Weekly Wrap Up: Haviv on The Breakfast Club, France, Abdul El-Sayed & More

Um, I'm sure a lot of you saw this, uh, friend of mine, friend of the show, as Tim Dillon would say, friend of the show, friend of the show, Khabib Retigur made an appearance on the breakfast club.

And, uh, there, you know, people had a lot of responses.

It sort of, you know, through a, if you're in a specific algorithm, um, It went through your feed and I watched the entire thing.

I didn't just watch clips.

I watched the entire thing.

I have some thoughts about it.

Um, and let's just get one thing straight.

Okay.

Because in our community, on the Jewish side, on the provisional side, there's, there's, there's, there's sometimes tends to be a little bit of a reactionary piling on of things.

And everyone likes to fetch.

Everyone's got opinions, you know, one Jew with million opinions.

Uh, Let's just acknowledge for a second the positive step in the right direction that something like this is, where you have someone who... is given an opportunity and they gave him the floor.

If you watch the whole episode, I thought they were the guys at the breakfast club, Charlemagne, everybody.

Did they push back? Did they have questions? Did they sort of give sometimes the generic, typical sort of warped, distorted understandings of the Middle East and push back with certain things? Sure.

But overall, man, did they give him the floor to give a perspective, a point of view? And you and I might not agree on every characterization or conclusion that Khabib might have or, uh, um, on his positions politically uh or his analysis even though we can acknowledge that he's certainly got the authority and has been an incredible force for good on this topic just the fact that it jumped out of a specific algorithm and universe onto a mainstream one is an incredibly positive development you have to acknowledge that and before you judge anybody you know i've been in the hot seat before you think it's easy to sit in that position You know, if you think too much and try to be so calculated over every answer and response that you give on everything, you know, the Internet and the people around you sniff that out in two seconds.

The best thing anyone can do is be as honest and authentic as they possibly can.

And I think he did that first and foremost, whether you agree or not with certain conclusions or answers he gave or, you know, the easiest thing to do is wag your finger and say, you should have done my bidding and said the thing I wanted you to say.

So stop, relax.

Being in the hot seat's not easy and give credit where it's due.

You know, they let Khabib be Khabib on a mainstream platform.

Love Dan Senor, love the world we're in, love the federations and panels and discussions where we all internally discuss these issues and how to combat this.

But you got to jump out of that world sometimes.

More than sometimes, because that's where the conversations and the narratives are being shaped and shifted and sometimes and often warped, obviously.

Everyone talks about messaging and PR war and all these things, but having honest actors get out there give their honest takes and opinions with an authentic informed authoritative position is the antidote to those without authority uh information knowledge authenticity the way to combat the dishonest actors is not to get together in a conference and discuss what to do about them but to actually get out there on the same platforms and give the counter arguments and the counter perspectives And he did it in a way that was different and refreshing.

And there were certainly things that I would discuss with him privately about and give, you know, constructive criticism and feedback, but not finger wagging and shame.