Omid Memarian, a journalist, analyst and recipient of Human Rights Watch's Human Rights Defender Award, is the Director of Communications at DAWN.
"The two issues we've been very big on—the threat posed by Trump and his fascism at home, and the genocide in Gaza—you know, we call a spade a spade," Mehdi Hasan, the former MSNBC host, says of his new media venture, Zeteo, which he founded just months after leaving MSNBC in early 2024 when his weekly show was canceled. The aim with Zeteo, Hasan tells Democracy in Exile in an extensive interview, was "having this direct connection with your readers, your viewers, your listeners, your subscribers." So far, that has meant 31,000 paid subscribers through Substack only four months after Zeteo launched.
Hasan sees Zeteo as "providing an alternative voice, definitely a voice that challenges the mainstream consensus, challenges a corporate consensus, challenges our very lazy foreign policy consensus, especially on the Middle East, which U.S. mainstream media has miserably failed on decade after decade, but especially since October 7." In practice, that means "we say the G-word, genocide," Hasan says. "We say the F-word, fascism. We say the R-word, racism. A lot of mainstream media outlets run away from these things. I think people are fed up with that. I think a lot of people see through the kind of linguistic contortions of journalists and headline writers and news anchors."
Especially when it comes to Israel's war in Gaza, where many mainstream media outlets seem to abandon some basic journalistic tenets, according to Hasan, in favor of vague and opaque language and the passive voice. "Journalism is about the what, the when, the why, the who," he says. "We're just not doing that when it comes to Israel-Palestine." Hasan emphasizes his point by contrasting coverage of the war in Ukraine. "How come The New York Times says Russia bombed an apartment and killed seven kids, but doesn't say that when it comes to Gaza? Why are you able to so clearly identify Russia as the illegal invader and occupier in Ukraine, but not Israel in Gaza? Why are you able to have anchors and reporters get emotional on air about people being killed in hospitals in Ukraine, but not in hospitals in Gaza?"
The problems go beyond just media coverage, which ends up reflecting Western complicity with Israel's devastating war. "This is the Iraq War on steroids," he says. The Iraq War undermined international law and "allowed dictators and people like Vladimir Putin to say: Well, you invaded Iraq, why can't I invade Ukraine?" It is a legacy that could be exceeded by the war in Gaza, Hasan argues. "I think 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, people will say: Well, hold on. How dare you say I've killed lots of people. What about what you did in Gaza? What about what you armed and enabled?"
The following transcript has been edited lightly for clarity and length.
I think Gaza is Iraq on steroids. I think 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, people will say: Well, hold on. How dare you say I've killed lots of people. What about what you did in Gaza? What about what you armed and enabled?
- Mehdi Hasan
You started Zeteo news in April after leaving MSNBC in January, and in the past four months, you have had 31,000 paid subscribers through Substack, including more than 1,000 at the $500-and-up "Founder" level, according to The Washington Post. At the same time, many major media companies are laying off their reporters in massive numbers. How do you explain the market you tapped into, and what does it say about the people's interest in consuming news these days?
Great question. I don't think people are not interested in news. How could they not be, when we're living in the most newsy time of our lifetimes? There's too much news.
I think it's about models and strategies. And I think a lot of the big legacy media organizations have obviously become a little slow to adapt. They've kind of overperformed in some areas, underperformed in others. They've put money into certain investments that didn't work out and ended up firing a lot of people. Sadly, it's been—to borrow a line from Donald Trump—a bloodbath for many in our industry.
When I decided to found Zeteo after leaving MSNBC, what appealed to me was the direct-to-consumer aspect to it, the subscriber relationship—having this direct connection with your readers, your viewers, your listeners, your subscribers. And that's worked well for us. And look, it's helped from the fact that I had a brand and a reputation and a following beforehand. I'm not saying everyone can do it. I'm not that naive, but those of us who have established connections with an audience—my audience didn't need me to be on MSNBC. I didn't need MSNBC to have an audience. In the social media age, I've built an audience over the years. Thanks to things like Al Jazeera English, I built a global audience. For me, it was a situation where if I can do my own Substack, it'll probably do pretty well.
