Donald Trump probably won't leave in 2028.
I would not shock me at all if he tries to run again or if he
tries to cancel or postpone elections.
I think American democracy faces an existential threat.
It has since he came down that escalator.
Authoritarianism in America. It's not going to be Jack boots
and concentration camps day one. It's going to be all band style.
It's going to be Modi style. The leader gets his billionaire
friends to buy up all the media, and that's what's happening
here. The one basic lesson I've
learned about politics over 25 years is you can't meet fascists
halfway. People don't vote for fascist
light, right? They vote for the real thing.
Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World.
I'm Krishna Guri Murphy, and this is the podcast in which we
talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their
lives and the events that have helped shape them.
My guest today is Mehdi Hassan. Now, Mehdi is a British
American. He has worked on all sorts of
mainstream media platforms from Channel 4 to Al Jazeera, but he
now is an independent with his own platforms at Teo, which
broadcasts on YouTube and other social media platforms.
He is outspoken, he's a forensic interviewer, and he straddles
the the world between conventional journalism and
advocacy and argument. And there's a lot to talk to him
about where the media is going and the role of journalism.
Mehdi, welcome. Thanks.
For having me, Krishna a long time.
Yeah, if you could change the world in any way, how would you
change it? OK, so we're starting with the
big questions. How would I change the world if
I could change it? I guess given my background and
what I do, I would change the world by making it harder for
the people in power to lie without consequence and I think
I try and do that everyday by asking people in power questions
they don't want to ask. Do you think it works?
I mean, people often ask me this question about, you know,
holding people to account and holding truth to power and
pointing out the lies and pointing out the factual errors.
Do you think it's working? Because because you have
particularly honed in on that as your speciality in the way you
interview people, I think. I guess it depends what day of
the week it is Christian. Today we're recording on a
Thursday. So today maybe I do believe it
has value. If it's Friday, maybe I won't.
It's very hard to work out when what we're doing actually has an
impact in the current age. I remember back in 2016 being at
Al Jazeera and Donald Trump winning that election.
I remember vividly turning to my colleague to my right and saying
we might as well just this all up and go be accountants, right?
What is the point of doing what we're doing when millions of
people are completely immune to fact based journalism, are
living in a cocoon, you know, completely detached from
reality. And you know, we are a decade
later and it's much worse today, much, much worse.
The information aid. So we try, you know, I would, I
would point to you that there's a poll out today that shows
Donald Trump is underwater on every single issue by the
border, by double digit points, the economy, immigration,
Epstein, Greenland. So it's not as if it's not
cutting through. People do hear and see what's
going on and change their minds. But it's getting harder and
harder, given the ability for politicians, especially on the
right, to shield their followers from facts and figures and
information. And globally, politicians are
copying Trump left, right and center.
And it's working. Yeah, I, I noticed that.
So I used to do a show for Al Jazeera called Upfront, where it
was a weekly show where I interviewed politicians from
around the world, Africa, Asia, Middle East, everywhere.
And I noticed that very quickly in 20/17/2018 that the ministers
from kind of African governments that I was interviewing sounded
exactly like Trump. They were saying fake news and
they were getting mad about things you don't get mad about.
They were attacking the interview and it was like, this
is very Trumpian and why wouldn't they, right.
They saw what worked in the United States, so why can't they
do it too? And we now do have this series
of Mini Trump's around the world, which again makes
journalism harder. Yeah, so, so, so how do you see
your role? I mean, you have worked in, you
know, British media, you worked on Channel 4, the Bbci think you
did a sort of a very traditional media role on Aljazeera as well
as sort of the anchor and interviewer, you know, trying to
be impartial, not giving out your own opinions.
You've ditched all of that and you've come out with what you
believe. Yeah, it's, it's a good
question. I don't know if I've ditched it.
Even Al Jazeera, I still do a show called Head to Head, which
I've been doing for coming up to 14 years now since I launched
with Richard Dawkins and my position on impartiality,
Christian and actually Channel 4 News, I know takes I used to
work at Channel 4 with you there.
It takes a pretty similar opinion, which is impartiality
doesn't mean you have no views. It means that you actually give
other people a right of reply. You give the other side of the
argument, but it doesn't mean you can't make an argument,
doesn't mean you can't take a position.
And and that's always been my case.
I still do interviews on Al Jazeera in London call head to
It's very clear where I'm coming from.
If I'm interviewing an Israeli official, for example, it's very
clear what my position is and what's happening in Gaza, that
it's a genocide. But it's not as if I don't give
him a chance to ask the question, as if I don't make
sure that the audience has supporters of his.
We're not, you know. So in that sense, impartiality
is a very tricky word and people throw it around without really
understanding it. But yes, I've always had very
strong views. And when I was a commissioning
editor at Channel 4, behind the scenes, I had to keep many of
those views to myself. When I left Channel 4, that's
actually when I came out of the political closet.
Should we use that phrase and made it very clear what my views
were? Because I left Channel 4 in
2000, I'm trying to think what year was 2000 and nine, 2009?
Yes, 2009. And I joined the New Statesman
magazine as the political editor there.
And that's where I started turning up on TV and writing
pieces and airing my positions. And I have an opinion
journalist. I've never hit that fact.
And I obviously when I worked at MSNBC here in the United States,
that is an opinion cable news channel.
So you're presenting the news, but you are giving your take on
the news. And you know what, in the
current climate, frankly, I find that a more honest position than
the people who pretend to be impartial but end up not being
impartial at all. Look at what's happening right
now in the US with CBS News. And then you host where they're
pretending to be in the middle, but it's basically pro Trump TV.
Yeah. I mean in, in terms of sort of
nailing the truth though, and pointing out for lies, what what
have you found as the difference in how people react when you
have an open opinion and an open position?
And, and lots of American, you know, America dropped the, you
know, the, the impartiality principle a long time ago, the
fairness doctrine. But have you noticed any
difference in the way people respond to your journalism after
after actually telling them what you think?
