WEBVTT 00:00:14.710 --> 00:00:17.620 From New York, this is Democracy Now! 00:00:18.550 --> 00:00:23.610 We have lived in the shadows, invisible, overlooked, 00:00:25.170 --> 00:00:28.990 stereotyped and relegated as second-class citizens. 00:00:30.130 --> 00:00:33.480 And now, in the wake of a violent and brutal shooting, 00:00:34.140 --> 00:00:39.990 white America is still trying to deny our humanity and existence. 00:00:39.990 --> 00:00:41.980 Protests condemning racism 00:00:41.980 --> 00:00:45.480 and hate crimes against Asian Americans continue, 00:00:45.480 --> 00:00:48.720 following last week’s deadly shootings in Atlanta, 00:00:48.720 --> 00:00:54.020 where a 21-year-old white gunman attacked three Asian-owned spas, 00:00:54.020 --> 00:00:56.710 killing eight people, seven of them women, 00:00:56.710 --> 00:00:58.980 six of them of Asian descent. 00:00:58.980 --> 00:01:01.400 We’ll speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning 00:01:01.400 --> 00:01:04.240 Vietnamese American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen. 00:01:05.040 --> 00:01:06.330 Asian Americans, as a whole, 00:01:06.330 --> 00:01:08.780 have immediately concluded that this is, of course, 00:01:08.780 --> 00:01:12.030 a shooting that is driven by racist and sexist fantasies 00:01:12.030 --> 00:01:14.610 and inclinations that are deep-seated, 00:01:14.610 --> 00:01:16.100 not only in this particular shooter, 00:01:16.100 --> 00:01:18.780 but throughout American society and throughout American history. 00:01:18.780 --> 00:01:21.130 So, none of this takes us by surprise. 00:01:21.130 --> 00:01:23.460 Of course, it’s still deeply upsetting at the same time. 00:01:23.460 --> 00:01:25.830 But we point towards a very long history 00:01:25.830 --> 00:01:27.720 of anti-Asian violence in the United States 00:01:27.720 --> 00:01:30.030 that has existed here as long as there have been 00:01:30.030 --> 00:01:32.160 Asian immigrants and Asian Americans. 00:01:33.360 --> 00:01:34.890 Viet Thanh Nguyen will talk 00:01:34.890 --> 00:01:37.130 about the mass shootings in Atlanta, 00:01:37.130 --> 00:01:41.140 the link between hate crimes and U.S. foreign policy, 00:01:41.140 --> 00:01:45.090 the plight of refugees, as well as his new novel 00:01:45.090 --> 00:01:48.300 The Committed, a sequel to his prize-winning book, 00:01:48.300 --> 00:01:49.570 The Sympathizer. 00:01:49.570 --> 00:01:51.510 All that and more, coming up. 00:01:56.900 --> 00:02:00.240 Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, 00:02:00.240 --> 00:02:02.810 The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman. 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:05.810 Protesters took to the streets of cities 00:02:05.810 --> 00:02:07.280 across the United States 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:09.270 over the weekend to condemn racism 00:02:09.270 --> 00:02:11.690 and hate crimes against Asian Americans, 00:02:11.690 --> 00:02:15.100 following last week’s deadly shooting in Atlanta 00:02:15.100 --> 00:02:16.800 which killed eight people, 00:02:17.870 --> 00:02:20.480 six of them women of Asian descent. 00:02:20.480 --> 00:02:23.470 The names of all the victims have been released: 00:02:23.470 --> 00:02:27.490 Xiaojie Tan, Yong Ae Yue, Delaina Ashley 00:02:27.490 --> 00:02:33.460 Yaun, Suncha Kim, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, 00:02:33.460 --> 00:02:36.990 Daoyou Feng and Paul Andre Michels. 00:02:36.990 --> 00:02:40.840 Elcias Hernandez Ortiz, who survived the shooting, 00:02:40.840 --> 00:02:43.220 is in hospital in critical condition. 00:02:43.220 --> 00:02:46.510 In New York, community leaders and elected officials 00:02:46.510 --> 00:02:49.030 gathered for a vigil Friday evening. 00:02:49.030 --> 00:02:51.750 This is Jeehae Fischer of the Korean American Family 00:02:51.750 --> 00:02:53.030 Service Center. 00:02:53.030 --> 00:02:54.240 Jeehae Fischer: 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:57.510 "These women are our mothers, our aunties, 00:02:57.510 --> 00:03:03.090 our sisters, our daughters, our loved ones. 00:03:03.640 --> 00:03:06.990 So, stop beating us! Stop cursing at us! 00:03:06.990 --> 00:03:10.010 Stop stabbing us! Stop killing us! 00:03:10.880 --> 00:03:12.800 Stop Asian hate!" 00:03:12.800 --> 00:03:17.340 Protesters: "Stop Asian hate! Stop Asian hate! 00:03:17.340 --> 00:03:21.100 Stop Asian hate! Stop Asian hate! 00:03:21.100 --> 00:03:24.410 Stop Asian hate! Stop Asian hate!" 00:03:24.410 --> 00:03:27.209 Jeehae Fischer: "And stop telling us 'Go back to China.' 00:03:27.790 --> 00:03:30.640 We belong here." 00:03:31.430 --> 00:03:33.710 President Biden and Vice President Harris 00:03:33.710 --> 00:03:36.590 met with Asian American leaders in Atlanta 00:03:36.590 --> 00:03:38.280 and addressed the mass shooting. 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:41.250 This is Kamala Harris, who is the first Asian American 00:03:41.250 --> 00:03:42.850 and first woman vice president. 00:03:42.850 --> 00:03:44.080 Vice President Kamala Harris: 00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:47.730 "Everyone has the right to go to work, to go to school, 00:03:48.470 --> 00:03:51.750 to walk down the street and be safe, 00:03:52.740 --> 00:03:58.270 and also the right to be recognized as an American, 00:04:00.230 --> 00:04:05.040 not as the other, not as them, but as us. 00:04:06.090 --> 00:04:12.250 A harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us." 00:04:12.920 --> 00:04:16.230 President Biden has urged Congress to quickly pass 00:04:16.230 --> 00:04:19.520 the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. 00:04:19.520 --> 00:04:22.670 Meanwhile, lawmakers and others have questioned 00:04:22.670 --> 00:04:26.020 FBI Director Christopher Wray’s statement last week 00:04:26.020 --> 00:04:30.150 that the shooting was apparently "not racially motivated." 00:04:31.490 --> 00:04:33.980 The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing 00:04:33.980 --> 00:04:37.220 on a proposal to reduce gun violence Tuesday. 00:04:37.220 --> 00:04:42.010 The Atlanta mass murderer purchased a 9 mm handgun 00:04:42.010 --> 00:04:48.280 just hours before Tuesday’s massacre at three area spas. 00:04:48.280 --> 00:04:50.200 The purchase was fully legal. 00:04:58.860 --> 00:05:02.590 AstraZeneca says its COVID-19 vaccine 00:05:02.590 --> 00:05:07.380 showed 79% efficacy against symptomatic disease 00:05:07.380 --> 00:05:10.020 among participants in a large clinical trial 00:05:10.020 --> 00:05:13.940 in the United States. The vaccine was 100% effective 00:05:13.940 --> 00:05:16.520 in preventing serious illness and death. 00:05:16.520 --> 00:05:19.540 The findings pave the way for a fourth vaccine 00:05:19.540 --> 00:05:22.460 to request emergency use authorization in the U.S. 00:05:23.540 --> 00:05:26.220 The trial also showed no increased 00:05:26.220 --> 00:05:28.250 risk of serious blood clotting, 00:05:28.250 --> 00:05:31.100 after more than a dozen countries this month suspended 00:05:31.100 --> 00:05:34.110 or delayed its use over such concerns. 00:05:34.110 --> 00:05:36.090 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 00:05:36.090 --> 00:05:37.990 say one in six U.S. adults 00:05:37.990 --> 00:05:42.110 has now been fully vaccinated for COVID-19. 00:05:42.110 --> 00:05:45.320 Mississippi and Alaska have opened vaccine eligibility 00:05:45.320 --> 00:05:47.460 for anyone 16 or older. 00:05:47.460 --> 00:05:51.610 Floridians over 50 can get vaccinated starting today. 00:05:51.610 --> 00:05:54.980 In education news, the CDC updated its guidelines 00:05:54.980 --> 00:05:57.560 to say three feet of physical distancing 00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:01.060 is safe in elementary schools, though teachers and other staff 00:06:01.060 --> 00:06:03.450 should still maintain six feet of distance 00:06:03.450 --> 00:06:07.370 and masks must remain mandatory for all. 00:06:07.370 --> 00:06:10.150 New York City high schools are reopening today, 00:06:10.150 --> 00:06:13.860 though officials warn infection numbers remain dangerously high 00:06:13.860 --> 00:06:17.870 in parts of the city, on par with this winter’s surge. 00:06:17.870 --> 00:06:22.620 Miami Beach has imposed an emergency curfew after officials 00:06:22.620 --> 00:06:26.450 said spring break revelers brought "chaos and disorder" 00:06:26.450 --> 00:06:31.020 to the area and ignited fears of superspreader events. 00:06:31.020 --> 00:06:35.620 The Intercept reports Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson 00:06:35.620 --> 00:06:38.820 are planning to hike up prices on vaccines 00:06:38.820 --> 00:06:42.760 as soon as COVID-19 is no longer considered a pandemic. 00:06:43.430 --> 00:06:47.650 Health experts say COVID-19 will likely become endemic, 00:06:47.650 --> 00:06:50.630 and people will continue to require regular shots, 00:06:50.630 --> 00:06:52.390 much like the flu. 00:06:52.390 --> 00:06:56.440 AstraZeneca, which also vowed not to profit from the pandemic, 00:06:56.440 --> 00:06:59.940 could declare it is over as early as July. 00:07:01.590 --> 00:07:04.180 Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan 00:07:04.180 --> 00:07:06.860 has tested positive for COVID-19, 00:07:06.860 --> 00:07:09.580 two days after he received a vaccine 00:07:09.580 --> 00:07:13.490 and as Pakistan is facing a third wave of the virus. 00:07:13.490 --> 00:07:17.470 Chile has recorded its highest daily caseload yet, 00:07:17.470 --> 00:07:20.410 and officials say over a quarter of deaths this year 00:07:20.410 --> 00:07:22.550 are due to COVID-19. 00:07:22.550 --> 00:07:25.090 The surge comes despite relatively 00:07:25.090 --> 00:07:27.030 high vaccination rates, 00:07:27.030 --> 00:07:30.630 with 15% of the population fully vaccinated. 00:07:30.630 --> 00:07:32.440 A Department of Health and Human Services 00:07:32.440 --> 00:07:34.560 report says U.S. health officials 00:07:34.560 --> 00:07:37.370 in Donald Trump’s administration pressured 00:07:37.370 --> 00:07:43.200 Brazil to reject Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, 00:07:43.200 --> 00:07:47.260 putting geopolitical concerns over saving lives. 00:07:47.260 --> 00:07:51.170 In Japan, organizers for the July Tokyo Olympics 00:07:51.170 --> 00:07:53.930 are barring international spectators. 00:07:53.930 --> 00:07:56.630 After delaying the Olympics one year, 00:07:56.630 --> 00:07:58.570 officials pushed ahead with the event 00:07:58.570 --> 00:08:01.920 this summer despite health experts warning against it. 00:08:02.450 --> 00:08:05.710 In Europe, France and Poland are the latest countries 00:08:05.710 --> 00:08:10.900 to reinstate partial lockdowns amid fresh coronavirus surges. 00:08:11.700 --> 00:08:15.730 Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas 00:08:15.730 --> 00:08:18.640 appeared on multiple news shows over the weekend 00:08:18.640 --> 00:08:21.500 to say the U.S. border is effectively closed. 