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This is an interview with Robert Meeropol, the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed for espionage.
* I am releasing this episode on the 70th anniversary of their execution, at 8:00 PM EST, the time at which the Julius and Ethel were executed.
Pre-Episode Introduction
0:00:00 - Introduction and Robert's story
0:08:40 - Manichean nature of propaganda
0:12:40 - Government destroys culture, not just resistance
0:14:35 - Timing of this episode
0:18:05 - Propaganda in the case of Robert's parents
0:23:35 - Role of fear and othering in propaganda
0:31:45 - Why was it important for propaganda that the kids of the Rosenbergs were targeted as threats?
0:42:45 - Propaganda in the media as a sedative that gets people to work within the system rather than buck it
0:56:10 - How can we know truth in a world saturated by propaganda?
1:04:50 - Why can't the government bring itself to admit they're wrong?
1:16:05 - Why do we need activists today if we solved discrimination with Civil Rights?
1:26:10 - Resource recommendations and plugs
A podcast focusing on issues related to nonviolence, and a member of the Kingdom Outpost.
Today's episode was originally aired in relation to our season on government and Christian anarchism. However, I did the interview for this season in particular. So I'm actually gonna leave the intro in from that season, just because I I think it provides some important context and, some interesting information and, outlooks. But for this season, I wanted to create a new intro to give you some ideas of what to look out for in regard to our season on propaganda. So in this discussion, you are going to hear from Robert Meeropol about some of his interactions with the media and how they filtered out what he said, and how the medium itself is kind of flawed because it doesn't really provide a platform for discussions and an exchange of information.
Derek Kreider:But, really, it's it's instead, provided for short attention spans and for a lot of, one liners and soundbites that don't really lend themselves well to rational discourse and to the potential that one might change their mind, or there might be, various interpretations or or ways that you can come about looking at a situation. So his insight into his experience with the the media is very helpful, I think, for our discussion on on propaganda in relation to media. Robert also talks about the framing of a story. You know, he he discusses how when he would go on these news programs, they would, a lot of times, portray him as, you know, this this angry child who's looking for justice, which, of course, taints whatever he says. Because now all of a sudden, well, it's not just some person trying to, seek what is right, but, you know, it's this child.
Derek Kreider:And, of course, he's gonna side with his parents and and whatnot, in regard to, the the situation of their execution. Well, Robert kind of talks a little bit about this and how, news outlets would frame those sorts of things. But then he also discusses how he combats that a little bit, you know, with his own framing and with, countering claims by conceding at some points, like, yeah. You know? It it, it was unjust what happened to my parents.
Derek Kreider:But, you know, I'm I'm here to talk about my mom's side of the story because she is, not culpable, and so we need to vindicate her. And so they might agree to some of the information or to, his father's culpability more so than his mom's, and kind of agree where where he can agree, but and reframe the story so that then he's able to dismiss this idea that he's just a child, being vindictive towards those who've hurt his parents. If you've listened to the Gary Webb episode, there are, lots of strands of that in here where Gary Webb came forward with information and people, on either side, you know, on the the pro news media side and the, conspiracy theorist side. Everybody wants to frame the story a different way to kind of co opt Gary Webb and anybody, any issue at hand, co opted for their own point of view. So I think you're gonna get some insight into media relations here in in this episode.
Derek Kreider:I'd actually originally intended to use this in our government season since we're talking about the state executing, Robert's parents and and kind of the, you know, McCarthyism and and anti communism that was going on at the time and the and the way that they use propaganda there. And while it would be good there, I think it's gonna really fit in best with media. Because when it comes to the government, we have plenty of source material to, to talk about their propaganda and lies and atrocities. So I hope you enjoy this episode with Robert Meeropol. Welcome back to the Fourth Way Podcast.
Derek Kreider:For this episode, I had the privilege of interviewing Robert Meeropol. While I know that you're likely here to listen to Robert talk and not me, I do have quite a bit to unpack here before we get to the interview proper. In order to value your time, though, I have put time stamps into the show notes so that you can navigate the episode as you desire. So if you wanna skip me completely, go for it. I also wanna note that there are a lot of resources referenced throughout this episode, and I'm gonna link those resources in the show notes.
Derek Kreider:And I'll also include my Goodreads reading list, which has a propaganda category that you might want to check out, as well as some of the questions that I had for Roberts, many of which that I was not able to get to. So this is a pretty loaded episode, and I hope you're able to use it as a springboard for further education. Before I introduce Robert Meirpole, I wanna give you a context for why I wanted to have this conversation in the first place. I've been working on researching and recording a season on propaganda since the beginning of 2022. As I was reading and listening to various books, a book recommendation came up for a book entitled Executing the Rosenbergs.
Derek Kreider:It sounded interesting, so I dove in and was very glad that I did. The book opened me up to a historical event, which I had never heard about before. The execution of a married couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. This execution was done by the US government for the crime of conspiring to commit espionage. Now the case was very clearly a theatrical and strategic event for the US government in a time of fear mongering under McCarthyism.
Derek Kreider:And there's so much about this case, which was much less about facts and more about the presentation and misrepresentation of information and the truth. So after reading this book, I reached out to Robert Meeropol because Robert Meeropol or Robert Rosenberg is one of the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the 2 accused spies who were executed by the US government. I was shocked when Robert graciously accepted to have a conversation with me, so I quickly read his book entitled An Execution in the Family and formed a set of questions to present to him in order to help us look at propaganda from someone who's experienced its effects personally. So this interview can be a stand alone discussion, but I am intending to place it within the broader season of propaganda in general. That being said, I feel as though holding on to this episode for another year or more, which is when I envision it fitting into the upcoming season, it seems too far away, particularly in light of the way that propaganda is being exposed in our society today.
Derek Kreider:So I decided to release this episode as a pre peat episode. An episode that gets me so excited that I have to release it now knowing that I'm just gonna repeat its release again in the future where it fits into, to its season. So on top of that, because I think the issue of propaganda is so vital, I'm gonna actually provide a pre release link for the first two episodes in the season, which I've already recorded. The first one is an introduction to the importance of understanding propaganda, and then the second one is is, an episode where I dig deep into how propaganda actually functions. I think by listening to those two episodes and by hearing Robert unpack the impact of propaganda in this episode, hopefully, we'll wet your palate for our season coming out in January of 2023.
Derek Kreider:But we'll also give you the basic tools to start thinking about propaganda in our world today. So with all those basic introductions under our belt, I want to now highlight some of the elements which I want you to listen for in today's interview, as there are a number of really important themes or pieces, which wanna make sure that you don't miss when we get to them. 1st and perhaps most importantly, Robert unpacks something, which Jacques Alul and others identify as aspects of propaganda. It's a polarizer. Propaganda is very Manichean.
