Becoming a critical thinker & an anti-imperialist writer w/ Louis Allday

Louis Allday: Hi everybody, this is Louis Allday, long time supporter and occasional guest host of East as a Podcast. What follows this short introduction is an interview that I gave in May of this year whilst on a visit to Iran. it's taken on a different meaning for me in light of the attacks that have been launched against Iran by both Israel and now the U.S. directly over the last week or so, especially as because this was a TV interview, one of a couple that I did. So I interacted with many employees of the Iranian broadcasting organization which at the time of me speaking has been bombed at least twice by Israel killing fortunately not people that I worked with and met directly but colleagues of theirs and what was already an incredibly memorable and important trip for me in a number of ways has only become more so since the aggression that has been undertaken against Iran. And I think it's worth stating that I have, it was my first time in Iran and I had wanted to go to Iran for a very, very long time. And I was well aware of the deeply misleading and insidious propaganda against the Islamic Republic for a very long time, both through my own study, through my own reading, and through interacting with Iranian friends and colleagues. Yet when I was there, there was still, even within me, who went very prepared for there to be a major discrepancy between reality and Western perception and Western propaganda, there was still somehow something within me that was surprised. And Iran is an almost comically rich and deep civilization and society. And it is a tragedy that it is being attacked by the vicious forces of Zionism and imperialism. And I think the only progressive position, the only right... humane and moral position at this juncture is to support the Islamic Republic of Iran wholeheartedly against what is evidently blatantly illegal and immoral aggression against it from the US, Israel and most of the West collectively and it's a key a key struggle now in the global struggle against imperialism and what follows in this interview I suppose one of the things I talk about and one of the things I was asked about was how I come how I have come to to understand the world in these in this through this this frame and why I see imperialism as the you know the primary contradiction and the key contradiction and why a lot of what I do and write and say is focused on that point um And yeah, given what's happened in the four weeks since I was in Iran, that has certainly become more poignant. So yeah, I hope you get something from it and enjoy. Thank you.

Bahman Nouray: There are writers and historians who dedicate their work to uncovering suppressed narratives and challenging dominant historical perspectives. These individuals strive to bring neglected voices to the forefront, reshaping our understanding of history and its impact on the present. My guest today is a writer who has committed his career to this mission, producing thought-provoking works that resonate with readers and contribute to critical discourse. Welcome to SORP. I am Bahman Nouray, your host. Louis Allday is a writer, historian and editor with a PhD in history. is the founding editor of Liberated Text, a project dedicated to reviewing and republishing works that have been overlooked, suppressed or neglected in mainstream discourse. In collaboration with Ebb Books, he published the first English translation of Ghassan Kanafani's On Zionist Literature in 2022, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Kanafani's assassination. Allday is also an editor at Ebb magazine and is known for his work on themes of colonialism, imperialism and solidarity with Palestine. Mr. Louis Allday, really good to have you and thank you for accepting our invitation to SOAP. Thank you very much for having me. It's our pleasure. Well, for the sake of the conversation, beginning it, how your upbringing influenced your interest in books and writing?

Louis Allday: I think on a very basic level, I was always encouraged to read. Both my parents definitely, there was always books around. And I think I was encouraged, especially as I got a little bit older and began to develop my own interests, I was encouraged regardless of whether they shared those particular interests. And I definitely think that instilled within me, yeah, an interest in exploring knowledge and learning, not solely, but definitely heavily around books and reading.

Bahman Nouray: And then as you grew up, you got familiar and, of course, interested in themes like colonialism and imperialism. How did that happen, considering the mainstream media that was around you?

Louis Allday: There's a multifaceted answer, and I imagine the interview will probably be answering that question, really. Of course. I think why I've ended up focusing on issues around imperialism, colonialism, Zionism, It's because of over a process of years, or a number of years rather, realizing that they are the common denominator in so many things that are unjust and that I care about. And for me, the kind of principle contradiction, the principle source of suffering and problems in the world is imperialism, of which Zionism obviously has a very direct relationship. And so it's that realization that so many disparate things that I learned and grew to care about, because I don't know where this came from, but I had quite a sense of injustice from quite early, quite young. And then I suppose through learning, through education over time, realizing what in most cases is ultimately the cause of these things that I feel angry or upset about is what led me to focus on those things.