00:08:21.500 --> 00:08:22.960 DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: 00:08:22.960 --> 00:08:26.030 "The border is closed. We are expelling families. 00:08:26.030 --> 00:08:29.790 We are expelling single adults. And we’ve made a decision 00:08:30.400 --> 00:08:34.070 that we will not expel young, vulnerable children." 00:08:34.820 --> 00:08:37.460 Over 15,000 unaccompanied migrant children 00:08:37.460 --> 00:08:38.950 are now in U.S. custody 00:08:38.950 --> 00:08:42.040 as the number of asylum seekers at the southern border 00:08:42.040 --> 00:08:44.250 shows no sign of slowing down. 00:08:44.250 --> 00:08:47.760 Over 5,000 of those are being held in Customs 00:08:47.760 --> 00:08:52.890 and Border Protection jails. Axios reports over 800 children 00:08:52.890 --> 00:08:55.060 have been jailed for over 10 days — 00:08:55.060 --> 00:08:58.410 more than a fourfold increase over the past week. 00:08:59.250 --> 00:09:02.850 Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin arrived in Afghanistan Sunday 00:09:02.850 --> 00:09:06.820 for an unannounced visit with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani 00:09:06.820 --> 00:09:08.870 and top U.S. generals. 00:09:08.870 --> 00:09:12.130 The trip came after President Biden said last week 00:09:12.130 --> 00:09:15.220 the U.S. might not honor its agreement with the Taliban 00:09:15.220 --> 00:09:19.100 to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May 1. 00:09:19.100 --> 00:09:20.980 Secretary of State Antony Blinken 00:09:20.980 --> 00:09:24.230 is meeting top NATO officials in Brussels, Belgium, 00:09:24.230 --> 00:09:28.930 today to discuss whether to cancel or delay those plans. 00:09:28.930 --> 00:09:30.810 The Taliban have called on the U.S. 00:09:30.810 --> 00:09:33.580 to honor its commitments and warned of a "reaction" 00:09:33.580 --> 00:09:37.030 if the U.S. and its allies violate a peace agreement 00:09:37.030 --> 00:09:43.050 signed in February 2020. About 3,500 U.S. troops 00:09:43.050 --> 00:09:47.570 and another 6,500 NATO soldiers remain in Afghanistan — 00:09:47.570 --> 00:09:51.480 nearly 20 years after the U.S.-led invasion. 00:09:52.720 --> 00:09:55.330 Human rights groups are condemning Turkish President 00:09:55.330 --> 00:09:58.550 Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to withdraw 00:09:58.550 --> 00:10:02.850 from the Istanbul Convention, the world’s first binding treaty 00:10:02.850 --> 00:10:06.290 to combat violence against women and girls. 00:10:06.290 --> 00:10:10.670 Nearly 40% of Turkish women have been subjected to violence 00:10:10.670 --> 00:10:13.300 from their partner, according to U.N. figures, 00:10:13.300 --> 00:10:16.790 and local rights groups say femicides are on the rise. 00:10:16.790 --> 00:10:21.450 In Istanbul, women took to the streets to protest the move. 00:10:22.750 --> 00:10:24.760 Özlem Tekin: 00:10:25.390 --> 00:10:28.660 "I wasn’t feeling safe as a woman even before this. 00:10:28.660 --> 00:10:31.160 And after this, I feel even more like I am 00:10:31.160 --> 00:10:34.690 in an unsafe environment. At least there was a law, 00:10:34.690 --> 00:10:36.710 a decision that I was leaning on. 00:10:36.710 --> 00:10:40.280 But now I don’t feel like I have any support. I feel vulnerable." 00:10:41.580 --> 00:10:43.620 In Syria, at least six people are dead — 00:10:43.620 --> 00:10:45.670 including a child and medical workers — 00:10:45.670 --> 00:10:47.850 after Syrian forces shelled a hospital 00:10:47.850 --> 00:10:51.220 outside the rebel-controlled city of Aleppo on Sunday. 00:10:51.220 --> 00:10:54.270 Sixteen civilians were also wounded in the assault, 00:10:54.270 --> 00:10:55.990 four of them critically. 00:10:55.990 --> 00:10:58.390 The attack came despite a ceasefire deal 00:10:58.390 --> 00:11:02.130 brokered by Russia and Turkey in March of 2020. 00:11:02.130 --> 00:11:05.970 Physicians for Human Rights has documented nearly 600 attacks 00:11:05.970 --> 00:11:09.040 on healthcare facilities by Syria’s military 00:11:09.040 --> 00:11:13.170 and its allies since the start of the civil war a decade ago. 00:11:14.120 --> 00:11:16.310 In Spain, a 2-year-old girl 00:11:16.310 --> 00:11:19.500 who arrived with dozens of other refugees by boat 00:11:19.500 --> 00:11:22.160 to the Canary Islands last week has died. 00:11:22.160 --> 00:11:25.540 The girl’s name was Nabody. She was from Mali. 00:11:25.540 --> 00:11:29.440 She was one of 10 people, over half of them children, 00:11:29.440 --> 00:11:32.230 who were taken to hospital with hypothermia 00:11:32.230 --> 00:11:34.210 after their boat was rescued. 00:11:34.880 --> 00:11:37.850 In Israel, tens of thousands of people took to the streets 00:11:37.850 --> 00:11:40.080 Saturday for some of the largest protests 00:11:40.080 --> 00:11:42.830 yet against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 00:11:42.830 --> 00:11:44.350 ahead of Tuesday’s election. 00:11:44.350 --> 00:11:45.550 Eyal Goldman: 00:11:45.550 --> 00:11:47.490 "We are here to protest against Netanyahu 00:11:47.490 --> 00:11:49.210 and his corrupt government. 00:11:49.210 --> 00:11:51.790 This is our last chance before the election. 00:11:51.790 --> 00:11:53.990 We want everyone to come and vote to change, 00:11:54.660 --> 00:11:56.600 vote to exchange this government." 00:11:57.730 --> 00:12:00.500 Israel is heading into its fourth election 00:12:00.500 --> 00:12:04.240 in two years amid Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial. 00:12:04.750 --> 00:12:06.540 Protesters initially condemned 00:12:06.540 --> 00:12:08.510 the government response to the pandemic, 00:12:08.510 --> 00:12:12.300 but Netanyahu is hoping Israel’s rapid rollout of vaccines 00:12:12.300 --> 00:12:14.340 will help secure his win. 00:12:14.340 --> 00:12:15.680 In other news from the region, 00:12:15.680 --> 00:12:19.130 Israeli troops fatally shot a Palestinian man, 00:12:19.130 --> 00:12:21.380 42-year-old Atef Yussef Hanaysheh, 00:12:21.990 --> 00:12:25.430 Friday during protests against illegal Israeli settlements 00:12:25.430 --> 00:12:27.560 in the occupied West Bank. 00:12:28.740 --> 00:12:33.150 In Tanzania, Samia Suluhu Hassan made history Friday, 00:12:33.150 --> 00:12:36.050 becoming the nation’s first woman president. 00:12:36.050 --> 00:12:38.410 Hassan was Tanzania’s vice president 00:12:38.410 --> 00:12:41.940 but will now finish the term of John Magufuli, 00:12:41.940 --> 00:12:43.890 who died suddenly last week. 00:12:43.890 --> 00:12:46.270 Hassan will take on the national response 00:12:46.270 --> 00:12:49.160 to the COVID crisis, which her predecessor denied, 00:12:49.950 --> 00:12:52.350 shunning any public health measures. 00:12:58.730 --> 00:13:01.810 A Pakistani court sentenced two men to death 00:13:01.810 --> 00:13:03.490 for a rape last year 00:13:03.490 --> 00:13:06.440 which set off protests and national outrage. 00:13:06.440 --> 00:13:08.410 The men gang-raped and robbed a woman 00:13:08.410 --> 00:13:11.240 in front of her children after her car broke down. 00:13:11.240 --> 00:13:14.470 At the time, the Lahore police chief blamed the woman 00:13:14.470 --> 00:13:16.780 for traveling at night without a male companion 00:13:16.780 --> 00:13:20.500 and not making sure she had enough gas in her car. 00:13:23.050 --> 00:13:25.930 The FBI has reportedly opened an investigation 00:13:25.930 --> 00:13:28.200 into New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s role 00:13:28.200 --> 00:13:30.030 in shielding nursing home industry 00:13:30.030 --> 00:13:32.570 executives from liability over the deaths 00:13:32.570 --> 00:13:36.010 of thousands of residents from COVID-19. 00:13:36.010 --> 00:13:39.760 The liability protections came in April 2020, 00:13:39.760 --> 00:13:42.280 after the Greater New York Hospital Association 00:13:42.280 --> 00:13:45.310 and its executives gave over $2 million 00:13:45.310 --> 00:13:48.360 in donations to Cuomo’s campaign. 00:13:48.360 --> 00:13:52.280 The FBI is also investigating reports that top 00:13:52.280 --> 00:13:55.310 aides to Cuomo pressured state health officials 00:13:55.310 --> 00:13:58.210 to falsify state data to cover up 00:13:58.210 --> 00:14:02.120 the true number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. 00:14:02.120 --> 00:14:05.010 Meanwhile, an eighth woman has stepped forward 00:14:05.010 --> 00:14:09.210 to accuse Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual misconduct. 00:14:09.210 --> 00:14:12.710 Alyssa McGrath, one of Cuomo’s current aides, 00:14:12.710 --> 00:14:16.820 says the governor made numerous unwelcome sexual advances, 00:14:16.820 --> 00:14:19.860 ogled her body and remarked on her looks. 00:14:19.860 --> 00:14:22.770 The latest accusations came as former aide 00:14:22.770 --> 00:14:25.860 Lindsey Boylan called on New York’s Legislature 00:14:25.860 --> 00:14:27.890 to impeach Governor Cuomo. 00:14:27.890 --> 00:14:29.920 Boylan addressed a crowd of protesters 00:14:29.920 --> 00:14:31.120 in Manhattan Saturday. 00:14:31.120 --> 00:14:32.340 Lindsey Boylan: 00:14:32.340 --> 00:14:35.830 "In December, I spoke truth to power on the harassment 00:14:35.830 --> 00:14:38.610 and bullying I faced working for Governor Cuomo. 00:14:39.670 --> 00:14:41.470 And when the governor should have been focused 00:14:41.470 --> 00:14:43.550 on leading us out of this pandemic, 00:14:43.550 --> 00:14:46.580 he was instead focused on covering up the deaths 00:14:46.580 --> 00:14:48.420 of 15,000 New Yorkers 00:14:48.420 --> 00:14:50.690 and smearing me and my reputation." 00:14:52.250 --> 00:14:53.520 In western New York, 00:14:53.520 --> 00:14:56.920 Republican U.S. Congressmember Tom Reed 00:14:56.920 --> 00:14:59.790 has apologized to a female lobbyist 00:14:59.790 --> 00:15:02.940 who accused him of unwanted sexual advances. 00:15:02.940 --> 00:15:05.130 Nicolette Davis says Congressmember Reed 00:15:05.130 --> 00:15:08.350 drunkenly rubbed her back, unhooked her bra 00:15:08.350 --> 00:15:11.420 and moved his hand to her thigh during a gathering 00:15:11.420 --> 00:15:14.820 at a Minneapolis bar in 2017. 00:15:14.820 --> 00:15:18.510 Reed said he would not seek reelection next year. 00:15:18.510 --> 00:15:21.420 He’s among elected officials who’ve called on Governor Cuomo 00:15:21.420 --> 00:15:24.090 to resign over sexual harassment claims, 00:15:24.090 --> 00:15:25.870 and said as recently as last month 00:15:25.870 --> 00:15:29.700 he was considering a run for governor in 2022. 00:15:32.600 --> 00:15:34.610 Louisiana Republican Julia 00:15:34.610 --> 00:15:38.660 Letlow has won a special election to replace her husband, 00:15:38.660 --> 00:15:42.530 Luke Letlow, who died in December of COVID-19 00:15:42.530 --> 00:15:45.220 before he could take his seat in Congress 00:15:45.220 --> 00:15:47.790 for what would have been his freshman term. 00:15:47.790 --> 00:15:49.730 Meanwhile, Louisiana Democrats 00:15:49.730 --> 00:15:52.420 Troy Carter and Karen Carter Peterson 00:15:52.420 --> 00:15:54.130 head to an April runoff 00:15:54.130 --> 00:15:56.640 to see who will fill the congressional seat 00:15:56.640 --> 00:15:58.380 vacated by Cedric Richmond, 00:15:58.380 --> 00:15:59.990 who is now serving as the White House 00:15:59.990 --> 00:16:02.280 director of public engagement. 