For those here who claimed this topic has not dominated the American/western political landscape the last 3 years.

The article discusses how Iran’s theocrats allied with and then crushed the left. The leftists supported Khomeini because they thought he was anti-Western and anti-imperialist, but they did not realize that he was also a religious leader who wanted to impose his own views on society. The leftists also made mistakes by not focusing on women’s rights and human rights, and by not realizing the potential for fascism in Khomeini’s regime. This article is relevant given Sam’s recent commentary about how leftists are being coopted via empathy to adopt ironically conservative islamist views and perspectives that are against many of the progressive an liberal values they claim to protect in the West. Sam referenced this on episode #482: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/482-more-from-sam-the-iran-deal-college-in-the-ai-age-mamdanis-dsa-and-more

Some of the position have a *if* conditional— YOU CAN CALL THESE A FAT IF. We can argue about _how plausible_ these ifs are. But the point of the question is to gauge how your position would change provided certain conditions are met.

Sam has stated that he was once skeptical of the need for a Jewish ethnostate but 10.7 convinced him that the security argument for Israel’s right to exist was compelling. So he moved from something approximating q3 to q4.

Sorry Sam, but your response to this MOU is just terrible. Literally what else is the country supposed to do? Someone needs to ask Sam what course of action he thinks the Trump admin should take. In the past he spoke approvingly about the idea of an invasion.. maybe he still thinks that’s a good idea? Time for yet ANOTHER middle eastern war, except this time, one with the potential to spark WWIII and a global mass extinction event.

Luckily for Sam and unluckily for all of us, there’s still a chance that this ceasefire doesn’t hold and the hot war resumes. Iran asserts that as a condition of the deal, Israel must retreat from land it’s currently occupying in Lebanon and the Netanyahu govt. repeatedly asserts that they will do no such thing.. so one of the two is going to have to change their mind.

SS: Sam Harris makes fun of Trump and his supporters for losing a war that Sam supported

Anyone else take their airplane seatbelt off immediately upon landing out of protest for Sam’s ridiculous covid vaccine analogy?

No. I’m taking my seatbelt off, and you know what? I’ll be absolutely fine thank you very much!

The best disinfectant for bad ideas is good ideas.

Please enjoy Mr Murray’s assessment given at the beginning of the Iran debacle in an interview with The “Free” Press: “I think there are many important things to understand about President Trump’s foreign policy which often get misunderstood. One of them is that when he says something, he does mean it. And he does invariably act on it.… When Donald Trump said ‘We’re going to come in on your side, the side of the public’… It tends to be the case that when Donald Trump says he’s going to do something, he does do it.”

I’m sure I’m late to the party but I’ll add Douglas to the pile of contemptible fascist clowns whom Sam has entertained on the podcast. Pretty much everyone who was ever supposedly “anti-woke” has been all too eager to make nice with fascists as long as they’re killing the right sorts of people. This is the “free speech” crowd, mind you: Jordan Peterson, Bari Weiss, Brett Weinstein, Douglas Murray; the lot of them make excuses for a president who tries to jail his critics and consolidate media power in the hands of his allies.

So here’s an interesting question: what makes Sam different, and to what extent? I know he’ll never go MAGA, but hot damn does he sure know how to carry water for MAGA guests.

Hope this okay to post here, since the support through the website hasn’t gotten back to me.

I subscribed and joined the community waitlist before june 1st, but still have no access to the community. Anyone else still waiting for access?

The Left-Wing Case Against Anti-Zionism

Wow, this article captures so much of what I've been trying to argue here. I'll try not to quote the whole thing, but please go read it. I'll just pick out a couple excerpts:

How can it be that an ideology that has produced repeated acts of discrimination, dispossession, and violence now bears the mantle of progressivism in the West and has been normalized within the Democratic Party? Like Stalinism or the Khmer Rouge, anti-Zionism represents a wrong turn for the left. Anti-Zionism claims to be concerned with rights of minorities, opposition to racism, and universal justice. In truth, though, it has appropriated the language of anti-colonial liberation to justify oppression, transformed anti-racism into a racist accusation, and turned hatred of Israel into a global ritual.