Bahman Nouray: And when did you really decide to act on it, like write about it, create a narrative?

Louis Allday: I mean, obviously that came much later. But looking back, just thinking now about what were some formative things, I think... The Iraq war was definitely, well actually before, so a big thing for me was in the UK, you go to something called college between the ages of 16 and 18, not college like in the US. My first day of college was September the 11th, 2001. So my first day of college was 9-11. And I did not immediately fully comprehend the significance of 9-11, but what I did notice very quickly was the propaganda against Muslims, the propaganda against Arabs, that did not match at all my experience, because I had Arab and Iranian friends at school, had met their families, around that time I had begun to become quite interested in the region, I'd done some very basic reading, not stuff that I would recommend reading now, but at the time I was expanding my horizons. And so I really noticed the stark disconnect between what I had read and what I had experienced myself personally, and the dehumanizing imperialist narratives that were prevalent in a way that I think some people even, it's not been forgotten, but I think how bad it was immediately after 9-11, some people are maybe not aware. And I think that was probably the start of my politicization. And then obviously going from 9-11 to the war in Iraq, I attended the famous anti-war process in March, I believe March 2003 in London. And it's actually quite interesting looking back. I'm not sure what my alternative sources of information were then. But I remember even at that young, still quite naive age, not believing the official story, seeing that it was quite obvious that it was about oil and power. And yeah, I think those two formative events, and this is obviously not unique to me, both those events were formative political events for a generation, but they definitely impacted me in a way that I can still kind of trace the trajectory of to now.

Bahman Nouray: Right. And thinking of 9-11, as you mentioned, like maybe immediately that day or the day after George W. Bush was starting a war on terror. And that narrative immediately became the main and mainstream media narrative all over the world. Nobody was like asking questions like, OK, why? war on terror, but why do we focus on this country or that country? Even today, people are asking for compensation and they get it from, I don't know, Iranian money in the US, they pay their families. while Iran had nothing to do with it or any particular country, it was rather than an ideology or a sectarian group or whatever. But how does this become so suddenly the main narrative? Is it something like planned beforehand or how do you justify that?

Louis Allday: I mean, it's a combination of, there are obviously more short-term specific propaganda campaigns around these things, but why one of the reasons such propaganda is so successful is that they can draw on a much deeper pool reservoir of longer term orientalist propaganda, orientalist narratives. So people in the West are going to be more susceptible to believe specific things because of this broader frame of understanding West Asia. And obviously at the time I didn't understand that in the way that I do now, but I think even then I could sense, you know, something is off here. It took me obviously a long time and I'm not, that's not to say I've completed my understanding now, but it took me a long time to reach the point of understanding that I have reached, because I think as a kind of maybe underspoken about element of politicization and education sometimes is that it can actually be, quite an unnerving thing.

Bahman Nouray: Right.

Louis Allday: Realising the extent of lies, realising the extent of propaganda, realising, and you know, talking about this in the middle of a genocide being enacted and enabled by the West is kind of case in point, realising what you are being taught on a societal level in the West or in the UK about the role of the UK in the world, about the West, realizing just how untrue that is and what the West and the UK specifically are capable of and do, it's not necessarily a pleasant realization. Of course. But it's obviously a vital one if you want to actually understand what's happening and have any chance of changing anything.

Bahman Nouray: I want to know if you thought, I want to know that understanding, that realization that you came to, was it kind of an isolated case in that society or you found many other people who thought like you just were not part of the main narrative?

