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Good evening. It's Thursday, April 25. 

As many of you undoubtedly noticed, we have not had a new show since last Thursday —a full week. That is because last week I contracted a lovely and chic and glamorous mosquito-borne virus called Dengue that is really quite debilitating. Only yesterday did I begin feeling vaguely human again, and it's been killing me not to be able to report on and analyze the numerous significant events over the last week. So, I am thrilled to be back, even if not yet fully 100%, in order to delve into as much of it as we can.

Beginning with tonight: the last seven months in the United States from October 7 until now, ranks among the greatest and most successful periods for the pro-censorship movement of any era in the United States. In years between the bipartisan ban or forced sale of TikTok, a topic we will cover another night, and the massive nationwide and long-planned crackdown on-campus political speech and protest in the name of protecting Israel. It is almost impossible to overstate how sustained and damaging this coordinated attack on core free speech rights has become. 

Supporters of Israel decided years ago that they must focus on American college campuses. One of the few prominent sectors of American life where Israel criticism and pro-Palestinian activism have been permitted to thrive. It also, by the way, thrives on TikTok, which is by all accounts a major reason that this ban, which has been lingering in Washington for years, suddenly picked up so much bipartisan support and has now been signed into law by President Biden. The reason that this country's most fanatical Israel supporters, the Ben Shapiros and Barry Weisses of the world, have been so obsessed for years with college students and college campuses is not that they are impassioned in genuine free speech activists—that's just the branding—and any lingering doubt about that should have been permanently dispelled since October 7. 

Instead, their obsessive focus on colleges is because the pro-Israel movement has understood that the greatest threat to pro-Israel consensus in the United States emanates from college campuses, in particular, their grave fear that the call to boycott and divest from Israel or to sanction it will have the same type of success as enjoyed by the movement of the 1980s on which it was based: activism to force divestment from South Africa as a means of weakening that apartheid regime. 

The desire to gain control of the range of permissible speech in American academia, and particularly the effort to ban Israel criticisms as anti-Semitic racism has long been brewing. October 7th was merely the much-awaited accelerant. As a result, one now sees Israel supporters of all types—neocons, Republicans, conservatives, pro-Israel, and Democrats—foaming at the mouth to weaponize racism accusations and police powers to silence Israel's critics. All of the most tawdry neocon tactics are on full display, including the equating of war critics with being “pro-Hamas”—and that has been fused with the embrace by much of the pro-Israel right of all the classic laughable theories of censorship over the last decade, namely, claiming that protests against Israel's wars have veered into racist hate speech, that words and slogans are themselves violence, and that they make Jewish students feel unsafe and thus must be forcibly silenced and punished. Never mind that Jewish students themselves compose a non-trivial, often significant segment of these pro-Palestinian protests on virtually every major American campus where they are found.

At bottom, this is not a complex question. If the First Amendment's free speech guarantees anything, it protects the right to protest and denounce the American government's decision to finance a foreign country's military and then arm and finance its highly destructive war. And it is precisely that right that is now under sustained and serious assault.

Then: there has been much that has been said about the protests taking place at campuses all across the country, particularly this week at Columbia University in New York. Tonight, we will speak to two of the students who have been actively participating in and helping to organize these protests: Jon Ben-Menachem, a Jewish PhD student, and an undergraduate student, Mohammad Hemeida, both of whom have been among the early leaders and organizers of the protest. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.

We are pleased to send you a summary of the key stories we covered last week. These are written versions of the reporting and analysis we did on last week's episodes of SYSTEM UPDATE.

—Glenn Greenwald

Welcome to the SYSTEM UPDATE recap, your weekend digest featuring everything we’ve covered throughout the previous week. 

Prefer to listen to your daily news analysis? Reminder that FULL episodes of SYSTEM UPDATE are available anywhere you listen to podcasts🎙️

Enjoy!

MONDAY, APRIL 15 - EPISODE 257

Is Israel Dragging the US in a New Mid-East War? PLUS: Vivek Ramaswamy on FISA, Israel/Iran, Elon Musk’s War w/ Brazil over Censorship

Full transcript available for paid supporters: HERE

WATCH THE EPISODE

Intro (9:07)

New Middle East War (14:03)

Interview with Vivek Ramaswamy (43:14)

Outro (1:21:21)

TUESDAY, APRIL 16 - EPISODE 258

SCOTUS Skeptical of Main Jan. 6 Prosecution Theory. Neocons Try to Destroy Tucker over Israel. PLUS: Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich

Full transcript available for paid supporters: HERE

WATCH THE EPISODE

Intro (8:02)

SCOTUS Skeptical of Obstruction Charges (15:17)

Neocons Unite Against Tucker (39:11)

Interview with Representative Dennis Kucinich (53:23)

Outro (1:20:29)

Supporters-Only After Show for Tuesday, April 16

We moved to Locals for our supporters-only, interactive after show, where Glenn shared his thoughts on some burning audience questions:

@Jcarp1965

Dennis was a great guest tonight. I grew up in the Cleveland area and remember him as Mayor in the late 70’s. I thought he was a kook back then. In fact I only recently have seen him as a true upholder of the Constitution, so I had a blind spot about him for quite awhile. It was a great interview.

PLUS: Glenn shares his thoughts on the latest update with Julian Assange and the U.S. extradition. 

Available for paid supporters here. 

Want to join us every Tuesday and Thursday for this supporter-exclusive, live after show? Become a paid supporter here!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17 - EPISODE 259

Norman Finkelstein Returns: The Future of Israel's War in Gaza

Full transcript available for paid supporters: HERE

WATCH THE EPISODE

Intro (7:30)

Interview with Norman Finkelstein (11:46)

Outro (1:24:55)

FRIDAY, APRIL 19 - EPISODE 260

Sahra Wagenknecht on the Failing War in Ukraine, the State of German Politics, and Her New Political Party

Full transcript available for paid supporters: HERE

WATCH THE EPISODE

Intro (7:30) 

Interview with Sahra WagenKnecht (11:44)