00:16:03.600 --> 00:16:05.890 New York Congressmembers Nydia Velázquez 00:16:05.890 --> 00:16:07.970 and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 00:16:07.970 --> 00:16:10.470 introduced a bill that would allow Puerto Rico 00:16:10.470 --> 00:16:13.120 to determine its territorial status, 00:16:13.120 --> 00:16:15.970 including statehood or independence from the U.S. 00:16:17.290 --> 00:16:19.220 New Jersey’s Bob Menendez 00:16:19.220 --> 00:16:21.070 introduced the measure in the Senate. 00:16:22.100 --> 00:16:25.300 "A colony is incompatible with democracy," 00:16:25.300 --> 00:16:27.220 said Ocasio-Cortez. 00:16:28.010 --> 00:16:31.210 Youth climate activists staged a global strike Friday, 00:16:31.210 --> 00:16:34.260 after a year of scaled-down and virtual protests 00:16:34.260 --> 00:16:35.620 due to the pandemic. 00:16:35.620 --> 00:16:36.850 Climate striker: "What do we want?" 00:16:36.850 --> 00:16:38.220 Climate strikers: "Climate justice!" 00:16:38.220 --> 00:16:39.450 Climate striker: "When do we want it?" 00:16:39.450 --> 00:16:40.650 Climate strikers: "Now!" 00:16:40.650 --> 00:16:41.850 Climate striker: "No more..." 00:16:41.850 --> 00:16:43.770 Climate strikers: "Empty promises!" 00:16:43.770 --> 00:16:45.840 "No more empty promises!" 00:16:45.840 --> 00:16:48.460 chanted climate strikers in Kenya. 00:16:48.460 --> 00:16:50.360 Youth activists from around the world 00:16:50.360 --> 00:16:53.700 called on their governments to treat the climate catastrophe 00:16:53.700 --> 00:16:55.330 as an immediate crisis 00:16:55.330 --> 00:16:58.740 and fulfill their commitments to cut emissions. 00:16:59.570 --> 00:17:03.780 Renowned Egyptian feminist, writer, psychiatrist 00:17:03.780 --> 00:17:06.480 and former political prisoner Nawal El Saadawi 00:17:06.480 --> 00:17:08.700 has died at the age of 89. 00:17:09.290 --> 00:17:11.770 El Saadawi was the founder and president 00:17:11.770 --> 00:17:14.950 of the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association 00:17:14.950 --> 00:17:17.830 and an outspoken defender of women’s rights, 00:17:17.830 --> 00:17:19.980 campaigning against sexual oppression, 00:17:19.980 --> 00:17:23.040 imperialism and female genital mutilation. 00:17:23.040 --> 00:17:25.700 She described her own experience with the practice 00:17:25.700 --> 00:17:28.570 in the book "Hidden Face of Eve." 00:17:28.570 --> 00:17:34.180 In 2011, she joined the uprising in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, 00:17:34.180 --> 00:17:37.420 which led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. 00:17:37.420 --> 00:17:39.890 Nawal El Saadawi spoke to Democracy Now! 00:17:39.890 --> 00:17:41.710 during the Egyptian revolution. 00:17:41.710 --> 00:17:43.140 Nawal El Saadawi: 00:17:43.140 --> 00:17:46.320 "Women and girls are beside boys in the streets. 00:17:47.560 --> 00:17:51.180 And we are calling for justice, freedom and equality, 00:17:51.180 --> 00:17:56.140 and real democracy and a new constitution, 00:17:56.140 --> 00:17:58.390 no discrimination between men and women, 00:17:58.390 --> 00:18:01.060 no discrimination between Muslims and Christians, 00:18:01.650 --> 00:18:03.720 to change the system, 00:18:03.720 --> 00:18:06.080 to change the people who are governing us, 00:18:06.080 --> 00:18:08.240 the system and the people, 00:18:08.240 --> 00:18:12.710 and to have a real democracy. That’s what women are saying." 00:18:13.420 --> 00:18:16.380 That was Nawal El Saadawi, speaking to Democracy Now! 00:18:16.380 --> 00:18:22.330 on January 31, 2011. She has died at the age of 89. 00:18:22.330 --> 00:18:24.620 Click here to see all of our interviews 00:18:24.620 --> 00:18:27.020 with Nawal El Saadawi. 00:18:27.750 --> 00:18:30.530 And those are some of the headlines this is Democracy 00:18:30.530 --> 00:18:32.450 Now, Democracynow.org, 00:18:34.450 --> 00:18:52.020 the War and Peace Report. 00:19:17.720 --> 00:19:22.560 I’m Amy 00:20:01.510 --> 00:20:03.210 Goodman. 00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:11.860 AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, 00:20:11.860 --> 00:20:14.180 The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman. 00:20:14.780 --> 00:20:16.720 Protests condemning racism 00:20:16.720 --> 00:20:20.040 and hate crimes against Asian Americans continue, 00:20:20.040 --> 00:20:23.540 following last week’s deadly shootings in Atlanta, 00:20:23.540 --> 00:20:28.380 where a white 21-year-old gunman attacked three Asian-owned spas, 00:20:28.380 --> 00:20:31.210 killing eight people, seven of them women, 00:20:31.210 --> 00:20:33.740 six of them women of Asian descent. 00:20:33.740 --> 00:20:36.200 President Biden and Kamala Harris 00:20:36.200 --> 00:20:38.660 traveled to Atlanta on Friday 00:20:38.660 --> 00:20:40.880 to meet with Asian American leaders. 00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:44.180 Vice President Harris, who is the the first Asian American 00:20:44.180 --> 00:20:48.770 and first woman vice president, condemned last week’s attacks. 00:20:49.470 --> 00:20:51.430 VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Whatever the killer’s motive, 00:20:51.430 --> 00:20:53.570 these facts are clear: 00:20:53.570 --> 00:20:56.700 Six out of the eight people killed on Tuesday night 00:20:57.470 --> 00:21:01.480 were of Asian descent. Seven were women. 00:21:02.890 --> 00:21:05.490 The shootings took place in businesses 00:21:05.490 --> 00:21:07.410 owned by Asian Americans. 00:21:08.460 --> 00:21:12.910 The shootings took place as violent hate crimes 00:21:12.910 --> 00:21:15.490 and discrimination against Asian Americans 00:21:15.490 --> 00:21:19.750 has risen dramatically over the last year and more. 00:21:20.960 --> 00:21:22.620 In fact, over the past year, 00:21:22.620 --> 00:21:26.040 3,800 such incidents have been reported, 00:21:27.120 --> 00:21:29.440 two of three by women, 00:21:30.700 --> 00:21:34.370 everything from physical assaults to verbal accusations. 00:21:35.390 --> 00:21:39.200 And it’s all harmful. And sadly, it’s not new. 00:21:40.540 --> 00:21:44.160 Racism is real in America, and it has always been. 00:21:45.250 --> 00:21:49.630 Xenophobia is real in America and always has been. 00:21:50.680 --> 00:21:53.180 Sexism, too. ... For the last year, 00:21:53.760 --> 00:21:56.720 we’ve had people in positions of incredible power 00:21:58.430 --> 00:22:00.610 scapegoating Asian Americans, 00:22:01.540 --> 00:22:06.110 people with the biggest pulpits spreading this kind of hate. 00:22:06.950 --> 00:22:09.730 AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, hundreds of demonstrators 00:22:09.730 --> 00:22:13.360 gathered outside the Georgia state Capitol in Atlanta. 00:22:13.360 --> 00:22:17.130 Speakers included Georgia state Representative Bee Nguyen. 00:22:18.200 --> 00:22:20.230 REP. BEE NGUYEN: We have lived in the shadows, 00:22:21.100 --> 00:22:23.570 invisible, overlooked, stereotyped 00:22:24.680 --> 00:22:28.380 and relegated as second-class citizens. 00:22:29.780 --> 00:22:33.790 And now, in the wake of a violent and brutal shooting, 00:22:33.790 --> 00:22:39.210 white America is still trying to deny our humanity and existence. 00:22:41.020 --> 00:22:45.900 A 21-year-old white man targeted three Asian businesses, 00:22:46.500 --> 00:22:49.550 driving 40 minutes from one spot to another, 00:22:50.200 --> 00:22:52.890 passing other adult entertainment businesses, 00:22:54.180 --> 00:22:56.970 but he shot and killed eight people, 00:22:57.710 --> 00:23:03.420 six of them being Asian women, at close range, in the head. 00:23:04.620 --> 00:23:07.350 No matter how you want to spin it, 00:23:07.350 --> 00:23:09.050 the facts remain the same. 00:23:10.030 --> 00:23:13.480 This was an attack on the Asian community. 00:23:14.860 --> 00:23:16.580 AMY GOODMAN: The Reverend William Barber, 00:23:16.580 --> 00:23:19.510 co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign, 00:23:19.510 --> 00:23:22.120 also addressed the protest in Atlanta. 00:23:23.280 --> 00:23:26.820 REV. WILLIAM BARBER II: Let us not forget that white supremacy 00:23:27.360 --> 00:23:28.710 is not just against 00:23:28.710 --> 00:23:31.700 Black people, but humanity itself. 00:23:31.700 --> 00:23:38.010 Let us remember that white supremacy 00:23:38.010 --> 00:23:41.950 is a form of self-worship and idolatry. 00:23:41.950 --> 00:23:46.910 And whenever it is pushed and promulgated by presidents 00:23:46.910 --> 00:23:49.390 and politicians and preachers, 00:23:49.390 --> 00:23:54.310 it can cause some of the most strangely justification 00:23:54.310 --> 00:23:57.330 for the taking of life this world has ever seen. 00:23:57.330 --> 00:24:01.420 And when white supremacy is promulgated, 00:24:01.420 --> 00:24:05.180 it will try to justify taking Black life, 00:24:05.180 --> 00:24:08.430 taking Brown life, taking Indigenous life, 00:24:08.430 --> 00:24:11.390 taking Indian life, taking Asian life, 00:24:11.390 --> 00:24:14.320 taking Jewish life, taking Muslim life, 00:24:14.320 --> 00:24:17.100 taking Palestinian life and taking gay life. 00:24:17.100 --> 00:24:23.700 And we come here to say that white supremacy 00:24:24.760 --> 00:24:27.970 is a lie teller and a life taker! 00:24:29.280 --> 00:24:31.150 AMY GOODMAN: As we continue to look at the mass 00:24:31.150 --> 00:24:33.990 shootings in Atlanta, the spike in hate crimes 00:24:33.990 --> 00:24:36.830 targeting Asian Americans and broader issues, 00:24:36.830 --> 00:24:38.990 we’re joined in Los Angeles, California, 00:24:38.990 --> 00:24:40.900 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning 00:24:40.900 --> 00:24:43.860 Vietnamese American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen. 00:24:43.860 --> 00:24:45.960 His new novel, The Committed, 00:24:45.960 --> 00:24:48.160 a sequel to his best-selling book, 00:24:48.160 --> 00:24:49.420 The Sympathizer. 00:24:49.420 --> 00:24:53.290 His other books include The Refugees and The Displaced: 00:24:53.290 --> 00:24:56.330 Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, 00:24:56.330 --> 00:24:57.610 which he edited. 