In today’s episode, River and I return to a conversation about Gaza, focusing on the discourse surrounding it, the function of antisemitism in the colonial creation of Israel, the state of resistance and the state of Israel’s genocide, as well as decolonization and the way whiteness and identification with institutions hampers leftist’s solidarity with decolonial movements. Perhaps a fitting epigraph for this episode would be a line from Aimé Césaire that River quotes in our conversation: “Europe is indefensible.” The end of Israel is not enough, we need the end of Europe and the end of the United States. One facet of our discussion is trying to get at the way we can find true solidarity with and inspiration from the resistance in Palestine. How do we bring the decolonial force from the colony to the heart of empire? In thinking about this, we touch on what stops people from having solidarity, or what trips up white leftists in their conceptions of decolonization. We also talk a bit about knowledge production in the academy and writing and thinking during this endless series of horrors surrounding us and escalating every day. But don’t worry, it’s not just doom and gloom: we find hope in the ways that Palestinians and others are teaching us life independent from the state.

Remember, as always, we have an online submission form at https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories and a phone line at ‪(917) 426-6548. Please write and call us, to share your break up stories, your questions about ending things, and your hopes for liberation! Our letters episodes are a recurring feature on the show, and we find that our writers appreciate the ways we help think of these situations, so keep writing us!

If you like this show, please share with your friends and rate and follow us wherever you get podcasts. You can also support the project and my writing by subscribing to my patreon patreon.com/thebreakuptheory. If you have any extra cash, you can sign up for $5/month, though nothing there is paywalled. On my patreon, I regularly post both short and long written pieces, along with episodes, and other conversations I’m having. I am so grateful for all of you supporting me and this project!

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. CZN brings together a slew of amazing audio projects, so check them out at https://channelzeronetwork.com/

CW - the last part of this episode contains mention and some details around sexual assault

We’re back with another entry in our letters episodes! In this conversation, Caroline and I discuss three different dilemmas presented to us by listeners. In the first we address the problems that come with queer longing and the difficulty of living single amidst the horrors of the world and social arrangements for couples. The second letter raises issues of ethics in relation to friendships: do you break up with a friend whose job you have a moral objection to? Are you obligated to tell them? Remember, as the endless merch says, all cops are bastards! And finally, the third letter comes from a haunted house, where the writer is battling ghosts and a very specific and terrible situation with an abusive ex, while still harboring an expansive dream of liberation for all. I want to give a content warning here, the letter discusses sexual assault, with some upsetting details, so if you are not up for that, turn the episode off after the second letter.

I really love the chance to discuss your issues, so I am very grateful for everyone who sends them in. I hope that our conversations prove helpful to you, as we look at things from multiple angles: these issues are so often, despite particular details, shared experiences and common struggles. And like with everything else, there are not many places to untangle the conjunction of relationships and our desires for liberation and anarchy, to step out of self-help into collective struggle.

We have an online submission form at https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories and a phone line at ‪(917) 426-6548. Please write and call us, to share your break up stories, your questions about ending things, and your hopes for liberation!

If you like this show, please share with your friends and rate and follow us wherever you get podcasts. You can also support the project and my writing by subscribing to my patreon https://patreon.com/thebreakuptheory. If you have any extra cash, you can sign up for $5/month, though nothing there is paywalled. On my patreon, I regularly post both short and long written pieces, along with episodes, and other conversations I’m having. I am so grateful for all of you supporting me and this project!

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. CZN brings together a slew of amazing audio projects, so check them out at https://channelzeronetwork.com/

On today’s episode, I got a chance to talk with Solomon Brager, the artist and author of the recently published graphic memoir, Heavyweight. Solomon Brager is a cartoonist and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. They are a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artists Fellow, a member of the Pinko magazine editorial collective and the director of community engagement at Jewish Currents magazine. Heavyweight deals with Solomon’s own search through the archives to learn the story of their German Jewish family fleeing the Nazis and escaping the Holocaust, specifically through Solomon’s elective affinity for a great grandfather, Erich, who was a boxer (and punched Nazis). The book is careful to tell the story of the Holocaust within a larger context of European colonial genocide, so that we see the eventual targeting of Jews, Roma, Sinti, and others as a continuation of German policies in Africa, for example. In this light, as Sol and I discuss, we can also view the eventual statehood of Israel as a culmination of this history of colonialism and violence. Though the book’s focus isn’t on Israel, we do spend time in this conversation analyzing the dynamics of Zionism in relation to the stories and teaching of the Holocaust to American Jews, and the idea of Jewish exceptionalism. One of the things I loved, and that we discuss also, is the way Sol represents in the book their own ambivalence about the this history, both in terms of family relations and scholarly practice, an ambivalence that Sol discusses as an ethical relationship to the past, an openness to being wrong. In this light, I also love the way this book depicts a kind of trans choosing of history and ancestors, as Sol finds a link to a Jewish masculinity in their great-grandfather: this is another ethical ambivalence, one that I think shows us we can tell stories of the past that don’t determine our future as inevitable, while still honoring the complexities of the dead. I highly recommend this book, it is honest, vulnerable, and thoughtful.

You can find Solomon Brager at https://solomonbrager.com, or on Instagram @jbbrager. I also am linking a comic that Sol did for Jewish Currents debunking claims to Jewish indigeneity, “When Settlers Become Native”—they mention it in our talk, and it’s a text I have also called on in my own writing. I also recommend checking out Pinko and Jewish Currents.

As always, We have an online submission form at https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories and a phone line at ‪(917) 426-6548. Please write and call us, to share your break up stories, your questions about ending things, and your hopes for liberation!

If you like this show, please share with your friends and rate and follow us wherever you get podcasts. You can also support the project and my writing by subscribing to my patreon patreon.com/thebreakuptheory. If you have any extra cash, you can sign up for $5/month, though nothing there is paywalled. On my patreon, I regularly post both short and long written pieces, along with episodes, and other conversations I’m having. I am so grateful for all of you supporting me and this project!

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. Check out this link to find many other important and fun projects, like my buddies, The Final Straw Radio.