Co-hosts Indi and Benji are joined by travel writer Julian Sayarer to grab the third rail of Left politics, the rarely discussed in polite company question of Judeophilia.
In this live episode of the PsychLib series, co-hosts Benji and Indi welcome Turkish-British travel writer Julian Sayarer for a frank, necessary conversation about a concept rarely named in Western leftist spaces: Judeophilia - the uncritical, often unconscious deference to Jewish identity that shapes discourse on Palestine, Zionism, and anti-imperialism.
Julian draws on his experience as a journalist, cyclist, and author of 50 Miles Wide to explore why the European-North American left, despite its self-professed anti-racism, remains reluctant to name the organized Jewish community as the primary vehicle for Zionism in Western politics. The discussion unpacks how the anti-Semitism paradigm functions not as a shield against prejudice, but as a political tool that protects Zionist legitimacy, suppresses accountability, and centers Jewish feelings over Palestinian survival.
Key themes include: the overrepresentation of Jewish voices in progressive media; the linguistic normalization of "Israel" as a proper name for genocide; the Eurocentric 1940s framing that forces Palestinians to argue within a moral universe not their own; and the material consequences of silence - from British Jews volunteering for the IOF to the suppression of plain speech about Jewish supremacy as a branch of whiteness.
This is not a conversation about Jewish people as individuals, but about power, representation, and the psychological formations that allow a genocidal project to retain consent in the West. As Julian argues: if we cannot name the perpetrator, we cannot stop the crime.
Julian Sayarer: Podcast Appearance - Why do leftists feel safer centring Jewish views on Palestine?
This was the first podcast I've done in a while, on a subject that's deliberately made hard and controversial to talk about, but one essential to the liberation of Palestine.
The episode title probably explains it best: Is judeophilia a problem for the left?
The whole conversation was over an hour, and it's been great to get feedback from people saying how much they valued it. Obviously jewish zionists use legal and violent harassment to smother discourse on Palestine, but their most effective method - specifically because it influences the behaviour of most people - is to make people uncomfortable mentioning sensitive issues like jewish overrepresentation.
I hope this conversation can help people feel more confident orientating a territory that has been purposefully made fraught. Below are a few extracts from it.
Why do leftists applaud the very small jewish minority that perform acts of minor protest as a way of deflecting from the broader jewish majority that backs and enacts zionism? Is this the equivalent of saying Not All Men as a response to patriarchy?
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Does jewish overrepresentation in leftist media ensure a prevalence of zionist and jewish-centric discourse at the expense of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and those directly enduring the impacts of jewish zionism?
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How do we address the jewish fixation on "anti-semitism" and the determination of a majority white group, heavily represented in politics and media, to remake themselves as permanent victims. What does this say about and do to jewish psychology?
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It was great to talk to Benji and Indi about this. As well as them getting my thoughts out of me, Benji as a French-Canadian reflected a little on how his own experience in leftism led him to question the prevalence of jewish perspectives, and how idealised understandings of jewish values among leftists had, even in a time of genocide, made him start questioning the function of this prevalence.
It was really good to have Indi's perspective as a Sri Lankan, which implicitly reminds that when we say "the left" we typically mean "European & North American left". Meanwhile the majority of the world's population is left to look on at both the horrors of zionism, confused at why our leftist discourse remains so obedient to the talking-points and representation of the group primarily responsible for the crimes of zionism.
We also talked about how this relates to imperialism, the declining US Empire, and reliance on a 1940s, Eurocentric obsession with the Second World War as the definitive moral framework for how Euromericans read the world.
on May 30, 2026, 4:25 pm