Yeah, it's a good question. So one thing I would say to
British viewers and listeners is the US is very interesting in a
sense the reverse of the UK, right?
In the UK, the newspapers are all loud, boisterous, partisan
and the news channels are impartial and neutral, Ofcom
regulated. In the US, it's almost a
reverse. And newspapers take great pride
in not being partisan and having this Chinese wall between
opinion and news, very strict standards.
And then you have cable TV, which is very loud and
boisterous and very, very partisan.
Fox on the right, kind of MSNBC on the kind of bland center
left, CNN pretending to be in the middle, but not really.
And that's an interesting dichotomy.
But look, my position is I found in Zeteo coming up to two years
ago, nearly in in April, May 2024.
And 1 of the things I said was we are going to take positions
on the big issues of the day and we are going to say things that
we believe to be the truth and they're backed up by fact.
So for example, fascism, a word that a lot of people in the US
media were running away from until very recently, still
wouldn't say the F word in relation to Donald Trump or you
can't say he's a fascist. The G word genocide.
You can't say genocide about Gaza.
That's that's taboo. And my position is a we're going
to say those words and we're not going to, you know, face any
consequences as many have in our media for saying those words.
Lost jobs over it, But also we're going to back it up with
facts. When I say genocide, Christian,
I'm just saying because I don't like Israel.
I'm interviewing Omar Batov, the preeminent scholar of genocide
at Brown University, an Israeli Holocaust historian, and he's
coming on to explain why it meets the definition of a
genocide. So I I, you know, it's very easy
to say, oh, people just running their views.
I get it. Cable news has poisoned a lot of
people. It's put out a lot of
propaganda, especially on the right.
I mean, Fox, I refuse to call it Fox News.
It's just a, it's just a Republican Party propaganda
channel. I get why people are skeptical
of that. But also Christian, come to the
US. People here are so fed up with
the quote UN quote MSM. They're so fed up of being lied
to more more than being lied to. They're fed up of being
patronized. Christian, they want to be
treated as adults. One of the reasons I succeeded
in the US, you know, a lot of people, I came here in 2016.
I worked for Al Jazeera till 2020.
I worked for MSNBC from 2020. People came up to me and said,
we like the fact that you asked tough questions.
We like the fact that you say what you mean.
You don't hide behind lazy euphemisms and both sides
bullshit. And I think people are just so
fed up of that, especially at a time when fascists are at the
door. They don't want to both sides
fascism, they don't want to both sides genocide.
They want people who can just say plainly what's going on.
I mean, you say nobody can sack you now.
I mean, what what happened with MSNBCI mean?
Do you think there was any elements of you being too
difficult for them? You know that they didn't like
your views. So that's what some people say.
I worked there for 3 1/2 years. I had a great time at MSNBCI,
learned a lot. I got a great platform, I
interviewed and met a lot of interesting people.
It was a great experience. I have no regrets.
But at that time, they decided to cancel my shows.
I had two shows for them and I knew that that was a moment
where this was the end of 2023 and I knew that 2024 was
election year. There was no way I could just be
benched. They offered me to stay on and
be a guest host and that wasn't what he wanted to do.
As you know, Christian, I'm sitting here with you.
I have a lot of opinions. I have a lot of things I want to
say. So it was a no brainer for me
that I had to leave and do my own thing.
And actually, it's the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
I mean, what I mean is, you know, you mentioned CBS and
what's going on there under Barry Wise.
You know, do you think the networks and their stated
position of impartiality is true?
No absolute bullshit. I mean, the American media is
completely be clowned itself in in recent years, in recent
months. I mean, the reason we're in this
state right now with Trump consolidating power is because
of what happened right at the beginning of his presidency.
Christian, he comes into power. ABC News owned by Disney,
settles A lawsuit with him because George Stephanopoulos
literally quoted a judge in his sexual abuse case and used the
rape word. He sued George Stephanos.
Most lawyers think that ABC would have won that if it gone
to trial. Instead they paid, I think
remember at 12, thirteen, $14 million settlement.
Then he sued CBS News Christian for the most absurd thing that
anyones ever sued a news organization for editing an
interview of Kamala Harris he didn't like the edit of.
Again, every lawyer says that CBS would have won in court, but
CBS then in the middle of a big merger, decided to settle and
pay him $16,000,000. These are for the American
public, which has always been skeptical of a corporate control
media, especially on the left. I mean, this is the most brazen
evidence that the corporations that run these channels, the
Disney's and the Paramount's, they're not interested in news
or impartiality or the truth. They're interested in appeasing
the government in office, a very authoritarian government that
all band style and Modi style and Erdogan style has made it
clear to media organizations that you get in line or you will
lose out. And even the ones who aren't
sued, like Comcast, donate to the White House extension.
Yeah, there's a lot of things going on.
I mean, Elizabeth Warren, who's a Democratic senator, very
prominent, has talked about this stuff being bribery.
She has talked about the fact that if that if slash when
Democrats get back into office, they will investigate this stuff
as bribery. Because that's what it looks
like, right? That's what it looks like to the
average American, that you pay a bunch of money and then Donald
Trump allows your merger to go through.
And Trump has made this very clear.
So I'm involved in all these decisions.
I mean, the the autocracy, the authoritarianism, the corruption
is very brazen here in the US right now.
It's all that done in the open. Corruption's, you know, it's a
word that we'll have our lawyers panicking, but lots of people
are talking about corruption quite openly in terms of this
administration. We might, we might get onto it
with Gaza and what's been just announced over the the Board of
Peace and their plans for for expansion there as well.
What do you mean by corruption? I mean, that a lot of Americans
look at the state of our politics.
I mean, if you ask Americans what they're most fed up about,
it is corruption. They will say corruption.
It's the issue that comes up in opinion polls.
It's one of the main reasons Donald Trump won, ironically,
even though many regard him as a deeply corrupt politician.
People were so fed up with the system in 2016 and again in 2024
that they want people just to tear it all down.