Derek Kreider:As a side note, I recognized when I was, writing and recording this portion that in the episode, I used the word Manichean. So, you know, with my ego and pride, I was thinking, do I go back in and and try to edit that out? I was like, no. I mean, with my conversation with, with Robert, you know, we're talking about admitting mistakes and and that kind of thing. So I left it in there.
Derek Kreider:You're gonna hear me say Manichean and look like a fool. But I also did that, in in one of my early episodes. I pronounced I still can't pronounce his name. Goethe? I pronounced his name Goethe.
Derek Kreider:So I like to leave my mistakes in. I'm human. I'm, I'm fallible. So enjoy that that, mess up. It's a word I've heard, but rarely ever used.
Derek Kreider:So propaganda is very Manichean. What does Manichean mean? It just means that there's really a lack of nuance. Manichean means that you break everything up into clear cut groups, into categories with clear delineations. Black and white, good and evil.
Derek Kreider:Now there are a number of problems with doing this, but there are 2 in particular which stand out. 1st, as Robert elaborates on in the episode, when we fail to anticipate and accept nuance, it's nearly impossible for us to know truth. It's impossible for us to know truth because a refusal to to accept nuance is a refusal to be willing to see certain truths that we don't wanna see, should they present themselves to us. This is a huge aspect of how propaganda isolates and creates echo chambers. But a more tangible problem arises from a Manichean view in that a failure to accept all truth ends with what we call othering.
Derek Kreider:Othering is simply this idea that there is our group, the righteous, enlightened, fully human group, and then there are those others who are lesser than us. What begins as a purely categorical notion in the mind of us and them almost always ends up leading to practical applications, which can be verbal abuse, physical violence, and, ultimately, atrocity. Now you'll hear this this strand come up several times in our conversation, but I also want to highlight how I saw the antithesis of this Manichean Othering come up in Robert's book. When Robert discussed his uncle and the lies that his uncle told about his mother, which is largely what ended up getting her killed, Robert didn't dehumanize his uncle. While Robert is clear that forgiveness is off the table for him, and he he does blame his uncle for what he did, he acknowledged that he understood why his uncle did what he did in order to preserve his immediate family, and he recognizes that it was a terrible position that the government put his uncle in.
Derek Kreider:But while Robert held his uncle culpable for his cowardliness and the violence that resulted from his untruths, Robert refused to dehumanize him. He held him accountable while also holding him human. And that's extremely powerful, to refuse to dehumanize other as some monster, even somebody who's responsible for the death of of your parents. You know, as a Christian, while I would seek to add the ultimate hope of forgiveness to this, Robert's philosophy here helps us to understand the type of thinking that we need to have if we're ever going to implement enemy love. Another aspect of this interview which stuck out to me was the discussion on the government keeping tabs on the Rosenberg's 2 children, and the terrorizing of them by trying to break up their adoptive parents' ability to keep them in a stable environment.
Derek Kreider:When I asked Robert why the government sought to to do this, he said that the government's goal is to destroy culture, not just the immediate resistance. When Elul talks about propaganda, one of the primary ways in which propaganda is instilled is through education. Now when I use the word education here, I don't just mean schooling, though, certainly, schooling is a form of education, which should give us pause in regard to how our children are schooled. But, really, education is much more than simple schooling. Education occurs to some degree in any community, and maybe community would be a good alternative word for education because communities educate.
Derek Kreider:And it's in communities that explicit ideas are taught, but there are also a lot of implicit norms and expectations which are picked up that aren't even always said out loud. Robert identified that by trying to remove him from a community who is supportive of his parents, the government was trying to prevent Robert from turning into exactly what he ended up turning into, a troublemaker for the government as someone who speaks out against them. Governments have a long history of of trying to do this exact thing, of trying to break up community and and culture, and a history which unfortunately continues into the present. Finally, I wanna close out this hefty introduction by explaining the timing of this episode's original release, the week leading up to June 19, 2022. That day will mark the 69th anniversary of the Rosenberg's execution, which is in itself an important event to remember.
Derek Kreider:However, June 19th has become more prominent as a date over the past few years due to the way that racial activism has highlighted what is known as Juneteenth. The day when the last black slaves in the US were told of their freedom in the last remaining slave state, Texas. Though slavery still persisted into the mid 19 100, but that's a story for another time. But what does Juneteenth have to do with the Rosenbergs other than it just so happens to be the date of their execution? Well, we have talked a lot about the idea of justice throughout this podcast, and how the troublemakers and weird dissenters are often the ones who fight for true justice, not just status quo justice, which protects the rights of the majority or the powerful.
Derek Kreider:During the abolition period, a lot of those abolitionists were anarchists and Quakers. Very odd birds at the time, and I guess still pretty odd birds. During Reconstruction and the civil rights era, it was often the communists or those labeled as communists who were using their status to fight for the rights of others. Communist were a large chunk of the pro civil rights crowd, and likely a significant reason that the civil rights movement ended up, taking off along with the pro religious infusion into government. And they just so happened to take off right alongside of McCarthyism.
Derek Kreider:Go figure. Many of the major players in the civil rights movement were actual communists or labeled as such. 2 of the prominent figures there being MLK and W b Du Bois. Robert Williams is another one that's lesser known, but a man who's targeted by the FBI who ended up finding refuge where? Communist Cuba, and he started Radio Free Dixie.
Derek Kreider:I mean, just insane. Right? That he has to go to communist Cuba to find freedom, whereas in, capitalist democracy of the United States, he he can't. He's oppressed and hunted by his government. History is replete with examples of the communists, in some ways being more on the right side of history.
Derek Kreider:Abel and Anne Meeropol, Robert's adoptive parents, were 2 other communist sympathizers who were dissenters against the discrimination of blacks in the United States. Abel Meeropol is famous for the penning of a song entitled Strange Fruit, made famous by Billie Holiday. I thought that commemorating the life of the Rosenbergs around Juneteenth this year would be the perfect time to do it. Not simply because it marks the anniversary of their deaths, but because it also coincides with the vision of the world that they were trying to build. Of course, listeners may be thinking that communism is terrible, and no amount of social justice work communist did justifies their position.
Derek Kreider:But if you're one of those listeners who thinks this way, then perhaps you've unwittingly uncovered in yourself the very thing that this episode is trying to warn you about. Your Manichean Tendency belies that you've been propagandized. This episode and this season then is made just for you. You know, the story of your parents obviously is extremely tragic. And I think what was particularly tragic for me is that as you lay out all of the evidence and everything, you know, they're they're blamed for, delivering an atomic secret, for, you know, espionage, for the Korean war, you know, by by some estimates, you know, for that starting or at least spiraling out of control, so many different things.
