Democracy Now! Thursday, October 1, 2026

0:00From publics, the House of Journalism in Berlin, Germany, this is Democracy Now. Most people think that AI is an existential bit. There is a 10% chance AI will cut us all in the next decade. It's pretty clear why that statement has worried so many of the AI will be out there. If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong. But it's actually the people who are building it that are the existential risks to humanity. As anthropic warns its AI models pose an existential risk to humanity, we'll speak to a leading critic of the AI industry, Timnick the Brew. She just won the 2026 Right Livelyhood Award known as the Alternative Nobel.

1:04Then as we broadcast from Berlin, we look at Germany's crackdown on supporters of Palestinian rights. Our own history, our responsibility, deriving from the Holocaust, makes it our permanent duty to stand up in existence and security of the state of Israel. This responsibility guides us. Those were the words of then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Days after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. We'll speak to a leading attorney here in Berlin who's represented clients involved in the pro-Palestine movement. Plus we look at Germany's crackdown on migrants and refugees. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now.

2:04Democracy Now.org. The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Tennessee's Governor Bill Lee has halted all remaining executions this year. After a death row prisoner survived two lethal injections on Wednesday night. According to her lawyers, Christophe Pike was still breathing. After she was strapped to a gurney and injected with two syringes of Pento Barbatol in a botched execution that spanned more than two hours. Witnesses say Pike described a burning spot in her arm that felt like it was going to burst. She smiled and laughed and gasped repeatedly and began snoring but continuing to breathe. She was later taken to a hospital. Her lawyer saying no one's informed them about her condition. Robin Mar, the executive director of the death penalty information center said quote, this event is the worst we've seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era, there is no precedent, she said.

3:08Pike was sentenced to death for a 1995 murder she committed when she was 18 years old. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years. Wednesday night's execution went forward only after the US Supreme Court lifted a stay by an appeals court which paused her execution to consider whether her sentencing had fully weighed evidence that she'd been raped and sexually abused as a child. Ahead of the botched execution, Pike's lawyers had argued a single dose lethal injection could be tantamount to torture due to Pike's small veins and history of sexual trauma. They said quote, we take no pleasure in being right but the concerns raised by Miss Pike proved to be true, difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded Pento Barbatol, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong. All under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy, they said.

4:13The Pentagon's announced a new four-star military command dedicated to the rapid adoption of killer robots and other autonomous weapons. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the announcement during his state of the force address on Wednesday at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia. Today at my direction, we are announcing the creation of autonomous warfare command or auto warcom. A new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force in the fastest peace-time shift in modern military history. Drone warfare supercharged by SI-enabled targeting is the biggest battlefield revolution in generations. Amnesty International is called for a ban on killer robots writing quote, the replacement of troops with machines makes the decision to go to war easier and through illegal transfers and battlefield capture.

5:16These weapons will fall into hands of others. Meanwhile Secretary Hegseth confirmed the military will cut 20% of its generals and admirals. This comes after he consistently blocked promotions for several high-ranking black and female officers. Hegseth declared, we are no longer the woke department. He also singled out reporters in the auditorium calling them anti-American losers in our media, accusing them of treason for reporting critically on the Pentagon. And Hegseth announced a new Pentagon project on the future of warfare led by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Trump donor and weapons entrepreneur Parmarlucky, and Trillionaire Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, which receives billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts. A federal judge Wednesday ordered the Pentagon to let him review its secret legal justification for lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific before he decides whether to release it.

6:20The Pentagon has been bombing boats for allegedly carrying drugs, even as it provides no evidence they engaged in narco trafficking. Since last fall the Pentagon's claimed 70 boat strikes killing more than 200 people. Jeffrey Stein, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project responded, quote, The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians. Today's order is a huge step in the right direction of ensuring that the government does not get to summarily execute people based on secret law, he said. A fly Dubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was diverted to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. After one of the pilots allegedly tried to stab his co-pilot in the cockpit and sent the jet plunging more than 17,000 feet in less than two minutes. The passengers and crew got into the cockpit and subdued the alleged attacker.