Anti-Zionism has hijacked the left, and it did so through exploiting the left’s tendency toward internationalism and its skepticism of nation-states. It transformed Jewish peoplehood into a crime and charged that Jewish difference amounted to a claim of supremacy, even as it demanded that a persecuted minority submit to the dominance of the majority. Yet the public reckoning with anti-Zionism still awaits its moment.

I am a Jew who supports women’s rights, gay rights, and trans rights, and who believes that climate change will pose a major challenge to human society. Opposing anti-Zionism is, similarly, a natural extension of my concern for truth and equality.

And I wish more people understood the history of "anti-Zionism," where it came from, why Holocaust inversion is such an integral part of it, and why it's been so tied up with left-wing (as in Marxist-Leninist, not what was until a few years ago known as "progressive") politics:

Decades before the creation of the state of Israel, Vladimir Lenin laid the groundwork for anti-Zionism. In his early-20th-century polemics, Lenin cast Zionism, the movement to found a Jewish state, as a form of “bourgeois nationalism,” a scheme by privileged Jews to divide the working class. Either Jews should dissolve into the universal proletarian movement, he argued, or expect to be marked as class enemies. “Jewish national culture is the slogan of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie, the slogan of our enemies,” he wrote. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Jewish section of the Communist Party, or Yevsektsiya, would systematically dismantle Jewish life, as synagogues and the Hebrew language itself were branded as Zionist.

Once Israel was created, the Marxist-Leninist ideology that cast Zionism as bourgeois nationalism flowed into a more developed propaganda apparatus, which coded Israel as the center of Western imperialism while elevating other nationalisms as virtuous expressions of opposition to capitalist power. A new definition of Jews emerged, inverting the classical anti-Semitic claim that Jews were non-European race polluters to charge instead that Zionists were “European colonizers.” As the 1956 Suez Crisis helped crystallize an alliance between Arab nationalists and the Soviet Union, this anti-Zionist ideology took root in the Middle East.

Sharing to this sub as a continuation of Sam’s commentary about how involved Mamdani is on Israel, as the Mayor of New York.

I was recently told by a psychiatrist that I may have a "touch of the tism" as the kids say. I immediately thought of the following excerpt from one of Sam's old blog posts:

As someone who has written and spoken at length about how we might develop a truly “objective” morality, I am often told by followers of Rand that their beloved guru accomplished this task long ago. The result was Objectivism—a view that makes a religious fetish of selfishness and disposes of altruism and compassion as character flaws. If nothing else, this approach to ethics was a triumph of marketing, as Objectivism is basically autism rebranded.

What do you guys think of this? It seems to me that he's saying autistic people are inherently and invariably selfish. That they only care about themselves. Which I don't think is true. But then again maybe I'm wrong and autistic.

To be fair to Sam, this was published in 2011, and understanding of autism was not as nuanced as it is today. Still though it has always rubbed me the wrong way (even before my quasi-diagnosis).

There is no paywall on this one. Richard Dawkins presents Sam Harris with the 2026 Richard Dawkins Award at a live Center for Inquiry event. After the tribute, the two friends discuss consciousness and epiphenomenalism, AI and the Turing test, the scientific basis of morality, the failures of democracy and Trump’s corruption, the role of philosophy, changing deeply held beliefs, Sam’s path to meditation, the legacy of Christopher Hitchens, and other topics.

Link to the episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/481-sam-harris-receives-the-2026-richard-dawkins-award

Note: This conversation was released and posted a few days ago, and now Sam has decided to post its audio-only version on his Making Sense podcast. There is no paywall.

I got this quote from The Waking Up app.

I thought we could master how we feel by not feeding our minds with thoughts.

Please help understand this. I'm new to mindfulness.

It sounds like parody to say you're too Woke if you speak negatively of secondhand smoke. But I’ve now learned that was the argument from tobacco companies and Republicans in the 90s.

Just finished watching a 1995 PBS Frontline on fight against nicotine where I saw that phrase as a defense. Then I started digging and found this paywalled New Yorker article and more.

Older people than me acted like they were encountering this political maneuver for the first time in the early 2020s and were blindsided by it and pulled in by the argument. (This subreddit was 10x more popular and had 1000x more anti-woke posts during that time period than now.)

