I'm Welcome to Media Roots Radio. This is Abby Martin. Today we're excited to speak to friend of the show Yasha Levine.

Yasha is a Russian-American investigative journalist and author of the book Surveillance Valley.

He now runs a substack about what it's like being a weaponized immigrant in a declining empire.

His substack is a must read,

and I encourage everyone to subscribe to it.

Seriously, go support his work today.

He is one of the most original and insightful minds in this space,

and it's truly an honor to have him on.

Thank you so much for coming on Media Roots Radio, Yasha.

Thanks, yeah, thanks for, always a pleasure to be back.

To be back among friends.

Yeah, yeah, dwindling space here. I guess talk about the concept first and foremost about just being a weaponized immigrant

and why you decided to kind of centralize that theme for your current writings?

Yeah, well, you know, being a weaponized immigrant, I mean, basically the only kind of immigrants

that America really likes, you know, or likes to promote and likes to talk about our weaponized

immigrants, you know, it's people who come from, uh, from other countries, obviously,

their immigrants, they immigrate to America. And then, uh, their kind of their narratives about

why they escape the, the countries or why they left the country, their, their, their country, their,

their countries of their birth are sort of used to bolster, you know, America's own self-image and the myths that America sort of spins about itself

and also, you know, spins not only domestically but also abroad. But for the most part,

it's like you're used as a kind of prop to prove to Americans or to kind of hammer the idea into Americans that, you know,

America is the greatest country on earth.

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