatic experience and the belief in the Almighty that rises up through you that's fundamentally against the sort of reasoning and careful understanding of the world around you that it actually defines itself against and pushes down when it comes to even the indigenous people that are trying to be converted right like it's not psychedelics but I think there's a question of experience like divine experience through rapture that I think is very core to how evangelism expands in the Americas broadly through the imperial projects of various different empires also that overlaps more recently with psychedelics with yoga with electronic music with all of these other techniques

[40:37] Of facilitating it and I think initially When a lot of these politicians and media thinkers came across these sorts of substances, there was this hesitation to go in more deeply because politically and culturally how they were constructed. But I can also completely understand why they would eventually drop that opposition and see something through them because I don't think it's actually that different from evangelism more generally. I think you just have to go back a couple of hundred years and really try to understand, especially in some of those camp meetings and the awakenings, quote unquote, what was really going on. It wasn't exactly something logical and intellectual. It was something spiritual and something embodied in your experience of like the moment of joy like as it occurs to you that the Holy Spirit is with you and that Christ has been reborn through you.

[41:36] And I think that's what these people are picking up on. Well, there is in fact mysticism. Yes, I was gonna say there the one of the things that's bridging the psychedelic kind of rightwing right now is in fact evangelism. It's one of the things that we've highlighted in a few of the things we've recently talked about. One of the biggest proponents of Ibeane on the kind of right-wing is kind of explicitly a Christian evangelist. And one of and Rick Perry being kind of a Christian evangelist, former Texas politician, very right-wing is also embracing psychedelics now. and you're seeing all of these books being published on like Christian's guide to psychedelics and I'm a Christian but psychedelics gave me this experience that that deeply related to my own kind of evangelism there.

[42:23] Yeah, it's very interesting and I think a few of the festivals that I name in the piece are complicit in this growth of Christian mysticism through a far right reinterpreting of what psychedelics can do for you. one that I don't mention, Burning Man and its popularity among the nation tech oligarchs several decades ago now. But also Coachella, especially as it overlaps with the influencer class and there's a queer and trans element to that that I would welcome someone to look for further into if they're listening or to see this. Also, Electric Daisy Carnival, Glastonbury closer to home to me in the United Kingdom, right? Like a lot of these places have leaned into the room that was opened up by moneyed people who wanted a kind of pseudospiritual experience through embibing substances through moving their bodies to sound to music and electronica very much has not

[43:26] Dealt with this as a potential political problem and I think this is partly the result of that is that there has been a new kind of politics that's forged under the radar of these sorts of conglomerations especially at the festivals that I named and a couple of them are in the article and I would imagine there is going to be more of an issue with this especially with Soundstorm in Saudi Arabia. Sa Saudi has its own sorts of economies around this in as well as Jordan as well as Lebanon as well as other Middle Eastern countries. And I think there's a lot to this that needs to be teased out. And I would imagine that it's not just going to end up being a problem as you've outlined it.

[44:12] I think it's going to be a worldwide issue. I think it already is. And I think the reluctance to discuss these things politically has partly enabled it. Yeah, we couldn't agree more about that. I think that there is a, you know, a very common story within the psychedelic field that this these sorts of ecstatic experiences generate empathy and connection across difference. And so we just need to get that like flood the world with more of that and it's going to solve the problems that we have. And it's a complete lack of reckoning with the ways that as you were outlining that ecstasy can become a tool of colonialism of fascist state power and that sort of thing the long history of that.

[44:57] Yeah. And in a way it's not unique for this, right? I was having a joke with my with one of my friends. This was a little while ago about handshakes, right? where I was teaching people how to shake hands, which is a great thing to know by the way, like and I said something like a handshake will take you far in the world. But by itself, it won't obviously like in addition to other stuff, right? And the and we started laughing about it and thinking about various things handshakes can do that are good, that are evil, right? and I introduce a handshake as kind just kind of like a conceptual device for all of you and for the audience, right? Like a handshake can do all sorts of things, right? You can shake hands with somebody and buy weapons.

