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cancel culture doesn't exist like like it's not a thing at all i want to apologize from the bottom of my heart i'm sorry
And now I want your job to be taken from you. Cancel culture bullies. It harasses. It dehumanizes the individual. Cancel culture is not real. Y'all are just afraid of accountability. It's obviously not just about being held accountable. That's a red herring. The punishment must be proportionate to the crime. This has all taught me a really valuable lesson. I'm Barry Weiss.
This is Honestly. And today, an introduction to America's cultural revolution.
My friend Majdi Wadi and the business that he runs with his family in the Midwest
They are like a walking advertisement for the American dream. No place on earth like United States of America. Three generations of the Wadi family living the American dream on this spot for more than 30 years.
It's the kind of thing that those of us born here I think sometimes take for granted. The ability to build something new from scratch, no matter your background or your parents. Majdi wasn't born into a society where that was possible. He's Palestinian, and he was born and raised in Kuwait.
And as far back as he can remember, his mother was trying everything she could to get his older brother into the U.S. My mom, she insisted that he has to go to America. I remember she went to the embassy maybe eight or nine times. And then she went and knocked on doors asking some people to sponsor him and to make the longest story, short story. Finally, he got the visa and he left Kuwait with nothing, with nothing, and then moved to Minneapolis.
in 1987. What did America mean to your mother? The land of opportunity and a place to call home because where we were living there in Kuwait, we have no right. We're not a permanent resident. We are nothing, you know. I remember when I was 18, they canceled my visa. Hold on. Let's explain for listeners
You're living in Kuwait, but you don't have citizenship in Kuwait. And is that because you're a Palestinian refugee? Yes, because we're a Palestinian refugee. Exactly. That's even born and raised, you know, no permanent residence, no citizenship. Is that the case for all Palestinian refugees in Kuwait? All Palestinian refugees in Kuwait and all the Gulf countries and all over the world, to be honest, except America and Canada. And all these years, we used to go to school afternoon, not with the regular kids.
The regular kids, they go to the morning school. We, as a Palestinian, go in the afternoon.
And then even if you score A+, 95%, 98%, you cannot go to the University of Kuwait there. And no university will accept you, by the way. I mean, what you're describing is quite literally second-class citizenship or segregation in Kuwait for Palestinian citizens. I wouldn't call it second. I would call it third or fourth even. Because even second-class citizens will have better choices to make. For us, there's no choice.
So my mom saw in America the land of opportunity and the dream that she want to find a better future for her kids. She want her kids to have their life in a place that they can achieve their dreams. They can make a home. Look, home is where you can...
live in peace of mind that you are not worried that somebody will come and knock on your door and kick you out. Which is exactly what happened to Majdi. After he graduated high school, he was forced to leave the country where he was born. They kicked me out from Kuwait because in order for me to stay, I have to file for a work visa and nobody will give me a work visa. So I end up going to Jordan. And in order for me to stay in Jordan, I have to serve two years in the army. He moved to Jordan.
where all young men have to serve in the military. Then he worked an office job that was more like a modern version of indentured servitude.
I worked in Jordan for three years with no paycheck. Literally no paycheck. Zero. And while Majdi is working this dead-end job in Jordan, his brother in the U.S. had been working at a small corner store in Minneapolis. Then he got the chance to become the store's owner. When did you arrive here? 1992. So by the time Majdi immigrated to America, the two brothers had come up with an idea.
I told my brother, "Listen, why people are running their business here back home style?" They noticed that a lot of immigrant-owned shops were mainly selling to other immigrants, often from their home countries.
Why I don't introduce my culture and my product to everybody, not just target a certain community? They knew that their hummus was delicious, but not a lot of Minnesotans at the time even knew what hummus was. Keep in mind, this was the early 90s. So they thought, let's find a way to welcome in more people to our store. And they decided to name it Holy Land. And we choose the name Holy Land for a reason. The name Holy Land for us is not just because we're Palestinian.
Holy Land, for us as a family, I believe that this belongs to everyone. For all the religion, the Jews, the Muslims, the Christians, everybody in the world has the right to visit this place. And this place should be the most peaceful place on earth. And this idea, it totally worked.
Today, you can find that hummus at stores all around the country. No preservatives, just pureed chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, and lemon. Holy Land grew and grew. Eventually, Majdi and his brother created good jobs for their whole family.
Majdi Wadi is the CEO of Holy Land, who knew he wanted to reinvent the idea of an ethnic business. They're only catering for their own ethnic group, which I don't like from day one we decided to...
