Bhakti Shringarpure & Madhuri Sastry unpack the ways in which the "No Kings" protests were anchored in mainstream, white and liberal feminist ideas. They ask why there was no popular interest in protesting genocide in Palestine and analyze the rampant American patriotism on display, the obsession with aesthetics as posters about royalty, crowns and the statue of liberty proliferated. The No Kings protests were mired in a nostalgia for a pre-Trump America thus operating under the delusion that previous American president were not invested in wars, imperials foreign policies and border regimes. The protests lacked any solid agendas to bringing about change and dismantling existing structures of violence.

Listen to previous podcast episodes here: https://www.radicalbookscollective.com/s/its-not-you-its-the-media

Watch the previous podcast episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLstXMEF0r05bhdfv7yCt5V2KXTdK4cO5F

Bhakti Shringarpure and Madhuri Sastry discuss the acute escalation in US-Israeli wars in Lebanon and Iran. The mainstream media barely reports on the shocking death toll and numbers of displaced in Lebanon. Not only is Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon expanding, the Gaza playbook seems to be in full effect with the targeting of civilian infrastructure, hospitals, women and children. In Iran, the war comes at immense material cost for Iranians as the death toll rises. The hosts unpack the ways in which Iran is winning the cultural war through a proliferation of AI & Lego videos that humiliate, shame and heckle US and Israel on the cyber battlefront. These videos are changing the narrative and shifting public opinion by stoking the existing unpopularity of US and Israel on the world stage. However, the abundance of videos, deepfakes, memes and satirical movie trailers creates a fog around what is real and what is not. The question remains: with legacy media being ideologically compromised and the social media flooded with fake videos, where do we turn to for news and information?

Palestinian American activist Nerdeen Kiswani joins Bhakti Shringarpure and Madhuri Sastry to discuss the recent concerns about NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani backtracking on Palestine. In light of Mayor Mamdani’s harsh words about writer Susan Abulhawa and her powerful video response, the fear of betrayal around Palestine looms large, a core issue for the base of supporters that brought him to power.

References

—The Polis Project holds the NYC Mayor accountable with their dossier 100 Days of Zohran: https://100daysofzohran.thepolisproject.com/

—“Here are four ways Zohran Mamdani can end financial support in New York City for Israeli settlements, and he must act soon” by Nerdeen Kiswani: https://mondoweiss.net/2026/01/here-are-four-ways-zohran-mamdani-can-end-financial-support-in-new-york-city-for-israeli-settlements-and-he-must-act-soon/