00:24:57.610 --> 00:25:00.160 Viet Thanh Nguyen came to the United States 00:25:00.160 --> 00:25:03.240 as a refugee when he was 4 years old. 00:25:03.240 --> 00:25:04.900 He’s a professor at the University 00:25:04.900 --> 00:25:08.250 of Southern California and recently co-wrote an article 00:25:08.250 --> 00:25:10.540 for The Washington Post headlined 00:25:10.540 --> 00:25:13.880 "Bipartisan political rhetoric about Asia 00:25:13.880 --> 00:25:16.940 leads to anti-Asian violence here." 00:25:17.640 --> 00:25:20.840 Professor Nguyen, it’s great to have you back on Democracy Now! 00:25:21.430 --> 00:25:23.610 Congratulations on your new book! 00:25:24.330 --> 00:25:31.230 And condolences on the horror that has taken place in Atlanta, 00:25:31.230 --> 00:25:35.210 which is not just a horror for the Asian American community, 00:25:35.210 --> 00:25:37.890 but clearly for all of us. 00:25:37.890 --> 00:25:41.920 If you can talk about the significance of what happened 00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:45.550 and also the point you make in this op-ed 00:25:45.550 --> 00:25:48.320 in The Washington Post, where you say, 00:25:48.320 --> 00:25:51.550 "Bipartisan political rhetoric about Asia 00:25:51.550 --> 00:25:54.260 leads to anti-Asian violence here"? 00:25:55.220 --> 00:25:56.450 VIET THANH NGUYEN: Hi, Amy. 00:25:56.450 --> 00:25:58.450 Thanks so much for having me back again 00:25:58.450 --> 00:26:01.080 and to speak on this really tragic topic. 00:26:01.800 --> 00:26:06.100 I spent the last week talking to a lot of fellow Asian Americans. 00:26:06.100 --> 00:26:09.220 We’re all, I think, in a state of anger and despair 00:26:09.930 --> 00:26:11.210 about what happened, 00:26:11.210 --> 00:26:13.360 and, I think, partly because, for many of us, 00:26:13.360 --> 00:26:15.820 we recognize that this is not anything new. 00:26:15.820 --> 00:26:18.880 As I’ve spoken about repeatedly, and as have so many others, 00:26:18.880 --> 00:26:21.270 the history of anti-Asian violence in this country 00:26:21.270 --> 00:26:22.580 goes back to as long as we’ve had 00:26:22.580 --> 00:26:24.760 Asian immigrants in this country, 00:26:24.760 --> 00:26:26.810 that Asian immigrants have been brought here 00:26:26.810 --> 00:26:28.920 to have their labor exploited. 00:26:28.920 --> 00:26:30.710 And to have that labor exploited, 00:26:30.710 --> 00:26:32.540 it’s often couched in a language 00:26:32.540 --> 00:26:35.870 and a justification of racism and sexism. 00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:38.290 And that is also tied to the United States’ 00:26:38.290 --> 00:26:40.280 attitudes towards Asia as a whole, 00:26:40.280 --> 00:26:43.510 that the United States has, ever since the 19th century, 00:26:43.510 --> 00:26:45.850 been focused on expanding westwards into Asia, 00:26:45.850 --> 00:26:48.420 especially China, to reach Asian resources, 00:26:49.020 --> 00:26:51.260 and that this has had a distinct relationship 00:26:51.260 --> 00:26:53.920 in terms of pulling Asia immigrants to the United States, 00:26:53.920 --> 00:26:56.130 either through economic relationships or through wars 00:26:56.130 --> 00:26:57.680 that the United States has fought 00:26:57.680 --> 00:26:59.820 with many Asian countries. 00:27:00.350 --> 00:27:02.690 So, for many of us, I think, 00:27:02.690 --> 00:27:04.310 during the last year of the pandemic, 00:27:04.310 --> 00:27:08.150 to hear President Trump and many of his supporters 00:27:08.150 --> 00:27:11.600 talk about COVID-19 as the "kung flu" 00:27:11.600 --> 00:27:15.380 and the "China virus" was simply the most recent manifestation 00:27:15.380 --> 00:27:18.430 of a deep-held anti-Asian racism, 00:27:18.430 --> 00:27:21.600 that when people say things like "kung flu" and "China virus," 00:27:21.600 --> 00:27:25.310 they’re tapping into this very deep well of anti-Asian feeling. 00:27:25.870 --> 00:27:29.450 And I think that that combined with the obvious stresses 00:27:29.450 --> 00:27:33.480 of the pandemic has a direct relationship to the rise, 00:27:33.480 --> 00:27:35.130 the very significant rise, 00:27:35.130 --> 00:27:37.100 in anti-Asian violence and rhetoric 00:27:37.100 --> 00:27:38.550 that many people have experienced 00:27:38.550 --> 00:27:40.560 in the last 12 months. 00:27:40.560 --> 00:27:42.440 But outside of that immediate trigger, 00:27:42.440 --> 00:27:45.970 I think that the bipartisan rhetoric that I mentioned, 00:27:45.970 --> 00:27:47.930 the fact that both Democrats and Republicans 00:27:47.930 --> 00:27:51.760 have focused on China as the major threat 00:27:51.760 --> 00:27:54.350 and competitor to the United States, 00:27:54.350 --> 00:27:57.040 number one, continues this concern with Asia 00:27:57.040 --> 00:27:59.830 that’s been present throughout much of American history, 00:27:59.830 --> 00:28:01.860 but also keeps China in the foreground 00:28:01.860 --> 00:28:06.050 of the American imagination as a country to be feared. 00:28:06.050 --> 00:28:07.780 And I think that, inevitably, 00:28:07.780 --> 00:28:10.240 whether this is said with explicit racism 00:28:10.240 --> 00:28:13.950 or just with a latent and implicit xenophobia, 00:28:13.950 --> 00:28:17.060 it can’t help but to aggravate the suspicions 00:28:17.060 --> 00:28:18.610 and the feelings of many Americans 00:28:18.610 --> 00:28:20.310 about people of Asian descent. 00:28:21.320 --> 00:28:24.080 AMY GOODMAN: As we speak, in this past week, 00:28:24.080 --> 00:28:26.830 Secretary of State Antony Blinken 00:28:26.830 --> 00:28:29.560 and the Pentagon chief, 00:28:29.560 --> 00:28:32.530 Lloyd Austin, have been traveling the world 00:28:32.530 --> 00:28:36.420 and fully taking on China, if you will. 00:28:36.420 --> 00:28:38.130 I mean, Secretary of State Blinken 00:28:38.130 --> 00:28:39.940 had his first face-to-face meeting 00:28:39.940 --> 00:28:43.200 with top Chinese officials in Alaska. 00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:44.840 During a press conference 00:28:44.840 --> 00:28:48.290 before that with Japanese officials earlier in the week, 00:28:48.290 --> 00:28:53.180 Blinken warned China not to use coercion or aggression. 00:28:53.180 --> 00:28:54.760 This is what he said. 00:28:54.760 --> 00:28:55.990 SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: We’re united 00:28:55.990 --> 00:28:59.430 in the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific region, 00:29:00.390 --> 00:29:02.310 where countries follow the rules, 00:29:02.310 --> 00:29:04.410 cooperate whenever they can, 00:29:05.230 --> 00:29:07.279 and resolve their differences peacefully. 00:29:07.820 --> 00:29:09.380 And in particular, we will push back, 00:29:09.380 --> 00:29:12.580 if necessary, when China uses coercion or aggression 00:29:12.580 --> 00:29:13.920 to get its way. 00:29:13.920 --> 00:29:15.880 AMY GOODMAN: And this is Defense Secretary Lloyd 00:29:15.880 --> 00:29:19.160 Austin speaking at that joint news conference in Japan. 00:29:20.030 --> 00:29:21.280 DEFENSE SECRETARY LLOYD AUSTIN: I know Japan shares 00:29:21.280 --> 00:29:24.600 our concerns with China’s destabilizing actions. 00:29:25.710 --> 00:29:27.410 And as I have said before, 00:29:28.580 --> 00:29:32.540 China is a pacing challenge for the Department of Defense. 00:29:33.890 --> 00:29:36.280 AMY GOODMAN: And so, you have Austin. You have Biden. 00:29:36.280 --> 00:29:38.290 We’re not just talking about Trump 00:29:38.290 --> 00:29:40.530 using terms like the "China virus." 00:29:41.480 --> 00:29:43.779 Can you respond to what they have been saying? 00:29:45.290 --> 00:29:46.590 VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, I think, again, 00:29:46.590 --> 00:29:48.480 that much of American foreign policy, 00:29:48.480 --> 00:29:50.200 during the period of the Cold War and afterwards, 00:29:50.200 --> 00:29:52.840 has depended upon a foreign other, 00:29:52.840 --> 00:29:56.630 whether it’s the Soviet Union or China in those years. 00:29:57.140 --> 00:30:00.030 And it’s obvious, I mean, that we need a foreign other 00:30:00.030 --> 00:30:02.370 in order to target our political rhetoric, 00:30:02.370 --> 00:30:04.920 in order to justify our vast expenditures 00:30:04.920 --> 00:30:07.580 in terms of our military-industrial complex. 00:30:07.580 --> 00:30:11.710 So, China has again resumed that position for the United States — 00:30:11.710 --> 00:30:13.030 Russia, too, to a certain extent. 00:30:13.030 --> 00:30:15.570 But I think China, because of this, again, 00:30:15.570 --> 00:30:17.190 deep well of anti-Asian racism, 00:30:17.190 --> 00:30:19.810 this set of Orientalist expectations 00:30:19.810 --> 00:30:23.220 that we have that China is going to be mysterious, 00:30:23.220 --> 00:30:25.000 that it’s going to be menacing, 00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:27.370 that it’s going to have all kinds of calculations 00:30:27.370 --> 00:30:29.340 going on strategically and economically 00:30:29.340 --> 00:30:30.810 that we have to worry about — 00:30:30.810 --> 00:30:35.590 all this is being put forth by various people in both parties. 00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:38.250 And I think that one of the things to stress here 00:30:38.250 --> 00:30:40.440 is that, of course, there are things about China 00:30:40.440 --> 00:30:41.880 that we should be concerned about. 00:30:41.880 --> 00:30:43.330 I think that we should be concerned 00:30:43.330 --> 00:30:45.200 about human rights abuses 00:30:45.200 --> 00:30:48.170 that China has undertaken in Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang. 00:30:48.960 --> 00:30:51.440 But oftentimes this kind of rhetoric 00:30:51.440 --> 00:30:55.190 about what China is doing is, again, being used to justify 00:30:55.190 --> 00:30:57.080 an American militaristic stance against China, 00:30:57.080 --> 00:30:58.460 instead of the United States 00:30:58.460 --> 00:31:00.470 worrying about how it can compete with China 00:31:00.470 --> 00:31:03.420 economically but in a nonviolent and nonthreatening manner. 00:31:03.960 --> 00:31:07.930 And, of course, our outrage about the depredations of China 00:31:07.930 --> 00:31:10.460 against its own people is sometimes a little bit 00:31:10.460 --> 00:31:12.740 hypocritical,,because we’re still struggling, 00:31:12.740 --> 00:31:14.680 as we are talking about now, 00:31:14.680 --> 00:31:17.420 with our own capacity to take care of Americans. 00:31:18.340 --> 00:31:19.540 AMY GOODMAN: Last week, 00:31:19.540 --> 00:31:22.500 Republican Congressmember Chip Roy of Texas 00:31:22.500 --> 00:31:26.400 was rebuked for using a House Judiciary Committee 00:31:27.110 --> 00:31:31.000 meeting on the rise of anti-Asian violence 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:35.150 to glorify lynchings and used rhetoric about China 00:31:35.150 --> 00:31:38.050 that stokes racism toward Asian American communities. 00:31:38.050 --> 00:31:40.230 This is just a small part of what he said. 00:31:41.040 --> 00:31:43.020 REP. CHIP ROY: I think there’s old sayings in Texas about, 00:31:43.020 --> 00:31:45.010 you know, find the — all the rope in Texas 00:31:45.010 --> 00:31:46.770 and get a tall oak tree. ... 