7:24The plane later landed safely in Saudi Arabia, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacker may have tried to crash the plane, which was carrying mostly Israeli passengers. Israel's foreign ministry called the incident an attempted terrorist attack on Israelis, but the motive remains unclear. This is one of the passengers who helped subdue the attacker. We pulled the assailant out, I pulled him out, after I pulled him out we took control of the plane. I pulled up the yoke, I straightened the plane out a bit and then the pilot. I saw two unmanned yokes with no pilots and I've watched this TV program, flight investigation and I knew I had to pull. Palestinians are holding mass funeral services in Gaza City today for 105 people whose remains were recovered from the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes. Among the dead are 60 children. The funeral follows Israeli attacks on homes and vehicles Wednesday that wounded dozens and killed eight Palestinians, including journalist Muhammad Abdel Aziz Al-Najar.

8:33He's at least the 260th Palestinian media worker to be killed by Israel since October 2023. This comes as Israel's severe restrictions on medicine, fuel and humanitarian goods has left Gaza's health sector on the brink of collapse. Sharif Matar is head of pediatrics at Al-Rontesi Children's Hospital, which is operating at minimum capacity with some departments forced to shut down to conserve electricity. At the moment we're unable to operate all of the ventilators or reopen the intensive care unit at Al-Rontesi Hospital with its staff and equipment. Last night unfortunately a one and a half month old baby died because intensive care was unavailable. In Massachusetts, members of the group Cambridge for Palestine delivered an open letter Wednesday calling on Cambridge City officials to divest public money from companies they are saying are complicit in Israel's genocide in Gaza.

9:40The letter was signed by nearly 2,000 people including Jewish residents who urged city counselors not to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism and pointed to Israel's continued deadly strikes on Gaza despite the US-brokered so-called ceasefire. Cambridge for Palestine says an investigation uncovered 28 million dollars of city investments and weapons and surveillance companies that are directly complicit in Israel's ongoing attacks on Palestinians. This is Ayah Azubi, a democratic socialist and the youngest city counselor in Cambridge's history. We are out here today because we are getting ready to launch our divestment campaign to the city council where hopefully we will call on the city to divest some of their financial funding out of companies that are invested in the genocide of Palestinians. Cambridge has a history of standing up against important human rights abuses. We stood up against apartheid South Africa back in the late 1970s.

10:44We divested from Polaroid in its human rights abuses in apartheid South Africa and three years later after the stand that we took Massachusetts also divested pension money out of South Africa. An immigration judge has ruled the president of Wisconsin's largest mosque can be deported. Salazar Soar was arrested by immigration agents in March and held from more than 80 days in an Indiana jail. Soar Soar came to the United States in 1993. He's been a legal resident of Milwaukee for over 32 years. He grew up in the occupied West Bank was detained by ICE agents back in March. Democracy now spoke with Salazar Soar in July. He said his time in ICE detention brought back bad memories of his childhood when he lived under Israeli military occupation. I never thought in my life that I would see such facility in the United States here with all this kind of bad treatment.

11:51So immediately as I mentioned it brought me this memories. What I went through as a child when they arrested me from my house, when the Israeli soldiers came and arrested me and make me go through two years at least in prison for one reason that I'm a Palestinian. That's all. The Justice Department has indicted 10 foreign nationals in Minnesota on charges of voter fraud attorney general Todd Blanche announced the charges Wednesday saying the 10 immigrants illegally cast ballots and elections dating back to 2022. That would represent about 0.0012% of the combined 8.5 million ballots cast by Minnesotans in those elections. Attorney General Blanche also announced he filed a judicial misconduct complaint against several federal judges in Minnesota who criticized Operation Metro surge. The Trump administration's deadly immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities last winter.

12:56There's an obvious bias against the Department of Homeland Security and immigration authorities in Minnesota. These judges are commenting publicly on pending and impending cases and making political statements on matters that are currently or just recently been before them. Many of which are still on appeal. Attorney General Todd Blanche was citing interviews the judges gave to the New York Times in September, including these remarks from Patrick Schultz, a George W. Bush appointee, who served as a chief US District judge in Minnesota during ISIS winter surge. What happened in our court, especially in January through March of this year, was pretty much unprecedented in the history of the United States, at least going back to the Civil War. And it created a grave threat to the rule of law.

13:56In a statement, Minnesotans attorney general Keith Ellison condemned the Justice Department's complaint against federal judges as quoted desperate and dangerous attack on American judicial independence. He added Trump and his allies have bullied immigrants, refugees, and the trans community. And now they're turning their attacks toward a co-equal branch of government, Ellison said. And those are some of the headlines. This is democracy now, democracy now dot org, the Warren peace report. I made me goodman in Berlin, Germany, we're broadcasting from publics, the House of Journalism. And I'm not mean to shake in New York, welcome to our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. On Tuesday, President Trump and leading tech and AI executive signed a set of voluntary safety standards for artificial intelligence. Trump announced the agreement at the White House alongside space exes Elon Musk, Metas Mark Zuckerberg and Thrompix Dario Amadei.

