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Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we look at three pieces from the magazine

with the writers behind them. I'm Lara Prendergars, the Spectator's executive editor. On this

week's episode, we'll take a look at how political identity has distorted our ability to

understand world conflicts. We'll be asking whether a picture really can tell a thousand words.

And finally, we'll be looking at what's behind the rise of witchcraft.

First up, in his cover piece this week for the magazine,

political scientist Yasha Monk has written about why identity politics has polarized our understanding of race,

and why the left has come to divide groups into oversimplified categories of the oppressors and the oppressed.

Yasha joins me now to discuss his piece.

So Yasha, can you start by explaining a little more your thesis that you write about in this week's issue?

Yeah, you know, when we started seeing the terrible images of Hamas' attack on Israel,

which ended up killing 1,400 people, the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

You know, many people were horrified,

they expressed the solidarity.

But there was also a strange and persistent part of the left,

but celebrated Hamas,

and there was many mainstream institutions

that fell conspicuously silent.

To understand that, I think we need to see it in the context of a broader ideology,

...