Derek Kreider:But, you know, as as evidence comes to light, people people don't realize that that really they were convicted of conspiracy, not espionage, actually. And they didn't really deliver the the atomic secret. And your your mother really had little to nothing to do with everything. So as you as you dig into the story, you just see that there's there's so much of an agenda and facade around their story. I'd love for you to maybe talk specifically about, some of the propagandistic aspects of, you know, of your of your parents' case and the way that you kind of see that uncovered there?
Robert Meeropol:Well, you know, the in we had a situation in the run up to World War 2 where we ended up with a relatively large left wing movement in the United States in the well wake of the 19 thirties and the great depression. And the Communist Party that, you know, had tens of thousands of members, Perhaps as many as a 100,000 at its absolute height. And then you had World War 2 in which we were allied with the Soviet Union against the Nazis. And we, in the end of World War 2, as the superpowers were kind of dividing up the world amongst them, all of a sudden, their the Soviet Union, which had been our ally, had to become our enemy in order for us to move towards what was called the American century, the 20th century to we were going to be the premier force in the world, and we were going to extend our reach across the globe. And the Soviet Union was our principal enemy.
Robert Meeropol:And so how to deal with an American public, which had a significant left and was supportive of World War 2 and our ally, and had to deal with that, when everything changed. Well, one of the ways that this was done was to demonstrate, first of all, that left wingers were not, were not legitimate dissenters. That they were actually foreign agents. That they represented a hostile ideology that was out that was gonna use the freedom of the United States to destroy that freedom and institute a communist government. And so the way they did this was they sort of created a relatively simple equation.
Robert Meeropol:And the equation was that there's an international communist conspiracy that's out to destroy our way of life, and it's kind of presented as a giant, world spanning octopus, with its beak in Moscow, and tentacles reaching out throughout the entire world to local communist parties who were not really local people. They were communist agents. And they had to demonstrate how dangerous this was, was to show that one of these tentacles had reached in to the lower east side of Manhattan and snatched up 2 very ordinary people who then became communist fanatics, who managed to steal the secret of the atomic bomb, the thing that could destroy us all. And what could be more dangerous than that? So if you've got people like that who are so dangerous and so effective at stealing our most precious secrets, well, then we can't allow the constitution and the bill of rights to stand in the way of our survival.
Robert Meeropol:Everything has to take a back seat to national security. And if you demonstrate that you've got these ordinary lick licking acting people who are doing these nefarious things that are gonna destroy us, we that we have to do this. We have no choice. And, of course, all of this is based on fear. The fear of the struck of the destruction of our system and a communist takeover.
Robert Meeropol:And that's really important because, I mean, fear is is one of the main motivating factors of propaganda. You get people you, you know, you if you manage to get a group of frightened people and you convince them to do something, they will do almost anything to protect themselves and they become very dangerous. So my parents' case, of course, there were many more ways that this was demonstrated during the Cold War, but the case was kind of a linchpin. It was kind of, if they can do this, if they can steal the secret of the atomic bomb, they can do everything, and that means we don't want any people like that around. And so if you're going to do that, propaganda also takes a cultural form.
Robert Meeropol:You know, I was I am ultimately, I became a lawyer, but I was originally trained as a cultural anthropologist, and I find myself wanting to kind of look at how the culture operates, and, well, one of the ways the culture operates is by assigning, legitimate roles to men and women. Okay? That's it's kind of and one of the ways to demonize people, and in my parents' case in particular, was to show that they didn't act like ordinary people. They may have looked like ordinary people, but they didn't act like them. And one of the ways that this was done in propaganda was to turn my mother into a kind of not a Harry like manipulative person who controlled everything.
Robert Meeropol:In other words, the man was weak and the woman was strong. And, you know, this also in my parents' case, since my mother was a couple of years older than my father, that fit the scenario perfectly. And so my mother was in particular demonized, and in the process, it wasn't the what was demonstrated to the American people was that my parents didn't only have bad politics, they were bad people. And that that's one of the principal purposes of propaganda to it's not just that we disagree with them, It's that they're evil.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. Yeah. And what's what's really fascinating to me so I come from a a Christian background. You know? And, you know, we're we're fed this idea that, you know, we're a Christian nation and and and all this kind of stuff.
Derek Kreider:But right when your parents were going through what they were going through, you get under God and the pledge of allegiance and on currency and prayer breakfast and all this kind of stuff because, you know, so fear is a huge aspect of propaganda, but a part of the way that you you, infuse fear is by showing difference. And so if their atheist, you know, were Christian or, you know, they're communist, were capitalist, whatever, that's, that difference creates a huge amount of fear.
Robert Meeropol:And that difference is not is a difference in kind. In other words, it is an unbridgeable difference. I mean, that's another important aspect of it that you cannot in other words, if you look at the communists who were demonized and then became heroic, The way they became heroic was they turned on other communists and they named them, and then they became anti communist experts. And those people were considered heroic because they had absolved themselves in in a way. It was almost religious.
Robert Meeropol:They had gone through a confession, and they've been absolved. So, yeah, there there is definitely that aspect as well.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. And it it reminds me of, you know, as you're talking, it reminds me I don't know if you're familiar with the book Terror Factory. Mhmm. But it's, yeah, it's a book about basically how that sort of thing has happened post 2000 where, you know, the FBI and and our government has created terrorists essentially by by certain definitions and by the way that they act and and pursue people. So it's it's still going on today,
Robert Meeropol:of course. Yeah. Yeah. I just, was given a book recently to blurb, which is about it just came out, and it it actually documents the change of into the use of the word terrorism. From the movement from anti communism to anti terrorism.
Robert Meeropol:And and the this Nixon's war at home, the FBI leftist guerrillas and the origins of counterterrorism, Really worthwhile reading. I don't consider myself one of, you know, an academic. I don't I don't, I don't read, you know, the various treatises of people who are writing on these subjects, but, books crossed my desk quite regularly, and I I realized that perhaps I'm a little more oriented in that direction that sometimes I'm willing to admit. Yes. This, if you actually look at that equation that I talked about, about the international communist conspiracy is out to destroy our way of life, and therefore, national security has to be paramount and everything else takes a back seat.
Robert Meeropol:If you extract the word communist from it and you insert the word terrorist in it, you now have the international terrorist conspiracy, which is out to I mean, it's the exact same line. It's just you have substituted a word and you've created a new enemy. And that and then you apply that term to everything you don't like. So an animal rights activist who goes in and, damages a lab where they're experimenting on animals, is is now is a terrorist. Someone who, destroys property, tries to prevent the expansion of the, pipeline in, in, you know, in South Dakota, they they, you know, they do something that disrupts it, and they become a terrorist.
Robert Meeropol:You know, that you don't even you know, any if you if you damage corporate property, if you damage property of people who, you know, have powerful politically in political interest interest, you become a terrorist. Even though as far as I'm concerned, terrorism really requires damage to people. But so that kind of ideological underpinning, is essential. And it and then, you know, you have the the sort of flip side of that. Well, then how do you deal with the people who you disagree with?