14:57In video's Jensen Huang, open AI's Greg Brockman, Google Sundar Pichai and others. These are the most brilliant people in the world. And the job they've done is unbelievable. We have a very big lead and we're going to keep our lead. And it's a very positive thing. It's an amazing industry. There are those that say it's bigger than the industrial revolution. Now I don't know if that's so, but everyone seems to think it is and it could be substantially bigger. And we're leading and we're going to keep it that way. The White House meeting came after weeks of warnings from AI companies about their own products. In early September, an anthropic researcher named Jacob Coxon resigned and warned that there's more than a 10% chance AI could kill all humans. And Thrompix has warned investors that advanced AI could pose quote catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. But the claims and motivations of the leading AI firms have also been questioned by Sam.

16:01We begin today's show with a leading critic of the AI industry, Timnich Gebruh. She's an AI researcher and the founder and executive director of the distributed artificial intelligence research institute or dare. Prior to that, she served as co lead of the ethical AI research team at Google. She was fired in 2020 for writing a paper warning about the dangers of large language models and raising issues of discrimination in the workplace. Thinit Gebruh also co founded black in AI her forthcoming book is titled deep unlearning the rise of AI and the radicalization of a tech idealist on Wednesday. Timnich Gebruh received the 2026. It was announced she's receiving the 2026 right livelihood award known as the alternative Nobel in a moment. She'll join us. But first this is a short video produced by right livelihood.

17:06Most people think that AI is an existential risk. There was a 10% chance AI will cut us all in the next decade. It's pretty clear why that statement has worried so many people. If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong. But it's actually the people who are building it that are the existential risks to humanity. If a bridge collapses, we don't ever ask was the bridge uncontrollable was the bridge unethical and really AI is no different than that. When we describe these systems and artifacts like they have their own agency, we're at the very same time helping the companies market themselves. But more importantly what we're doing is we're also helping them sidestep accountability. I'm a scientist trying to just do science but it's not possible in our world to just do that.

18:08Ten years ago I was focused on changing the minds of powerful people whereas now I'm focused on building grassroots power. The institute that I created, there we have technologists, we have refugee advocates, we have labor organizers, we have artists, and we also collaborate a lot with other people. I've been able to create a safe space for people like this to make their mark on technology and also imagine and re-imagine what it means to build technology. What motivates me to keep going is the belief that we have to try to make things better and I really do believe in human agency and I believe in the ability of collective action. We can change things. That's a video produced by right livelihood profiling AI expert Timnick Gaborou who joins us now from Menlo Park, California.

19:17Timnick, congratulations on the right livelihood award prize and I'm wondering if we can move right into the content you've been most focused on. Your response to President Trump and the world's wealthiest tech executives, signing a voluntary set of safety standards for artificial intelligence this week. If you can talk about your response and what's happening right now in California, the major meeting that you're attending. Well, so I have been warning that this kind of discussion about the fictional super intelligent machines that don't exist and the so-called existential risk that they pose has been a ploy for regulatory capture. I feel like when I saw this meeting announced with self-policing and self-regulation and relying on the goodwill of these companies to self-regulate and my first thought was that they got what they wanted.

20:28This is what they wanted. Instead of being held liable by through existing laws, I mean, for example, if you wanted to look at cybersecurity laws, opening I could have been held liable for unleashing malware around the world, hacking, hugging phase, hacking all sorts of government agencies. But instead of doing that and holding them accountable for unsafe security practices that they should have had basic security practices that cybersecurity experts would tell you they could have implemented. Instead of that, they managed to redirect the conversation to some type of unprecedented rogue machines that don't exist. And then now that leads to this kind of agreement between all these men who I believe are the actual real existential risk to humanity to self-regulate self-police and we have to rely on their morality now. And if you could respond to the fact that the other tech executives all came down quite hard on Amadaya and Thropic saying that he's being too extreme in his public statements about the risks of AI.