00:31:46.770 --> 00:31:50.490 So, now we’re talking about whether talking about China, 00:31:52.100 --> 00:31:54.650 the Chicoms, the Chinese Communist Party, 00:31:54.650 --> 00:31:56.170 whatever phrasing we want to use, 00:31:56.170 --> 00:31:57.380 and if some people are saying, 00:31:57.380 --> 00:31:59.580 "Hey, we think those guys are the bad guys," 00:32:00.700 --> 00:32:03.790 for whatever reason — and let me just say clearly, I do. 00:32:04.970 --> 00:32:06.769 I think the Chinese Communist Party, 00:32:07.540 --> 00:32:10.490 running the country of China, I think they’re the bad guys. 00:32:11.590 --> 00:32:13.639 And I think that they are harming people. 00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:18.510 AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Texas Congressmember Chip Roy 00:32:18.510 --> 00:32:20.840 using the term, the Cold Warrior term, 00:32:20.840 --> 00:32:23.060 "Chicom," for the Chinese Communist Party. 00:32:23.060 --> 00:32:27.180 This was a hearing on violence against Asian Americans. 00:32:27.180 --> 00:32:29.050 This was the response 00:32:29.050 --> 00:32:31.930 from New York Democratic Congressmember Grace Meng. 00:32:32.870 --> 00:32:35.290 REP. GRACE MENG: Your president and your party 00:32:35.290 --> 00:32:38.400 and your colleagues can talk about issues 00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:41.130 with any other country that you want, 00:32:41.130 --> 00:32:44.080 but you don’t have to do it by putting a bull’s-eye 00:32:44.080 --> 00:32:47.080 on the back of Asian Americans across this country, 00:32:47.080 --> 00:32:49.140 on our grandparents, on our kids. 00:32:49.790 --> 00:32:52.050 This hearing was to address the hurt 00:32:52.050 --> 00:32:55.510 and pain of our community and to find solutions, 00:32:55.510 --> 00:32:58.140 and we will not let you take our voice away from us. 00:32:59.310 --> 00:33:01.720 AMY GOODMAN: That was Democratic Congressmember Grace Meng. 00:33:02.620 --> 00:33:04.180 If you, Professor Nguyen, 00:33:04.180 --> 00:33:08.190 could respond to what he said and what this means? 00:33:10.210 --> 00:33:13.530 VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, again, the reflexive turn from trying 00:33:13.530 --> 00:33:15.650 to talk about anti-Asian violence 00:33:15.650 --> 00:33:17.990 within the United States directed against Asian Americans 00:33:17.990 --> 00:33:20.890 suddenly being undertaken to do a pivot 00:33:20.890 --> 00:33:23.420 towards this fear of Asia, 00:33:23.420 --> 00:33:26.130 but also the rhetoric of law and order, 00:33:26.130 --> 00:33:28.460 of violence, of using lynching, 00:33:28.460 --> 00:33:30.170 it demonstrates what the Reverend William Barber 00:33:30.170 --> 00:33:33.010 said in the excerpt of his speech that you talked about, 00:33:33.010 --> 00:33:34.390 which is that these manifestations 00:33:34.390 --> 00:33:37.010 of anti-Asian racism are almost inevitably tied 00:33:37.010 --> 00:33:38.990 towards other manifestations of violence — 00:33:38.990 --> 00:33:41.770 here, in this case, the specter of lynching brings up 00:33:41.770 --> 00:33:45.300 anti-Black racism that’s been endemic in this country — 00:33:45.300 --> 00:33:47.880 and that these domestic manifestations of anti-Asian 00:33:47.880 --> 00:33:50.100 and anti-Black racism are tied, again, 00:33:50.100 --> 00:33:53.640 together with justifications for American foreign policy. 00:33:53.640 --> 00:33:55.330 Now, the term that the Reverend Barber, 00:33:55.330 --> 00:33:57.060 William Barber, used was "white supremacy" 00:33:57.060 --> 00:33:59.480 to connect all of these kinds of manifestations, 00:33:59.480 --> 00:34:01.540 and I think that that is correct, 00:34:01.540 --> 00:34:05.230 that for some people in the United States, 00:34:05.900 --> 00:34:07.910 talking about anti-Asian violence 00:34:07.910 --> 00:34:12.140 means that it allows them to deploy other methods of violence 00:34:12.140 --> 00:34:14.170 directed against other kinds of populations, 00:34:14.170 --> 00:34:17.390 whether it’s populations abroad or, as well, in this case, 00:34:17.390 --> 00:34:20.380 the idea that African Americans or Black people 00:34:20.380 --> 00:34:22.580 also need to be suppressed in this country. 00:34:22.580 --> 00:34:25.330 So I think one of the points that we, as Asian Americans, 00:34:25.330 --> 00:34:29.940 must insist on is that our efforts are tied together here. 00:34:29.940 --> 00:34:31.530 You know, our efforts to highlight 00:34:31.530 --> 00:34:36.220 and to combat anti-Asian racism also need to go hand in hand 00:34:36.220 --> 00:34:40.020 with the necessity to address anti-Black racism, as well. 00:34:41.290 --> 00:34:43.210 AMY GOODMAN: Professor Nguyen, I wanted to ask you 00:34:43.210 --> 00:34:46.960 about the whole media coverage of what has happened in Atlanta. 00:34:47.620 --> 00:34:51.660 In that first police news conference last week 00:34:51.660 --> 00:34:53.430 after the deadly shootings, 00:34:53.430 --> 00:34:55.380 Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department 00:34:55.380 --> 00:34:57.980 spokesperson Captain Jay Baker 00:34:57.980 --> 00:35:01.850 said the 21-year-old shooter Robert Aaron Long’s 00:35:01.850 --> 00:35:05.600 killing spree was not racially motivated, 00:35:05.600 --> 00:35:08.300 and instead stemmed from his sex addiction. 00:35:08.300 --> 00:35:10.900 He said that the young man himself said 00:35:10.900 --> 00:35:12.980 it wasn’t racially motivated. 00:35:12.980 --> 00:35:16.310 If you could — now, he’s been removed as the spokesperson now 00:35:16.310 --> 00:35:19.340 because there was such outcry over what he said. 00:35:19.340 --> 00:35:22.020 But it has framed the discussion, 00:35:22.020 --> 00:35:26.120 and the issue of hate crimes has yet to be raised. 00:35:26.120 --> 00:35:28.460 He certainly hasn’t been charged with them. 00:35:28.460 --> 00:35:32.890 If you can comment on that and also comment on this issue — 00:35:32.890 --> 00:35:36.520 I mean, his church, apparently, has now disowned him. 00:35:36.520 --> 00:35:40.410 But talk about this sexualization of Asian women. 00:35:40.410 --> 00:35:42.650 Seven of the eight victims were women. 00:35:42.650 --> 00:35:44.770 Six of them were of Asian descent. 00:35:46.340 --> 00:35:47.800 VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, as so many Asian American women 00:35:47.800 --> 00:35:49.000 have already spoken about, 00:35:49.000 --> 00:35:53.440 the question of racism and sexism cannot be separated. 00:35:53.440 --> 00:35:56.900 So, even if he might have been sexually addicted, etc., 00:35:56.900 --> 00:35:59.020 whatever his self-proclamations are, 00:35:59.020 --> 00:36:01.000 the idea that this somehow is removed 00:36:01.000 --> 00:36:04.050 from any kind of racist preoccupation is absurd. 00:36:04.050 --> 00:36:06.930 And again, if we look at the way that Asian Americans and Asians 00:36:06.930 --> 00:36:10.400 have been depicted and exploited in the American imagination, 00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:13.170 it’s almost always with the intersection of racism, 00:36:13.170 --> 00:36:15.210 sexism and labor exploitation. 00:36:15.210 --> 00:36:18.350 And we see that happening exactly in this context, 00:36:18.350 --> 00:36:20.450 that he deliberately — that is, the shooter — 00:36:20.450 --> 00:36:23.900 deliberately picked not just any type of place 00:36:23.900 --> 00:36:25.530 where he might have expected sexual activity, 00:36:25.530 --> 00:36:28.110 but very specifically Asian massage parlors. 00:36:28.110 --> 00:36:30.110 And Asian women and Asian American women 00:36:30.990 --> 00:36:34.190 have always existed as objects of racialized, 00:36:34.190 --> 00:36:36.780 sexualized, fetishized fantasies 00:36:36.780 --> 00:36:39.100 for men of many different kinds of backgrounds. 00:36:39.100 --> 00:36:43.080 There are deep roots of this in American and European culture. 00:36:43.080 --> 00:36:45.890 And, as has come to light, many of these women 00:36:45.890 --> 00:36:47.940 who were working in these massage parlors — 00:36:47.940 --> 00:36:49.720 we don’t know whether they were sex workers or not; 00:36:49.720 --> 00:36:52.590 if they were sex workers, that doesn’t invalidate the fact 00:36:52.590 --> 00:36:55.660 that they were also victims of racist and sexist violence — 00:36:55.660 --> 00:36:58.010 but many of them appeared to be women 00:36:58.010 --> 00:37:03.360 of a marginal economic class who were living 00:37:03.360 --> 00:37:05.870 and working in these massage parlors. 00:37:05.870 --> 00:37:07.960 In effect, they were exploited laborers. 00:37:08.850 --> 00:37:11.380 And all these things are happening at the same time. 00:37:11.380 --> 00:37:14.970 So, it’s enormously frustrating that the police response 00:37:14.970 --> 00:37:18.170 and the FBI response has been to try to compartmentalize 00:37:18.170 --> 00:37:20.690 what has taken place under one category 00:37:20.690 --> 00:37:23.590 only of sexual exploitation, 00:37:23.590 --> 00:37:26.400 when in fact all these things are happening at once. 00:37:26.400 --> 00:37:29.450 AMY GOODMAN: I want to read from a statement by Kimberlé Crenshaw 00:37:29.450 --> 00:37:32.140 and The African American Policy Forum. 00:37:32.140 --> 00:37:34.110 Professor Crenshaw writes, quote, 00:37:34.110 --> 00:37:37.140 "To say the murderer’s actions were about sexual desire, 00:37:37.140 --> 00:37:38.610 and therefore not about race, 00:37:38.610 --> 00:37:41.380 is a fundamental intersectional failure: 00:37:41.380 --> 00:37:43.420 it denies the racial dimensions 00:37:43.420 --> 00:37:46.050 of the hyper-sexualization of Asian women, 00:37:46.050 --> 00:37:49.420 and reproduces the environment that makes Asian women 00:37:49.420 --> 00:37:51.860 particularly vulnerable to harassment, 00:37:51.860 --> 00:37:54.230 abuse, and murder." Professor Nguyen? 00:37:55.620 --> 00:37:56.930 VIET THANH NGUYEN: No, absolutely, 00:37:56.930 --> 00:37:59.340 I think Professor Crenshaw is right here. 00:37:59.340 --> 00:38:01.990 Again, for many Asian American women, 00:38:01.990 --> 00:38:04.840 they have a long litany of experiences 00:38:04.840 --> 00:38:06.840 being subjected to harassment, 00:38:06.840 --> 00:38:09.160 to catcalls, to sexual invitations, 00:38:10.030 --> 00:38:12.340 and then, of course, also to rape, 00:38:12.340 --> 00:38:14.900 sexual violence and marginalization, 00:38:14.900 --> 00:38:19.000 due to their experiences and representations 00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:21.130 of being Asian American women. 00:38:21.130 --> 00:38:23.610 And it’s pervasive in American popular culture, 00:38:23.610 --> 00:38:26.340 as well. Certainly, the figure of the Asian 00:38:26.340 --> 00:38:28.510 or Asian American woman as a sexual object 00:38:28.510 --> 00:38:34.050 or as a prostitute in sort of the American cinematic fantasy 00:38:34.050 --> 00:38:36.020 has been with us for a very long time. 00:38:36.020 --> 00:38:38.080 You know, many, many people have talked about 00:38:38.080 --> 00:38:42.050 this infamous moment in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket 00:38:42.050 --> 00:38:45.620 where the marines, on first going to Vietnam, 00:38:45.620 --> 00:38:47.330 encounter a Vietnamese woman prostitute 00:38:47.330 --> 00:38:49.860 who approaches them and says, "Me so horny." 