But I actually wanted to build something more, something more enduring, an institution that hopefully outlasts me. So we set up Zeteo as a media company. We brought on all these high-profile contributors, like Naomi Klein and Greta Thunberg and Bassem Youssef and Owen Jones and Rula Jebreal. The aim being to try and build something that matches what they're doing on the right, because they've been doing this on the right for a while, and to try and do it in a self-sustaining way. Not have to worry about advertisers or corporate ownership, but to actually be funded by our readers and build a community of readers and viewers.
How do you think the response to Zeteo reflects traditional media outlets' broader challenges in today's rapidly evolving landscape where shortform content like memes and TikTok dominate, and political discourse has become increasingly hyper-politicized? How can media organizations adapt, stay relevant and, as you mentioned, sustainable?
So, a couple of things. One is in terms of TikTok, Instagram, Twitter—I'm 45 years old. I have gray hairs to prove it, but I've always been pretty good on social media. I've always had a big audience on those platforms. On TikTok, the Mehdi Hasan Show on MSNBC has one of the biggest audiences of any cable show. We've understood, my team and I, how to appeal to younger audiences, what kind of engagement, what kind of content, what kind of pace, how to stand out, how to be innovative, how to have fun while covering big stories.
And that leads to number two, which is people want authenticity, and I think corporate media has lost a lot of authenticity. I think people don't trust corporate media in many ways, and they don't see it as authentic. Those of us who have built personalities, reputations, connections with our readers and our subscribers directly can benefit from that. One of the things about Zeteo is we try and be true to our branding, which is to be outspoken, to be challenging. I think that's what people want right now.
The two issues we've been very big on—the threat posed by Trump and his fascism at home, and the genocide in Gaza—you know, we call a spade a spade. We say the G-word, genocide; we say the F-word, fascism; we say the R-word, racism. A lot of mainstream media outlets run away from these things. And I think people are fed up with that. I think a lot of people see through the kind of linguistic contortions of journalists and headline writers and news anchors. They just want to be treated with some respect.
What do you do similar to or different than MSNBC or other mainstream media?
We're much less cautious than a big corporation at NBC Universal. We're willing to take more risks. We're willing to be more outspoken. We're willing to be more challenging of the people in power. Obviously, we don't have any corporate connections, ties, bonds, compromises that an NBC or an ABC or a Fox—obviously, undeniably—has. So we have much more freedom of maneuver and less worry about what's happening in a C-suite.
We move faster and we're nimbler than a big media organization. That has pros and cons. Let me be clear, there are many pros to having the big media organization with their big resources and their fact-checking departments and their legal teams. I'm not a Tucker Carlson who's gone independent and burned down mainstream media. No, not at all. I'm very clear that we all have our own roles to play. The NBCs and the PBSs and NPRs and the CNNs have their role to play. And the Zeteos of this world, we have our role to play.
I think what we're doing is providing an alternative voice, definitely a voice that challenges the mainstream consensus, challenges a corporate consensus, challenges our very lazy foreign policy consensus, especially on the Middle East, which U.S. mainstream media has miserably failed on decade after decade, but especially since October the 7th. And I think again, we say it as we see it. We don't have to worry about ruffling feathers. We don't have to worry about access. We don't have to worry about upsetting people with bad language or being offensive. We'll say if someone is, you know, a fascist.
You have often spoken about your multicultural upbringing and how it shaped your worldview. Can you share more about the values you were raised with and how they have influenced your approach to journalism and your focus on the Middle East?
My parents were Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom. My dad moved to the U.K. in 1966, my mother in the early '70s. My sibling and I were born in the U.K. I was raised as a British Muslim, son of Indian immigrants. So yeah, I've got lots of different hats on. I always saw myself as very European, as well. I was very pro-EU, anti-Brexit. And then, of course, I moved to the U.S. as an immigrant, and now I'm a naturalized citizen. So, I'm a British-American. I hold, you know, multiple passports.