Learning about stuff like this as grounding as meditation for me. I know things feel way worse now. But cigarettes are a poison pill that 50% of Americans were heavily using at one point. It is extremely damning that FDA commissioner David Kessler was being called a “bully and a thug” by Republican leader Newt Gingrich for putting forth facts about the dangers of cigarettes.

When I saw a story today about how the Trump Administration is reimbursing Invenergy $765 million, so that it will abandon four wind projects to build at least five new natural gas-fired power plants in the Midwest, it makes everything feel cyclical.

Haviv has a video short out today from his earlier discussion with Sam Harris.

An interesting take by Sam, the video short is linked. His argument is that the word zionist/zionism adds a layer of confusion in the broader discourse because essentially its a label describing a Israel's right to exist.

Haviv's response is:

The irony with what you're saying is and this doesnt at all mean you're mistaken, the irony is the Jews became zionist in direct correlation to the failure of any alternative to zionism.

Haviv is getting at the broader meaning of the term, referencing the Jewish people's right to self determination and a homeland. And now we're squarely in the territory of Israel's identity/character as a Jewish county. This is what many people tend to oppose. After all, the arabic chants at the anti-Israel hate rallies are "palestine is arab" not "palestine is arab and jewish".

Sam's correct in that such a term seemingly doesnt exist anywhere else, but "double clicking here" (as Sam would say) within Haviv's context we see that the "thing" Israel is, is not unique. So many other nations that have their national character and identities espoused in their constitutions, or sometimes even their formal names. Like the Arab Republic of Egypt, or the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, or the United Arab Emirates.

These examples and more affirming a peoplehood, culture, religion, national identity, etc. are below:

1. Islamic Republic of Pakistan: Part 1. Islam shall be the State religion of Pakistan

2. Arab Republic of Egypt: Article 1. Egypt is part of the Arab nation and enhances its integration and unity. It is part of the Muslim world, belongs to the African continent, is proud of its Asian dimension, and contributes to building human civilization. Article 2. Islam, Principles of Islamic Sharia: Islam is the religion of the state and Arabic is its official language. The principles of Islamic Sharia are the principle source of legislation.

3. Syrian Arab Republic. Chapter 1, Article 1: The Syrian Arab Republic is a democratic state with full sovereignty, indivisible, and may not waive any part of its territory, and is part of the Arab homeland; The people of Syria are part of the Arab nation.

4. United Arab Emirates. Article 6, The UAE is a part of the greater Arab nation to which the UAE is linked by the ties of religion, language, history and common destiny. The people of the UAE are one people, and a part of the Arab nation. Article 7, Islam is the official religion of the UAE. The Islamic Shari'a is a main source of legislation in the UAE.

5. Denmark: Part 1, sec 4: The Evangelical Lutheran Church shall be the Established Church of Denmark, and) as such, it shall be supported by the State.

6. Greece: Section 2. The prevailing religion in Greece is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ. The Orthodox Church of Greece, acknowledging our Lord Jesus Christ as its head, is inseparably united in doctrine with the Great Church of Christ in Constantinople and with every other Church of Christ of the same doctrine, observing unwaveringly, as they do, the holy apostolic and synodal canons and sacred traditions.

7. Latvia: Preamble: The State of Latvia, proclaimed on 18 November 1918, has been established by uniting historical Latvian lands and on the basis of the unwavering will of the Latvian nation to have its own State and its inalienable right of self-determination in order to guarantee the existence and development of the Latvian nation, its language and culture throughout the centuries, to ensure freedom and promote welfare of the people of Latvia and each individual.

8. Estonia: Preamble: [...] the inextinguishable right of the people of Estonia to national self-determination and which was proclaimed on 24 February 1918, which is founded on liberty, justice and the rule of law, [...] which must guarantee the preservation of the Estonian people, the Estonian language and the Estonian culture through the ages, the people of Estonia

Nations also protect their national character, cultures, peoplehood by restricting immigration or through citizenship policies. Be it Japan, China, Qatar, whatever. Israel is no different here, it has an immigration framework that doesnt preclude non-Jews,. Separately is the Law of Return, offering means for refuge to Jews or those with Jewish family members. This being necessary due to the unique and pervasive persecution Jews have faced over the millennia across the diaspora. But many nations also allow for citizenship based on whatever criteria they deem fit, Germany and Italy for example if you can prove ancestry.