And the business kept growing, and they kept hiring. Nearly 200 people. Who were the kind of people that Holy Land employs? They used to call us United Nations. We have Hispanics, we have African-American, we have African immigrants, we have European, name it. And this reflects also on our people that we serve. The Wadis became minor local celebrities with glowing profiles and local news features.
This is undefeated, this hummus. Undefeated. Not to be biased, but it is. Incredible quality. But more importantly, it's an incredible family legacy. Mama, sons, grandkids. They were seen as a symbol of what was great about America and what was great about Minnesota. And then...
came last summer. Do you remember where you were when you saw the video of George Floyd? And do you remember what it felt like in your community in the days and weeks after that video came out? Personally, when I saw the video, I saw it at Facebook, but I couldn't believe it, to be honest with you. For me, I couldn't believe it. I cannot describe my feeling because it's
Beside the sadness and the pain that you have in your heart seeing a guy executed in the street, this is shocking. Took me two, three days, to be honest with you, to believe that this is happening here. And every one of us started thinking that he might be in his shoes one day.
Majdi says that his family talked a lot together about what had happened to George Floyd, but more broadly about the injustice of all of it. And one of his daughters, Leanne, decided she was going to take to the streets and join the protest movement. She was in the street with the people getting angry. Even I warned her so many times, said, Leanne, why you're in the street till one, two o'clock is not safe for you? Said, you know what? We cannot stand this. This is not going to happen. All of us has to stand against the injustice.
The Wadi family and Holy Land hung Black Lives Matter signs in their windows. They donated food to the protesters. Majdi says that his family felt united with their city, united in sadness and united in a desire for justice.
And then came the tweets. When did Holy Land, in the kind of unrest of last summer, start to become a part of the story? A tweet went viral for my daughter that she did in 2012 when she was a teenager, that we were not aware of it. My daughter, Leanne...
In 2012, he had some tweets. It was horrible tweets, you know? The tweets had been deleted many years earlier, and it's still unclear how they surfaced. Was it a rival business, a competitor with an ax to grind? Majdi doesn't know. What is clear is that they were horrible to read. One said, "'Top three races you wish to eliminate. Ready? Go. Jews, Blacks, and Fats.'"
Another said, I'm discovering my new love for Mormons. Just kidding. Hitler all the way. I'm not here to defend these tweets. I say they're horrible. They does not represent who she is or who we are as a family. But they went viral, the tweets. And this is where Holy Land became the center of attention for the whole problem. I want to apologize from the bottom of my heart. They were such like horrible and vile things. And that's not...
His daughter Leanne went on television and she apologized. She said that these were terrible jokes written eight years earlier when she was 16 years old. And she said that she deeply regretted them.
Those statements were made a long time ago and like I was at a different place in my life. They in no way, shape or form reflect who I am as a person today. But online, many people were already calling for a boycott of the business and demanding that Majdi fire his daughter. I was facing a tough decision as a dad and as a CEO, you know.
As a dad, I know who my daughter become. But as a CEO for this company, I have 189 family that live off my business. And if this is the demand for the people that they're sending us messages and calling, I'll give it to them, although I feel it's not fair for my daughter.
Holy Land's owner said that he fired his own daughter, saying that he will not tolerate that type of behavior. I said, you know what? We're firing her. She's no longer here. Hopefully this will calm the anger down. But it's still...
It did not. I'm at Holy Land, northeast Minneapolis. I thought it was going to be shut down. Majdi says protesters started coming to their stores. You guys come up here. I'm out here at Dolo. There's about 10, 15 of them out here in the parking lot. Making videos of their employees. Once you get exposed for being racist, ain't no turning back from that. Ain't no coming back. Definitely not. And from there, things just got worse.
They have my home address in the social media. This is where they live. People asking other people to attack where my family is. I had to evacuate the home for maybe 10 days, live in a secret place in Minneapolis. Nobody knows where my family lives because I was concerned about their family safety. So you were in real fear for your physical safety. The safety of myself and my employees. You know, I mean, imagine if something happened to one of the people that they work for me.
Imagine, how I want to live with this? How am I going to live with this for the rest of my life? While Majdi's family was in a safe house, his business started falling apart. Major stores started dropping their products.
We lost more than $5 million in contract that till this second, we cannot recover. And who were those contracts with? Who dropped you? Costco, Target, Sam's Club, Super Value, Cup Food, Seward Kebab, you know, Super Target. And what did they say to you when Costco or Sam's Club dropped you? Nothing. They said nothing? Nothing. I send them emails. I send them my company statement, just please talk to me. You know what?