00:38:49.860 --> 00:38:52.690 That became the line for a 2 Live Crew 00:38:52.690 --> 00:38:55.480 hit that many of us heard in the 1980s and 1990s, 00:38:55.480 --> 00:38:57.670 and a line that many Asian American women 00:38:57.670 --> 00:38:58.950 have been subjected to. 00:38:58.950 --> 00:39:03.150 So, again, in the experiences of Asian American women, 00:39:03.150 --> 00:39:05.510 racism, sexism and exploitation 00:39:05.510 --> 00:39:08.580 have been always mutually experienced. 00:39:10.350 --> 00:39:11.630 AMY GOODMAN: Viet Thanh Nguyen, 00:39:11.630 --> 00:39:15.800 if you can talk further about the history 00:39:15.800 --> 00:39:20.080 targeting Asian Americans and the violence 00:39:20.080 --> 00:39:23.900 targeting Asian Americans, going back more than a century? 00:39:24.940 --> 00:39:26.170 VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, I’m coming to you 00:39:26.170 --> 00:39:27.380 from Los Angeles. 00:39:27.380 --> 00:39:30.050 And one of the worst mass lynchings in American history 00:39:30.050 --> 00:39:33.290 happened here in downtown Los Angeles in 1871, 00:39:33.290 --> 00:39:38.140 when a mob of about 500 white men murdered 00:39:38.930 --> 00:39:41.360 17 Chinese men and boys. 00:39:41.360 --> 00:39:42.800 And this was not an isolated incident. 00:39:42.800 --> 00:39:45.760 This was taking place throughout the western United States. 00:39:45.760 --> 00:39:48.040 Even I have learned some of these incidents. 00:39:48.040 --> 00:39:50.670 Most recently, I’ve learned about an incident 00:39:50.670 --> 00:39:52.990 in Oregon in 1884 00:39:52.990 --> 00:39:55.220 where 34 Chinese miners were murdered. 00:39:55.830 --> 00:39:57.400 And so, what happened was that Chinese immigrants 00:39:57.400 --> 00:39:58.650 had come to the United States 00:39:58.650 --> 00:40:00.270 to work on the transcontinental railroad, 00:40:00.270 --> 00:40:02.320 and when their usefulness was expired, 00:40:02.320 --> 00:40:04.640 they were let go and had to make a living 00:40:04.640 --> 00:40:06.460 for themselves in the American West. 00:40:06.460 --> 00:40:09.540 And anti-Chinese fervor among the white working class 00:40:11.740 --> 00:40:14.760 was encouraged by the media and by politicians — 00:40:14.760 --> 00:40:18.650 again, scapegoating an Asian other in the United States 00:40:18.650 --> 00:40:22.180 to deal with white working-class economic frustration. 00:40:23.110 --> 00:40:26.520 And other Asian populations that came after the Chinese 00:40:26.520 --> 00:40:28.840 were also subjected to these kinds of feelings. 00:40:28.840 --> 00:40:31.590 Obviously, there was the Japanese American internment, 00:40:31.590 --> 00:40:33.980 when 120,000 Japanese American people, 00:40:33.980 --> 00:40:36.770 many of them citizens, were put into concentration camps, 00:40:36.770 --> 00:40:39.670 even though people of German and Italian descent were not. 00:40:41.030 --> 00:40:42.770 Racist incidents against Asian Americans 00:40:42.770 --> 00:40:44.880 have proliferated in the last few decades, as well, 00:40:44.880 --> 00:40:48.540 most notoriously the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982. 00:40:48.540 --> 00:40:51.250 He was a Chinese American who was mistaken for Japanese 00:40:51.250 --> 00:40:53.940 by two Detroit auto workers who were frustrated 00:40:53.940 --> 00:40:55.810 by Japanese economic competition, 00:40:55.810 --> 00:40:58.200 and they beat him to death with a baseball bat. 00:40:58.200 --> 00:41:00.890 They did not spend any time in jail. 00:41:00.890 --> 00:41:04.520 In 1989, five Cambodian and Vietnamese schoolchildren 00:41:04.520 --> 00:41:07.480 were shot and killed in a Stockton schoolyard massacre 00:41:07.480 --> 00:41:09.030 by a white gunman, 00:41:09.030 --> 00:41:12.790 which I feel is a direct outcome of the wars in Cambodia 00:41:12.790 --> 00:41:14.920 and Vietnam that the United States fought. 00:41:15.610 --> 00:41:19.110 In 2012 — in 2002, I’m sorry, 00:41:20.820 --> 00:41:24.760 six Sikh worshipers at a gurdwara in Oak Creek, 00:41:24.760 --> 00:41:27.300 Wisconsin, were massacred by a white supremacist gunman. 00:41:27.300 --> 00:41:29.210 And these are just some of the most notorious incidents. 00:41:29.210 --> 00:41:31.180 But again, throughout American history, 00:41:31.180 --> 00:41:32.990 from the 19th through the 20th century up 00:41:32.990 --> 00:41:36.230 until the 21st century, we’ve seen repeated incidents 00:41:36.230 --> 00:41:39.460 of both singular and mass anti-Asian violence 00:41:39.460 --> 00:41:41.430 taking place periodically. 00:41:41.430 --> 00:41:43.250 AMY GOODMAN: Do you think what happened in Atlanta 00:41:43.250 --> 00:41:46.250 has to be immediately labeled as, 00:41:46.250 --> 00:41:52.020 and the alleged shooter charged with, hate crimes? 00:41:54.080 --> 00:41:55.290 VIET THANH NGUYEN: I certainly think so. 00:41:55.290 --> 00:41:58.080 But again, it was shocking to me to read yesterday 00:41:58.080 --> 00:41:59.990 in The Guardian that Christopher Wray, 00:41:59.990 --> 00:42:02.940 the FBI director, has said that it’s not conclusive 00:42:02.940 --> 00:42:05.680 that this was a racially motivated crime. 00:42:05.680 --> 00:42:07.700 And the Reverend Raphael Warnock immediately said, 00:42:07.700 --> 00:42:08.990 "No, it is a hate crime," 00:42:08.990 --> 00:42:11.690 when we’re looking at this targeted attack, 00:42:11.690 --> 00:42:14.850 targeted against Asian massage parlors, 00:42:14.850 --> 00:42:17.690 in which six of the eight victims were Asian women, 00:42:17.690 --> 00:42:20.100 who were deliberately tracked down. 00:42:20.100 --> 00:42:23.740 It looks like a hate crime. It smells like a hate crime. 00:42:23.740 --> 00:42:25.770 It is a hate crime. And I think, overwhelmingly, 00:42:25.770 --> 00:42:28.040 the Asian American population of this country believes that. 00:42:28.040 --> 00:42:29.260 AMY GOODMAN: Let me go directly 00:42:29.260 --> 00:42:30.970 to what FBI Director Christopher Wray 00:42:30.970 --> 00:42:35.490 said on NPR on Thursday about the FBI’s role 00:42:35.490 --> 00:42:37.740 in the investigation into the mass shooting in Atlanta 00:42:37.740 --> 00:42:39.430 and his thoughts on the motive. 00:42:39.430 --> 00:42:40.700 CHRISTOPHER WRAY: We’re actively involved, 00:42:40.700 --> 00:42:46.540 but in a support role. And while the motive remains 00:42:46.540 --> 00:42:48.860 still under investigation at the moment, 00:42:48.860 --> 00:42:53.790 it does not appear that the motive was racially motivated. 00:42:54.340 --> 00:42:57.140 But I really would defer to the state 00:42:57.140 --> 00:43:00.970 and local investigation on that for now. 00:43:00.970 --> 00:43:03.200 AMY GOODMAN: That was FBI Director Christopher Wray. 00:43:03.200 --> 00:43:06.850 And this, as Professor Nguyen talked about, 00:43:06.850 --> 00:43:11.490 was Georgia Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock’s response. 00:43:12.280 --> 00:43:13.610 SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK: Law enforcement will go 00:43:13.610 --> 00:43:15.630 through the work that they need to do, 00:43:15.630 --> 00:43:17.900 but we all know hate when we see it. 00:43:17.900 --> 00:43:20.910 And it is tragic that we’ve been visited 00:43:20.910 --> 00:43:22.720 with this kind of violence yet again. 00:43:22.720 --> 00:43:24.750 And I’m going to be doing everything in my power 00:43:24.750 --> 00:43:26.520 as a United States senator 00:43:26.520 --> 00:43:29.400 to make sure that families don’t have to endure 00:43:29.400 --> 00:43:31.200 this kind of violence in the first place. 00:43:31.200 --> 00:43:33.330 AMY GOODMAN: That’s the new Georgia senator, 00:43:33.330 --> 00:43:35.000 Reverend Raphael Warnock. 00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:37.840 We’re going to break and then come back to our discussion 00:43:37.840 --> 00:43:41.830 with the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, 00:43:41.830 --> 00:43:44.620 author of the new book The Committed, 00:43:44.620 --> 00:43:47.240 sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, 00:43:47.240 --> 00:43:48.480 The Sympathizer. 00:43:48.480 --> 00:43:50.220 We’ll talk to him about his new book 00:43:50.220 --> 00:43:54.160 and also about his use of the word "refugees" — 00:43:54.160 --> 00:43:55.600 not "migrants," 00:43:55.600 --> 00:44:00.030 but "refugees — whether we’re talking about his family 00:44:00.030 --> 00:44:02.490 coming to this country from Vietnam 00:44:02.490 --> 00:44:06.730 or refugees from Honduras or Guatemala or El Salvador. 00:44:06.730 --> 00:44:27.560 Stay with us. 00:45:17.610 --> 00:45:20.190 AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, 00:45:20.190 --> 00:45:21.670 The Quarantine Report. 00:45:21.670 --> 00:45:23.450 I’m Amy Goodman, as we spend the hour 00:45:23.450 --> 00:45:25.290 with the Pulitzer Prize-winning 00:45:25.290 --> 00:45:27.950 Vietnamese American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen. 00:45:27.950 --> 00:45:30.050 His new novel has just been published. 00:45:30.050 --> 00:45:34.080 It’s called The Committed. It’s a sequel to the 2015 00:45:34.080 --> 00:45:36.990 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer. 00:45:36.990 --> 00:45:39.710 Both books share a narrator, half-Vietnamese, 00:45:39.710 --> 00:45:41.720 half-French communist spy, 00:45:41.720 --> 00:45:45.920 who refers to himself as "a man of two faces and two minds." 00:45:45.920 --> 00:45:48.650 Professor Nguyen is the chair of English and professor 00:45:48.650 --> 00:45:50.790 of English and American studies and ethnicity 00:45:50.790 --> 00:45:52.930 at the University of Southern California. 00:45:52.930 --> 00:45:56.090 His other books include The Refugees and The Displaced: 00:45:56.090 --> 00:45:58.680 Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, 00:45:58.680 --> 00:46:00.700 which he edited. With his new book, 00:46:00.700 --> 00:46:02.890 The New Yorker says Professor Nguyen 00:46:02.890 --> 00:46:04.780 has established himself as a, quote, 00:46:04.780 --> 00:46:07.240 "conscience of American literature." 00:46:07.240 --> 00:46:09.520 Professor Nguyen, before we get to your new book, 00:46:09.520 --> 00:46:13.920 I wanted to go to The Refugees. I mean, two of your books 00:46:13.920 --> 00:46:16.520 use the term "refugees" in the title. 00:46:17.080 --> 00:46:21.600 As we speak today, you’ve got the mass killings in Atlanta, 00:46:21.600 --> 00:46:25.610 and you have this massive number of unaccompanied children, 00:46:25.610 --> 00:46:28.900 of children on the southern border, upwards of what? 00:46:28.900 --> 00:46:31.070 Fifteen thousand right now, 00:46:31.790 --> 00:46:34.490 not to mention the number of adults 00:46:34.490 --> 00:46:36.190 who are being turned away. 00:46:36.910 --> 00:46:40.230 Can you talk about why you choose to use the term 00:46:40.230 --> 00:46:43.110 "refugee"? And tell us your own story, 00:46:43.110 --> 00:46:45.220 your family’s own story, in that answer. 