It's become cliched, kind of a right-wing pejorative, but I'm a very proud globalist, a citizen of the globe. I see myself as Indian, British, American, brown, Muslim, Shia. I have many identities that I wear. And I think that has helped me as a journalist try and see the world through different lenses. Not just see it through one lazy Western, British, American lens. One of the things I've done as a journalist working in the Western media, what I did at MSNBC, was to try and platform voices that you don't hear on mainstream media.
When the Afghan withdrawal happened in August 2021, I happened to be sitting in for Chris Hayes on prime-time MSNBC. A lot of other prime-time shows on CNN, on NBC, on ABC—all of the media—they were just interviewing generals and colonels about what happened here and what was the failure. They were interviewing Biden administration officials, former administration officials, David Petraeus. What do you think this is going to cost Joe Biden in the polls? How much is this going to hurt the Democrats? That was the perspective, and I was there on prime time saying, You know what? Let's have some Afghan voices on. Let's have the former Afghan ambassador on. Let's have a women's minister on. Let's have a famous Afghan novelist on. Let's hear from Afghans at this moment.
That's always been my approach. With Gaza, I wanted to hear from Palestinians and Israelis on the ground, not just talking heads in a studio in D.C. And that does come a little bit from my upbringing and my background. My father worked for the U.N. He traveled the world. We had a map in our dining room growing up with pins of all the countries he had been to. He would tell us stories about Ulaanbaatar and other places that he had visited. So that's always been in me.
How did navigating your identity in a Western society influence your understanding of global politics, particularly with respect to the Muslim world?
Growing up as a British Muslim, especially post-9/11, clearly seeing the Islamophobia that is institutionalized in the British media and British politics—just as it is within American media and American politics—that was a real wake-up call. And a reminder that we can't see the world through rose-tinted lenses where we just preach about liberal values and democracy and pretend that we are always the good guys. I'm also old enough to remember Gulf War one. I was 12 years old. I remember being all gung- ho, a 12-year-old not knowing anything about politics. And then in the years that followed, actually reading up about the causes of the war, what happened in the war, how many people were killed, the sanctions that killed so many Iraqis. That kind of radicalized me in a small r-radicalization and politically made me move to the left. You have to be careful, as a Muslim, saying radicalized—because I don't mean joining ISIS. I mean taking a more critical view of U.S. and Western and U.K.-backed imperialism and colonialism.
Look at the language, the passive voice, the inability to name a perpetrator, the inability to say: Israel is killing people. Palestinians are bombed, but who bombed them? We're never told.
- Mehdi Hasan
How have your positions evolved on political and social issues, including human rights?
Over the years, I've tried to take a more rights-based approach to everything, really. If you take the Middle East, for example, right now my focus is on Palestinian human rights. It's not about whether you have one, two, three, four, five states, right? I think that's a redundant discussion. I think the key is fighting for rights, going to court, standing up for international law, making sure people's dignity and humanity is protected. That, for me, is fundamental. My critique of the Gaza war—I can have a strategic critique. I can have a political critique. I can have a moral critique. Ultimately, it's a rights-based critique. What they're doing in Gaza is a violation of human rights and international humanitarian law.
On issues like LGBTQ rights, trans rights, my position starts from: How do we guarantee as many rights for as many people? And then work from there. People talk about, well, on trans rights there's a debate about what about the protection of women and in single gender spaces? Look, let's have that debate. But let's start from a position where people have as many rights as possible, and then work backwards. Let's not start from a position where people are denied rights, whether they're Muslim, whether they're gay, whether they're trans, whether they're Jewish. I start from the position that we recognize the rights of everyone.
In the wake of October 7, the Israel-Palestine conflict has become even more politicized and polarized, especially in this era marked by misinformation and sophisticated propaganda. Given the high personal and professional costs that often come with taking a critical stance on Israel, what are your thoughts on the consequences of speaking out on this issue, and how has this affected both your career and the broader media landscape?