And they like outsiders. And Donald Trump very cleverly,
very fraudulently, in my view, presented himself as an
outsider, even though he's a, you know, it's been inside the
system as a quote, UN quote billionaire for years.
New York Times Christian just yesterday did a story to mark
his anniversary in office saying he and him and his family have
made over a billion and 1/2 in, in, in, in wealth increases
since he came to office. It's the biggest increase in
wealth of any president in modern times coming to office.
We have his children making a lot of money out of deals.
We have him specifically still making money.
And it's, it's insane. I mean, you look at what's
happening in Venezuela, Krishna, the oil's coming out and it's
going to a Trump donor in a Qatari bank account.
I mean, the whole thing is absurd.
So there is a massive perception of corruption.
There's a massive frustration with corruption.
You have ethics organizations accusing the Trump
administration of corruption on a level we haven't seen in our
lifetimes before. And then again, yes, the media
is complicit in this. Instead of the media holding up,
you know, a light and flashing a light on all this corruption,
the media organizations themselves look like they're
corrupt too. Because again, what else do you
say when Elizabeth Warren says this looks like a bribe?
When Paramount and the Ellison family, who are close to Trump,
are paying $16,000,000 to settle a lawsuit that they don't need
to settle, and then they get favourable treatment for the
government, What are we supposed to call that?
So what do you think you're, you know, what is it that you're
doing now with this? I mean, are are you effectively
a political player now in advocating for the kind of world
you want? You know, what are you?
How are you trying to change the world given what your profession
is? It's an interesting question.
So I I would break it up into two parts, Krishna.
First of all, on the issue of fascism and the assault on our
democracy and the Free Press. I don't think you have to be a
political player to say you support truth and reality based
journalism. To say up is up, not up is down
to, you know, we live in a world where people in our media and
our politics and our public life, especially here in the US
want us to believe that up is down, hot is cold, black is
white. And I think simply pointing that
that is not true, that we are being gaslit.
That's not a political position. That's just speaking truth.
Not even to power, just speaking the truth.
But you go beyond that, don't you?
I mean, you know, because you're not just correcting the
untruths. I agree.
I do go beyond that. I do go beyond that, but that's
what I'm saying. I break into two parts. 1 is the
very basic mission of journalism, which we're failing
at, which is just speaking the truth with that is failing.
And that's one of the reasons I set up Zeteo to be able to speak
freely without having to worry about corporate boardrooms and
government pressure and advertiser your influence.
That's we're failing at that, right?
And that needs to be said. I'm fed up of people saying
journalists need to be neutral on every issue.
Actually, journalists should not be neutral on the issue of
democracy. Journalists should have a bias.
You, me, everybody in our profession, in our industry
should have a bias towards the truth, a bias towards reality,
and a bias towards democracy, because journalism cannot exist
without democracy. So we're not neutral players on
this. We're not sitting on some
hilltop watching from afar with some neutral I.
That's BS #2 you say I go beyond that.
Yes, of course I do. I'm on the left, I take
political positions. I'm an opinion journalist.
I want universal healthcare. I want an actual ceasefire, not
a pretend ceasefire in Gaza. You know, I want the Epstein
files released. I want a Supreme Court that
isn't packed with Trump toadies. Clearly I have political
positions which I don't hide. Right.
But, but what I mean is, are you doing what you're doing now
because you want to persuade people, you know, is, is, is
this a sort of a new, a new sort of hybrid, you know, type of
media that you're, you're in, you know, because you're, I
think you are sort of a pioneer in this.
That is sort of somewhere between what we used to think of
as the media and politics. Yeah, and I think a lot of
people in that space, not maybe in the exact space I'm in.
Yeah, I've always been about persuasion.
I literally wrote a book about persuasion.
So I've always believed that there's no point taking
positions if you can't change people's minds, if you can't
take people with you, if you can't help them see the world in
the way you see the world, otherwise, what is the point?
You know, I've since I was a child, I've always, you know, if
a tree falls out of wood and there's no one around to hear,
it doesn't make a sound. And I've always thought about
that when it comes to the news, we do a lot of interesting stuff
and people either don't hear it or see it, or they hear and see
it but don't understand it or it doesn't have any impact on them.
And for me, that has always been part whether whether I was a
commissioning editor at Channel 4, whether I was a producer at
Sky News, whether I was a columnist at New Statesman,
whether I was anchor Al Jazeera or MSNBC.
That's always been my position, that I want people to be able to
see the world the way I see it, see what needs to be said,
understand what's going on behind the scenes.
Otherwise, what is the point of everything we do?
I might as well pack it in and go be an accountant.
Not done anything wrong with being an accountant.
People seeing what you say today though, depends on, you know, to
some extent getting into bed with the devil, doesn't it?
I mean, you are dependent on on the algorithms you know, and
they can presumably freeze you out at some point if they want
to. Yeah, it's a huge problem.
It's why I get to come back to kind of opinion Jones.
One of the positions I take is that we need to regulate and
break up big tech. I mentioned Elizabeth Warren
earlier. I support the Warren Sanders
approach to breaking up big tech.
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg 2. Human beings should not control
what hundreds of millions of people see in here on a daily
basis. That is clearly undemocratic.
That is clearly illiberal and I think we need to do something
about it. The public space, the public
town square, whatever you want to call it.
One thing I would say, and I'll give a shout out here to Sub
Stack Zeteo is on the Sub Stack platform, which is a newsletter
platform for those of you who don't know.
And you know, it is has a much better commitment to free speech
than most of these oligarchs out of Silicon Valley.
It's why we're here and also we control our subscriptions, we
control our newsletter, we control our subscribers.
So, you know, today we have over 600,000 subscribers in the US
and around the world. You know, God forbid the tech
companies decide to illiberally and undemocratically and cut us
off. We can still survive just with
our 600 subscribers, 600,000 subscribers to our newsletter.
We also have a million and a half subscribers on YouTube.
Clearly, Google could screw us with that.