[45:44] You can shake hands with somebody who's like an aranged father that you are now having a new loving relationship with, right? Like by itself, these things can do all sorts of things, right? But what they do is reliant on the context that they're in. Right. And I'm familiar with what you're saying like people are just like, "Oh, well, you know, you need to open people's minds up and they will be able to connect with each other and then fraternity and like universal love will govern all which is I mean that's very nice, right? Like that's a very way of but like but it's not a very like grounded in the realities of the world way of looking about things is it right like you see this in some of the responses to the article that have come out now people saying that I deny peace like that I deny humanity it's like oh is dancing for peace right Zanab isn't engaging with them dancing for peace but what this means I have no idea right

[46:46] Right like a lot of people say they're dancing for a lot of things, right? Like I could say that I'm dancing for Donald Trump to be overthrown, right? That doesn't mean it's actually like going to happen in any way, shape, or form, right? Like of course like there needs to be more than this, right? Like I think the position of that this will lead to like an opening and an understanding of love among the people who use the psychedelics. I think you have to go back like a number of steps to like just ask basic ideological questions about how these people see the world, right? Like how they conceive of power, how they conceive of how communities are structured, right? A bit of social contract theory as the sociologists might say, right?

[47:33] Do they believe that society is built on people agreeing to things or a society built on something altogether more violent? Right? I would say that society is built on class struggle as a Marxist and an anarchist simultaneously. Right? But someone else may have a different position. Right? But if there is a utopian a basic utopian sense of like humans kind of get together and do beautiful things, right? that like is structuring people's whole worldviews, then of course it would apply to psychedelics and they would come to this conclusion that all you really need to do is give people substances and then they'll stop fighting and the Garden of Eden will recreate itself at some person's house on the coast of Mayorca.

[48:22] Do you know what I mean? Like of course they're going to come to that position. They have a fundamental misunderstanding of the reality of how politics functions especially in a capitalist and imperial world, right? And so you here you have another project that you have to do an ideological critique of like where the these attitudes come from. Remember that it's a consumer society, right? Like I think a lot of the people in the Frankfurt school would have had a lot to say about this, right? Thinking of the psychedelic as a commodity, right? that it represents something that is divine that that it represents paradise and I would point everybody's attention to that right like why has the psychedelic been become seen as something that can create heaven on earth and why is heaven on earth something that involves no conflict and only peace and people just connecting without anything to stop them right like is there conflict in heaven.

[49:24] I ask all of you, right? Like there might be is would there have been conflict in the Garden of Eden? Some of it's canon actually. I want to I wanted to just comment very briefly. You know, you said, oh well, you know, is Israelis are dancing for peace and obviously most people are dancing to, you know, celebrate or to participate in community or even just to exercise. But you know in the recent time period post October 77 7th many of us witnessed Israelis throwing raves dancing to block aid trucks into Gaza. Yes. And when those kinds of dance events are happening, when those kinds of raves are happening, it no longer is tenable to simply say that that that is the only way that these events and that this mode of expression and this music and medium is is used in society

[50:26] Is used in Israel is is weaponized. And so I just I really like the handshake idea. You know, we I've often talked about psychedelics as a hammer. You know, you can build a cathedral with it or home or you can knock a hole in somebody's head with it. These are very basic interpretations of technologies of the body and the mind. But I just wanted to comment on that. Yes. No, thank you for saying that. And of course, a lot of the people that have been saying this about the article and the responses know what you're saying is correct like know that dance music as it applied in various different ends. It's a bit obscene to deny it. I would also call attention to some people in the United Kingdom who are using dance music to do the exact opposite to try to blockade weapons being sent to Israel.

[51:17] And protests in the Americas against supply chains and ports as logistical centers sending weapons out to Israel. Sometimes it's more symbolic, but I just want to call attention to that also that electronic music can also be applied in that direction and psychedelics in that direction. I welcome although legally I do not say I welcome people doing that. And just to take a quick look related to the topic of how different symbolic kind of stories about how psychedelics work and the nature of where political problems are coming from can lead to different ideas seeming like good ideas or not depending on the kind of version of what the problem is that you're seeing.