21:43Yeah, he is very extreme, but they're no different. So I'm not really, you know, maybe that maybe they're saying now that he's being too extreme and so that might be changing investor responses. But all of them have at one point or another claimed that AI is an existential risk to humanity going back all the way to 2012. Elon Musk said that with AI, we're summoning the demon into 2013 Peter Teal said that AI is a higher existential risk to humanity than climate change. 2023 Sam Altman was talking about how his own creation is an existential risk, but the difference I think what people really need to understand is at the same time as these tech executives are saying that in the same breath, they also tell us that their products, the beneficial kind of AI, the kind of AI that they're trying to do. The kind of AI that they control because they're the good guys can eradicate poverty stop climate change, which is ridiculous because the data centers are actually causing climate catastrophe and eradicate all disease.

22:50I mean, they're in the same breath saying this. This is still to me the utopia and doom is still a marketing ploy, but maybe one of them went a little too far and is spooking investors, whereas in the past, it was speaking to this these defense, defense cap capabilities in your headline, you talked about how the US military is trying to integrate AI into every facet of its practices. And there was just a CNN investigative report that showed that the US almost started World War III with China relying on a faulty fabricated information from a chatbot. Now we don't know what chatbot they use, but it's obviously one of these providers. And this chatbot provided fake information saying that a Chinese vessel was carrying components of nuclear weapons and the military was ready with planes, soldiers to intercept the ship, board the ship. And this was going to cause an actual existential threat to humanity. So now instead of discussing faulty, unreliable systems, we are, they are marketing their systems as all knowing super powerful, super intelligent.

23:59So regardless of how far Amodin may have gone in their eyes, all of them have been talking about their creations and products in that way. And Timmy, if you could say, you said earlier that it's a ploy for a regulatory capture and that these agents, as people describe them going rogue, although I understand that that's not an accurate description, that these agents doing something reportedly different than the ones that are going to be in the same place. So if you could talk about the regulatory capture question and then what security practices, safety practices are in place, that or are there any in place? If you speak to any cyber security expert, they would tell you that whatever they had in place that they claimed to have the security practices were laughable.

25:01For example, OpenAI was testing the capabilities of their models to find vulnerabilities and explain them. That is what they trained these models to do and they were testing the ability of these models to do what they were trained for. But the thing is if you want to test this and you don't want to hack other organizations, you should do it in a what's called an air gap environment where there's no internet access. And so they did not have a properly air gap environment environment. And so the models ended up being able to have internet access. This is not models going rogue. This is gross incompetence and negligence by a particular company, which actually they could be held criminally liable for. For Lena Khan outlined a whole bunch of ways in which these companies can be currently held liable with current laws.

26:02And unfortunately that's not what we're talking about. We're acting like there is some kind of unprecedented thing that has been created for which we have to discuss what to do. But actually if we did not take these companies words for what went wrong, we could have we could use the legal mechanisms at our disposal to currently hold them accountable. Tim Neade, can you talk about Senator Bernie Sanders effort to ban artificial super intelligence in a recent piece you described his bill as well meaning but ultimately misguided explain. I think that Bernie Sanders is really misleading the left astray and I've been extremely disappointed and in fact to be clear shocked absolutely shocked by the kinds of people he's been surrounding himself with and the kind of advice that he's been getting. One of the things that I think people do not realize is that the AI industry is using the exact same playbook from the tobacco and fossil fuel industry.

27:10So for instance, Bernie Sanders has this alliance with Steve Bannon is very closely working with the future of life institute which was co founded by billionaire Jan Tallinn, the same billionaire Jan Tallinn who's a leading investor in an entropic series a he led entropic series a it's also the same billionaire Jan Tallinn who invests in invested in a so called auditing third party auditing organization that could be a big deal. So this whole road models you know agents creating civilizations and all of that lingo came from this very pseudo scientific audit that that is by an organization that claims to be a third party but in fact isn't because you see it's the same investors the same staff the same people. So to the public it seems like there's a whole bunch of independent experts coming together warning about these existential risks but what is actually happening is regulatory capture the same way I learned that British petroleum came up with the term carbon footprint right instead of them being held accountable now everybody's conversation about the environment in 2004 got redirected to our individual responsibility in carbon footprint.

28:32So this is sort of what's happening this a industry so instead of Bernie Sanders talking about for instance how can we have regulation to prevent the use of these faulty systems what he's doing is he's helping them market their systems as super intelligent in which case in my opinion the real existential risk is like what we saw with the US military almost starting world war three because of the belief that these systems are infallible and actually super intelligent. What we need people to understand is that they are fabled so far will they're not super intelligent and we need to hold corporations liable for unleashing these kinds of error prone models into the world. Timmy could you talk about this idea of yours of stochastic parrots and how it applies to AI and then respond to the fact that many have said now that that's an outdated that that research is outdated because AI has changed so much.