So to what extent do you have to provide people with what does
well on YouTube? You know, does that skew your
editorial values? It's, it's no, it's a good
question, Christian, because a lot of people in the independent
space, they'll say stuff like, I'm completely independent,
unlike the corporate people. I've never gone down that road.
I, I try and be self aware. I know what you're getting at.
It is very hard even in the independent space to be truly
independent in the sense that there is the danger of audience
capture, right? We are playing to a subscription
base. I know I have subscribers.
I'll give you one example. When the election happened at
the end of 2024, our subscribers as a tear of a very split,
right. We had a bunch of people saying
Trump is the menace, we need to get behind Harris and we need to
stop Trump. That is what all of your
journalism should be about. And then we had a bunch of
people saying the genocide is the biggest issue.
There's no way we can do anything other than oppose
Harris and Biden. Doesn't matter if Trump wins,
Democrats have to be punished for a genocide.
And we lost a lot of subscribers on both sides, people who are
not happy with our journalism from either direction.
I remember seeing people cancelling their subscriptions.
Now, a lot of independent media platforms in that position and
say, well, let's just give the people what they want.
Now separately, I couldn't give them what they want because we
had a split base. But but that is a danger, right,
That you're a small business. We're a small business.
I'm a businessman now as well as a journalist is a weird thing to
say. And I have to think about
revenue. I have to think about the people
I employ. I have to think about
subscriptions. And I think, well, you know, if
people are cancelling because they don't like what I'm saying,
should I change what I'm saying? That clearly is an ethical,
journalistic and professional dilemma that and it's and it
would be, it would be ridiculous for me to pretend that's not the
case for everyone in the independent space, especially
with YouTube and the algorithms and the way people have to play
to the algorithms. We haven't gone YouTube first.
Right now, our priority is still the newsletter, which is what
we've built up. We have built up an audience on
YouTube, as I say, of over a million and a half.
And yeah, you know, you think about, of course, you think
about what does well on YouTube. Of course you think about what
kind of tone and style does well on YouTube.
We all adopt different. You know, habits and approaches
to different platforms. I don't think there's anything
wrong with that. That's not being 2 faced.
That's just meeting people where they are.
I mean, I'm sitting with you right now on a podcast wearing a
hoodie. Yesterday, Tuesday night, I was
in DC interviewing congressman on stage.
I was in a suit and tie, right? You know, that's, this is this
is this, this is that. So I, I, you know, I get it.
It is a danger to go down a road where you're just playing to one
particular platform or algorithm and we try and resist that, but
we're not always successful. I'll be honest about that.
And you have a sort of a bit of a double act going with, with
Piers Morgan, which I presume help both your audience base,
you know, pull in both your audience bases.
Yeah, I mean, he's, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a juggernaut on
YouTube. There's no debate about that.
I, I did a debate. I I did an interview with him
after they bombed Lebanon, I remember and it went viral where
I kind of, he didn't know when Hezbollah was founded.
And we went back and forth and then I flew to Malaysia for a
conference and all these Malaysians came up to me and
said literally 1 after in different places, oh, we watched
you and Peers book. And I was like, wow, I don't
want to inflate his ego even more, but I did text him and say
peers are people in Malaysia talking about how the row we
just had. And again, that is a phenomenon,
right? That is that is, you know, what
Peers has done on YouTube is create a media company that has
a global reach in a very short space of time.
And more people watch that. When I go on Piers Morgan, I get
more feedback from people in the street than I get from when I go
on CNN or MSNBC or the BBC. And that's the reality we live
in now. And people say, oh, why do you
go on Piers Morgan? People who hate him will say why
he's awful. Friends and families don't go on
Piers Morgan. And I'll be, but it's a big
platform again to come back to my tree falls and I would why
would I not want to get my views across on a big platform?
Now I do have a hygiene test. I don't go on Fox.
They have a big platform, but I wouldn't go on Fox.
Let's rewind a little bit and work out sort of where your
views come from. You, you, you posted a, you
know, a, a moving post about your father who passed away
recently. And it was, it was very explicit
that you are the product of of his journey.
My father was an immigrant who moved to the UK in in 1966 and
he moved from India. And he taught me a lot of what I
know about politics and what I think about the world.
And, you know, as we're all human beings, Christian, and we
come from different places, our values, our opinions.
You know, I have a mother, a father of siblings, friends,
school, religion. I take from all those places.
But yes, the kind of passion against, you know, the burning
passion to fight injustice that I believe I have and I, that
motivates a lot of what I do, I do think comes from my dad.
You know, he was talking about politics and labor politics and
Harold Wilson and Clement Attlee when I was 678 years old.
He was talking about the Middle East, you know, and what was
going on, unfortunately in Palestine even back then in the
1980s when I was a kid. So I did take a lot about that
and speaking truth to power and debating.
I wrote a book about debate Christian.
And in the introductory, you know, in the in the intro, I say
very clearly, like a lot of people say, where does this come
from? Your knack and your obsession
with debating? It comes from my father of my
house. I grew up in a very disputatious
household. You know, one of my earliest
memories about, you know, politics and controversy.
And I tell the story in the book is, do you remember in the late
80s, you know, people in Muslims in Bradford are burning copies
of The Satanic Verses. Salma Rushdesberg, my dad buys a
copy, puts it on our bookshelf in the dining room.
And Muslim friends of ours are coming over and going crazy.
Like, what are you doing? Why do you have this book in
your house? And he would say, well, how can
you condemn it if you haven't read it, right?
Have you read it? And that that mentality that can
slight contrarianism, that ability to poke holes in
people's arguments definitely does come from my dad.
Yes. You, you talked about, you know,
how he, he came to Britain but held onto his love of India.
He refused to be sort of defined in anyone religious, political,
nationalistic tradition. And I suppose you're doing the
same. But you've but you've left
Britain. And I just wonder why, you know,
did you find Britain too small, too boring, too insular?
You're putting words in my mouth.
Krishna will get me in trouble. Let me.
Well, look, it is very strange to always have to define myself
these days as an immigrant because I grew up saying I was.