Robert Meeropol:How do you deal with the critics of your policies? You you can label them terrorists, but but you it that's kind of a very general term. You have to undermine them in other ways. And that's where you get into the bad people, the differences, and where, you know, you you look for whatever you can to make those people look bad.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. So one of one of the things reading your book, that highlighted for me the the evidence of propaganda is that, you know, if if your parents' case was about justice, then your parents would have been on trial and, you know, presumably, there would have been a relatively fair trial and lacking politics and that kind of stuff. But but then when you started to talk about your life, you know, after your parents, and you talked about how as you were going through school, you ended up being expelled because, some parents had had, complained or whatever, and they found some loopholes to kind of get you kicked out, which impacted some other kids too, but it was focused on you. And and you talked about a number of of those things, like, the government trying to keep you from, being with with the people who ended up being your adoptive parents, the mirror pulls. Like, to me, that that's like, well, that's not about justice anymore.
Derek Kreider:That's like clearly, there's a narrative here that's being shaped if if people are going society and the government are are going after 6 year old kids. So would you be able to explain why why do people care about 6 year old kids? Like, how is that a part of of the story, and why is this twisted narrative important to furthering, you know, a a particular agenda?
Robert Meeropol:Well, I think that, you know, I think the question is, how do you how does the government deal with resistance? How does the government destroy resistance? Well, 1, you know, what is what is resistance spring from? Well, it springs from response to oppression and working to organize that response through building community resistance. And that broadens to social resistance.
Robert Meeropol:And if the problem that the forces of oppression often have is that resistance is inspirational. I mean, one of the things that always has has blown me away, particularly when I was doing central Central America work back in the 19 eighties 19 nineties, one of the things that always amazed me was that, you know, there were all these activists in Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador, and they kept being assassinated. And then someone would step forward and take their place. They'd say, well, you know, what's going you know, these people are being killed. They're being tortured.
Robert Meeropol:Well, how come people are willing to put themselves in that position? Well, that's because they're inspired by the resistance of others, and that resistance is mediated or transmitted through the community. So what you have to do and children are critical to the development of community. So if you separate the children from their community, you short circus sir you short circuit the multi general resistance that could develop. So if you look at the government's activity in terms of dealing with me and my brother, well, what did I do?
Robert Meeropol:I was raised by people who were supportive of my parents. I was raised with a positive connection to my parents. This led me through a series of relatively difficult times, and it took me until I was 43 years old to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up, to found the Rosenberg fund for children, which was a testament to my parents' resistance and a vehicle for encouraging the resistance of others intergenerationally. And that's what the government didn't want to have happen. When the government seized me and my brother from Abel and Aunt Meeropol and placed us in an orphanage, they wanted to make sure that not only did they kill my parents, but they would kill their legacy as well.
Robert Meeropol:Because their legacy of resistance was powerful, and they wanted to destroy that power. And, you know, in in many ways, I'm, you know, once my parents were executed and my name was changed and I we we we sort of, lived in the closet without the connection between Rosenberg and Meeropol being made for approximately 20 years or so, that I was an ordinary person. But as Robert Meeropol, the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, I have a certain amount with sir of cert with certain constituencies of moral authority, and that gives me more power than I would have otherwise. And the government doesn't want people like me to have that power, so they're gonna do what they can. And, you know, that's that's part of it.
Robert Meeropol:And, I mean, how you know, one of the things that if you look at it internationally, you look at the the the, military dictatorship in Argentina in that era. And you saw them, you know, in their fight against the urban gorillas. They killed the gorillas. They grabbed their children. They kidnapped their children, and they placed their children with military people who were childless, who then raised their kids.
Robert Meeropol:Okay? That's destroying the legacy. If you that the same thing there's been investigations going on in Mexico now where the same thing happened. All these people were disappear, and their children ended up being raised by the people who were part of the process of their disappearance. And, you know, it I think it goes on today.
Robert Meeropol:One of the things that we're reading is about the children that are being kidnapped from Eastern Ukraine and shipped back into Russia. You do when you see a pattern like that, you understand that what they're trying to do is destroy not only the resistance itself, but the culture that underlies the resistance. And and that's that's why it's so important. I think one of the things that I felt, for instance, in the United States in dealing with progressive movements is that if you look at, Christian fundamentalists, k, if you look at them, you it is possible to live a Christian fundamentalist life as a child. You're going to church.
Robert Meeropol:You're going to, Chris fundamentalist summer camps. You're going to fundamentalist retreats. You're going to fundamental you know, there's a whole, cultural baggage that goes along with it. And but if you and if you look at the left in the United States, what you find is that the Communist Party, in particular, set up a whole series of cultural institutions. There were insurance companies.
Robert Meeropol:There were adult summer camps. There were children's summer camps that were set up. And during the McCarthy period, all of these things were dismantled by government agencies, which claimed that these, you know, these were communist front organizations, and they should be delicensed, and they and so what what the government took an active role in destroying as much of the left infrastructure, particularly, that they could. And the result is is that in the United States today, while it is relatively easy to grow up as a child in a fundamentalist community living a fundamentalist life, it is actually quite difficult to grow up in a left wing community with a left wing cultural life. Because there while there are a couple, there are a couple of left wing summer camps, and there are a few left wing institutions.
Robert Meeropol:But by and large, there aren't. And as a result, it is very difficult to grow up. You can grow up in a progressive household with progressive ideology, but it's very hard to live a progressive life without extracting yourself from the society as a whole. And so that I think and the and that's really and, you know, if you look at those institutions, they're the transmitters of the propaganda, of the ideology. You know, that that's that's the way the new generation gets to accept their parents' beliefs.
Robert Meeropol:And if you destroy the ability to do that, you really make it very difficult to transmit those beliefs across generations. And and one of the things I've noticed that in in in my own experience, having grown up as a new leftist and being connected with students for democratic society and anti war and civil rights in the 19 sixties and into the early 19 seventies, that I knew a lot of people involved in that kind of activity, and a lot of those people, you know, became less active as time went on, and and some of them continued in various forms of activism. But what you found what what I found is that for the most part, their children did not follow them. Their children stayed left of center, but they became more liberal and radical. And part of that has to do with the fact that you're constantly swimming against the cultural current when you're in resistance to it.
Robert Meeropol:And that takes a lot of energy, and it's just easier to go with the flow.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. I I think that that idea of destroying community destroys the ability to propagate beliefs. I mean, we saw that in the United States with, we used to have indigenous schools where we would we would take Native Americans and we'd pull them from their community, and we'd we'd reeducate them. You know? So that that's a very good point.
Derek Kreider:So, you know, destroying community, is a way to undermine propagation of beliefs.