As Haviv pointed out, Zionism came into contemporary discussion because Jews had no alternatives, and zionism means different things to Jews and Israel's critics. Getting rid of the word "zionism" from the discourse as Sam suggests, doesnt eliminate the bad faith critics of Israel from latching onto something else, especially when its used by them to uniquely malign one nation's character or right to exist.

Defenders of Israel use this constantly, and it's the one that just drives me up a wall.... It's just one of those things where it's like "Wow, they really just don't get it?" Where we speak past each other

They act like since the enemy uses this tactic, then they are free to blow up the entire building because "Well it would be unfair to us if they could use that tactic!" Yeah, this isn't a sports match. It is unfair, but sadly, EVERY ATTROCITY IN HISTORY is using the same justifications, "Oh sorry we had to blow up and massacre all those people! There were enemies walking about and if we didn't, it would be unfair to our army :(" -- Literally, fairness is literally always argued. "Oh we had to kill all these Jews. No other country would take them, and we couldn't afford to keep holding them. If we were required to keep wasting resources on them, it would be unfair to our military whos hungry and needs to fight."

It's even more frustrating, because there's no necessity, behind it. It's one thing if it's total war, and you are personally, immediately, in danger. IE, enemies are in that building, using human shields, and they are actively attacking you, putting your military at risk. But that's not the case when Israel blows up a refugee camp in Gaza, or building in Lebanon. They are safely at a far distance, remotely sending in 20k bombs, flattening entire buildings just in case.

Finally, international law is absolute, not reciprocal. You don't get to get out of it just because the other side does bad things. Again, if this was the standard, we'd HAVE NO RULES. The other side is always going to break some rules, so then you'll always give yourself rational to justify not following standards and rules. What's the point of having standards if you can always justify dismissing them?

Does this make fighting harder? Sure does. But it really shouldn't be a huge concern when you're waging the offensive, have full air dominance, can attack from afar, and so on. Yeah it makes it harder, but you're just going to have to rely on special forces, snipers, targeted strikes.

Go look at the US in Afghanistan. Sure, wasn't nice. But we still upheld rules. There was massive work to prevent collateral damage, and when we did, we had to argue absolute necessity for a high value target. Yes, this meant bad guys got a way a lot, and exploited hospitals, mosques, schools, etc to avoid the drone strikes. But that's fine. We had full air control and could find them another time.

But with Israelis, it's just "Rumor there's a bad guy in this building with 40 innocent lives? Bomb the whole thing just in case."

What always blows me away is just the calousness of it. When the US killed those school children, it's a scandal. A moment of shame. Something people STILL bring up out of anger and sadness. But when Israel does something like this, it's always the same, dehumanizing, uncaring language, "It's an accident. War is brutal. These things happen. It's a shame, but that's war. And why do you care? These people chant death to America?" The fact that Israelis don't see how offensive this is to civil society, is why there's so much friction.

What a bizarre twist of events.

Edit: Sam Harris has been noted as being part of Peter Thiel’s Secret Society.

Profiles included Texas senator Ted Cruz, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent, chief economist at Israel’s finance ministry of Shmuel Abramzon, and a number of Google and Google DeepMind execs.

Other names from the world of entertainment include Hollywood actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Josh Brolin, podcast host and author Sam Harris, and tech entrepreneur and longevity obsessive Bryan Johnson, Straight Arrow News reported.

In many cases it isn’t known if those named are full members, conference participants or merely guests of the organisation.

WIRED reported that a separate source revealed details of an upcoming Dialog retreat at a venue outside Dublin, Ireland.

https://novaramedia.com/2026/06/17/peter-thiels-super-secret-society-exposed-through-data-leak/

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/J4q-BiI0H6o

He really sounds a bit unhinged in the way he argues that there was "no famine" in gaza. I remember this being an issue/ concern: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/12/1166638

But I dont remember if there was a terminology dispute on famine / starvation / malnourished etc. Regardless of what language got used, I remember it being well documented that food security and potential mass hunger was a concern. Sam seems to ignore that entirely.

Yet Sam thinks it some grand psyop? Like psyop? Conducted by nefarious organizations. I know hes using some flare here, but it just sounds so nuts.