Big question. I think that people are severely intimidated within Western media when it comes to the issue of Israel. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool or a liar. I think that we've seen enough examples just since October 7 of people being canceled for their views. I think Israel gets graded on a curve by Western media organizations leaning in certain ways because people are worried about offending Israel or supporters of Israel.
For years, the right have weaponized this idea of cancel culture, which is often BS. Many of the people who claim to be canceled are multimillionaires with huge followings; they're doing just fine. But ironically, there is a cancel culture in the U.S. that goes back decades, and it is the cancelation of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices—on campus, in academia, in mainstream politics and electoral politics, and, of course, in the media. I think that's slowly changing for the better. You now have more pro-Palestinian voices on air—or at least people who want to allow pro-Palestinian voices to appear and give their side of things, but it's taking a very long time. And the pro-Israel side don't want to go down without a fight. They're bent on attacking anyone in public life who speaks on this subject as "pro-Hamas," "pro-terrorist," antisemitic. We've seen that endlessly since October 7. Myself, Ali Velshi, Ayman Mohyeldin—three brown Muslim-background hosts on MSNBC—were viciously attacked by prominent right-wing journalists like John Podhoretz as being Hamas supporters, simply because we have the gall to challenge Israel's narrative or to platform Palestinian voices.
Even those who are not necessarily pro-Palestinian have faced a lot of consequences.
You saw that in the U.K. with a Sky News anchor who just did a very challenging interview with an Israeli guest. She was benched, and then she was attacked, and who knows where she is now.
In the past 11 months, there has been significant criticism of U.S. mainstream media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and particularly the events unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank. Many argue that the atrocities and suffering on the ground are underreported or obscured from public view, with coverage failing to capture the full scale of destruction and human pain. What do you think are the key issues with the American media's portrayal of this conflict, and what needs to change in the way it's covered?
Omid, we'll have to have another hour and a half to go through what needs to change. It's a huge question. Let me just say this—one small point, one big point. Small point is just headlines. You know what's frustrated me since October 7? The headlines. Look at the language, the passive voice, the inability to name a perpetrator, the inability to say: Israel is killing people. It's always Palestinians just spontaneously combust. Palestinians just die of mysterious causes. They "leave their homes." They're not driven out. Who's driven them out? They are bombed, but who bombed them? We're never told.
Assal Rad, who's a very interesting voice on Twitter, wrote a piece for us for Zeteo where she actually went through New York Times headlines, fixing them and putting in the non-passive voice by actually identifying who's doing this stuff. I think that's just one small point about how bad the coverage has been—the inability to name who is doing what, when and how. I think that's basic, you know? Journalism is about the what, the when, the why, the who. We're just not doing that when it comes to Israel-Palestine.
Then the bigger point is this: we don't need to have some imaginary, hypothetical discussion about, "Oh, if only the media was like this. If only journalists did this." You know why? Because there is something called Ukraine. The most fascinating aspect of the Gaza conflict has been that it has run in parallel to and subsequent to Russia's invasion and bombardment of Ukraine. I don't need to have a hypothetical "imagine if." All I need to say is, "Hey, how come The New York Times says Russia bombed an apartment and killed seven kids, but doesn't say that when it comes to Gaza?" When it comes to Gaza: "Gaza tower block explodes. Hamas says seven kids die." Right? Why the double standards? Why are you able to so clearly identify Russia as the illegal invader and occupier in Ukraine, but not Israel in Gaza? Why are you able to have anchors and reporters weep, get emotional on air about people being killed in hospitals in Ukraine, but not in hospitals in Gaza? Why is it, when it comes to Gaza, we go out of our way to be as objective as possible? It's so "neutral." We're so "both sides." If a Palestinian said something, we need to get an Israeli to respond. We don't do that in Ukraine. We don't have a Ukrainian official balanced out with a Russian official every time.
