‘Gaza Is Over, It’s Gone. There’s Nothing Left' | Aaron Bastani meets Norman Finkelstein

Quick Overview

Norman Finkelstein asserts that his commitment to rigorously pursuing truth, often to a self-destructive degree, stems not from his Holocaust survivor parents' direct experiences, but from their die-hard Stalinist refusal to ever sell out or acknowledge the Soviet Union's wrongdoings, a principle Finkelstein internalized as never letting his words or punctuation be for sale, while also noting the current political debate, particularly on the right, has devolved into gossip and personality contests lacking intellectual substance.

Key Points: Finkelstein states he does not want to get adjusted to the world because it is the world that exterminated his parents' family, leading him to continuously fight against the existing system. His parents, Holocaust survivors, were resolutely atheist after their religious father, the mother's father, believed God would protect them, leading to their demise during the war. Finkelstein believes his pathological commitment to truth comes from his parents' absolute refusal to ever denounce the Soviet Union, even when it meant missing out on lucrative opportunities within the 'Holocaust industry' which required denouncing the USSR. He criticizes the current American right's political discourse, stating it has been reduced to gossip, citing figures like Megan Kelly, Tucker Carlson, and Ben Shapiro, arguing that 'a tweet is not an argument.' Finkelstein dismisses the 'identity politics left' as 'completely vacuous,' citing books by Kendi and D'Angelo as containing nothing but 'slogan and posturing,' though he acknowledges some scholarship on slavery remains good. He recounts feeling intimidated by his mentor, Noam Chomsky, whose formidable logic and mastery of detail made disagreement difficult, but notes that after October 7th, Chomsky was unavailable, forcing Finkelstein to struggle to form his own stance on Hamas. Finkelstein expresses a desire to be remembered not as a Jewish critic of Israel or the son of survivors, but for the 'mental effort' and 'perspiration' he put into struggling hard to make sense of complex situations.