I'm not an immigrant. You know when racist used to say
go back to India, I'm born here, I'm from Swindon.
You've made yourself an immigrant again.
Well, what's interesting now, Christian, is we've we've we've
advanced in the world of racism. Now people told me to go back to
the UK. I'm like, oh, what an insult
that is. Like, yeah, you have American
right wingers tell you, I have members of Congress, Republicans
saying get out, we're going to deport you to the UK.
Oh, how painful. We've kind of made some advances
there. They haven't told me to go back
to India, but, yeah, I am an immigrant now.
So I do get the racism that my dad got in the 60s, different
kind of racism. My dad got the kind of dog
excrement pushed through the letterbox.
I get Republican members of Congress saying I'm a jihadist
and I should be de naturalized. So this is the world we live in
now. Yeah.
Why did I do it? It's a great question.
Well, my wife's American, so I've talked openly about the
fact that, you know, she wanted to do a move and.
And I and I wanted to try out working in the US Christian, you
know that British journalists have long, you know, tried,
tried their hand at doing stuff in the US You mentioned Piers
Morgan, he had a rather interesting, partly successful
than disastrous journey at CNN. Actually, I remember going into
a big job interview, a major network here in the US and the
person behind the desk said, why would we hire another British
anchor? We already had Piers Morgan,
which was a kind of funny story. But then I ended up at MSNBC and
I would say Christian without wanting to kind of shit all over
the UK, which I love. I'm still a proud Brit as much
as a proud American. There is no denying the fact
that America is a bigger country with more opportunity,
especially for non white people. It's ironic that we talk so much
about racism in the US and the anti black racism.
The legacy of slavery is massive, don't get me wrong, but
if you're a non white immigrant here, it is more meritocratic.
There are more opportunities, including in the media, not just
in the media, across industries. And I do think if I'd been in
the UK, would I be where I am today?
Would I be running my own business?
Probably not Would I have had a prime time show on national TV?
Probably not. So I do think there are more
opportunities for people here. And I think people like my good
friend Riz when he did his Channel 4 speech talked about
this a few years ago. I think people like Idris Elba,
you know, people in Hollywood have also talked about this, non
the non white roles and non white opportunities in the US
for people in media, in entertainment, in IT.
There is more opportunity here, weirdly and kind of
counterintuitively in many ways. So, with a bit of distance, do
do do you think Britain is a lot more racist within its
establishments than it likes to think?
Yes, 100%. When I don't think I fully
realised it till I moved here, which is a weird thing to say
because America's going through a very racist moment.
But as I say, it's a different kind of racism in terms of kind
of the workplace, in terms of rewarding talent.
I do think it's much more open here and there are many more
opportunities. I mean, clearly the size issue,
it's a big place, but also it's a mentality issue.
And I think the UKI think about, for example, when I worked for
the New Statesman and I was a political actor, but I never
went to the lobby. We had a separate journalist who
would go and get the lobby pass. And for people not watching the
lobby is the Downing St. press corps who spend their time at
#10 And I remember we did a feature, The New Statesman about
the lobby and about, you know, coverage of media.
And it was, you know, it was all about how all white it was.
And you know, this Christian, because you're one of the, you
know, you're one of the people who've broken so many barriers
in the UK media. You've been presenting on
Channel 4 News for decades. I don't even know how long.
I feel like you've always been there ever since I was alive.
Sorry to sorry to make you sound old, but you, you know, you were
one of the rare faces when people back 20 years ago when
people said, I don't know, brown people on TV.
You would be like one of the three people you can name check.
And before you, I think it was Zainab Badawi.
So, you know, I look at the Downing St. press code.
I remember it being very, very white.
And I talked to a friend of mine recently and it hasn't changed
that much. I mean, there's Shahab Khan and
others, ITV, but it's still pretty, pretty white.
And I think we, you know, that conversation has not really
happened in the UK as it should do in America.
People say you're obsessed with race.
I think that's a good thing. The more you talk about racism
racism, the better chance you have of overcoming it.
Yes, I mean, I suppose the, the, the one difference when when I
think about the two countries though at the moment for
somebody like you who cares passionately about democracy is
that democracy doesn't feel under threat in Britain.
But if you look at America, you you wonder how long it's going
to be a democracy. Oh, 100% I'm the person who's
been screaming about democracy in America for years now and I
I'm the person on the record saying Donald Trump probably
won't leave in 2028. I have no, I would not shock me
at all if he tries to run again or if he tries to cancel or
postpone elections. I think American democracy faces
an existential threat. It has since he came down there
escalator in May of 2015. There's no doubt about that.
But let's not be complacent in the UK.
You know, we know that when, you know, America sneezes, the UK
catches a cold or whatever the phrases.
We know that traditionally American politics has been
followed the trends here very quickly by the UK, whether it's
Reagan and Thatcher, Clinton and Blair.
We know that whether it's Brexit and Trump, we know there are
parallels between our two countries.
And I think it would be weird to be complacent about the fact
that, yes, the UK right now does not face an existential threat
to democracy. But the trend lines are very
clear. I mean, you're having hundreds
of people who are protesting peacefully being picked up by
the police. You have pensioners and elderly
people because they hold up Palestine in action.
They're getting picked up. I'm I'm watching images of
priests and little old ladies and people in wheelchairs being
dragged away by police, right? That is a threat to democracy.
You're watching people like Nigel Farage leading in the
polls, about to win the next election apparently, if the
polls are to be believed, a super illiberal party, their
reform, which is a great fan of the Donald Trump MAGA party.
So I think the trend lines in the UK are not very good.
I don't think they're good anywhere across the Western
democratic world, to be honest. So you don't, you don't feel a a
sort of sense of duty to come back and fight Nigel Farage on
on your channel. It's funny.
So it's so, it's so funny. You should say.
Well, no. I mean, I'm happy to interview
reform people and I have in the past and we're trying to get
actually an Al Jazeera interview going with a reform politician
hopefully soon. But but let me just say this, in
the first few years after I moved to the USI moved to the US
in 2015. In the first few years I went
back, fellow journalists and people you and I know and
friends and family would say to me when are you coming back?