Robert Meeropol:Mhmm. Absolutely.
Derek Kreider:So we've we've focused a lot on the government so far. I wanna I wanna kinda turn to another propagandistic institution now, the the media. And, I I wanna kind of draw an analogy from your book. So in the book, you're talking about a therapist. You're not talking about the media at all.
Derek Kreider:But I wanna I wanna read this because I think it kind of relates. Mhmm. In your book, quotes, my therapist found a neurotic individual who could not function within the institution of his choice and only considered adjusting my personality to fit the institution. He apparently never considered that my employer's social function might have caused my problem. This is not surprising since the typical mental health professional's primary role is to help people function within the system.
Derek Kreider:In Schmidt's words, a therapist is not about to turn the troubled into troublemakers, no matter how helpful that may be. Lydia, who shared my radical critique of society, saw instantly that I needed to be a troublemaker, end quote. So when you explained your your initial therapist and how they functioned in regard to to what it was that you truly needed, it immediately made me think of of propaganda in the media. Because you cite throughout your book a number of ways in which the media misportrayed you and your brother. You know, you talk about hearts and flowers stories, used to undermine you or or how the media chose what to report on and what not to report on.
Derek Kreider:So it seemed to to me that the media is kind of the public's therapist, you know, the equivalent. Because, you know, propaganda, the the way that they relay information is a way to kind of be a sedative to the people. Like, here here's what you need to know. You just work within the system. Just work within the system, as opposed to saying, no, no, no.
Derek Kreider:That dissonance that you feel, like, that's legitimate and you need to be a troublemaker. So I would love for you to talk about a little bit about, your experience with media propaganda and and maybe how that is used as a sedative for people.
Robert Meeropol:Yeah. Well, I I mean, you know, it's it was it is a frustrating experience to, all of a sudden, you know, I I was a private person, and then I'm in my mid twenties. And all of a sudden, we start my brother and I go public with our connection to the Rosenberg case, file a massive Freedom of Information Act case, and become public figures and start, you know, speaking to the media on a regular basis. And, you know, our what we tried to do was, okay, what's our job? Well, our job is to talk about the facts of our parents' case.
Robert Meeropol:And, the media didn't really wanna hear us talking about the facts of our parents' case. So they would ask more personal questions, and we would, you know, you you answer, but we would try to sort of move those answers in a more case oriented direction. But, of course, they had editorial control, So it's you know, you get you get interviewed for an hour and maybe 10 minutes of what you said gets reprinted in quotes. They get to choose what the quotes are. And and that, you know, that immediately creates a situation where the image that of you that is presented as as a dutiful child of your parents, who, of course, you know, the media on the one hand, we had a certain moral authority.
Robert Meeropol:It's hard to attack us as evil when we're trying to vindicate our parents because most people think, well, okay, you know, maybe they're they're wrong, but, you know, it's not a bad thing to do. And yet since what we were trying to do was not considered legitimate by the powers that be, we that aspect of what we were doing had to be delegitimized. So one of the ways to very simply do it is to sort of treat us as quote interested parties who, you know, there are objective sources and there are interested parties. Now the reality is is that no one is objective. And, but the the people who are presented as objective tend to come from the center of what's considered politically acceptable and tend to be people who've risen through the ranks of the various bureaucracies, whether they be think tanks or whether they be elected officials.
Robert Meeropol:And those people are presented as, well, they're disinterested and they're dealing with the facts. But the sons of the Rosenbergs, they're they're, you know, interested parties who are displaying their emotion. And and and the result is is that you get undermined. Your credibility is is damaged. And it's one of the things that we tried to deal with by basically saying that out front.
Robert Meeropol:We, of course, you know, we have I I'm can't tell you how many times I've said in public. I have a massive credibility problem because and then I go on to to list that. And then say, that is why I have tried to counter that by being as factual as possible and and and being as dispassionate as possible. But it it it doesn't it doesn't always work. I mean, you can try to to, to try to control that, but by doing things like refusing to be taped.
Robert Meeropol:I'll do an interview with you on TV if it's live. You know? Then, you know, then what you have to do to get your narrative across is when they ask you a question, you respond, well, that's an interesting question, but I think what your audience really needs to know is blah blah blah, and people do that. But the result of the totality and it's one of the things you have to understand about the American media. People will say, well, but, Robert, you got on TV.
Robert Meeropol:You got to express yourself. You got to say these things. How can you say that the the media is just this palliative, you know, kind of calming presence that wants you to accept the way things are and gives you the idea that things really can't be changed. How can you say that when you're getting a chance to say that on TV? Well, it's a question of quantity.
Robert Meeropol:The way I always say it is if General Motors wants to sell a new car, they don't put out one commercial. They flood the airways with commercials. And that's the way it's done so that if you look at forget Fox News and the people to the right for a minute. But if you look at ABC, NBC, CBS, and and and CNN, I'm I'm going and I'm not looking at print media so much. I'm looking at, you know, audio visual media because they're bigger.
Robert Meeropol:They have a bigger reach these days. Or if you look at stuff on the Internet, what you find is they're all they have slightly different foci, but they're all oriented towards the status quo, an acceptance of the basic status quo. When you get the the one of the things that mainstream media has had a real difficult time dealing with is something like Fox News, and, AON or the things further to the right where they are actually not accepting of what's considered the mainstream. They go outside of it, and and and they don't know how to handle that, because they because the format looks like standard kind of news and the way the media has been portraying it, and the critique that the right wingers make against mainstream media propaganda, and and and, is there's a degree of legitimacy to it. So, you know, that's one of the reasons that the kind of Trumpist populism resonates, because people realize that they have been manipulated.
Robert Meeropol:They feel it. They they and so their reaction to the manipulation, somebody comes along and gives them a very simple answer. And all you need to do is follow the strong man, and he will solve all the problems. And they buy it because on some level, they realize that the wall has been pulled over their eyes. They just don't quite get it entirely.
Robert Meeropol:So I don't know if that really addresses where you were, coming from here, but it it it intrigues me, how many times you can you you know, you do get on television once in a while, and by doing it, in some ways, you legitimize an illegitimate system. You know, it's always a it's always a problem that that that I think I have. You know? By participating in it, you add a level of legitimacy to it. But if you don't participate in it because they have a relative monopoly and what I mean by a relative monopoly, it's a kind of internally contradicted it's an internal contradiction.
Robert Meeropol:It's a to a degree, it's an oxymoron. What I mean by that is that the the o the totality of what is being presented is same enough so that you could see it as a a a a kind of ideological monopoly. But there are different components to it, so it's a multifaceted monopoly. And if you participate in that, you add to it, but if you don't participate in it, you don't have access to the society at large. You know?