Nobody want to talk to you. That's it. You're done. Then the landlord at his biggest location told him he was no longer welcome. They canceled my lease and I closed the business. So you actually had to close a location? Yes, permanently. Because of this? Yes.
which actually I want to be honest with you here. I completely understand why they canceled the lease. This is why I did not take any legal action against them. Although my lawyer says they have no right to cancel your lease.
why would you possibly understand why they had to cancel your lease? Because that location is in the heart of the action. This whole area here, this whole city block here has been a hotspot all day. It's very close to the area where everybody is doing damages. They're right there. They're starting to, we're going to move back. They're starting to throw Molotov cocktails. Yeah!
Everybody's burning the businesses, firing the business. So that business is inside the global market. And all the businesses inside the global market are
family owned business, very small guys, husband and wife, you know, the global market in Minnesota is very famous market and Holy Land was the biggest giant guy sitting there. So again, I have to face another decision as a CEO of the company, whether I go after my business best interest or the other people best interest. And I went with the other people because if I refuse
They might come inside Holy Land and burn Holy Land inside Holy Land. And look what's going to happen to the damages that are going to happen to all the other businesses that all of them have no insurance. Okay, so by allowing them to cancel that lease, it was sort of preemptive because you guys feared property damage and looting and burning and things like that. And in the same market, there is apartment building upstairs. So the damages that could happen because if I want to take the stand, I say, no, you cannot cancel my lease. I'm staying there. Legally, you cannot do that.
So I have to make a decision that, you know what, I will sacrifice this location to protect the other businesses and the tenants that are living in the same building. Because of all of this, Majdu says he had to start laying people off. I have to send more than 60 people home from the hummus factory because people don't want to come to Holy Land because they're afraid. Some of them, they're angry, and some of them, they're afraid because they don't want to come and shop here and somebody attack the store.
In the end, he says he had to let go of 69 employees, many of them who'd worked there for over a decade. And I'll add almost all of them from minority backgrounds. Some people online cheered this on, which Majdi is still really angry about. The 69 employees that were working in my factory that been working for 15 plus years has nothing to do with it. Has nothing. It's like an ancient idea of collective guilt. Thank you.
I respect everybody's anger and I understand where they're coming from and I can see their point. But my sadness came from, you know what, they're not seeing the truth. When you call me a racist, don't
Do you know that me and my daughter were in Africa in February building schools and there is a camp that has 35,000 refugee in North Sudan that for the past 10 years, we as a family sponsored this camp. Do you know that there is more than 100 students in Africa that they go to college?
under the Holy Land Fund, nobody's seeing this. Nobody knows that every single hummus container that you buy, there is 25 cents from this hummus goes to any non-profit organization of your choice, not my choice. A company that's been serving the community and I'm not talking about the Muslim community, merging the community in large for the past 35 years with a great history of work has to pay the price for a tweet that a teenager did in 2012.
So there's a mob in the street and then there's a mob on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. Exactly. And then these mob, they were very powerful in a way that if you mention, for example, I remember a guy wrote a tweet defending Holy Land and saying that, no, Holy Land is a good family. I know them. I did business with them. This is what they did to the community since they came. They attacked him and they canceled him.
Right. So it's like if you try and defend someone that has been canceled, then you're putting the target on your back and you're going to be canceled too. Exactly. So people took two steps back because nobody's listening. And this is what scared me the most from everything happened that, look, this is not what America is about. Now, actually, I...
I like to use a good example. When we were in Jordan, me and my roommate, when we want to talk about politics, we used to whisper in each other's ears. Although nobody's sitting like me and you, Barry, talking about politics, we're talking whispering. In Jordan? In Jordan, in Kuwait, in all the third world countries. Why? Because we're scared that somebody will listen to our beliefs and they're going to report us and then we're going to pay the price.
We'll be back after this.
Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.
There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer.
Welcome back. More of Majdi soon, but by way of introduction, if you don't know me or somehow stumbled in here, hello, I'm Barry, and I'm a newspaper woman without a newspaper. A way less poetic way to say that is that I'm one of those people that maybe you've been reading about, who left a big fancy media company to start a newsletter on Substack, and now I know just what the world needed, another podcast.
How did I go from writing and editing at the opinion pages of the New York Times to striking out on my own?