When are you coming back? No one says that to me anymore.
Is that weird? So I think that says a lot about
the UK, not the USI think that says a lot about people in the
UK, especially non white people in the UK who are wondering
about their own long term futures in that country.
Yeah, that's conversation people are having.
It's not quite packing the suitcase yet, but.
No, but it's but it's people thinking what I might be here,
but is there a future for my kids here and my grandkids here?
If I think over the last year, I mean you, you've, you've
certainly been most vocal and most active on Israel, Gaza
again in terms of sort of what you're achieving.
Do you feel you've won people over in any sense?
Attract people to the argument. I do, actually.
I say it for two reasons. One is the big picture, which is
not just me. You just look at the big picture
of American public opinion. We're seeing things we've never
seen in our lifetimes. I never thought I would see
polling showing more American sympathize with Palestinians and
Israelis. I never thought I would see
polling showing a majority of Americans are now critical of
Israel. I never thought I would see
polling showing half of Americans say it's a genocide.
I never saw polling saying that only.
I think it's only 8% of Democrats are happy with their
party's support for Israel. I think that is a massive sea
change in public opinion. Obviously, partly that's just
due to the horrific genocide that has been live streamed to
our phones for over 2 years. But partly it's due to the
advocacy from a lot of us trying very hard to go out, whether
it's on CNN or Piers Morgan or live debate stages in Toronto
and New York, as I have, and trying to convince people and
point out to them that you don't know what's happening in the
Middle East. You haven't been told a full
history of what's happening in Gaza.
The world did not begin on October the 7th.
And I think that has had an impact.
And again, that's the big picture.
But I can also give you anecdotal data.
I've had people message me on social media through Zeteo
saying I had no idea about any of this stuff.
I used to be someone who was either neutral or pro Israel.
And over the last two years, your content has helped me
understand what's really happening.
And the reason I know we're having an impact is because
guess what they're trying to do? I mentioned the Ellison family,
they're buying TikTok. And what are they buying TikTok
for? To stop China?
No, they've been very brazen about it.
Mitt Romney said on stage TikTok is too pro Palestinian, that
Benjamin Netanyahu said the big war we have right now is to take
control of TikTok or words to that effect.
And I think that again is a reminder, Krishnan, that they've
lost the PR battle. They've lost the debate online
and in public and in politics and in the media, the pro
Israel, pro genocide side. And I think that fills me with a
little bit of hope, even in these dark times.
And that Elson wants wants CNN as well, doesn't he?
Yes he does. And Can you imagine AUS media
landscape in which Elon Musk Trump Trump supporter controls
Twitter ex Mark Zuckerberg now de facto a Trump supporter
controlling Facebook, Meta, WhatsApp, Instagram, the Ellison
family, the most pro Trump pro Israel billionaire family around
controlling CBS News, possibly CNN TikTok.
Obviously Fox and Rupert Murdoch have always been in the can.
It's a very, very dangerous climate.
I I said this, I said this two years ago that what it's going
to look like authoritarianism in America.
It's not going to be Jack boots and concentration camps day one.
It's going to be Orban style. It's going to be Modi style.
It's going to be Erdogan style. The The leader gets his
billionaire friends to buy up all the media, right?
And that's what's happening here.
So do you, do you think the traditional media structures are
effectively dead in America and that the future is, is is is
kind of going your way? Yeah, I think they're
exaggerating when they say people say it's dead.
Clearly millions of people still watch the nightly news, still
watch cable news, still read the New York Times.
Clearly the people who matter. Christian, this is another
point, right? It doesn't matter how few sales
the New York Times does, as long as people in power still reading
the opinion pages and still taking their cues from the front
pages. So clearly they still have
influence and relevance. It would be insane to pretend
otherwise. But the trend line for them is
bad. I worked at MSNBC.
I saw all the data. I saw all the ratings.
I sat in all the meetings with people pulling their hair out
about what's what's the future of cable news.
You know, nobody under the age of 30 has cable.
Nobody on my team has cable. When I was working at MSNBC,
none of the young producers at MSNBC had cable, right.
So the the trend line is bad and there's a trust issue and
there's a technological issue where people cutting the cable.
So that makes it very hard for media to survive.
I think Donald Trump separately has done huge damage to the
media's reputation in terms of just spending ten years non-stop
relentlessly attacking the media.
He's taken 30% of the population and they will never trust the
media ever again. They are lost.
At least one in three Americans is completely lost to mainstream
media. And therefore, look, I said this
the other day on stage in DC, we had a big live event for Zeteo.
And I said, look, the fact that CBS News is imploding is great
for Zeteo. It's great for me as a
businessman. It's bad for me as an American,
right? I don't want the mainstream
media to die. I don't, I don't think, I don't
think for me to survive the mainstream media to die.
I think the mainstream media still has important reporting on
huge events, especially around the world.
It's not good for American democracy if the media is dying
and everyone hates the media. But clearly independent media is
going to thrive at a time when corporate media is so brazenly
failing. But but can you survive in all?
Sorry, Christian. Gaza, by the way, has played a
big role in that right, big role, especially on the left.
Right people spent two. I know people who were very
mainstream liberals, not lefties.
Nothing. And they just cancelled the New
York Times subscriptions because they're just so fed up of seeing
the mismatch between the genocide on their phones and the
bullshit evasions and both sides in in the headlines of the Times
or the coverage on CNN, etcetera.
If your warnings are correct, though, about American
democracy, they can shut you down.
People said to me when Trump was elected, this is great for you,
good for business, you'll have so much content.
And I said, yeah, if Immediate survives, I'll have great
content. And I'm under no illusions about
the threat we face. We have to spend way more money
now on liability coverage and insurance because we live a
little serious climate where Trump and Musk sue people into
oblivion. That's another form of
intimidation against the Free Press.
We have the DOJ going after journalists.
