conversations and the world that being lenny brenner lenny brenner's an honest to god real public intellectual of the highest order the writer is written a number of books we've got it up on the title page he was the author of what's become a classic i think it's fair to say zionism in the age of the dictators and other books as well and it's always good and welcome to welcome you to conversation and it's always good to be here you're always busy or always got your tent out and everything like that it might be worthwhile for those who may not  programs we've done with you in the past three years here just briefly your background ok were born raised that kind of think there will wade into a discussion of the human condition particularly emphasis i would think perhaps in the middle east because you focused on that as very much in terms of the human condition now but share your own background a little bit if you would please educate born and raised education here well i just celebrated my a sudden the a birthday and gradually through a young man young man i don't think anyone was younger or me older than me are not power yes but then i moved from there to the bronx and all of a sudden orthodox jewish leweni had my ups neighbor was angelo akin to tory a trauma yeah but they really are when i was seven years old two things happened to me i don't remember which happened for you know seven of the time but they both happened number one my mother decided that she'd read in the papers that bacon was good for kids so the next thing you know there we are eating bacon and then after that it meant i'm a got the swine w but de facto i wasn't orthodox from seven on and now that i've done all kinds of research into judaism zone i really said that's quite common in other words simply and yeah i was you have people wasps really yes ok they came by the millions all right when we went from about eight hundred forty eight into the sixty's and seventy's why were there so many germans coming because they moved the revolutions in eighteen polish yeah yeah ok and in fact the first jew who was elected to congress i forget his name but he was elected from milwaukee from the as a socialist in a from so she zipped them off for the united states or what team all right bondi got involved for i think first mexico but eventually he wound up in the south and then went out to kansas a bloody after we take care of these crackers down there on par with tell me we're going to meet over at the hill you meet us in the hill you're a messenger because nobody knows you ran here to get around to see us they know us all right so they go in the middle of the night ok i think it his memoirs diogo we know was just one of the big great figures in history who just happened to be in the right place at the right time and then he was in them in the you you know me big fat guy you know and then went out west and nuclear reactor in europe is in paris and so the fears as well if you cannot do so with military research in the occupied powers so what you s now my publisher told me he gave me some very good advice and you know he said look remember you're writing a book about zionism in the age of the dictators you not write in the book about the dictators if people want to buy a book about the when he came to our thirty three i mean it was not the size of in any way shape or form yeah you know and it hadn't been for her the first i'm saying i'm saying you know but what i'm trying to give that is that what struck me about citizens he stuff little babies in to the stables of the need a racetrack in other words when they took japanese yes when he took the japanese off the street when the so them the two and i joined i joined the youth section socialist party but i joined another group called the young socialists the lions which is the youth group of a thing called the independent socialist league in one thousand and fifty three have i have some things you know like they followed me through the streets from a civil rights meeting to my home you know i mean because that's well typed out now and when i move from city to  at events with him but i didn't work with him then i started working with stokely in one thousand nine hundred eighty far and what had happened was with a friend of mine i'd been involved in the berkeley free speech movement right and a friend of written it and you talked about the and all that kind of thing and zionism as a movement and so forth and it took it took a lot of attention got the attention or most open it out of other people and that the plastic actually you know that kind of thing you've written and you know understand it very population ok but they were heavily concentrated in the uk yeah but when you're talking about in poland you're talking about the business community with an overwhelmingly jewish and in germany not as much even though germany had a very large quota from when you're talking about one percent of the population they couldn't all get on the quota on you follow me right now what happened was that this point the zionist came to the nazis literally all right they sent them a memo ok if we can collaborate we can collaborate all right now the memo and they did and now the memo wasn't published until nineteen sixty really and it was one million stein who picked up on it his attitude was listen all you guys you're talking about boycotting the jews in germany but the problem with that is it creates anti german boy everywhere else now you're also talking about throwing jews out of his wedding go wherever they want the problem with that is when they go to some place like london and they talk big bed now if you're a and that hebrew and in tel aviv oh yeah yeah yes but what i'm getting at is that the average jewish kid ok for my generation on yeah the idea of learning voluntarily learning hebrew or you  bridge yes now could that be a deal been done to america or did that apply where you if you're going to do your own let me less onerous than i let me ask your question that idea that if you're leaving germany of cat out to get to get liquid you can't get that did that apply if you're coming from france or three and says i'll do better ok if you give us an even better a break from ok i will survive to you and tell you there  information number one the german communist party they're using the radio to beam across the border from belgium a secret radio to beam across the border into you guys have these arabs meeting in berlin but what they don't know is that one of them is relaying everything that's going on during meetings to moscow over that  build a lot on and they've got a lot of weapons and things a place to stay pay attention to do better than to go into their research or lenny brenner's into me to put all this in perspective problem we run out of time oh it's always a problem thanks for coming on and always always thanks