The Ukraine parallel is so fascinating because it shows that the Western media is not unable to cover a conflict in the way it should be covered. It can. Ukraine is proof that we can cover a conflict in a way it should be covered. We just choose not to do so in Gaza.
Do you see the U.K. mainstream media environment as broadly similar to or significantly different from the U.S. mainstream media environment in covering these issues?
I think the BBC has been horrifically bad since October 7. The BBC headlines have been some of the worst. I think it was a BBC story on this guy who lost 100 members of his family and the headline was, "Palestinian man loses 100 members of family." That was it. Like, where do you lose them? Down the back of a couch? He lost them in his backyard? No, he lost them in Israeli attacks on his family. You had to get like 20 or 30 paragraphs in before it's identified that, oh yeah, Israel is accused of killing his family members.
The BBC has been atrocious. Normally, I would have said the BBC is better than most American networks. The Guardian as the most liberal paper in the U.K.—not liberal or left enough for me, I'm a columnist for The Guardian, but clearly I'm to the left of its politics—it's still better than The New York Times when it comes to Middle East and Gaza coverage. In terms of its op-ed pages, it's better than the op-ed pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post. In that sense, I guess the U.K. is a little bit better. But no, I think the U.K. media suffers from the same issue as the American media: it will not call a spade a spade. It will not say Israel is the illegal occupier here, that Israel does not have a right to self-defense inside of occupied territory.
The world did not begin on October 7. My biggest critique of the media overall is the lack of context, right? It's as if the world began on October 7. It's as if Israel was just minding its own business when these people came in and killed these people mindlessly for no reason whatsoever. That's not to justify the crimes. What happened October 7 was barbaric, inexcusable, but it didn't come out of a vacuum.
How significant do you think the cases against Israel at the International Court of the Justice and the International Criminal Court are in terms of holding Israel accountable for alleged war crimes and influencing the broader geopolitical landscape in the region?
That's a good question. I'm not an international lawyer, but I would say this. I think the approach by the Palestinians to take legal action has been an important one. The Israelis and their supporters dismiss it as "lawfare" because they don't like any kind of accountability. Oh, if you violently resist, you're terrorists, but if you go and peacefully, legally apply for help, you're doing "lawfare." The reality is, they don't want any kind of Palestinian resistance or pushback against their illegal occupation.
I think the ICJ and ICC interventions so far have been crucial. The ICJ and the ICC are not sending military forces in to protect Palestinians, but I think globally, it makes Israel much more of a pariah. The ICJ is going to take several years, sadly, to come up with a genocide ruling. All they've said so far is it's plausible that the Palestinian right not to be genocided has been violated. The ICC, on the other hand, is delaying the chamber putting out warrants. It's unprecedented how long it's taken, I think, given the clear evidence that Karim Khan, the ICC chief prosecutor, brought in May when he announced his request for arrest warrants. I think if we do get arrest warrants against Netanyahu, it'll be a great test for Western European countries. Not for the U.S., which isn't a member to the ICC and threatens the ICC regularly. But I think the Germanys and Frances of this world, which talk a great deal about international law and adhering to institutions like the ICC, what are they going to do? Will they arrest Netanyahu if he arrives in Paris or in Berlin? Because that's their obligation, if the warrants come out.
Most people in the Global South don't even recognize the West as some kind of moral arbiter, but it'll be a real emperor's new clothes moment if they reject ICC and ICJ rulings going forward. There'll be nothing left of any moral credibility that the West may have ever claimed to have on these issues.
What are the consequences of undermining all these international institutions before the eyes of dictators in the Middle East?
I think that's a very important point. Look, this is the Iraq War on steroids. What Bush and Bolton and Cheney and Rice did with Iraq in '03 undermined international law, and it allowed dictators and people like Vladimir Putin to say: Well, you invaded Iraq, why can't I invade Ukraine? The Iraq precedent has been cited by multiple regimes around the world. The Chinese, the Russians, multiple regimes have pointed at Iraq and said: Well, what about you? It's given a whole new genre of whataboutism to dictators and despots. That's a huge problem, and a legacy of the Iraq War that we're still living with 20 years-plus later. I think Gaza is Iraq on steroids. I think 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, people will say: Well, hold on. How dare you say I've killed lots of people. What about what you did in Gaza? What about what you armed and enabled?