[52:07] And I wanted to just if we could pull up a Twitter thread by Nardine Kaswani about the attempted and do you have the whole thread there as well like with the Yeah, I can scroll up or down wherever you want me to head. I can head to the top. Yeah. Yeah. Just I thought this was very interesting for us when we were a friend sent this thread to us from July 2025. So just over a year ago. It was interesting to us because we knew about these attempted Iawaska peaceuilding projects for many years. They've been you know this has been developing the field and I had not yet seen people who are involved in Palestine activism and like real organizing hear about it and react to it until this thread came out.

[53:00] So just I thought we could go over very quickly just to react to the tensions between these different stories that are kind of finding themselves in connection to psychedelics. So she begins this thread, a psychedelic peaceuilding nonprofit reached out to us because they'll be in New York City soon. Their mission is to get Palestinians and Israelis to drink Iwasa together to heal collective trauma. Yes, this is real and it's one of the most absurd forms of peace peacewashing we've seen. It mentions they published a 2021 paper. They put participants in a safe container, gave them psychedelics, and said it helped them move beyond fear, anger, and othering. And then she asserts, let's be clear, Palestinians are not suffering because of fear or misunderstanding. They are being bombed, starved, and displaced by a settler colonial regime.

[53:46] That's not a trauma bond. That's genocide, apartheid, and colonization backed by weapons, not feelings. There, this entire framework flattens power dynamics. It presents colonizer and colonized as equally harmed, equally responsible, and equally in need of healing. Meanwhile, one side has one of the world's most lethal armies and US weapons, and the other buries its children. This is how peacewashing works. You strip away history, replace material struggle with emotional language, treat genocide like a group therapy issue, and package it all in a western friendly healing model. And we're close to the end here. They continues. They even said, "If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere." As if Gaza is just a tough interpersonal conflict that needs better vibes, not the site of a decadesl long campaign of siege, blockade, starvation, genocide, and military occupation.

[54:37] And then it ends with, "We do. We don't need Iawaska fueled coexistence circles. They won't dismantle the checkpoints, lift the siege on Gaza, or return stolen land. You can't heal away a war crime. We need justice. We need liberation. We need decolonization, not tripping for freedom. So, I just curious if you have any thoughts about that. Well, I mean the comment tough interpersonal conflict. I mean, so I don't know if you've ever tried to use psychedelics to solve an interpersonal conflict, but it also doesn't do much of that, right? Like I don't know where these ideological preconceptions come from. Like I think they come from this Yeah, they come from this deep internal belief that they hold the magic substance. And I think that's mixed with more business or fundraising aspects of group leaders who want to get into a certain area to get funding for to expand their project and in this case to expand the psychedelic medicine therapy project into Israel into Europe into new markets outside of

[55:38] The US. There's that. And there's also, frankly, it reminds me of I used to hang out with men in fraternities when I was in that age group, which is more distant than I will freely admit, right? Like, and some of them would say at times like, "Oh, so and so needs to get laid and like that'll solve everything, right?" Frankly, it reminds me of that in some ways. like, oh, you know, they just need to meet somebody and then they'll let go of these sorts of things that they're doing, right? Like there's this really bizarre need for this cure all that I think is quite core to how conservatives see the world. And I think it takes a lot of forms. I think that's partly what it is with something like this. Also, I will see say briefly there's the comment about fear and misunderstanding.

[56:27] I mean there is fear and misunderstanding. I won't deny that. But the fear and misunderstanding is also enabled by the vast inequalities that exist on the ground and like by the use of military power by the checkpoints by the constant harassment the screening by the air strikes by the fact that it's a part of daily life to think about killing the these other people the Palestinians on the ground by the propaganda. Of course, there's fear and misunderstanding. Like, I don't deny that. But to define the fear and misunderstanding without mentioning this other stuff. I mean, like, it plays into a fundamental misreading of what's happening, that's of course intentional.