Robert Meeropol:You you can you know, I I can my own experience, is starting in the mid 19 seventies, I say from, say, 75 to 80. And from skip the gen the the the 19 eighties. And then from 1990 until now, I have been a public person talking to people. Now pre COVID and really pre my retirement, if you go back into the 19 seventies, I spoke to audiences, sometimes a 1000 people, sometimes more, sometimes 10, some you know, I did dozens and dozens of speeches. And if you were to add up all the people who I talked to, it's quite possible that in my entire entire career, I actually gave speeches that were heard by a 100000 people.
Robert Meeropol:Of course, it took me decades to do it. And this country has 330,000,000 people. 100,000 people seems like a lot, but it's a drop in the bucket. So my ability to go out and communicate my ideas is severely limited, by this kind of ideological monopoly. And and yet that ideological monopoly can say to me, well, you've got on TV.
Robert Meeropol:You've been on TV plenty. What are you complaining about?
Derek Kreider:Yeah. And, Noam Chomsky talks about he he says something very similar where he says, hey. Look. You know, I get invited to go on to places. And he said, they give me such a limited amount of time.
Derek Kreider:I I can't really give all of the information that that's that's valid. And so I have a choice to make. I either go on and give a case that's not sufficient, but hopefully is is enough to get people to to do the legwork of researching further. Or, but then I validate the system, or I don't go on at all and let the mainstream media just kind of say whatever they want without anybody to kind of, contradict them. And, I, yeah, I understand I understand that that turmoil.
Derek Kreider:And I guess my question is it's really interesting because, you know, I I strongly oppose, you know, the the right and and Trumpism and and all that kind of stuff. But when it comes to something like propaganda and the media and fake news and that kind of stuff, I I do sympathize there. And reading your book, and I know you're you're on the opposite end of the spectra spectrum from Trump, You kind of it seems like you're saying the same thing. Like, yeah, the media is propaganda. You're you're both kind of saying the same thing.
Derek Kreider:How do you how do you sift through information? How do you determine what's truth, and how do you navigate media then?
Robert Meeropol:Well, I mean, I think that's that's the the big question. If you trust the sources of information that you are getting, well, you tend to trust the sources that confirm the ideas you had to begin with. So one of the things that you have to do is to constantly remind yourself that you might be wrong. And and and evidently, people have a very difficult time dealing with that. You know, I don't know if it's because I was raised to in ideological opposition to the vast majority of the society I was raised in.
Robert Meeropol:I don't know if it's because I'm partially dyslexic. I don't know what it is that makes me more willing to say, you know, this is what I thought, and this is I don't think that now. I've, you know, I've learned that I could be wrong, and therefore, I'm not going to just simply accept the stories that come from people who have the same kind of ideology as I do at face value. Because I know I mean, partly, it's my own political experience of having been absolutely convinced that both of my parents were totally and completely innocent and realizing that I was wrong. That that was not the case, that while Julius Rosenberg didn't steal the secret of the atomic bomb, he did help the Soviet Union get secret information to help them defeat the Nazis during World War 2.
Robert Meeropol:I I I know that that he was guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. Actually, he was guilty of of espionage. But, to see that you are so convinced of something for so long and something that you're quite knowledgeable about. I mean, that's one of the things which you get in academics. You get these academics arguing with each other over, you know, whether whatever issue it is, and they are absolutely convinced because they've done all their research and they've gone down a certain road that they must be on the right road.
Robert Meeropol:And, also, it becomes more and more precarious to get off of that road. Because if you get off of that road, you look back and say, oh, I've been wrong for the last 45 years. Well, I don't think that helps an academic's career, and it certainly is very hard to admit, And, it tends socially to isolate you from the people who you've been hanging out with who tend to be the people who agree with you. So all those things come together. And that's so looking at that, trying to figure out how, you know, to find where you stand.
Robert Meeropol:I, you know, I could I can I find myself, and and I hope this is just not my own version of ideological confirmation, self confirmation, is I find myself looking for nuance? I find myself attacking what I call binary politics that this side's right, this side's wrong. Let's let's let's let's try to figure out the elements. And I I'll give you an example of that, and I don't know if this is going off on a tangent for you, but, but look at the look at the war in Ukraine right now. What I find is there's certain, ideological binary oriented ideological American leftists who were saying, NATO's to blame.
Robert Meeropol:You know? They look at the history. They look at the attempted encirclement of the former Soviet Union, and they say, well, Putin is reacting to what the west is doing. And, therefore, they end up condemning the west rather than condemning Putin. And I look at this, my first response is, are you telling me that it's right for Putin to invade Ukraine, and and drop all these bombs on people and and and do what what he's doing?
Robert Meeropol:And they don't wanna go there because it doesn't fit their binary ideological situation instead. You know, my position on this is, well, it's terrible what Putin is doing. And I don't blame the Ukrainians for trying to defend themselves, and I don't blame them for asking for arms, and I don't blame I don't, you know, I don't blame I don't think it's wrong for the United States to be supplying and for European countries to be supplying them with arms to defend themselves. But the reasons that the right that the the Europeans are giving for defending Ukraine, they may be doing the right thing, but they're doing it for the wrong reason. And they're doing it within a bad political context.
Robert Meeropol:It is really hard to find real good guys in this situation. And that you know, I used to have a little mantra that I would occasionally I try to recite to myself, which is see shades of gray, but act anyway. That but it's difficult. What you find is and I you know, I'm going back to my my parents' case and my own experience is that when I went out to quote reopen my parents' case in the 19 seventies, I ended up speaking to a lot of people who were active in trying to save my parents in the 19 fifties. They were my parents' generation.
Robert Meeropol:And the minute I began to raise a question that Julius might have done something, You should have seen the rush for the door of some of these folks. It didn't matter that they didn't do the thing they were killed for. It didn't matter that they were demonized. It it didn't matter that, you know, all these things that happened to them and they were wrong, all of a sudden didn't matter because they weren't pure. The the binary nature of trying to set up angels and devils.
Robert Meeropol:And that's and that's the role that propaganda plays because what it does is it takes whatever gray area it is, and depending upon what propaganda you want, is it moves it to the right if you're a right wing, and it moves it to the left if you're a left wing. So you have to try to and it is the best of these people that say, wait a second. You know, I support the Cuban revolution, but I think the way they handled gay people was absolutely atrocious. You know? And they did this and they, you know, and and they depended on the Soviet Union too much and they screwed as a result, they screwed up their account.
Robert Meeropol:You know, you can, even though I support the Cuban revolution. Well, how can you give critical support to things? How can you understand that kind of nuance? And and so I find myself coming full circle, mostly trying to deal with this by looking for nuance. But I do think it seems to run against people's propensities for wanting things to be clearly one way or clearly the other.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. We're we're very, you know, looking for that that, black and white kind of stuff. I I love that, nuance, and that's that's a position that I've come to in the last couple years as well. And I loved that particularly about your book because I assume it was a a main theme because you you laid it out. I believe it was in the first chapter where you said, you know, I think changing your mind is very important.