Louis Allday: um i mean yes short answer yes of course it's not just me alone there are many well i mean a very little group of people that's sort of after there are i think more people than you know the mainstream media would imply that that at least doubt these narratives um but there are structures in place within academia, within the media, within, on a societal level, to allow a certain amount of criticism and critique and pushback against narratives, but to make sure it stays still within certain- Contained. Contained. Yeah. And a perfect example of that now is, a lot of people in the UK, to use that example, would be disgusted, rightfully on a human level, disgusted, angered, outraged about the ongoing genocide and be allowed at least to some extent to express that in certain quarters, so long as they accept certain premises on other related issues, i.e. they will condemn Israel but in the same breath, they will condemn the very same states, actors, movements who are actually fighting Israel. So, for example, people would express their solidarity with Palestine, but then in the same breath repeat lies about Iran, or other relevant parties that are basically indistinguishable from the State Department position on Iran. And that's because there are people who are put in a position to soak up what they know, what the ruling class know is inevitable anger and outrage. and attempt, obviously it's not a wholly successful thing, and part of what I'm doing is trying to fight that, but often successful, and funnel it back into a more palatable form of opposition that, for example, will obviously oppose any form of Palestinian armed resistance, will largely accept the liberal Zionist position that the occupation began in 1967, not 1948. And I think that's probably one of the most challenging things of trying to re-establish narratives or fight propaganda, is that a lot of propaganda is not crude. They allow space for some criticism, for some pushback against the more extreme, obviously right-wing imperialist narratives. They give space to acceptable, from their perspective, opposition that many people see as genuine opposition. So it's not a straightforward battle, basically.

Bahman Nouray: Louis, do you think that nowadays with the far-right governments, it's like a domino, we see in different countries coming to power. Has it become less costly for people to talk in this propagandist, if you may call it, way about affairs of the world? Like, you know, we see a U.S. president easily talking about ownership of Gaza and making it a beautiful plaza and everything, or other people coming and talking about, okay, yeah, this is a very reasonable narrative, you need to do that in order to help the people there, we should send them out. And the Israelis also jump on that. There was a ceasefire going on, and in effect, But as soon as Donald Trump, in that press conference with Netanyahu, which many said was even a surprise to Netanyahu himself, talked about the ownership and rebuilding Gaza in that special way, I think something emboldened even Netanyahu to end the peace and go on with, okay, it's going to be all out war until they free all of the hostages, in their words, of course, I'm quoting.

Louis Allday: I think obviously rhetoric like Trump's is disgusting. I mean, not a surprise at this point, but disgusting nevertheless. But I think what I find myself more interested in is not the differences in rhetoric. It's the continuity of policy. So, you know, the obvious example being the Democratic Party and the Democratic establishment, Joe Biden, etc., facilitated the genocide in a way that is largely, there are nuances, but largely indistinguishable, at least for the victims of the genocide from Trump and the Republican Party. That's not to say there aren't differences, and those differences may manifest in a way that we don't know. Right. But... And I think actually not in the way you intended it, but some people will critique Trump. Trump is quite a good example of this. Some people will critique Trump extremely strongly, but were perfectly happy supporting Biden and Kamala Harris and the Democrats. And that's because for them, their policy, and I'm primarily talking about liberals in the US, but it also extends to Europe. their political positions are based largely around rhetoric, external appearances, and how those external appearances make them feel about their own life and their own positions. So it's not actually really a genocide they have a problem with. It's being very crude and rude and obvious about it. You know, Trump being the unmasked face of US empire, whereas even if he was increasingly decrepit and not very good at it, Biden being the, you know, at least there was at times at least an attempt at portraying balance and sympathy for the Palestinians, however disingenuously and badly. So I think, yeah, this speaks actually to one of the things I'm interested in, which is trying to get beyond rhetorical differences and actually spotting continuities, especially in policy and the impact of policy.

Bahman Nouray: You're right on that, because as he was talking, this reminds reminded me of John Kerry, who was like the American architect of JCPOA. And now that Trump is talking about peace and peace deal is saying that no, this is an opportunity to defeat Iran and we shouldn't do that. It's exactly as you said. But of course, realizing that shallow narrative is one thing. Trying to inform others is absolutely a whole different thing. How did you start moving in that direction?

Louis Allday: It's a good question. I'm trying to think when I first started. I think one of the sparks, and this is probably something that can be talked about in response to a number of your questions, because it was so key for me. So I lived in Syria for most of 2009. The last time I returned was in 2010. Obviously the proxy war against Syria began in 2011 and everything that happened from 2011 really until now has been a very painful educational process for me. because I did not understand immediately what was happening in Syria. I now see that especially early on, I accepted Western narratives quite uncritically. And it was only when I started to realize how badly I was misunderstanding things and what was actually happening. I think that is one of the things that pushed me to take a more critical edge. And I think around that time is when I first kind of became active on social media and almost just organically over time developed a little bit of a following. I had a blog which doesn't exist anymore, which I wrote a few things. And then I suppose at a certain point realizing I felt there was a kind of gap. Not that I could feel single-handedly, but I had something to say. And it kind of went from then, from I suppose around 2014, 2015, is when I started writing more regularly and being more active on social media and beginning to do kind of more public-facing things.

