I’m not going to go too far depth into this story, since it does concern a personal online interaction with a person whose opinion I’ve always taken seriously. However, I want to use it as an example of how people can be so blinded by their personal biases and prejudices as to swallow total nonsense because it fits their narrative. Look, I’m writing directly to you as a reader: If you ever see me do this, feel free to point it out. You don’t need to worry about offending me!
Daniel McAdams is the co-host of the Ron Paul Liberty Report. (I still listen to the show, including the latest episode now). I consider Dr. Paul, a former congressman from Texas to be one of the greatest influences on my perspectives of foreign policy and economics, along with similar libertarians like Thomas Woods. I also agree with them on 90%+ of the issues regarding the Middle East and US policy towards it. However, my admiration isn’t enough for me to worship every word of Dr. Paul’s or any of the others in the non-interventionist conservative constellation. Here’s are three key points in that broader topic where I believe that I and McAdams are largely in agreement:
End US foreign to all countries. This includes but is by no means limited to Israel, and like Liel Liebovitz I believe that is in both nations’ best interests.
Opposition to online censorship in any form, whether it be racism, sexism, homophobia, or Jew hatred. I believe that this only makes all of those worse.
Opposition to free speech restrictions on college campuses for similar reasons.
Opposition to anti-BDS laws.
Cease US involvement in the war between Russia and Ukraine unless it’s strictly in the interests of ending the fighting and facilitating a peaceful resolution.
We have dramatically different reasons for supporting these positions. It happens to be that I hold them while still believing that Israel has just cause to fulfill its military objectives in Gaza. McAdams believes that Israel has exhausted its justification and that the US should not only have nothing to do with the invasion of Gaza, but should be attempting to stop Israel. OK, I still think that this is a totally reasonable opinion to hold and even if it wasn’t I can still live with it. Last February, along with Dr. Paul and fellow former congressmen Dennis Kucinich and Tulsi Gabbard, McAdams spoke at the Rage Against the War Machine rally at the Lincoln Memorial. The rally was a failure as only hundreds joined in, but it was still an admirable effort and they certainly did more than I did. However, perhaps its greatest weakness was that the rally openly courted and attracted luminaries of openly pro-Russian (as opposed to antiwar) figures like “MAGA Communist” Jackson Hinkle and LaRouche Organization spokeswoman Diane Sare.
There are two problems that combine to hurt the antiwar movement: a) that there is so little courage among mainstream US politicians to say “no” to defense spending and foreign aid and imperil their future reelection chances, and b) that so many who unhinged people are in the antiwar movement and do damage to its reputation. Where I think McAdams and many other libertarians break from logic and reason is in their choice of who to get their information from, which often coincides with the same type of characters. I don’t aim to discredit anyone by calling them a “conspiracy theorist” or any of the other epithets used to squelch dialog. However, there are people on the internet especially X (formerly Twitter) who just post total bullshit, and McAdams is generously willing to not only listen to it but repeat it on Twitter so long as it fits the anti-Israel narrative that he tends to tone down on the Liberty Report.
The most egregious example is that of Maram Susli, better known by her profile of “Syrian Girl” (@partisangirl) who has been best known as a commentator for supporting the Assad regime during the Syrian Civil War. Susli is one of the most notorious propagandists on almost any geopolitical topic, and is well known for her emotionally unhinged behaviour an propensity to post stories that are obviously false, sometimes removing them later without any clarification or apology, despite her self-described status as a “journalist” and “think-tank analyst”. Here are some examples:
On Nov. 12 she tweeted a photo of a woman descending the staircase of a bombed out home claiming it was in Gaza, but which was actually shown to be Homs in Syria where Assad’s forces had bombed civilians.
On Dec. 14 she tweeted that “not a single Hamas fighter has surrendered” in response to videos showing dozens of men laying down weapons and surrendering.
On Dec. 19 she tweeted out the released “Jeffrey Epstein flight list”, but Community Notes responded pointing out that this was a fake list previously tweeted out in 2019. Even Ryan Dawson, a vile hoaxer who I have debated in the past, pointed this out.
On Dec. 22 she stated that Israel had used a tactical nuclear weapon in order to destroy 56 buildings in northern Gaza. Community Notes quickly stepped in to correct her by stating that both the blast pattern and covered area were consistent with conventional explosives.
McAdams has had several online interactions with Susli since at least 2022. For example in October he tweeted in response to a music video she shared by some Palestinian Christians with presumed sarcasm “Jesus wasn’t no damn Middle Easterner”. This is part of the longstanding ridiculous claim that Jesus of Nazareth was a Palestinian based on him being born in a city later populated by Christian Arabs. In January he also responded to one of her criticisms of Rep. Ilhan Omar for supporting Syrian rebels against Assad by saying that “at least she is critical of one terrorist country in the Middle East”, meaning Israel. On October 29, he also responded to a tweet by Susli taunting Israeli soldiers waiting to invade Gaza and asking them “don’t you want to meet your G-d?”, ironic since in the weeks that have transpired the IDF has effectively defeated Hamas forces while suffering a fraction of casualties and seizing much of Gaza as Susli posts endless videos of death and destruction from there calling to an end to it. McAdams didn’t have an issue with her tweet, but rather an argument she had with another user over whether there even is a G-d.
A couple weeks ago I confronted McAdams by tweeting in response to one of Susli’s posts alleging that female hostage Na’ama Levy was a soldier (not civilian) and had not been raped where she had been seen bleeding, but had soiled herself. It was so absurd and devoid of evidence, that I thought perhaps he would have to admit that this had totally disqualified her as a reliable source. I called him out (excuse the typos) for trusting her and remarked as above that Susli is like others I mention above who are partisan belligerents masquerading as peace activists. He responded by accusing me of “slandering” Susli.
Bizarrely enough, McAdams didn’t even look at which story I was referring to. He instead thought I was referring to a different fake story that Susli and her ilk were propagating concerning the surrender of Hamas gunmen at Kemal Adwan Hospital in Gaza’s Jabaliya neighbourhood to the IDF. Her contention in that matter was that the gunmen were in fact just hospital staff, including a doctoral resident. This information is irrelevant to the point, since being a doctor does not prove one way or another whether someone is involved in terrorism or not. I responded to him with the observation that the No. 2 of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was himself a veteran practicing surgeon when he joined what was then Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
In the wake of this episode, Israel released a video of the confession in detention of Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout, the director of Kemal Adwan Hospital. (The hospital happens to have been named for a Fatah terrorist who was killed in 1973). In the video (watch below) Dr. Al-Kahlout admitted not only his own senor membership in Hamas’s Izz ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, but that the hospital was staffed by at least 16 others of both that terror group and the Al-Quds Brigades affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
I try not to let my disagreements with people cloud my general opinion of them. Overall, the libertarian movement offers a lot of proposals on both foreign policy and economics that address the crises that we find ourselves in thanks to the two-party system and its neoliberal agenda. Hopefully McAdams and Dr. Paul will have an open mind to hearing the perspective of those like me that want a good faith pursuit of non-interventionism and free markets without indulging the aims of pro-war instigators from other countries.