The FBI just raided the home of a Washington Post journalist and
took her laptop and phones. And guess who didn't say
anything about it? Jeff Bezos, the billionaire
owner of the Washington Post, now a close ally of Trump, SAT
quietly, didn't say a word of outrage or objection.
So this is the world we live. I'm under no illusions of the
threats we face. I'm under no illusions of the
threats to our personal safety and security, to the viability
of our companies and our media organisations.
Yeah, I don't know how much more to scream it out loud.
This is, is really bad. It was amusing to me, Christian,
when I saw a British journalist over the last few days, you
know, clutching pearls, saying, oh, my God, Donald Trump, he's
acting so erratically and reckless.
I'm like, yeah, welcome to our world.
Keep up. Yeah.
I mean, do you, do you take any hope from the reaction of
American cities to ICE or do you think those people prepared to
stand up to ICE are, you know, for wants of a better phrase,
the usual suspects? No, no, not the usual suspects
at all. And I think people watching a
white mother who dropped her kid to school being killed in cold
blood, I think was a transformative moment for a lot
of Americans. They used to see black and brown
people abused by law enforcement.
Look, I would say two things about that.
One is obviously I'm hopeful when I see people power, the
thing that keeps me most hopeful is people, right?
Real people, separate to all the stuff that goes on online.
And if you look at the polling that I mentioned at the start of
our conversation, Trump is underwater on every issue,
including on ICE and on immigration, hugely water, even
even a small minority of Republicans have turned him on
on that, according to the polls. People are unhappy.
They're seeing this fascist militia terrorize American
citizens, not just immigrants on our streets, not just
undocumented immigrants, I should add.
And it's changing minds. And I think it would be bad in
any normal election. The problem, Krishnan, this is
where my head crashes up to my heart.
My heart says, yes, hope. I'm inspired by people taking
action. I'm inspired by people turning
against fascism. My head says, yeah, but is that
going to work if we don't have a free and fair election?
And how come that Donald Trump is so relaxed about how
unpopular is? A lot of people have made this
point, Krishnan, in any normal political climate, right, you're
this unpopular. Donald Trump just had his most
unpopular poll ever this week. If you're that unpopular, your
strategist come in and you do a reboot.
You do a relaunch, you pivot away, you sack some people, you
stop doing unpopular things. These people are doubling down
on their ICE stuff. They're doubling down on their
foreign imperialism. Why is that?
Is that because they know we're not going to have another free
and fair election in that country?
Is it because they're relaxed about the outcome of the next
election? Sorry to sound like a conspiracy
theorist, but Donald Trump, especially post Epstein, has
turned even me into a conspiracy theorist.
And to bring it back to Britain again, I mean, have you, have
you been watching, thinking why aren't people making this
argument on immigration at a time when immigration has become
one of the big motivating factors in political
disaffection and the growth of the rights and the success of
Nigel Farage and Reform? Yeah, I, I, I feel like, I, I
feel like I want to bang my head against the wall, like watching
the UK right now. As you know, I was a journalist
there for nearly 15 years before I moved.
It's deja vu. I mean, I feel like I've seen
this movie before. I mean, Keir Starmer, Tony
Blair, I mean he's Tony Blair without any charm.
But that the whole, the whole Blair ISM mantra of a kind of
triangulating and stealing the rights clothes and then seeing
it backfire in front of our eyes.
We've seen this movie before. We saw it in 2000 and 78910.
We saw it with Tony Blair and asylum seekers.
We saw it with Gordon Brown and British jobs for British
workers. How did that work out?
It worked out with the Tories winning the election.
It worked out with UKIP on the rise pre reform.
Those, those are my political memories of the UK, UK.
And now I see the whole thing happening again.
The Keir Starmer is the greatest gift you could ever give Nigel
Farage. With this Labour government in
office, doing what they're doing, we're almost guaranteed a
reform government next time around.
And that's why I do admire people like Zach Polanski trying
to reinvigorate a kind of a minor party like the Green Party
by speaking more plainly and honestly and authentically about
these issues. You don't look one.
The one basic lesson I've learned about politics over 25
years is you can't meet fascists halfway.
People don't vote for fascists light right, They vote for the
real thing. You can do your best
impersonation of Donald Trump if you're a Democrat, or Nigel
Farage if you're a Labour Party politician.
And it will not work in the long term.
Maybe in the short term it will, but certainly not in the long
term. And that's why the trends in the
UK are so bad. And we need people who can stand
up to these illiberate, illiberal, autocratic, nativist
trends. I mean that that's an argument
as to why Labour might be getting it wrong, but how?
How would you take on Farage and his basic argument?
Well, tell me what his basic argument you think is.
Well, I mean if, if, if, if so many roads to the problems of
Britain lead to immigration, whether it's housing, health
service, public services in in their terms and it's persuasive
to a lot of people. How do you change people's
minds? So, I mean, it's a great
question. I've read a book about changing
people's lives, a tough one. I'm not pretending there's an
easy answer in immigration. I would say that I question your
premise, right? I don't accept that the issues
of housing and health are driven by immigration.
They're driven by austerity. Health services driven by
austerity. We had 10 years of austerity,
the worst austerity in living memory.
I wrote a book about austerity in 2011, warning about the
dangers of austerity politically and economically.
Osborne and Cameron, you know, we talk about Boris Johnson is
trust for me, the villains of the story are still David
Cameron and George Osborne, who laid the groundwork both for
austerity and Brexit. And I think that's where we are
today. And I think you've got to start
by first questioning the premise that immigrants are to blame.
There's a fascinating poll, Krishna, that's always done.
I haven't seen the latest one in the UK, but when I lived in the
UK, every year it was the same. I think it was from Gallup.
That shows if you ask the British public are you bothered
about immigration, Do you think immigrant immigration is a
problem for the UK, They will say yes it is.
And if you say do you think it's a problem in your local area,
they say no it isn't. And that disconnect is very
simple. That disconnect is politicians
aided by the media, the right wing media in particular the
mails and expresses fanning the flames of this issue and making
it into something that is abstract and out there and a
boogeyman to be blamed rather than billionaires and corporate
boardrooms and right wing politicians.
