Fool me twice, shame on me.

The media might fake innocence when it comes to Trump, Palestine, and migration but our podcast insists on accountability and critical analysis. Plus check out what we're reading right now.

Suddenly, everyone has been jolted awake. The precise type of attention, outrage and engagement that we were desperately calling for when it came to the genocide of Palestinians for the last 15 months is now here. But it is all focused on Donald Trump. Daily conversations, all the media chatter, and various events and programs are all abuzz and aflame with the horror of his policies, his comments, his every little action.

Its as if a moral core has become visible. The media is angry about deportations and racist ways of talking about migrants. Vacuous talk show hosts and even particularly frivolous ones like The View are discussing Trump’s declarations about taking over Gaza and ethnically cleansing it. There’s even been talk of how land is important for Palestinians and that Netanyahu is a war criminal and violating international law. This is mind blowing because so far we have only had liberal media peddling Israel’s PR line and they have categorically refused to engage with frameworks of international law.

So should we all be thrilled that Palestine is getting actual engagement and there’s some analysis floating around? No, because its too little, too late, and simply too flawed. A particularly disturbing quality of this phenomenon is an attempt at innocence. The media is reporting on migration, Palestine, and Trump himself as if everything has suddenly started happening. The media behaves like this is tabular rasa, as if all these issues have neither history nor a deep context.

It is strange, for example, to act like Trump invented deportations when Obama was the one who got himself called “Deporter-in-Chief” and still holds a record on high number of deportations. After all the outrage about “children in cages” during Trump’s first term, Biden and Harris did nothing to change migration policy and protect or secure human rights of immigrants. Similarly, outrage that Trump speaking insensitively about Palestinians and alluding to ethnic cleansing is literally extra-planetary. The Democratic Party handed Trump a fully funded genocide and a Gaza that has been brutally decimated. As for the liberal media, I can say and prove for the millionth time that they not only been complicit but have aided and abetted genocide in Palestine through racist, anti-Palestinian and openly pro-Israel reporting. Finally, there is move to innocence when it comes to coverage of Trump himself. It seems that the media has not heard of “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” We have had 4 years of Trump already. Nothing he says or does is new. There is immense clarity around how he operates and nothing should be unpredictable.

There are articles floating around claiming that Americans are sleepwalking into fascism. This is shameless and pathetic, and shows an absurd loyalty to a Democratic Party that has brought us to this place: human rights and free speech have been systematically eroded; a racist and violent carceral order is in place; governance is at the whims of tech billionaires; the wishes of a settler-colonial genocidal state of Israel are top priority; and a corrupt and colonial media that refuses any radical opposition or dissenting views. Yes, the Democrats brought us here.

How we’re resisting
Perhaps it is a drop in the ocean but so many of us are trying to establish a space for critical analysis as the media space shrinks everyday, and historical amnesia and systemic erasure becomes the new normal. We have been working hard on our podcast It’s Not You, It’s The Media where three women of color who all have one foot in the West and another in the Global South attempt to make sense of where we find ourselves today. We are urgently concerned about liberal media’s inability to grasp that not holding the Democratic Party accountable means that there is no viable opposition left to the party in power. To that end, this becomes a project of accountability wherein truth-telling and critical analysis remains at the heart of all our podcast episodes. Media narratives shape our understanding of the world and we refuse to let a compromised liberal media get away with omissions, erasures and outright gaslighting. Please listen or watch, and spread the word.

What we’re reading
Our co-hosted reading group for Workshops4Gaza meets in one week on February 15th! Suchitra Vijayan and I will meet registered participants online and in-person in New York to talk about Mahmoud Darwish’s powerful work Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982. Proceeds from the registration fees will go The Sameer Project. The ceasefire might have brought a pause in the heavy bombardments but the task of rebuilding is overwhelming and massive. Gaza has been destroyed in unimaginable ways and not enough humanitarian aid is getting in. More importance, violence still continues and harsh weather conditions endure. Your help matters more than ever. Join us to talk about Darwish and help out too. Its a win-win. Register here.

I’m also excited to announce a new book club for March! Happy publication day to Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, a poet and writer whose first novel We, The Kindling is now out and available. The story of three friends that survive captivity with the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, the novel is written in sparse, evocative and haunting prose, and is also one of the first to explore this particular chapter of history. Okot Bitek will be joining us for the online book club on March 29th and I am excited to talk to her about her work. And we have plenty of time to buy and read the book. All the information is here, sign up!

Hope to see you all next week for the Darwish reading group. Keep reading, keep resisting, and stay vigilant.

Love and solidarity❤️‍🔥
Bhakti Shringarpure