Derek Kreider:And then there are, like, 5 or 6 significant things that you changed your mind about throughout the book. You your parents' innocence, full innocence being one of those things. You talk about I think it's the the feminist movement and realizing, oh, yeah. We're, you know, we're trying to, you know, be pro civil rights and against the war, but look how we're treating women. You talk about, you know, recognizing your your wrongness and, you know, compromises versus splits where where you promoted a split, but you recognize compromises better.
Derek Kreider:So over and over and over again, you show throughout your book the importance of being able to change your mind. And, you know, one of the, one of the ways in which I think that that this sort of plays out is you identify later in your life as you're working on, capital punishment, against it. You, you talk about the government, and the government is at least the American government right now is kind of the antithesis of that. So, I'm gonna quote from your book, the section that I think highlights this very well. You said, quote, in the wake of a murder, the police must demonstrate their competence by quickly finding and arresting the killer.
Derek Kreider:Once an arrest is made, they're loathed to admit a mistake. The prosecutor must show the electorate he or she is tough on crime by demanding the death penalty and by rapidly obtaining a conviction. If contrary evidence is uncovered, it may be ignored or even buried. But these layers of bureaucracy often become mechanisms to demonstrate the system's perfection. Admission of error threatens the entire edifice of a system which requires flawlessness, end quote.
Derek Kreider:So that that, that reminded me so much of, you know, David Hume. He argues that legitimate government, you know, government is founded on the consent of the governed. And it it seems that the consent of the governed is strongly tied to their to to their confidence in the authority and competence of rulers to keep them safe or or provide their pleasure or whatever it is. And so the the justice system is a big part of that, and and capital punishment in in American society is a big part of that. If somebody murders somebody, I wanna feel safe.
Derek Kreider:You know, I wanna know that that that person is not gonna get out to do it again. So maybe you could you could talk about why the government is so averse to admitting wrongs and, talk about how that plays into this this propaganda that we've been talking about and and how it plays into this vow that you made to yourself early in life to be willing to change your mind and admit wrongs.
Robert Meeropol:Yeah. Well, you know, if we look at the history of governments, we start from a position of God. You know? The the the there's a, it is the pharaoh is the body and bottom the the the modern embodiment or the live embodiment of a god. And, you know, if you if, particularly, if you're dealing with state oriented societies, and you go up through history and you find, you know, the divine right of kings in Western Europe and the Chinese emperor is treated like a god.
Robert Meeropol:And and and similar things happen in India and the other the other major, and then you have a new concept that the people are sovereign, not the king. That the government only has the powers that the people cede to the government in order to protect them. And that element of the government as god survives. Even as other aspects of the government as God does not. You know, we we want a government in the United States that basically leaves us alone to go about doing I mean, leave that's the ideology.
Robert Meeropol:Okay? But when it comes to being protected, that's when we want the government to have the ultimate power. And what is the ultimate power? Well, it's the power of life and death. And that is and, you know, there's another element of that within the United States that should not be ignored, and it comes from, you know, what I would consider the settler colonialist ideology of our history, and understanding that, you know, we Western Europeans came to the United States and destroyed the culture that was here and took over their land and then imported a whole bunch of Africans in order to work the land that they'd stolen from the Indians.
Robert Meeropol:Okay? I mean, this this and so we were a frontier oriented, violent oriented society because the way we took this land was through violence, and through killing. And so that sort of ideology of killing your enemy, it didn't disappear when the frontier was closed back in 1890. It it it didn't disappear when every part of the continental United States became a state, and stabilized in that kind of standard American governmental way. That the people who grew up with that ideology transmitted it to their children, who transmitted it to their children, and it's only a few generations removed.
Robert Meeropol:I mean, one of the things that has that I see about the United States today that I didn't see 60, 70 years ago is that when I was 20 years old, I thought of the United States as a pretty old country, because it was 1967 when I was 20, and the country was less than 200 years old. And I but but I was only 20. 200 years was a long time. Well, now another, you know, 50 years have gone by, 50 plus years have gone by, and the country is 50 years older. But I'm also 50 years older, and I actually see the United States as a very young country.
Robert Meeropol:You know? I know that Abel Meeropol, the person who, adopted me, was grew up in the early 20th century when there were still thousands of civil war survivors. People there were still maybe a 1000000 black people in the country who who'd been slaves. They were old people then, but they were still alive. And I can remember my, father used to talk about whenever he talk about something happening a long time ago, he would say, oh, that's from before the civil war.
Robert Meeropol:Well, it took me years to realize that was a cultural saying that existed among people in 1910 and 1915, because it was still in the immediate cultural memory. And so that that powerful transmission through time has has not changed, and that cultural phenomenon of killing your enemies is alive and well, particularly in rural America, in small town America. And so it makes perfect sense that the American public would like the death penalty. And it would make perfect sense that in those states where you have the most immigration, the most people who've come here more recently, the most people who have no real immediate connection to settler colonialist ideology, those are the states that have abolished the death penalty. And the states that were the slave owning states and the states that where they, you know, massacred all the Indians and in Indian wars in the late 19th century, those are the states that have capital punishment.
Robert Meeropol:It's not this you know? So it's a there's this cultural element that goes along with, that, in the United States that adds a layer of problems. And I think that that understanding of how of and it it, of course, also plays into the other that you were talking about to begin with. Because the Africans who were brought over here and the Native Americans who were slaughtered and still exist, There's still millions of them in this country. They are the other.
Robert Meeropol:They're and and, you know, and they're the quintessential other in some ways, because they're they're culturally other in a manner that is totally foreign to the nature of this country today, given the societies they grew they lived in. And the Africans who were brought over here to serve, the Europeans, well, they're not even quite human. So that all has worked together. And and and, you know, I I end my book, which I wrote 20 years ago on a kind of optimistic note about ending the death penalty. And and but and the death penalty is a smaller presence in the United States today than it was when I wrote the book, but we're far from ending it.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. Yeah. I know I noticed that when I read it, and, I was kinda I was kinda sad about that. But, so I I wanna get to the last question. Okay.
Derek Kreider:And, you know, so looking more into propaganda and being more introspective and and objective about our society, I I recognize more than ever today the importance of of activists and activism. But I think, you know, prior to it was really the the 2016 election, which woke me up to that. But prior to that, you know, I was indoctrinated very strongly to think that, well, we, you know, we don't need activists. You know, slavery was a 100 years ago over a 100 years ago. You know, civil rights, we we fixed we fixed things.