And I think you've got to start if you're going to win this
debate. You first thing about winning a
debate is you don't fight the debate.
You don't fight on your opponent's terrain, right?
You fight on your own terrain. You don't accept the premises of
the motion set out by your opponent, to use a debate
phrase. And then that's what has to
happen. The problem we have with Labour
and even to an extent the Lib Dems and other parties is
they've accepted the Farage and Bader not framing that
everything all Rd. lead back to immigration.
And you have to actually reframe the fight.
The British public, like the American public, like the French
public, they're angry, they're pissed off.
You have to give them somewhere to direct their anger.
The right have decided to direct that anger towards migrants and
the left are saying actually maybe direct that anger towards
the people who have really screwed you over.
The point 1%. And when it comes to Gaza, I
mean, you know, Gaza has fallen off the international news
agenda to a large degree since, except today, except today, that
time of recording where we've just seen Jared Kushner unveil
the the the Riviera of the Middle East as they always saw
it with mock ups of skyscrapers along the beach and little
housing complexes for the Garzans through the strip.
You know, a, do you think, do you think it's going to happen
now in a way that perhaps you didn't before?
Because they seem to be pressing ahead with it and and will they
get away with it? When you say the houses for the
Gazans, of course these are the gardens who are allowed to stay
behind, right? This is a plan for ethnic
cleansing. Everyone knows this.
When I went on Piers Morgan to go back to our Morgan exchange,
one of the things he said to me back in his very pro Israel
time, he's moved a bit was well, you know, they're fighting
terrorism. What else do you think they're
doing? And I said they're trying to
depopulate Gaza. And at the time, to many on the
right, many in mainstream media who hadn't heard this argument
sounded like a conspiracy theory.
But the Israelis have made that very clear.
You know that Channel 4 News has done excellent reporting from
Israel, interviewing Israeli politician to a very, very open
about the fact that their goal is ethnic cleansing and the
depopulation of Gaza. One of the great failures,
Christian of mainstream media, and I'm going to exempt Channel
4 News from this is the inability to actually just
report what Israelis are saying, right?
People like me sound like some crazy person saying ethnic
cleansing. You can't say ethnic cleansing.
You can't say genocide. Well, listen to what Israeli
politicians say. The Israeli media is more honest
than a lot of the American and British media when it comes to
Israel. So just listen to what Netanyahu
and his cabinet ministers are saying and it's very clear what
the goals are Always been Listen to what Jared Kushner has always
been saying. He talked about the Riviera and
the Gaza a while ago. Donald Trump loves talking about
real estate. By the way, Jared Kushner is not
an elected official. He's not even an appointed
official in the first term. He was an advisor in the wife.
He's just a private businessman. And the son-in-law of the
president, how is this not to go back to the word you used or you
were worried about me using corruption?
How is this not corrupt morally, if not financially for the
son-in-law of the president? Where are we in some kind of
Banana Republic? The son-in-law of the president
is leading on this issue. He stands potentially to gain,
like all Trump family members from whatever deals his family's
been invested in settlement businesses in the West Bank.
I know years ago, he's so close to Netanyahu.
Christian, let me just tell you, listen to this.
When Jared was a boy, Benjamin Netanyahu just come and stay in
his father's home in New Jersey. I think it was New Jersey.
He used to stay and he used to sleep in Jared's bed, not with
Jared in it, Jared to sleep in another room.
But Jim Benjamin Netanyahu used to come stay in their house.
That's how complicit these people are.
This idea that this board of peace has any interest in peace
or justice or ending an occupation or helping the
Palestinians. There are no Palestinians on the
executive board, Krishnan, and they've invited Netanyahu to be
on the board. Can you imagine if we had a
Board of peace in Ukraine and international Board of peace and
we invited Putin to be on the board of peace?
But do you think it will happen because there was always there's
always a temptation with a lot of these statements Trump makes
initially to go, well, that's not going to happen.
You know, when he first mentioned Greenland, everyone
says, well, that's, you know, there's nothing.
He's forget Greenland and then suddenly it's back and and you
kind of think, well, they look like they actually want to build
this. No, I take him seriously on the
things he's obsessed with for sure.
Like I said, I take him seriously when he says maybe we
maybe we should cancel elections.
I take that seriously. I don't think that's a joke.
Yes, of course it could happen. I, I, you know, I'm not going to
get into the predictions business, but it will come at
great cost. I mean, the Palestinian people
are not just going to roll over. I think one thing we've learned
over the last 70 years and certainly over the last two
years is that the Palestinian people are resilient people.
They've gone through occupation, ethnic cleansing, dispossession,
genocide now and they haven't given up.
Why would they? There are people who deserve
freedom and self determination like any other people in the
world. And the idea that you're just
going to empty out Gaza, I mean, they've made it unlivable.
Trump himself said it's uninhabitable, which is one of
the definitions of genocide, you could argue.
And so yes, it will be very difficult.
Will they try and get rid of everyone?
I'm sure they will. Will they succeed?
Let's see, I'm one of these people to go back to your
question about journalism and activism.
I'm one of those people who's going to try and persuade people
to see what's happening, try and keep Gaza on the news agenda and
make sure people know the injustice is happening there and
the corruption that's happening there.
What the hell is Tony Blair doing there, Krishnan?
What the hell is Tony Blair doing in on a Palestine board of
peace? Tony Blair should be at The
Hague. He was a failed Middle East
envoy. He caused more bloodshed in in
the Middle East than most politicians of our lifetime.
And the idea that he he's involved in this just tells you
everything you need to know. Tony Blair and Jared Kushner are
not going to bring peace to the Middle East.
Well, on that note, Mehdi Hassan, we must leave it there.
Thank you very much indeed for joining us to share your ways to
change the world. You can watch all of these
interviews on the Channel 4 News YouTube channel.
Until next time, bye bye.