[57:13] That's of course given to people so that they see themselves the as the heroes, right? And I use they vaguely in this case because I think it's also something that can be put onto activists who are against the Zionist occupation. And I think it's something that people need to be self-aware of in order to get away from this sort of conservative framing. Right? They being I would suppose people who see themselves as the heroes, right? Everybody wants psychedelics on their side. Like that's what I have to say. side. And it's a foil. Yeah. It reminds me as well of in the United States, you know, the types of conservatives who have a big problem with critical race theory, which I know is also very has a long history in legal studies, but people who view it as, you know, the problem with race in this country is just a lack of trust

[58:16] Between communities and people an unwillingness to move on from the past instead of actually recognizing that the past is still alive with us today. that the inequalities of the material conditions and the oppression of some communities and not others is an ongoing situation that's giving rise to these feelings. And so to address the feelings as the source of the problem is to kind of be completely lost in terms of where what the actual underlying issue is. And it teaches people to not resist feeling powerless, right? So like why else would you why like because the refrain is just to move on because you have no control over this past. Yeah. Like exa Exactly. Right. Right. Right. It's like fundamentally conservative as a position.

[59:02] Fundamentally like it discourages you from looking at something as ongoing. It discourages you from fully understanding what happened from positioning yourself to prevent it in the future. from stopping the effects from continuing in the present. It's fundamentally conservative. It erases things. That's the function is eraser. Yeah. And there's two more things I just want to because I know we're here in about an hour. If we have a few more minutes to get to two last things, I'd like to turn to the recent IOF MDMA clinical trial find just because this is you know much in the United States much of the momentum behind MDMA as a medicine treatment for PTSD has been you know really pushed by the organization MAPS the multi-disiplinary association for psychedelic studies and who was which was founded by decades ago by in the 80s I believe

[1:00:03] By Rick Doblin and Rick Doblin specifically identified his mission as advancing MDMA as a treatment in order to prevent a future holocaust. That's what his kind of guiding star has been. So now for his project to be coming to fruition as a tool for treating soldiers that are engaged in an active genocide. I think it goes to highlight the ignorance of that project in terms of how it's being implemented. But did anyone else have any thoughts about this study or any context about it that you wanted to share? It's to my knowledge, you know, our outlet was the first to critique this notion that MDMA assisted therapy for PTSD was going to help at a societal level with peace and that I recognize that this is is specifically

[1:01:05] For PTSD and not the IASA circles, but that that somehow that psychedelics were going to have a structural effect on, you know, a generational occupation project and it was something that you know was critiqued and rejected and dismissed and yet here we are. I think that's the main thing that I would say. I mean these are studies that are ongoing and continued throughout the genocide the most recent genocide post October 7th. And so it really puts the question to, you know, who is receiving, you know, cutting edge treatments for PTSD, regardless of whether or not they, you know, have been proven to work.

[1:01:51] I have not once seen a PTSD study that was focused on on Palestinians in this context. Does anyone else have anything to say? Yeah, I can. The one bit of elaboration I wanted to kind of put on the MDMA assisted therapy results in the Israeli soldiers was just a little piece of history. This is kind of like an ongoing point in a timeline that has been a strategic play for the industry for a long time. One thing I reported in 2022 was kind of this long history of MAPS, specifically the organization founded in the 80s taking MDMA trials through the FDA. One of their main strategic goals was to shift the rights views on psychedelics and their main way to do that was to get the kind of integration between psychedelics and the military.

[1:02:46] And one of the first places they went for that was actually Nicaragua during a Nicaraguan civil war. And they actually had trials canled there. But in the wake of that, the next place they went was Israel. And I'll share my screen here. Can you all still hear me even though I'm off screen? Yeah. Okay, great. But Moshi Cutotler was one of the first people that MAPS pledged a large amount of money to do some of this research, $50,000. And he was a former chief psychiatrist for the Israeli Defense Forces. And this was kind of a first node in their whole strategy to integrate psychedelics with the military. So, I just see this study and its results as some of this kind of continuing point along this timeline of that that long-term strategy and a form of washing.

[1:03:38] You hear about green washing, you hear about pink washing. I think this is its own thing like but with a kaleidoscope of colors do tie-dye washing. Yeah. Something I want to say because I haven't said it so far is I think with psychedelics in this sense it's partly a question of an efficient use of resources and I think people who practice as in like people who work as care workers and as practitioners of this who facilitate this should also confront that one of the things in that Jerusalem Post article is that you don't really need that many sessions for this to have a deep effect on somebody and I think That's quite appealing for a state effort that doesn't really want to spend much money but wants to maximize results.