29:32It's very interesting because this this critique of stochastic parrots mostly comes from a very specific segment of the of the group of people who believe that AI in fact causes an existential risk so stochastic parrots was describing a large language models and this is actually the reason that I got fired from Google in 2020 is one of the reasons I got fired is for writing a paper outlining the answer. The dangers of large language models and we call them stochastic parrots because these are large language models that are trained on vast amounts of textual data and they're trained to calculate the most likely sequences of tests so now what has changed recently is that the way in which the likelihood is calculated is different there's sort of bells and whistles but at the end of the day. The core engine of many of these chat bots is still a large language models which we call stochastic parrots because they're not grounded in fact they think you cannot count on them to tell you facts so even if they happen whatever you get the information you get happens to be factual a certain amount of time you can never count on it to be fully factual and this is the reason that my collaborator Emily and vendor and I wanted to remind people

30:56that the US almost started World War III the relying on such chat bots today and so to the people who say it's outdated I first of all most of these people are not speaking in academic peer reviewed research papers I like to speak in scientific terms and I like to have scientifically grounded evaluations of the claims that I make and experiments and most of these people are taking the word of press releases company press releases instead of actually doing their own evaluations grounded in the scientific method so I'm we still have examples of these systems being stochastic parrots and I do not understand the criticisms that things have that these systems are no longer stochastic parrots. So team needs your obviously not of the view that with the passage of time artificial intelligence in terms of the information it provides will improve it'll get better and better which is of course the general consensus around AI so if you could respond to that and then also tell us what policies you think I would say it's the general consensus well there well let's just say they're now a billion people who you

32:13know and they're not using using the right and I think it's the general consensus about the idea of how to use chat bots right I mean now maybe they have conflicting views on it but more and more people are turning to artificial intelligence to these chat bots so perhaps it's wrong to infer from that that they think the information they're receiving is more reliable but okay so you respond to that and then second what kinds of policies do you think should be put in place to regulate AI to control what these companies are doing. So the term AI itself is very misleading term to use it's a marketing term so when we right now let's say we're discussing the specifically the chat bots that these companies are creating right like Claude or chat GPT and so there are many different things happening where regulation could be helping for instance there are kids who are being goaded into a dying by suicide I was just opposed in a specific case of suicidal self-serve of a teenage child.

33:13I'm a teacher who committed suicide after interacting with a chat bot called character AI whose whole entire deal was to mimic different characters and I do not understand how it's even legal to have such a chat bot that all it does is mimic various characters so this particular case the chat bot was mimicking the character of Daenerys Targaryen of the Game of Thrones and it was it was kind of good. So I was just voting this teenager into dying by suicide and actually it's it's heartbreaking because the teenager was actually asking do I have to do this and the chat bot saying yes you know so in this this is a great example of if you apply intent to the actual chat bot you would say that this chat bot was super intelligent and also was trying to do something to the kid but actually our attention should be directed to the companies Google character AI etc. So I did they unleash this kind of chat bot into the world why do we allow these kinds of chat bots that are completely unsafe for children that are actually killing children that had no prior mental health issues into the world so those are the kinds of conversations I want to have.

34:31So I wanted to ask you guys is it that just recently speaking of error per on large language models someone in Australia this poor woman in Australia accidentally found out that a summary from a medical scribe had attributed her illness her symptoms to micro dosing on mushrooms she's never done mushrooms ever so why do we not have guardrails making sure that these kinds of error prone systems are not used in high-stakes scenarios like medicine that's not what we talk about when we redirect our conversation to super intelligence because when you believe they're not error prone and they're super intelligent then you're kind of pushing it on doctors and the medical feels to use these kinds of systems so for me it's a very clear do not allow companies to put out unreliable products into the world especially in high-stakes scenarios without very specific tests and guardrails and the tests should not be ones that the companies themselves tell you about or that based on their press releases we need to have transparency into the kinds of data that they're using me we're not talking about copyright protections and how much data they're stealing from authors on the topic just have to settle with a whole bunch of book others why are we allowing them to steal all this data