Bahman Nouray: Was that around the time that you started Liberated Texts?

Louis Allday: No, that came much later. That was in 2022. But the time that I'm talking about is also the time that I was doing my PhD.

Bahman Nouray: And you did it in history, right?

Louis Allday: I did it in history, yeah.

Bahman Nouray: Can you tell us a little bit more about that and the patterns that you probably have seen getting repeated in our world today?

Louis Allday: Yeah, so my PhD is about the British Council. which very few people, especially in the UK, because it's an outward facing organization, very few people in the UK know what the British Council is. But to put it very simply, the British Council is the British government's global network of cultural centers and English language training centers. It's where many people around the world learn English. And so my PhD was a historical case study of the British Council in the Persian Gulf, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, so the opposite side of Iran. And essentially the way in which, in spite of its supposed independence from the British government, it's supposed just neutral cultural and educational activities, that it was in fact, it constituted a project of educational and cultural propaganda that was directly tied to the aims of the British state. At the point in time in which they first became active in the Gulf, the Arab side of the Gulf was, it was not formally read on the map, but it was effectively part of the British empire. So the way in which the British council first became involved was as a means to try and maintain that British hegemony over the Gulf because of the risk of Arab nationalism and various other kind of societal changes that were taking place due to the discovery of oil. Once Britain decided it militarily would not stay in the Gulf, which it announced in 1968, the British Council's importance and funding and status rapidly increased and it was then and I know this because obviously I've read the archival documents that discuss its real purpose and what was actually happening. It began to be conceptualized by senior British government figures as a means to create a new neo-colonial role in the Gulf. not solely but largely premised on ensuring English language dominance, technical dependence and other means of indirect neo-colonial control over the Gulf. So what we call TEFL, what is referred to as TEFL, teaching English as a foreign language, the roots of that actually go back to the 1950s and a direct collaboration between the US and UK governments to really ensure that English became the global lingua franca. And these documents talk specifically about the dangers, quote unquote, of other languages becoming a more dominant global language.

Bahman Nouray: Of course, we have linguistic colonialism, of course.

Louis Allday: There's a brilliant book by Robert Philipson called Linguistic Imperialism. Exactly. And the US and UK viewed languages like Chinese and Arabic as potential rivals for more global languages.

Bahman Nouray: So yeah, that's more or less what my PhD is about. I'm doing translation studies, so I'm really interested in that topic. Very good. Now tell me about Liberated Texts. What inspired you to start that?

Louis Allday: Again, it wasn't one single thing. It was a kind of multiple things building up in layers over a number of years. Although there were a few specific things, I suppose. One of which was coming across a document called the Church Report, which is a internal US, I think, Senate report from 1976, into the activities of numerous US intelligence agencies. We know about many infamous US intelligence projects like MKUltra and other things like that because of this report. But one of the lesser known things which I found in this report was the extent of the CIA's control of the publishing industry. I can't recall the figures off the top of my head, but the figures that it gives are largely about, I think, the late 1960s. And the CIA was publishing thousands of books, not obviously stamped with the CIA, unbeknownst to the people buying them, in some cases, unbeknownst to the people who had written them. And not just in English, in multiple languages all around the world. And then they also had attached to the publishing system, they had a whole reviewing system. Distribution system. Distribution system. But I think the thing that specifically interested me was the reviewing system. Yes. Whereby a book that they knew had been published by the CIA would be reviewed in X, Y, and Z. Because obviously the broader context of this is what's often referred to as the cultural Cold War.

Bahman Nouray: Yeah.

