Bonus - Language, Genocide, and American Power w/ Shadi Hamid

American Prestige

Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison

History, Politics, News

4.8 • 705 Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Subscribe now to enjoy all of our Sunday bonus episodes. Danny and Derek welcome Washington Post columnist and Wisdom of Crowds co-host Shadi Hamid to the show to discuss the shift in rhetoric and framing around the genocide in Gaza. Shadi explains why he hesitated to use the word “genocide” until this year, reflects on reactions to his Washington Post piece, and explores with Danny and Derek how language shapes mainstream debate. They further discuss the future of the Democratic Party, the absence of left institutions, and whether shifting the discourse can translate into policy given the current structure of American power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to American Prestige. To listen ad-free, you can subscribe at Americanprostagepod.com.
0:08.4	Find the link in our show notes. Hi, this is Ava from Vanta. In today's digital world,
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0:33.8	managing vendor risk, Banta makes it quick, easy, and scalable. And I'm not to
0:38.3	say that because I work here. Get started today at vanta.com. Hello, prestige heads. Derek.
0:43.7	We're doing something a little different this week and making our usual paid subscriber bonus
0:47.7	free to everyone. We've got what I think is a great conversation with Shadi Hamid coming up,
0:52.7	and we really hope you all enjoy it. For those of you who are already supporting the show with your subscriptions, we thank you profusely, and for those of you who are still on the fence about subscribing, here's a little taste of what you're missing that we hope will entice you to come on board. As I said, please enjoy, and as always, thanks for listening and keep and welcome to American Presage.
1:35.8	I'm Danny Bessner, here as always with my friend and comrade, Derek Davison.
1:40.3	And we are very excited to welcome to the podcast today.
1:43.9	My old friend, Shadi Hamid, Shadi's a columnist
1:47.2	at the Washington Post and the co-host of the podcast, Wisdom of Crowd. Shadi, thank you very much for joining
1:53.6	us. Hi, Danny. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. So let's just dive right into it. We've invited
2:00.4	you to talk about a variety of things, but let's start with Israel, Palestine. And so famously, I mean, famous, I guess this is a small world, how famous is any of this, but famously, you change your position on using the G word genocide to describe Israel's actions in Gaza.
2:21.8	And I wanted to ask you about that, because I think it might be reflective of a broader shift in center-left punditry.
2:24.3	I don't know if you define yourself on the center-left.
2:26.3	That's where I place you ideologically, but please feel free to disagree.
2:29.8	What made you change your mind, and then we'll go from there?
2:33.0	Yeah, well, it's not so much that I changed my mind.
2:36.1	I mean, I was never against the word genocide.
	...

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