[1:04:28] The logic is very neoliberal in that sense. You know, low budgets, there isn't really a lot of time to spend with people. There isn't there aren't really a lot of resources. This treatment works very quickly, right? So, you know, just give it a bunch of money and then like you can get everybody to the point where they can be back into the trenches or they can be back at work. really really fast and they don't ever have to think about their childhood trauma again. That's exactly why Lily just purchased the 5me they purchased the this specifically the industry wants a very fast acting psychedelic. So with 5MO it's very quick versus when Compass Pathways they're going to be going for approval with psilocybin that's a whole day affair you know so yeah it makes sense and there are only so many hospital beds right yeah like and there I would just touch very briefly we don't have a lot of time on biohacking right I think biohacking as a concept that you see the Silicon

[1:05:30] Valley billionaires and a trillionaire soon if not now talking about goes into this line as well. Optimizing one's ability to do cruel things to be destructive by undercutting the psychological and emotional effects, right? Like that psychedelics become a form of optimizing the self, right? These you do workouts four times a week and then you take a bit of a kenamin, you take a bit of a psychedelics on your day off as your muscles are relaxing and then you're at optimal capacity, right? like I think the whole production chain is scaling out with these logics in mind and I would welcome people to say more about it. Yeah. One thing that what you just said brought up for me was the sort of structure of labor relation society the material conditions the political economy that we are subject to. you know, it causes strain, stress, distress, trauma, and you know, yeah, a

[1:06:34] Neoliberal technocratic solution that you doesn't cost a lot of money and doesn't cost a lot of time, but is highly profitable. Yeah, psychedelics can be that. They will fund it. If it's direct brain stimulation, they'll do that. But you know the concept of that there's not enough care there's not enough hospital beds and yet you know a solution of rest and restoration of leisure has also been advanced as parallel in the awareness or excuse me in the wellness space. It reminds me some of some quippy tweet that I saw some sometime recently that that essentially said that many vacation and resorts are essentially experiences and walkable communities, you know, and that you know, you go to an all-inclusive resort, you go down, there's the hot tub and there's the massage and there's the bar and there's the place to dance.

[1:07:31] And it's like that's only attractive because you're only your own community that you're coming from is not walkable and is not enjoyable and does not provide adequate, you know, leisure, rest, restoration, recreation, you know, right? So like what we've hammered on quite frequently in this long discourse on you know psychedelics and society and the market and commodification and trauma and all of that is that you know if we spent some of these resources or more of these resources on on changing society to not cause so much stress and distress and oppression. If we built some walkable communities that people actually want to live in, maybe we don't need highly profitable technocratic brain solutions.

[1:08:22] And what's interesting about all of this is not that long ago to be shell shocked was to be a coward like in many different places, right? In Pakistan, in Canada, in Israel, in Germany, in Britain, if you were shell shocked, you were a coward, right? So what's wild about this is that so much of the stigma around mental illness has gone down, right? Which is something I support is that it's less of a an embarrassment to admit that you have mental health issues. But then you see what's mutated out of this is an idea that there's lost human capital here Mia because people need psychological support and then another position that arises so quickly of oh well you know I mean there's an efficient way to get them back to functioning the way they should.

[1:09:13] Let's invest in human capital this way and then boom it's in the system that created the stigma in the first place. Like the world changes so quickly and to be aware of those changes requires dealing with the uncomfortable realities of how money is spent and where that money has come from and where it's not coming from, which is taxation and nationalizing resources that are held in private hunts. Yeah. And there's also been a real unequal normalization of mental illness in the sense that at least in our corner of the psychedelic field PTSD among veterans is given this like real platform and you know almost a sacredness like a kind of a fetishistic kind of quality to it.

[1:10:04] Whereas PTSD among, you know, for example, women who have been sexually assaulted, people raising concerns about how these treatments are going to affect those communities, they're, you know, mental health is used as a weapon to discount those concerns. So, it's a very unequal kind of it's like a selective normalization or a selective desigmatization of mental illness that I've seen. And but it also leads to some interesting alliances too, right? I mean, as I've recovered from sexual abuse in my own life, I'll be honest about that. I actually dealt with veterans at different points in ways that I did not predict, right? And those were very stable and caregiving relationships.