Louis Allday: where you had UK and US intelligence heavily involved in funding all kinds of literary, political, artistic endeavours, all as a means to try and defeat and crush the Soviet Union on a cultural level. That's the broader context. So what they would do is they would ensure that their own publications were reviewed extensively and positively, And inconvenient publications that were not done by the CAA would either, they would try and ensure that they were ignored, because in a way, you know, the cliche of any publicity is good publicity. In some cases, just not reviewing things was preferable to a kind of hit job against them. But if for whatever reason it was perceived that actually we need to critique it, they would ensure negative reviews of things. And one of the examples the Church Report gives is there was a publication that was supposedly written by a Chinese dissident, this is in the 1960s, so from an anti-communist perspective, supposedly written by a Chinese dissident, was in fact written by a CIA official, was then reviewed in the New York Times by someone else working for the CIA. So you've just got these layers of control and infiltration. And also another aspect of that is that they had thoroughly infiltrated academia. And again, that's laid out in this report. So that was definitely one turning point for me. Because obviously what is so patently the case is an institution like the CIA does not build up that level of control and influence and then pack it up overnight when the Cold War ends. it obviously just becomes- It's already there. It's already there and it just becomes more refined, more insidious, more deeper. Once the internet is created, it spreads into the internet. It did not end with the overthrow of the Soviet Union. So I suppose that got me thinking about, OK, well, how is this manifesting now? And that again, that related to Syria. A host of really awful books have been published about Syria that in many cases are indistinguishable from the State Department line on Syria, but use leftist. framing or terminology to again so to supposedly give an alternative voice but funnel people back into the very narrative they think they're somehow opposing um another specific thing that comes to mind which is related to the church report is i found an internal cia review of a book called neocolonialism in africa by kwame and krumer Three months after that internal book review was written, he was deposed in a CIA coup. And his literary executor and kind of close confidant, whose name escapes me, she was an English woman who was very close to him, she speculated that that book was the kind of last straw in them deciding to get rid of him. And there's a quote from a senior CIA official in that report talking about how, and this quote, which I can't recall verbatim, is on the Liberated Text website, talking about the importance of books as propaganda. And obviously, 50, 60 years later, the situation is not the same. multimedia, social media, the internet has transformed the way people consume information and the means of propaganda. But I suppose me establishing Liberated Texts was me still believing and seeing that books are significant. And I guess I mean that both ways. They can be significant in educating and enlightening people, But they also have a role to play in enforcing propagandistic narratives and imperialist narratives.

Bahman Nouray: And you're still working with that, right?

Louis Allday: Yeah.

Bahman Nouray: You're continuing that. And have you got the desired effect that you wanted?

Louis Allday: Obviously not enough. And, you know, I'm not naive. But enough to encourage you to keep up? Enough to encourage me to keep up, definitely. I mean, to give you an example of the kind of thing that does encourage me, of which there are many actually, but just as one example, shortly after October the 7th, myself and a Palestinian colleague and friend of mine wrote a review of a book written in 1978 called Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany. And that book was published by something called the Palestine Research Center, which was the PLO's research center based in Beirut. That was established in 1965 and it was looted and then later bombed and essentially destroyed by Israel in 1982, 1983 during the invasion of Beirut. But during that time that it existed, published incredible works of analysis. And this book specifically, Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany, it is a really short but powerful explanation of the ways in which the Zionist movement actively collaborated with the Nazi regime up to and including and during the Holocaust. So it is a very sensitive topic that there has been a lot of silence around for a long time. And even though I knew some of the facts when I read it, I didn't know all of them and the way in which they're packaged it blew my mind really.

Bahman Nouray: Can you tell us a little bit of that because I'm really curious how did they collaborate exactly with the Nazis?

Louis Allday: In more ways than one and I think what's in addition to the which he does recount the kind of practical how you know what did that actually manifest that cooperation the more the broader point is the philosophical connection between Nazism and Zionism, which is they both actually fundamentally share the anti-Semitic premise that Jews should not be assimilated and in non-Jewish societies.

Bahman Nouray: I see.