35:54where are we allowing them to build all these data centers and pillage the environment and pollute our water and make us all have asthma because we can't have clean air we can't breathe clean air anymore so these are the kinds of conversations I want to have about regulation Timney as we begin to wrap up you've described many prominent backers of AI as being eugenicists can you talk about what you see as this link between eugenics and artificial intelligence Very hard to wrap this up in a little bit but basically I part of my work describes the people who talk about existential threats of AI and utopia so utopia and dystopia are two sides of the same coin this is kind of eschatology like religion and of times you know you have these preachers always telling you the end of is coming tomorrow So in this case the test real bond bill the tea is for transhumanism and I think this is the best example of how the those who talk about super intelligence or creating super intelligence have a direct line to eugenics and they're very public about it for example Mary the organization that you had in your show last week I mean the founder is very publicly a eugenicist I can give you all sorts of quotes but for example when you talk about transhumanist in eugenics the goal is to improve the human world

37:20So you know through breed selective breeding either through killing undesirable people or through making sure that the desirable people breed a lot of humans but in transhumanism you want to sidestep that altogether people are like why don't we just create a new human species called post humans and this human species is just better it lives forever or for a long time it doesn't feel any pain And so a great example I can give you is Ben Gortzel the man who popularized the term artificial general intelligence was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein and in his correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein he says that the girls who accused him of rape were in fact wrong and that they were old enough to consent and he says that specifically the issue was with the human brain and this is why he's working on a GI because once he achieves his goal of artificial general intelligence we're not going to have these kinds of faulty human brains because we'll have a great brain.

38:27Max Tagmark who you've also had on your show in his 2017 effective of altruism keynote says a similar thing where if we build a super brain we can earth is just our womb right we can colonize the cosmos and have digital millions and billions and trillion billions and trillion I don't know quadrillions of digital beings happily living and colonizing the cosmos so you know I have a whole body of work that draws this line and connections but honestly none of it is hidden because these are all publicly available talks and papers that of what these people say. Tim Nietgavru we want to thank you so much for being with us founder and executive director of dare the distributed artificial intelligence research institute her forthcoming book deep on learning the rise of AI and the radicalization of attack idealist she has just one. A 2026 right livelihood award known as the alternative no bow speaking to us from men low park California coming up will speak to a leading attorney here in Berlin whose represented clients charted in Germany's down the pro Palestine moments stay with us.

39:53I'm going to be to that place where I lose my sense of time where I just give my faith when I feel most light want you play my favorite song my favorite song my favorite song my favorite song my favorite song by sing came performing in our democracy now studio this is democracy now democracy now dot org I made me goodman in Berlin Germany at public the house of journalism with

41:16with no means shake in New York we turn now to look at how German authorities have cracked down on pro Palestinian voices across the country in recent years soon after the October 7th attack on Israel in 2023 this is how then German Chancellor described his country support for Israel. In this moment there is only one place for Germany at this time and that is by Israel's side. This is what we mean when we say Israel's security is part of Germany's raison d'etat our own history our responsibility deriving from the Holocaust makes it our permanent duty to stand up for the existence and security of the state of Israel. This responsibility guides us in the years in the years since Germany has banned a restricted pro Palestine demonstrations criminalized certain speech and intensified surveillance and prosecutions of pro Palestinian voices the restrictions on protest have been accompanied by thousands of criminal cases and investigations for more we're joined here in Berlin by attorney Alexander Gorski he's been challenging Germany's restrictions on the

42:24pro Palestine activism and representing people facing criminal prosecution or deportation for their protest. He recently represented the so called Berlin for three European Union citizens in one US citizen ordered to leave Germany because of their involvement in pro Palestine protest he succeed in the process of the process. Alexander Gorski it's great to be with you here in Berlin explain that case. The case of the Berlin for is a good example of how the German state and the Berlin local government tried to crack down on the pro Palestine movement. Those were four young people who were active in especially campus related activism in favor of Palestine liberation against the genocide in Gaza and they were accused of taking part in an occupation but none of them had a criminal conviction none of them had a criminal record.

43:30And then in March of 2025 the migration office in Berlin decided to issue expulsion orders against all four of them and making them executable at the moment so we had to file an emergency relief measure at the administrative court in Berlin to make sure that those four people could stay in Berlin to await the outcome of their case. Luckily we achieved that and we won the emergency measures in April of 2025 and all four are still in Berlin. Three cases are still pending the fourth one of an Irish national we already won but this is just one of many examples of Germany using migration law in order to crack down on the pro Palestine movement. Alexander let's just talk about the context the broader context in which this has been occurring the contemporary political use of the term which we just mentioned Statz Rizon reason of state in Germany.

