Thread by @TrumpFile

THREAD: Live tweeting "The Middle East Crisis Factory: The @Iyad_Elbaghdadi Interview," the new episode of @GaslitNation podcast with @AndreaChalupa & @SarahKendzior.

"'How badly did you screw up your life that now several nation states want you dead?'"

patreon.com/posts/middle-e…

Iyad El-Baghdadi is a prominent Palestinian activist and writer. In 2014, he was jailed and expelled from the UAE for his activism and made his new home in Norway. He has been under protection there since 2019, when the CIA revealed that he's a target of the Saudi regime.

.@iyad_elbaghdadi's new book "The Middle East Crisis Factory" covers tyranny, terrorism, and foreign intervention and how these systems of oppression battle and feed off each other. It is about the failures of history, and the reasons for hope.

hurstpublishers.com/book/the-middl…

Speaking of books, we're just minutes away from @sarahkendzior's "Hiding In Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America" turning a year old! I wrote about my experience reading the book today for a new page on Trump File. trumpfile.org/about/

To new followers: I do this thread every week. I always learn something new, and I promise you will, too.

I'm posting the above tweets now & live tweeting as I listen from here! This ep. of Gaslit Nation will be available wherever you get your podcasts soon, or listen early and get bonus episodes on Patreon. Follow @GaslitNation for transcripts & audio clips. patreon.com/gaslit

"When the Arab Spring started in 2011, a lot of people in my generation felt this urge, like 'This is our moment. We have to say something now. We can't sit this out.' I took to Twitter... The story eventually sees me being sent to prison in the United Arab Emirates." - Iyad

When Iyad was arrested for speaking out against the tyranny in the UAE, they said he had to go back home. But "you can't really deport a Palestinian back to Palestine because the place where I'm from is now Israel. So, I ended up in prison."

Iyad negotiated his release by offering to be deported to Malaysia, but once there, he had nowhere to go. He lived in the airport for weeks until he was invited to a human rights conference in Norway. There, he applied for asylum.

After he settled in and was able to return to some sense of normalcy, Iyad started working with a journalist named... JAMAL KHASHOGGI.

"Jamal was a friend... He was killed too soon."

Iyad wanted justice for Jamal's murder, which led to exposing MBS's hack of Jeff Bezos phone. The hack was part of the Saudi regime blackmailing Bezos over the Washington Post's coverage of Jamal's murder. I mention the blackmail briefly here. trumpfile.org/jeffrey-epstei…

MBS is the first royal in generations to attempt political reform. But "he's not really attempting reform. All he's attempting is to vanquish his own family & come out on top as the autocrat... the absolute ruler."

Like if Trump's opposition was his kids instead of Democrats.

"I'm sure our listeners are probably still sitting there with their mouths open just from your opening biography." - @sarahkendzior

I'm kind of like this, but same idea. 😉

"The Trump administration seemed to condone the murder of a journalist working for a US publication [Khashoggi]. Kushner seems to have possibly been implicated in that murder with his friend MBS. Now, we have the Biden administration refusing to sanction MBS." - @sarahkendzior

"Out of 22 Arab nations, 20 had significant protests and several of them had full on revolutions... Imagine these events from the vantage point of a dictator. They were absolutely terrified... It is their paranoia that continues to drive them to this day." - @iyad_elbaghdadi

"Dictators in many cases kind of paint themselves into a corner... with blood. They spill so much blood that they know that they're married into power. There is no post-presidency for them [because] the moment they lose power, one thousand knives are going to be out for them."

MBS arrived four years after the 2011 uprisings, and the underlying message was basically "You can't have democracy, but you can have this guy... He's going to reform you... You don't need democracy, you just need an autocrat who does the right things."

Sounds familiar.

The more that the West tries to isolate MBS, the more that allies like Israel and the UAE will encourage him.

"When it comes to the hacking technology, for example... This has been provided by the Israelis, and it was Jared Kushner - as far as I know - who facilitated this." -I

"We have to be realistic about what can be done to MBS. I think it will be a tragedy if we focus on punishing the murderer rather than centering the cause of the person who was murdered. Jamal Khashoggi believed in freedom of speech, and this is what we need to center." - Iyad

"I've been doing this for a decade now. It's been the last decade of my life, and it's going to be the rest of my life. I know they want to kill me, and I know that I'm a long-term problem to them... I'm at peace with that." - @iyad_elbaghdadi

This is heartbreaking.

"Jamal Khashoggi was not the first that they killed, and unfortunately he's not going to be the last that they kill. There are Khashoggis all over the region, and there are going to be more... What can we do... to make sure that this does not happen again?" - @iyad_elbaghdadi

"What we're looking at in the Middle East is the same as the threat that we're under here in the United States, which is just plain, old, simple, far-right "populism"... Greed and corruption masquerading as populism, trying to come to power, to stay in power." - @AndreaChalupa

"You're faced here with a core of democratic nations that are unsure about what to do, but these autocratic regimes absolutely know what they have to do. They know that they have to degrade the world order." - @iyad_elbaghdadi

That's all for this week's Gaslit Nation! For the FULL discussion, make sure to listen to the episode. This week's bonus Q&A is "The Next Generation of Kleptocrats," and you can access it on Patreon at the Truth-Teller level or higher. patreon.com/gaslit

Thank you @iyad_elbaghdadi @sarahkendzior & @AndreaChalupa. I hope anyone reading this thread listens to the full episode. I couldn't believe how much about the Middle East we just accept without question. Iyad was great. Please have him back soon.

If you'd prefer to read rather than listen to Gaslit Nation, transcripts are available for past episodes on GaslitNationPod.com. This week's transcript should be up soon. Follow @GaslitNation for updates.

Here's my Gaslit Nation thread from last week.

https://twitter.com/TrumpFile/status/1377104262635814915?s=20