Louis Allday: So that's the Zionist position. And then the Zionist solution to that problem is a settler colonial state. Right. And the Nazis effectively facilitated that. they allowed German Jews to leave so long as they went to Palestine. And there was extensive collaboration which massively benefited the German state, the Nazi state, economically. And there are numerous examples of collaboration, but the point I wanted to make about that book, something that encourages me we use that book to make the point that Zionism has to be understood as a fascist movement and not as a movement that has become fascist recently and as if this genocide is anomalous to the history of Zionism that in fact this has always been in its uh it's inherent to it. And I suppose what has encouraged me about that is, obviously I get the statistics on the site that has been read countless thousands of times since we wrote the review. And I now see people on social media talking about that book and discussing that book and posting pictures of it. And it's just a small way of, A, bringing into the discourse something that has been so thoroughly and very deliberately hidden The latter part of the book is actually about how, from the 1950s onwards, Israel went to great efforts to try and cover up this very inconvenient history, because they're not unaware that it doesn't look good. But it's also a means to not only place the current genocide in a broader context, but it also helps people to understand why, for example, Israel was arming, and probably still is, the Azov Nazi battalion in the Ukraine. because people see something like that and they see a contradiction. They think, how can Zionists support Nazis? Whereas actually by looking at a book like that, for example, you see, no, this is actually a historical... There is an obvious logic behind it and there is a continuity behind it. And the very earliest Zionist ideologues like Theodor Herzl, they said openly, anti-Semites are going to be our best friends. because they contribute to their argument that we can't exist here, so we have to go and colonize Palestine.

Bahman Nouray: There's no other way, we have no other option.

Louis Allday: It's the same Zionist logic.

Bahman Nouray: This is a very interesting conversation. Louis, we'll be back after a quick break. I want to know how do you process works that are suggested for you to review or republish there?

Louis Allday: It's not necessarily a completely systematic process. In some ways, it's quite random because I don't know what people are going to submit. In some cases, obviously, it's something that's just not really relevant. In other cases, in many cases, it's been things that I'd never heard of before. And I've just been like, wow, this is absolutely perfect. And then in terms of what I have written and want to put on the site, again, it's been quite random. And that, I think, was one of the factors as well. So the first book that I reviewed for Liberated Texts is a book called Zionist Colonialism in Palestine that was written in 1965. Again, published by the Palestine Research Center. It was the first book that it published. It presents an unbelievably prescient, unbelievably insightful understanding of Zionism from pre-1967. So, you know, what a lot of people start the occupation at has not even happened yet. And the author Fayez Sayyih, who was the founding editor and manager of the Palestine Research Center, He describes Zionism as inherently expansionist in nature, addicted to violence and inherently racist. And unfortunately, the last 65, 70 years since then, he has been proven painfully, painfully correct. Sorry, 60 years. And I came across that book completely by chance in a secondhand bookshop in Beirut. And I was so struck by its clarity, its insightfulness, and the fact that having, even though I had been in higher education, in many, you know, done courses specifically around what's referred to as Israel-Palestine in a lot of academic spaces, I had never come across him. And I learned more in some ways from a much, much shorter book than I did from years of studying longer books.

Bahman Nouray: What's the name of this book again?

Louis Allday: It's called Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. And I suppose, yeah, it's like I say, it wasn't one thing that made me think, oh, I want to do this. It was these interconnected things. And I suppose, yeah, just a general feeling of things that I was discovering, whether through social media, through complete chance, by finding it in a bookshop, through suggestions of people that as I was kind of growing a network, realizing that so much important work has been, you know, it's not always a case of really deliberate, insidious censorship. Sometimes for whatever reason, sometimes just a book does not get the attention it deserves. I think the Palestine Research Center is obviously an extreme example in that it was physically attacked and people were killed and its contents were looted. Not everything is going to be such an extreme example like that. but there's a general trend of uncompromising, insightful, powerful work not getting, as an example in academia, that doesn't get put on a reading list. The balanced, quote unquote, academic authority by an American academic gets put on it, not the Palestinian academic writing decades before, more insightfully. Because another thing he does in that book, Again, he's writing in 1965. He refers to the Zionist state as apartheid in nature and actually talks about how in some ways it's different, potentially worse. And you had people, I think only two years ago, maybe even less, no, about two years ago, You know, you have people in the West celebrating the fact that human rights organizations in the West had very belatedly described Israel as an apartheid state. You had a Palestinian seeing that and saying it 60 years ago. And then obviously the other angle to that is in many cases, those organizations, their criticism of Israel, is largely a means to preserve their standing so that the comments they make about other countries, which in many cases, again, are informed by the State Department, will be accepted by people. They have to retain some credibility. They have to criticize Israel. But they do that so that what they release about other countries, I'm primarily talking about Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and a few others, especially Human Rights Watch. There is a revolving door between working for Human Rights Watch and the State Department. And if you look at the output of Human Rights Watch, I mean, even though it does criticize Israel, it also accuses Hamas of war crimes. And it equates the violence of the oppressor and the oppressor. So even its criticism of Israel is muted, but that criticism is to gain credibility to spread reports and demonize Iran, Venezuela, Cuba. Both those organizations played a very damaging role vis-a-vis the proxy war against Syria as well.