00:46:46.870 --> 00:46:48.650 VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, I think there are official refugees 00:46:48.650 --> 00:46:50.070 and unofficial refugees. 00:46:50.070 --> 00:46:51.580 And in our case, my family’s case, 00:46:51.580 --> 00:46:53.800 we were definitely official refugees. 00:46:53.800 --> 00:46:55.990 We were South Vietnamese, 00:46:55.990 --> 00:46:58.050 and we were on the losing side of the Vietnam War. 00:46:58.050 --> 00:46:59.770 So, in 1975, 00:46:59.770 --> 00:47:02.530 along with 130,000 other Southern Vietnamese people, 00:47:02.530 --> 00:47:06.600 we fled to the United States. And we were lucky, 00:47:06.600 --> 00:47:09.290 because the United States had an interest 00:47:09.290 --> 00:47:12.570 in accepting refugees from a newly communist country. 00:47:12.570 --> 00:47:16.470 That was useful PR for the United States. 00:47:16.470 --> 00:47:20.170 And we ended up in Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania. 00:47:20.170 --> 00:47:22.520 And I was 4 years old. 00:47:22.520 --> 00:47:26.270 My own experiences were that I was taken away 00:47:26.270 --> 00:47:27.750 from my parents at that age 00:47:27.750 --> 00:47:31.050 to be resettled with a different sponsor family than my parents. 00:47:31.050 --> 00:47:33.720 It was done benevolently, because my parents were being 00:47:33.720 --> 00:47:35.490 given the time to get on their own two feet. 00:47:35.490 --> 00:47:38.160 But as a 4-year-old, I didn’t understand that. 00:47:38.160 --> 00:47:39.990 I only remembered it as abandonment. 00:47:39.990 --> 00:47:42.270 So my first memories are screaming and howling, 00:47:42.270 --> 00:47:44.430 being taken away from my parents. 00:47:44.430 --> 00:47:45.690 And I was comparatively lucky. 00:47:45.690 --> 00:47:48.070 I was reunited with my parents after a few months. 00:47:48.070 --> 00:47:52.510 But, of course, what’s happening at our border is that children, 00:47:52.510 --> 00:47:54.100 at least under the Trump administration, 00:47:54.100 --> 00:47:56.530 were being forcibly separated from their parents, 00:47:56.530 --> 00:47:58.430 not for benevolent purposes. 00:47:58.430 --> 00:47:59.940 And so I know that those families, 00:47:59.940 --> 00:48:01.180 those parents and those children, 00:48:01.180 --> 00:48:04.600 will be permanently scarred by what happened to them there. 00:48:04.600 --> 00:48:07.400 Now, at the current moment, we have unaccompanied minors. 00:48:07.400 --> 00:48:09.050 Some of them are being held for much longer 00:48:09.050 --> 00:48:11.500 than has been mandated, 00:48:11.500 --> 00:48:15.090 and that will also be deeply problematic for them, as well. 00:48:15.090 --> 00:48:17.890 But they are not being classified as refugees 00:48:17.890 --> 00:48:19.880 under any kind of American classification 00:48:19.880 --> 00:48:21.920 or under the UNHCR, 00:48:21.920 --> 00:48:24.210 High Commission on Refugees, classification. 00:48:24.210 --> 00:48:26.570 And again, I think this is oftentimes very, very political. 00:48:26.570 --> 00:48:28.720 Why are people coming to the southern — 00:48:28.720 --> 00:48:30.940 to the south and coming to our southern border? 00:48:30.940 --> 00:48:35.920 Oftentimes it’s due to political and economic circumstances 00:48:35.920 --> 00:48:38.220 that the United States has had a role in playing, 00:48:38.220 --> 00:48:39.610 and the United States has any interest 00:48:39.610 --> 00:48:41.750 in not classifying them as refugees, 00:48:41.750 --> 00:48:43.980 because that would obligate the United States 00:48:43.980 --> 00:48:45.200 to welcome them in, 00:48:45.200 --> 00:48:48.590 but also it would highlight the ways 00:48:48.590 --> 00:48:50.980 by which what we do here in the United States 00:48:50.980 --> 00:48:52.660 impacts other countries 00:48:52.660 --> 00:48:55.590 and creates conditions for people wanting to flee. 00:48:57.470 --> 00:49:00.880 AMY GOODMAN: And that story of fleeing from a place 00:49:00.880 --> 00:49:03.490 that the U.S. has been involved with — 00:49:03.490 --> 00:49:05.620 I mean, of course, with Vietnam, Laos, 00:49:05.620 --> 00:49:08.400 to say "involved with" is to put it mildly — 00:49:09.160 --> 00:49:13.520 bombing the country, continually at war with. 00:49:13.520 --> 00:49:18.280 The significance of how that shaped your view of the country 00:49:18.280 --> 00:49:19.910 you came to grow up in? 00:49:19.910 --> 00:49:23.710 And culturally, in this country, for example, 00:49:23.710 --> 00:49:27.870 you talk about being steeped in films like Apocalypse Now 00:49:27.870 --> 00:49:29.760 and what that meant to you, 00:49:29.760 --> 00:49:33.410 what people in this country who were born here understand, 00:49:33.410 --> 00:49:35.310 and what you felt coming from Vietnam. 00:49:36.980 --> 00:49:38.760 VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, I feel myself to be an American. 00:49:38.760 --> 00:49:40.260 I’ve grown up here since I was 4. 00:49:40.260 --> 00:49:42.560 And I think I deeply understand American culture, 00:49:42.560 --> 00:49:43.820 and I feel myself to be an American, 00:49:43.820 --> 00:49:45.070 which means I love many, 00:49:45.070 --> 00:49:46.840 many things about American culture, 00:49:46.840 --> 00:49:48.580 including things like American movies, 00:49:48.580 --> 00:49:51.210 including the many movies that the United States 00:49:51.210 --> 00:49:53.720 made about the Vietnam War, including Apocalypse Now. 00:49:53.720 --> 00:49:55.250 But watching a movie like Apocalypse 00:49:55.250 --> 00:49:58.330 Now was quite shocking for me at 11 or 12 years of age, 00:49:58.330 --> 00:50:00.150 because I felt myself to be an American, 00:50:00.150 --> 00:50:01.910 rooting for the American soldiers 00:50:01.910 --> 00:50:04.080 — up until the point they killed or massacred 00:50:04.080 --> 00:50:05.430 Vietnamese civilians. 00:50:05.430 --> 00:50:07.350 And then I felt myself split in two: 00:50:07.350 --> 00:50:08.960 Was I the American doing the killing, 00:50:08.960 --> 00:50:11.160 or was I the Vietnamese being killed? 00:50:11.160 --> 00:50:13.980 To me, that is a very basic question 00:50:13.980 --> 00:50:15.910 that applies to many other kinds of circumstances 00:50:15.910 --> 00:50:17.290 that my work addresses. 00:50:17.290 --> 00:50:18.980 But I think the most important thing about this 00:50:18.980 --> 00:50:21.120 is that it’s not just a personal issue for me. 00:50:21.120 --> 00:50:24.940 It’s not just a feeling of being divided and culturally divided, 00:50:24.940 --> 00:50:27.750 that many Asian Americans have spoken about. 00:50:27.750 --> 00:50:29.650 To me, what’s also important to understand here 00:50:29.650 --> 00:50:31.130 is that my very existence, 00:50:31.130 --> 00:50:33.350 and that of many other Vietnamese and Asian Americans 00:50:33.350 --> 00:50:36.010 in this country, we are here because of wars 00:50:36.010 --> 00:50:38.120 that the United States fought in Asia. 00:50:38.740 --> 00:50:43.110 And so, this speaks to a bifurcation 00:50:43.110 --> 00:50:46.760 in American history and culture that is true for so many people, 00:50:46.760 --> 00:50:49.180 that, on the one hand, this is a country of high ideals, 00:50:49.180 --> 00:50:51.170 of democracy and pluralism and opportunity; 00:50:51.170 --> 00:50:52.450 on the other hand, 00:50:52.450 --> 00:50:55.530 it’s a country that’s rooted in warfare and conquest, 00:50:56.070 --> 00:50:58.970 which has manifested itself in wars in Asia. 00:50:58.970 --> 00:51:01.760 And I think that we have an obligation as Americans 00:51:01.760 --> 00:51:03.830 to recognize the complications of this, 00:51:03.830 --> 00:51:05.920 both the possibilities of this country 00:51:05.920 --> 00:51:11.370 and its roots and its continuing immersion in warfare, 00:51:11.370 --> 00:51:13.070 genocide and colonization. 00:51:13.600 --> 00:51:15.510 AMY GOODMAN: Professor Nguyen, your new book — 00:51:15.510 --> 00:51:17.440 and congratulations on it — 00:51:17.440 --> 00:51:20.990 The Committed, begins on a refugee boat. 00:51:21.510 --> 00:51:25.990 You severely object to people being called "boat people," 00:51:25.990 --> 00:51:31.480 but you point out that, oh, Ulysses was on a boat, 00:51:31.480 --> 00:51:34.410 but we cast him in heroic terms. 00:51:34.410 --> 00:51:36.970 Pilgrims of the U.S. were boat people, 00:51:36.970 --> 00:51:38.880 but we called them "Founders." 00:51:38.880 --> 00:51:41.850 Talk about the difference in how this country 00:51:41.850 --> 00:51:44.090 looks at different refugees. 00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:46.320 VIET THANH NGUYEN: I think one of the reasons 00:51:46.320 --> 00:51:47.560 why I call myself a "refugee" 00:51:47.560 --> 00:51:51.110 is because it’s a stigmatized term in the United States. 00:51:51.110 --> 00:51:53.640 I mean, Americans know what to make out of someone 00:51:53.640 --> 00:51:55.820 who calls himself or herself an "immigrant." 00:51:55.820 --> 00:51:57.270 That’s a part of the American mythology, 00:51:57.270 --> 00:51:59.580 that you’ve come here to improve yourself 00:51:59.580 --> 00:52:01.210 and contribute to this country. 00:52:01.210 --> 00:52:03.870 But I think a refugee often brings up very negative images 00:52:03.870 --> 00:52:06.270 and ideas in the American imagination. 00:52:06.270 --> 00:52:09.400 And the term "boat people" completely illustrates this, 00:52:09.400 --> 00:52:11.240 that after the Vietnam War, 00:52:11.240 --> 00:52:14.110 tens of thousands of Vietnamese people did flee by boat, 00:52:14.110 --> 00:52:15.720 and the media called them "boat people," 00:52:15.720 --> 00:52:17.820 which is a way of drawing attention to their plight, 00:52:17.820 --> 00:52:19.500 in a very successful way. 00:52:19.500 --> 00:52:21.860 But it means that Vietnamese have been fixed 00:52:21.860 --> 00:52:24.570 in the American imagination as these boat people. 00:52:24.570 --> 00:52:26.870 And the images around boat people are 00:52:26.870 --> 00:52:29.060 that these are desperate and frightened people. 00:52:29.060 --> 00:52:30.390 And, of course, that’s true. 00:52:30.390 --> 00:52:31.660 They were desperate and frightened. 00:52:31.660 --> 00:52:33.590 But I also think that they were heroic, 00:52:33.590 --> 00:52:36.670 because many of them knew that their chances of survival, 00:52:36.670 --> 00:52:40.320 once they took to the open seas on very rickety little boats, 00:52:40.320 --> 00:52:42.190 were going to be very, very slim. 00:52:43.070 --> 00:52:44.980 And so, I have always asked myself: 00:52:44.980 --> 00:52:47.710 Why do we cast certain people as heroes 00:52:47.710 --> 00:52:50.280 and other people as not heroic? 