Not just the whataboutism with despots and dictators, but the entire postwar international settlement—from the Geneva Conventions, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to the U.N. Charter—we're burning it all down for the sake of one country. It's insane, to the point where the Israelis are going to the U.N. and attacking the U.N. to the U.N.'s face, and the outgoing Israeli ambassador to U.N. saying: Well, we should just flatten this building. It shouldn't exist. I don't think we come back from that. I think the damage done not just to the moral legitimacy of the West, if it had any to begin with, but to the international order, which had many flaws and many double standards but still was better than not existing. I think we're not going to recover from that. And I think the fact that a Democratic administration in the United States and now a Labour government in the U.K. is complicit not just in a genocide, but in the undermining of this order that the U.K. and the U.S. built in the wake of World War II—I think we will regret this for many years to come.
DAWN has had notable successes in pushing for sanctions against Israeli settlers, targeting lobbies and challenging U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine. How do you view DAWN's role in these efforts, and what impact do you think such initiatives can have on shaping U.S. foreign policy and U.S. policy and international discourse surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict?
I think it's super important that we have groups like DAWN doing what they do, because for far too long, the policy and lobbying landscape—and they are sometimes separate, sometimes intertwined in Washington, D.C.—has been taken over by lobbies and groups working for certain Gulf governments, advocating on behalf of the Israeli government, or just advocating on behalf of the weapons dealers, the military-industrial complex. We've had Human Rights Watch and Amnesty put out reports and point out what's happening and try to make the American or British government take human rights and arm sales seriously, but not as much success as they should have done. And they're not fundamentally political operations or even advocacy or think tanks. I think we do need more of the DAWNs of this world that cannot just call out human rights abuses abroad, but actually advocate for, as you say, means and methods to address this within the mainstream. Be able to have conversations on Capitol Hill, have conversations at the State Department with people who are credible and are well informed, because otherwise, it's just sniping. It's just armchair critics and people sniping anonymously online, and that's never affected change anywhere in the world, as far as I'm aware.
Given the ongoing atrocities in Gaza and continued U.S. support for regimes like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, where do you see room for hope and optimism in terms of meaningful change, both in U.S. foreign policy and the broader struggle for justice and human rights in the region?
I'm not an optimistic person. I'm pretty pessimistic. I think things are going to get worse before they get better. But I am a hopeful person. There's a difference between hope and optimism. Hope is recognizing that things can get better, even at the darkest moments, even when you think things are going to get worse in the short term. I do keep hope. I am, to quote Cornel West, a prisoner of hope. I have to be, otherwise I wouldn't do what I do. I would just give up and go, you know, isolate myself in a cave somewhere. No, I try and affect change.
What gives me hope right now is a young generation that takes human rights seriously, that takes activism seriously, that is standing up for the rights of people in Gaza. The college campus protests have been invigorating, inspiring, and I think the new generation of people coming through won't make as many mistakes as people in my generation made, I hope.
Last question: Zeteo has reported on several significant stories involving the Middle East, including allegations of a 2017 bribe paid to Donald Trump by the Egyptian regime and the Biden administration's potential defense pact with Saudi Arabia. How do these stories, which highlight U.S. ties with Middle Eastern dictators under different administrations, shed light on U.S. foreign policy priorities in the region?
It's very important for us to shed light on what goes on because, of course, foreign policy tends to get a backseat in American politics. We're told that Americans don't care about the rest of the world, which is not quite true. American media is very navel-gazing, very domestically focused. Zeteo is always going to have one eye on what's happening domestically with the rise of Trump and the far right and the presidential election in November, but another eye on Gaza, the Middle East, foreign policy. We do want to give a global perspective, not just because we care about the globe, but we want Americans to pay attention to what is being done in their name with their tax dollars.