44:30The way it's being used now was reportedly coined by Chancellor Angela Merkel during a historic speech to the Israeli Knesset in March 2008 so could you talk about what exactly was going on then and what prompted Merkel to speak specifically of this to the Knesset. Yes the now in famous a concept of Statz Rizon of state was popularized by Angela Merkel in 2008 as you just said but this concept dates back a lot longer it's an extra legal context concept it's not enshrined in the German constitution it's not a law it's actually a guiding principle of German foreign policy towards the state of Israel after the Holocaust in the 1950s for geopolitical reasons. Germany Western Germany supported Israel with money and weapons in order to regain its position again at the United Nations at NATO to re enter into the Western community of states and in the decades since this unconditional support for Israel has served as a moral white washing of Germany's guilt regarding the Holocaust in especially since October the seventh we have seen that this concept has been abused to justify the supply of the United States.

45:53The support of the genocide war of Israel against the population Gaza and of the export of millions and millions of euros worth of arms to Israel in order to continue its military actions in Gaza. You've also represented Dr. Graszen, Abu Sita and Janis Verifakis the former Greek finance minister and the restrictions on coming here into Germany explain. Yes, those two cases are definitely extraordinary I don't think that your audience needs to be introduced to those two people so very briefly Dr. Graszen, Abu Sita is a British Palestinian surgeon a world leading expert in the field of conflict medicine and Janis Verifakis is a Greek politician and global commentator on global affairs. So those two people were scheduled to speak at the Palestine Congress which was supposed to be held here in Berlin in April of 2024. But the German government again used migration law in order to silence these voices the Congress itself was organized by Palestinian groups left the groups but also anti-Synerist Jewish groups and it was the idea to talk about what's happening in Gaza and how Germany is complicit.

47:04And Dr. Graszen, Abu Sita specifically wanted to speak about his personal experience working at Al-Shifa Hospital and Al-Ali Hospital in Gaza in the first weeks of the genocide and Janis Verifakis was invited to give a broader political context. Gassana, Abu Sita was entered into the Shangan information system meaning the Germany banned him from entering the whole Shangan area which covers most of Europe which also would have banned him from giving expert witness testimony at the ICC and they also put a ban on political activity for several weeks on him. We challenged both of these government actions successfully in court we fought back and we are doing the same in the case of Janis Verifakis. Janis Verifakis was also targeted by the German government the federal police who patrols the airports and is in charge of airport security was given a notification for the weekend of the Palestine Congress that up on arrival Janis Verifakis was to be checked very carefully because he could be a danger to the public good

48:10because of possible anti-Semitism of possible radicalization in anti-Israeli views and he was and that the federal police was told to search him very carefully and possibly deny him entry if they deem it necessary. Also we found out about this notification that went out to the federal police and were challenging it in court and we're hoping for a court date later this year. Those two cases obviously target two very prominent figures but the abuse of migration law goes far beyond that numerous Palestinian activists Palestinian refugees living in Berlin have been targeted by the German state for their activism in favor of Palestine with the use of migration law. By provoking their refugee status by revoking their residence titles or by the naturalization. Alexander, just as we conclude with 19 I just make one last point just to clarify this starts raison from the very outset was there a conflation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism or anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism with respect to Israel?

49:30Definitely the German state is basically using these terms interchangeably when they say anti-Semitism they could just smell mean anti-Zionism I think it's very important to distinguish between those two concepts Germany has a historic responsibility for challenging anti-Semitism but at the same time what we should learn especially as Germans from the Holocaust that never again means never again for anyone and that is especially important now considering the genocide happening in Gaza. Alexander Gorski we thank you so much for being with us Berlin based lawyer here who specializes in migration and criminal laws represented several clients involved in the pro Palestine movement coming up a quick look at Germany's crackdown on migrants and refugees stay with us. When I love you you didn't want me to turn me away from the door of your heart.

50:33When I love you you love me to but you didn't know that I'm still another one my heart. Oh I just got the message you sent by friend tell me that you had to be with me once more. Oh you heard my words you can't believe it my heart is safe and don't let me know more. When I love you you didn't want me you turned me away from the door of your heart. When I love you you love me to but you didn't know that I'm still another one my heart.