00:52:50.280 --> 00:52:52.130 And I think, in the case of refugees, 00:52:52.130 --> 00:52:53.660 it’s easier to cast them as desperate 00:52:53.660 --> 00:52:55.130 and frightened rather than heroic, 00:52:55.130 --> 00:52:57.130 because if we were to see them as heroes, 00:52:57.130 --> 00:52:58.770 we might also have to incorporate them 00:52:58.770 --> 00:53:00.380 into our own stories. 00:53:00.380 --> 00:53:02.630 We might feel even more obligation to them. 00:53:02.630 --> 00:53:05.820 And we might have to see them as human beings 00:53:05.820 --> 00:53:09.900 rather than as these pathetic objects that need to be rescued. 00:53:09.900 --> 00:53:13.240 And so, part of the project of a novel like The Committed, 00:53:13.240 --> 00:53:15.950 which begins on a refugee boat 00:53:15.950 --> 00:53:17.950 that I deliberately call an "ark," 00:53:18.530 --> 00:53:22.480 is to reframe the experience of refugees, 00:53:22.480 --> 00:53:23.770 whether they’re fleeing from Vietnam 00:53:23.770 --> 00:53:26.360 or whether they’re fleeing south of our border to the north 00:53:26.360 --> 00:53:30.110 or whether they’re fleeing from Africa into the Mediterranean, 00:53:30.110 --> 00:53:35.260 to recast these people as heroes undertaking very difficult 00:53:35.260 --> 00:53:38.170 journeys with enormous obstacles, 00:53:38.170 --> 00:53:41.860 and that if they succeed, we should treat them as heroes 00:53:41.860 --> 00:53:45.240 rather than as desperate and frightened objects of our pity. 00:53:45.860 --> 00:53:48.920 AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about your protagonist, unnamed, 00:53:48.920 --> 00:53:50.730 in The Committed. 00:53:50.730 --> 00:53:52.120 VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, he’s unnamed 00:53:52.120 --> 00:53:55.200 because he’s an everyman. He’s certainly Vietnamese, 00:53:55.200 --> 00:53:58.000 but he’s also an everyman in terms of these adventures 00:53:58.000 --> 00:54:00.360 and misadventures that he has to go through. 00:54:00.360 --> 00:54:02.730 He’s of mixed descent: His father is a French priest; 00:54:02.730 --> 00:54:04.490 his mother is a Vietnamese woman. 00:54:04.490 --> 00:54:05.790 And so, being of mixed descent, 00:54:05.790 --> 00:54:09.530 he’s caught directly in the middle of these tensions 00:54:09.530 --> 00:54:12.230 that we’ve been talking about throughout our hour here, 00:54:12.230 --> 00:54:13.480 between East and West, 00:54:13.480 --> 00:54:17.350 and the Orientalist expectations of Europeans and Americans 00:54:17.350 --> 00:54:20.040 about the Vietnamese and other Asians. 00:54:20.040 --> 00:54:22.520 And as a result, he’s also a man of two faces and two minds. 00:54:22.520 --> 00:54:24.470 He sees every issue from both sides, 00:54:24.470 --> 00:54:27.340 which makes him a perfect figure for someone who’s a writer, 00:54:27.340 --> 00:54:29.240 who does exactly the same thing. 00:54:29.240 --> 00:54:31.860 But as a man of two faces and two minds caught up 00:54:31.860 --> 00:54:35.120 in this era of the Vietnam War and the Cold War, 00:54:35.120 --> 00:54:39.030 he is able to see through the oppositions 00:54:39.030 --> 00:54:42.040 and the polarities that countries and cultures 00:54:42.040 --> 00:54:46.390 typically deploy to make things easier to understand. 00:54:46.390 --> 00:54:49.330 So, again, going back to this idea of East and West 00:54:49.330 --> 00:54:50.660 and anti-Asian violence, 00:54:50.660 --> 00:54:52.130 it’s easier to understand the world 00:54:52.130 --> 00:54:54.590 if we see it split into two. 00:54:54.590 --> 00:54:56.510 But he, himself, does not have that luxury. 00:54:56.510 --> 00:54:58.940 He’s always going beyond the surface binaries 00:54:58.940 --> 00:55:00.310 to look underneath. 00:55:00.310 --> 00:55:03.310 It allows him the capacity to satirize our absurdities 00:55:03.310 --> 00:55:04.660 and our hypocrisies. 00:55:04.660 --> 00:55:06.320 And it also makes him kind of a tragic figure, 00:55:06.320 --> 00:55:09.820 because in a world in which most people want to choose one side 00:55:09.820 --> 00:55:12.190 or the other, he can’t choose. 00:55:13.450 --> 00:55:15.770 AMY GOODMAN: Professor Nguyen, I was listening to the interview 00:55:15.770 --> 00:55:19.430 you did on KPFA, Pacifica Radio. And in it, 00:55:19.430 --> 00:55:23.750 you said Americans don’t think of themselves as colonizers. 00:55:24.330 --> 00:55:27.480 Their word for colonization is the American dream. 00:55:27.480 --> 00:55:29.180 Can you elaborate on this? 00:55:30.230 --> 00:55:31.580 VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, I think, you know, 00:55:31.580 --> 00:55:34.340 we, as Americans, believe in American exceptionalism, 00:55:34.340 --> 00:55:36.780 that we are the greatest country in the world, 00:55:36.780 --> 00:55:38.770 no other country has been like ours. 00:55:39.510 --> 00:55:41.890 And when we think about colonization, we think, 00:55:41.890 --> 00:55:44.370 "Well, it’s the Europeans who did the colonizing, 00:55:44.370 --> 00:55:46.150 but we never did that." 00:55:46.150 --> 00:55:47.780 That’s part of American exceptionalism. 00:55:47.780 --> 00:55:50.190 But, of course, that’s factually wrong; 00:55:50.190 --> 00:55:52.400 that this country has been founded on colonization — 00:55:52.400 --> 00:55:54.660 that’s why we have the 13 colonies — 00:55:54.660 --> 00:55:57.200 and that we’ve expanded through colonization, 00:55:57.200 --> 00:55:58.930 and that the kind of colonization 00:55:58.930 --> 00:56:01.170 that we’ve seen with Europeans in other places, 00:56:01.170 --> 00:56:03.340 that we would characterize as being brutal and rapacious 00:56:03.340 --> 00:56:04.550 and so on, 00:56:04.550 --> 00:56:06.470 I mean, those are the very terms that we should be using 00:56:06.470 --> 00:56:09.400 to describe our American history, as well. 00:56:09.400 --> 00:56:10.880 And, of course, a lot of Americans 00:56:10.880 --> 00:56:13.330 would object to this kind of characterization. 00:56:13.330 --> 00:56:15.600 I think we, as Americans, are like every other country: 00:56:15.600 --> 00:56:18.570 We want to see our own history in the best possible light. 00:56:18.570 --> 00:56:21.850 So, that inclination is not unique at all. 00:56:22.500 --> 00:56:26.690 And I think part of my work is to say we, as Americans, 00:56:26.690 --> 00:56:29.420 need to be able to, like the sympathizer, 00:56:29.420 --> 00:56:32.690 hold two opposite ideas in our minds at the same time. 00:56:32.690 --> 00:56:35.330 This is something that F. Scott Fitzgerald also said: 00:56:35.330 --> 00:56:36.800 "The test of a first-rate intelligence 00:56:36.800 --> 00:56:39.960 is to hold two opposite ideas in our minds at the same time." 00:56:39.960 --> 00:56:41.950 And I think that many Americans can’t do that, 00:56:41.950 --> 00:56:43.480 which is why they would rather say, 00:56:43.480 --> 00:56:46.620 when someone like me brings up these kinds of criticisms, 00:56:46.620 --> 00:56:48.210 "Love it or leave it." 00:56:48.210 --> 00:56:50.270 And since I do, in fact, love this country 00:56:50.270 --> 00:56:52.320 and I don’t want to leave it, I think, in fact, 00:56:52.320 --> 00:56:54.640 what we should do is embrace the complexities 00:56:54.640 --> 00:56:58.850 and the brutal and bloody contradictions of our history. 00:56:58.850 --> 00:57:01.460 And when I say that successful colonization 00:57:01.460 --> 00:57:03.500 goes under the name of the American dream, 00:57:03.500 --> 00:57:04.790 I think what I mean by that 00:57:04.790 --> 00:57:06.670 is that rhetoric of the American dream 00:57:06.670 --> 00:57:10.450 allows us to forget the history of our colonization 00:57:10.450 --> 00:57:13.970 and the ongoing fact of our colonization. 00:57:13.970 --> 00:57:15.710 I think many Indigenous peoples would say 00:57:15.710 --> 00:57:17.970 that they’re still being colonized today. 00:57:19.440 --> 00:57:22.100 What Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said about Puerto Rico 00:57:22.100 --> 00:57:24.220 is that it’s a colony right now. 00:57:24.220 --> 00:57:28.160 And so, the very opposition to the idea that our country 00:57:28.160 --> 00:57:31.040 can be a colonizing country blinds many Americans 00:57:31.040 --> 00:57:33.430 to what is actually going on in our country 00:57:33.430 --> 00:57:34.660 at this present time. 00:57:34.660 --> 00:57:35.880 AMY GOODMAN: We have less than a minute, 00:57:35.880 --> 00:57:37.200 but I was wondering if you can talk 00:57:37.200 --> 00:57:40.050 about the Asian American writers who most influenced you? 00:57:40.050 --> 00:57:43.780 You’re a student of the great Chinese American writer 00:57:43.780 --> 00:57:45.480 Maxine Hong Kingston? 00:57:46.180 --> 00:57:47.650 VIET THANH NGUYEN: So many great Asian American writers. 00:57:47.650 --> 00:57:49.580 I’m very lucky to come late in the game, 00:57:49.580 --> 00:57:51.810 because an earlier Asian American writer 00:57:51.810 --> 00:57:54.250 would just face even more perplexity than I have faced. 00:57:54.250 --> 00:57:56.210 I think about John Okada writing about 00:57:56.210 --> 00:57:58.430 the Japanese American internment in the 1950s, 00:57:58.430 --> 00:57:59.680 Carlos Bulosan writing about 00:57:59.680 --> 00:58:02.160 Filipino migrant laborers in the 1940s, 00:58:02.160 --> 00:58:04.260 and, yes, of course, Maxine Hong Kingston, 00:58:04.260 --> 00:58:05.470 my great teacher, 00:58:05.470 --> 00:58:07.770 who — I have to say, I was a very poor student, 00:58:07.770 --> 00:58:10.770 but she had faith in me, and I owe her a great deal. 00:58:11.540 --> 00:58:12.890 AMY GOODMAN: A very poor student — right? — 00:58:12.890 --> 00:58:15.130 who just won the Pulitzer Prize. 00:58:15.130 --> 00:58:18.070 We thank you so much for spending this time with us. 00:58:18.070 --> 00:58:21.530 Our guest, Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the new novel 00:58:21.530 --> 00:58:24.670 The Committed, sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, 00:58:24.670 --> 00:58:26.440 The Sympathizer, professor 00:58:26.440 --> 00:58:28.940 at the University of Southern California. 00:58:28.940 --> 00:58:32.540 And we’ll link to The Washington Post piece you co-authored, 00:58:32.540 --> 00:58:35.340 "Bipartisan political rhetoric about Asia 00:58:35.340 --> 00:58:38.640 leads to anti-Asian violence here." 00:58:38.640 --> 00:58:40.710 And that does it for our show. 00:58:40.710 --> 00:58:42.820 Happy Birthday to Miriam Barnard! 00:58:42.820 --> 00:58:45.540 Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, 00:58:45.540 --> 00:58:48.640 Deena Guzder, Libby Rainey, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, 00:58:48.640 --> 00:58:51.150 Carla Wills, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, 00:58:51.150 --> 00:58:53.210 Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, 00:58:53.210 --> 00:58:54.750 Hany Massoud and Adriano Contreras. 00:58:54.750 --> 00:58:56.460 Our general manager is Julie Crosby. 00:58:56.460 --> 00:58:58.940 Special thanks to Becca Staley, Miriam Barnard. 00:58:58.940 --> 00:59:01.220 I’m Amy Goodman. Stay safe. Wear a mask.