Bahman Nouray: Of course. I want to talk about the collaboration you had with Ebb Books to publish on Zionist literature. And what was its significance, you think?

Louis Allday: So On Zionist Literature is a book written by Ghassan Kanafani, again published by the Palestine Research Center in 1967. I read the original Arabic probably around four or five years ago and was blown away by it. And especially because in the introduction, so to put it very quickly, the book is, Can Afani's attempt to trace the kind of chronology and how and why of the dominance of Zionist narratives and Zionist tropes in the West through literature, how has that come about through the close study of novels, through the close study of other literature? And he says in the introduction, you know, the basis of this study, why I'm doing this is on the basis of know your enemy. And five years after he wrote that, that very same enemy that he was trying to understand assassinated him, along with his 16-year-old niece, Lamise. So, yeah, I got kind of goosebumps reading that story. you know, the enemy that he was trying to understand five years later assassinated him. And so my motivation was to publish, to commission a translation and then publish and edit that translation was partly specific to that book itself. But it was also the realization that the majority of Cannafani's, because he's primarily or at least prominently known as a novelist and a short story writer and artist. But he was also a spokesman for the PFLP and was very, very active politically. And especially in the English speaking world, that side of his life has been kind of softened and not forgotten, but toned down. And I think that's both because of, but also a reflection of the fact that his political writing and his analysis have not been translated into English. So in doing that, I wanted to try and spark more interest in his political work, try and get people to engage with what he actually believed in and who he actually was, not this kind of slightly liberal, toned-down version of him. And I'm certainly not claiming credit for it single-handedly, but I'm pleased to say since we published that on the 50th anniversary of his killing in 2022, since then, two other translations of political texts of his have been published. And I do think it's not a straight line, but I think it has contributed to a... not a rediscovery because he was never lost, but a greater interest in him and specifically his political work and his political analysis.

Bahman Nouray: Of course, an appreciation of his work.

Louis Allday: And as a perfect example of his ongoing importance, it was reported just last week that the head of public policy for Israel at Meta, Instagram, Facebook, who unsurprisingly is a former Netanyahu advisor and senior Israeli official, she specifically requested for all content related to Hassan Qanafani to be flagged and to be ideally removed and restricted. So, you know, they killed him 50 plus years ago and they're still scared of his words and analysis.

Bahman Nouray: that is really, I also really appreciate your work in getting the words across to a global audience. And you have seen, of course, the effect. Did you do the translation yourself?

Louis Allday: I didn't. So a friend of mine called Mahmoud did the translation, but I was very involved in assisting him.

Bahman Nouray: You did the editing?

Louis Allday: Yeah. I was especially involved because of the nature of the book. He quotes an enormous range of sources. And so we needed to find the originals of those sources to avoid publishing a translation of a translation which introduces huge room for error. Of course.

Bahman Nouray: I have so many more questions to ask you, but the time is up. I don't know how the time even passed. As a traditional now show, in these final moments of the show, you have that camera right behind me all to yourself. Our audience become yours. So feel free to share whatever you want with our audience here.

Louis Allday: I would say please be brave in whatever way you're able to. I think one aspect, there are many aspects of resistance to this genocide, to resistance to imperialism and Zionism. Not everyone can be a fighter, not everyone can be involved. in direct action but I think everyone according to their their abilities and their responsibilities can contribute in some way um and whatever that is probably requires some some bravery and commitment and I would yeah extol people to to do what they're able to do to to stop this um yeah and it's an honor to be here in Iran thank you very much

Bahman Nouray: Thank you, Lou, all day. It was amazing. The conversation, I really didn't want it to end, but we had to end it. Thank you so much for accepting our invitation. Thank you. And thank you, our lovely audience. Remember, you can be part of the conversation. This doesn't end here. Use our social media networks. And of course, the handles are appearing on your screens. Until next time, it's goodbye from me, Bahman Array.