[1:10:51] And we and they were based in support. I wish those people well, right? like I would not have expected that at the beginning of those journeys. I'm sure they wouldn't have either, right? And you know like I say that partly I'm sure the audience members and some of the people here and some of the people who are watching in the audience members probably have had those experiences as well. It's quite unstable this and yes I also agree there is an implied hierarchy that's built around notions of patriotism and heroic duty. Yeah. and patriarchy, I would say, [laughter] as part of that complex. Absolutely. And yeah, thank you so much for, you know, all the time you've taken to unpack all of these very interesting, we only scratched the surface of a lot of this as, as you yourself have pointed out.

[1:11:39] And one thing I wanted to get at as we begin to wrap here is just the if you could speak to the way that you closed out your article because I found that very fascinating and in particular because the end of the piece getting back to what you were saying earlier about handshakes and how they can be used in different directions. The end of the piece provides a vision of a future where music could be part of a reconciliation between different cultures. But you know that that won't be possible so long as Palestinians are remain oppressed and disenfranchised. So I was wondering if you could speak to that idea and your decision to end the peace in that way. Well, it's partly a self-care technique as you may have heard the concept of self-care, right? Like I've been challenged by many people in my life or as time has gone on in my own healing journey to not discount the possibility that things could be different, right?

[1:12:34] And I held myself to account with this, right? Like just because there's a ridiculous Zionist position that everything is peace on the dance floor currently, I challenged myself in the conclusion, is it possible for there to be peace on the dance floor? just realistically on the face of it. And I had to answer to myself, well, Palestinians would have to have a lot more power than they do across the board and specifically the refugees, right? And then I thought to myself, well, that's not impossible, right? The material relationships would have to change, right? And that's where the conclusion came from is is the underlying reasons that there isn't peace on the dance floor that there is not peace, love, unity, and respect.

[1:13:23] If those shift, then maybe as an output and maybe plur on the dance floor helps shift the material relations wrapping up with a little bit of Grochi too. I need to be open to that as a possibility, right? like there is utopia I think as a possibility and there is utopia that could come from this whole catastrophe that's unfolding in the Palestinian territories at the moment right and I include 48 I include Israel proper within that there is a possibility for a utopia and I think losing track of that would mean that you almost give Zionists the ability to define peace on the dance And I really try to prevent myself from ending this in a direction that's more dystopian because I think that there's also just I mean I'll be frank.

[1:14:18] I think there's too much dystopia in literature at the moment. I think utopia needs to be more present in literature and I think the fact that utopia can arise from brutality and catastrophe I think is not often something that's taken very seriously and I wanted to at least give it a chance and when I drafted it I realized that it looked amazing the way it was and then I just went in and I edited it and I'm really glad that I did that like it could have easily I could have done something else and I'm glad that I didn't. I think we do need real grounded but hopeful narratives and that it's the only way to be well it's the only way to be Marxist at all because any postcist future is built on the ashes of the current system.

[1:15:11] And so I really liked that there was this open door. And I would imagine that if there does come a day of some kind of a just peace in that region, there will be dancing and there will be music and I hope it's good music here. Here's my article. Yeah. [laughter] Read the article. Yeah. We'll include a link in the show notes. And since we have reached the end of our time today, Zenab, I just wanted to thank you again so much for coming to join us and is there anywhere that you would like to shout out in terms of places that people can find you or anything you'd like to add at the end here? Yes. Okay. So my handle is Pakistani Pakistani Pakistani in the anglicized form.

[1:15:56] That's on Instagram, Tik Tok and Snapchat. You can email me. My Gmail is Pakistanarchy@gmail.com. bakistanarchy@gmail.com and I'm a student at SOASS University of London. I'm in the law department and so shoot me a text, shoot me a message and we'll connect. Amazing. Thank you so much and yeah, it was very easy to find you because of your sharing of those handles. So, thank you for I'm really glad that we could use that to connect. Well, thank you again. Yeah, have a great rest of your day. Bye. See you. Thank you.