Author Viet Thanh Nguyen on ICE Raids, "Apocalypse Now" & Gaza

[Uncle Joe]

Just days after President Trump threatened to wage war on the city of Chicago, ICE launched what it called "Operation Midway Blitz," and President Trump claimed the city was "about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR" — a reference to his order to rename the Department of Defense. On Monday, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume indiscriminate immigration raids in Los Angeles. "Donald Trump is targeting Los Angeles and California because this is a city and a state in which multiculturalism and ethnic diversity have worked," says Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He also discusses Trump's use of the term "Chipocalypse Now," a reference to the epic Vietnam War film _Apocalypse Now_, and discusses how his Vietnamese heritage led him to support Palestinian liberation. "I identified strongly with the plight of Palestinians, because one of the first things that one of the Israeli ministers said after October 7 was that they were fighting human animals — by which he meant Palestinians — and that idea of reducing other people to being less than human is one of the key narrative acts that justifies genocide," he says.

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