51:43Allister Art and Ben singing when I loved you at the Brooklyn folk festival this is democracy now democracy now dot org I made me good men in Berlin Germany with their means chef in New York. We end today's show with a look at broader militarization and the immigration crackdown in Germany and the European Union. This is EU migration commissioner Magnus Brunner speaking to Reuters last week saying that the European Union needs to quote control migration flows. Well ten years ago when the first crisis started with the migration flows towards Europe after the Syrian crisis Europe took a lot of responsibility but we didn't have a system we didn't have rules and that's why we didn't have control over who comes into the European Union who can stay and who has to leave again and that's why the member states agreed after years and years of discussion on the pact for migration and asylum. And that was that was the actual reason to get control back this is actually what we need in the European Union so this comes as Germany's far right AFD party is made significant electoral gains and state elections in September which could result in German state being controlled by a far right extremist party for the first time since World War II.

53:04The European Union has been a 50 champion restrictions on migration and promotes so called remigration which amounts to a policy of mass deportation. For more we're joined here in Berlin by the cut unit. She's the legal policy spokesperson for pro-assil German NGO working for the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees in Germany and Europe. Thank you so much for being with us in these last few minutes we have together can you talk about what the AFD victories mean for asylum seekers and refugees in Germany. Yeah, thank you so much. First of all, of course, the win of the AFD and Zaxan Anhal but also the gains they have made across Europe is deeply concerning for everyone who cares about our democracy but especially for people who are targeted by their policy. For the first time ever them taking control of government could mean that they can make policies that will directly impact refugees asylum seekers of course also other people with migration background and this could mean excluding refugee children from schools this could mean further restricting of benefits they might try to stop any asylum seekers being brought to that specific federal state.

54:19So a lot of people have fear but I also do want to highlight I think already in the last years they have quite successfully managed to push the center parties towards their policies and I think that is just as concerning. And Vypka if you could talk about the transformation of the discursive the conversation around immigration in Germany I mean it was in 2015 that Angela Merkel made it a policy to admit refugees in particular from Syria to the point that now there are almost I believe a million Syrian refugees in Germany and now that so that was 2015. What has happened that has led to this kind of backlash against refugees in Germany. Over the last 10 years we for sure have seen quite a shift of the German migration policy towards the right it's not like a straight forward at this time it went in the other direction but it's just something that has developed and there have been you know a lot of anti migration

55:29campaigns in the media by right wing or even center parties. So for almost 10 years migration has again and again we put on the top of the gender as supposedly the biggest issue in Germany. What I do think we currently see is that again it's shown no it's other issues that are very concerning with regards to housing or the retirement system but I think constantly having put migration in asylum on top of this agenda has led to quite a hostile environment. But what we have seen in the past as well is also there is still a lot of solidarity with refugees in Germany also Ukrainian refugees were welcomed in the last years and we still see a lot of people day to day supporting refugees in their work so I think this really we have to consider as well. And finally your group will the work that it carries out in Germany and Europe the space you find for it and the movements how successful they are in pushing for the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.

56:33What we do focus on currently but have been doing for many years in Germany but with partners across Europe is really litigation because it is quite hard at the moment to have political wins but we have fundamental rights we have human rights and there is still a functioning court system that we can use. What is quite concerning is that we see that if there are wins in front of courts governments are not perceiving it that well anymore they might implement it or might not and they might use it to really also campaign against our core human rights such as the European human rights charter. So these are developments that we see increasing and we are quite worried but for the moment I think going to court is still a good way and how much public support do you have. Well it always depends of course who you ask and we can't deny that there has been a shift within the German population as well but again I want to highlight there are many people who every day support refugees and other people coming to Germany.

57:33So I think people are of course a bit swayed by some of these narratives that have been pushed again and again and again as migration being the main concern but there are also many people who see and who know people in their daily life who have arrived ten years ago perhaps but who are now member of the community who arrive and who fill drop gaps that otherwise are not filled who arrive who are part of school etc. So we also then again always see a lot of protests when there's for example effort to return such people and people come together to protect their neighbors to protect people at their workplace. I want to thank you so much they've got you did legal policy spokesperson for pro a seal German NGO working for the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees in Germany and Europe. Democracy now is currently accepting applications for an individual giving manager to support our fundraising team learn more and apply at democracy now dot org tonight I'll be at sport.

58:38Here in Berlin Germany for the screening of steel the story please the documentary about 30 years of democracy now I will be there with the director of the film Carl deal is at seven o'clock it's free people should come early. Check our website I made me good man with no means shake.