Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. Joining me is Norman Finkelstein, author and scholar,

whose latest book is called I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. Norman, welcome.

Well, thank you for having me.

This book is a departure for you, I think.

You're not primarily writing about Israel-Palestine, which has been the prime focus of your scholarship.

You are offering also a really extended critique of the left, and you're saying this as a lifelong leftist.

So let me first ask you to talk about this book, why you wrote it,

and what kind of conversation you hope it elicits about what being a leftist is.

I am a person of the left and have been for the whole of my life, probably, you know, I would say consciously a person of the left from maybe age 15 or 16.

They came from a home saturated in politics.

And my parents were on the political spectrum.

On the left, you might even say on the far left, at least in words, I won't say in actions.

And it was clear that two phenomena were happening at the same time.

Number one, there was the Bernie Sanders candidacy or campaign, which was preceded by the Occupy movement and

several other milestones. And they culminated, they climaxed in the Bernie Sanders campaign.

And it was an extremely hopeful moment. And it was actually an exhilarating moment for a person of my politics because it seemed to

materialize a possibility, which was only a textbook possibility up until that moment. Namely, if you read

Karl Marx and his successors, there was always a core idea was this

homogenization of the working class, the polarization of wealth between a handful of people

who basically control everything and own everything.

And then on the other poll, those, the overwhelming majority who had nothing, who owned nothing

and had nothing.

...