Derek Kreider:There were activists in the sixties, and that was important, but, you know, things are different today. But, you know, you you were surrounded by activists, and and it seemed like you had, an eye to what was going on in the culture that that somebody like me probably wasn't able to see very clearly. And so that eventually led you to create the the Rosenberg Fund for Children to help children of activists who are harmed or persecuted. So to somebody like like me 5 years ago who would have been like, what do you mean activist today, persecuted today? Like, that was that was 50 years ago.
Derek Kreider:I'd love for you to be able to talk a little bit about the RFC and maybe give some stories or background for, how activism still go goes on today and how, persecution and and propaganda are still pitted against people, that impact real lives today.
Robert Meeropol:Yeah. Well, I mean, the the shortest the sort of 25 word or less version that I can give of what the Rosenberg Fund for Children's Project is is it's it's a public foundation that provides for the educational and emotional needs of the children of targeted activists and targeted activist youth within the United States. And the way we do that is we make grants to institutions for the benefit of these particular children. And you and we don't do food, clothing, and shelter because well, we'd be overwhelmed. Instead, it's usually educational and emotional needs.
Robert Meeropol:And in some ways, what the RFC does is it echoes the thing that saved me and my brother. That there was a fund raised for us and this the Mirapolz didn't have much money. And, the the the fund that was raised us in order enabled us to get therapy and go to summer camp and do thing and connect us to a community of support. And that's exactly what the Rosenberg Fund for children tries to do with these children. So it is a it is my effort to transform the negative that was, the destruction of my family, with the positive of supporting other families, and other children.
Robert Meeropol:And that's that's been my experience now. You know, we don't. One of the things that I've been very careful about is that you don't want to I don't believe in in doc you know, the Christian fundamentalist may believe in indoctrinating children, but I don't believe in that. I think the most important thing that to let children if you can let children be children so that they are not, we do not demand they deal with adult problems. You know, of course, in a privileged society like the United States, it's more possible to do that than it is in Ukraine.
Robert Meeropol:But so if we're gonna try so the trick that I see it is we want the pair the children of pos of of progressive activists to have a positive connection to their parents. We do this by providing grants that enable the children to do the kinds of things they want in a cultural setting. For instance, any kid that has musical talent, well, we'll give them musical lessons. If they have athletic talent, we give them athletic lessons. It's it anything that can create a safe harbor in what otherwise is a storm for a child is a positive thing, and it helps create a positive connection between them and their parents.
Robert Meeropol:But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna follow in their parents' footsteps. We have children who reject, you know, who basically say, well, my parents went off and did this, and they neglected me. And and therefore, they react more frequently. They don't react by becoming right wingers so much as they react by becoming nonpolitical. But it is my feeling that if you create a positive connection between a parent and a child, it is more likely not that the child is necessarily gonna follow in the parent's footsteps, but that the child is going to engage in activities that are in their own way somewhat of an echo of what their parents did.
Robert Meeropol:It increases the chances that that will happen. And if through this, we so that's that's you know, and that's why one of the our programs is is is is our Attica Fund. We fund children visiting their imprisoned parents, because we want to forge that connection between children and parents. So that is really the ideology behind what we're trying to do in the RFC. The other thing that we try to do is and this is the reflection of the nuance that I've talked about is that we have 4 guiding principles.
Robert Meeropol:All people have equal worth. People are more important than profits. Society must function within ecologically sustainable limits, and world peace is a necessity. If you look at that, it's an anti discrimination clause. It's an anti capitalist clause.
Robert Meeropol:It's a green clause, and it's a peace clause. Okay? And what we say is if you're involved in working for any of those causes or causes of that nature, then you and you get targeted, then you become eligible. Your children become eligible for RFC support. And if you look at that politically, it's very, very broad.
Robert Meeropol:It's pretty it doesn't include the right wing, but it includes from the center to the left. And that means that if you were I would bet that in we're a public foundation, so we raise money from thousands of individual contributions. I would bet that there's not one of our supporters who agrees with every single bit of activism that all our parents have done. And in some ways, that's the thing I'm most proud of, that we support such a range of people that no one would support all of them. And and, they wouldn't necessarily even support each other.
Robert Meeropol:But we put all these people together, and we send them all our newsletter, which lists all our grants anonymously, but talks about the kind of activities. And one of the things we're also trying to do is to say to these people is your agreements are more important than your disagreements. And the challenge that we face today in the world is the greatest challenge we've ever faced. And, because the dominant political system on the globe today is probably incompatible with human survival. How are we gonna deal with that?
Robert Meeropol:Well, we're never gonna succeed in dealing with that if we don't form the largest, most multifaceted global coalition that the world has ever seen. And if that's the task in front of us, we get there by emphasizing our points of agreement and how our work complements each other rather than emphasizing our points of disagreement, and how what I'm doing is more important than what you're doing. That, you know, that's the bottom line for me. And the RFC is a small little organization, but I figure, well, anything that I can do to push things in the right direction, no matter how small it is, is good. And so that's that's kind of where the Rosenberg fund for children comes from.
Robert Meeropol:And I I do wanna say if people wanna find out more about it, simple website, www.rfc.org. We got in on the web domain issue very early and so have a very easy website to find. And if you go to it, you'll find out more about us.
Derek Kreider:Alright. Yeah. And I'll make sure that I I link that in the, in the notes and anything else that you, your book as well and anything else that, you wanna send me that you think is important.
Robert Meeropol:Okay. There is, I don't know. I just wanna say one more thing before going because I noticed my voice is is going. 2 books I wanna mention. I mentioned this settler colonialism.
Robert Meeropol:I think this book, not a nation of immigrants by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz is really important in understanding that ideology and where we come from. And then a book particularly for you, and that which you might find fun. Okay? This book isn't out yet. I was asked to do a blurb for it.
Robert Meeropol:It's coming out it's coming out on May 3rd, I think. It's called Yippee Girl. Exploits and Protest and Defeating the FBI, the story of Judy Gumbo, who was one of the founders of the Yippies. And it's about the sixties and into the early seventies, but it's more about from an anarchist perspective. And it's it's it's really a romp.
Robert Meeropol:It's a wild romp through that period. And I think, you know, this one is is kind of fun reading. It's interesting politics, but it's fun reason reading, and I recommend it.
Derek Kreider:Alright. I will definitely grab that. You said May 3rd?
Robert Meeropol:May 3rd.
Derek Kreider:Okay. Yeah. I I usually get I usually get things on Kindle over here because Yeah. Ship shipping is kinda difficult. So as long as it's on Kindle, I'll make sure to grab
Robert Meeropol:I don't I don't I have no idea. It's called it's their the publisher is it's a small publisher. It's called the 3 rooms press. So but Judy Gumbo, you'll probably be able to find. She was given that name by Eldridge Cleaver, by the way.
Derek Kreider:Well, yeah, I will I will make sure to link those as well. I appreciate you you giving me an hour of your time, and, I I was very honored that you you accepted, and, I enjoyed the conversation. So thank you. That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.
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