Well, the tedious version of the story involves Slack channels with acts and guillotine emojis and bullying in full view of the people in charge of the paper. It involves activist journalists who treat the paper like a high school cafeteria where those they deem problematic just can't sit here. And most tragically, it involves editors who live in total fear of internet mobs, publishers who know what's right but can't seem to find the courage to do it.
The short version of the story is that I, like a growing number of journalists, did not want to participate for another day in a project that was betraying my values, that was actively fomenting rage, polarization, distrust, and that made it impossible to tell the truth. The transformation of the times is part of a much, much bigger story. For the past several years, I've been following the evolution of a really troubling phenomenon—
First, it seemed to show itself on elite college campuses.
When people die and you're sitting here like, well, at least they got to practice their free speech. I'm so sorry about it. Your free speech is not more important than the lives of Black trans femmes and students on this campus. Where some of the most safe and privileged members of our society began claiming that they were under near constant threat of dangerous violence. And now I want your job to be taken from you. I don't want you to have this job. I am disgusted knowing that you work at Yale University where I will get my degree.
Violence from things like emails about Halloween costumes. Professors and faculty members were mobbed. You should not sleep at night. You're disgusting. Threatened. As faculty members need to be holding hip and hip and all these... Forced out of their jobs. In some cases... Look at you shaking a little bit! Had to move their families into hiding. And those crazy videos from the quad at Yale or at Evergreen State College...
Well, now that happens every day, in every corner of American life, where exaggerated claims of harm and moral evil inspire these public shamings. And often the truth of a person's character, their history, or even the events that inspired the shaming to begin with, those are tossed aside, along with the individual unlucky enough to be at the center of the dog pile.
There's not yet a short term for what I'm describing. Supporters of it have tried to call it social justice. The author Rod Dreher has called it therapeutic totalitarianism. The critic Wesley Yang refers to it as the successor ideology, as in the successor to liberalism. At some point, there will be new vocabulary to describe what's going on here. But for now, let's call it what it appears to be, an American cultural revolution.
One of the sharpest weapons of that ideological revolution is cancellation. Cancel culture itself is a term that I've come to dislike because it's been stretched beyond recognition to fit any negative action ever taken against any entity, including most recently a Kentucky Derby racehorse. What I'm interested in are the effects of these cancellations because the goal is not merely to punish the person in the hot seat. No, no, the main goal is to send a message to everyone else.
Step out of line and you're next. Normal people who watch others being attacked or expelled or demonized, they have a perfectly human response. They stay quiet. The threat of public shaming has been massively, enormously, amazingly effective. It has led to an epidemic of self-silencing and fear. How has this become a normal feature of American life?
What are we losing by living like this? What are we sacrificing when we don't have the courage to tell the truth? I don't think that it's enough anymore to be quietly, privately against this creeping dogma. It's time to come out. It's time to speak honestly. I think part of the reason that we got here is because many of us don't think in the day-to-day about what we really value.
Or maybe it's that it feels too cheesy to articulate something so soaring, even to ourselves. And so we don't always notice when those values have been betrayed or when we've been the ones to betray them. So something I've been trying to do lately is to state my values, to state my principles, to put myself on the hook publicly. So when the moment comes where I have to put up or shut up, I'll do the right thing. So let me do that right now. I am free.
I live in a country where I get to walk down the street holding my wife's hand without fear. Trust me that I do not take that for granted. I know that other people, especially women in so many places in the world right now, would give absolutely everything to be able to enjoy those luxuries. And it's not just that. I have freedom of thought and of speech, and I'm going to use those rights as fiercely and as fearlessly as I can. That means not bending the knee,
And it means not cowering in the face of mobs. But it also means taking risks and making new things and being honest. That means saying what I think. It means admitting when someone I usually disagree with gets something right. And it means when someone I trust gets something wrong, saying so. I'm really not interested in scoring points for Team Blue or Team Red. Besides, I don't even think those labels apply anymore. This troubling phenomenon that I've been writing about
this phenomenon that's swallowing the culture, it needs to end, which means we need to stop playing to the crowd. We need to stop the mindless loyalty to our tribe. And we need to stop being silent at the expense of being honest, because it's coming at great cost, not just to people like Majdi, but to the American project itself. ♪
The thing that struck me about what you were saying before is that you always felt such a part of the community in Minneapolis. Has that feeling changed? No, no, because look, few people is not going to change my beliefs. But what hurting me the most, as I told you the story of whispering in my friend's ears when we talk politics, now...
This thing became a tradition in America. This is not America. You know, I have the right to say what I believe and what I don't believe. I have the right to disagree with you. People have the right to disagree with you, but I have no right to cancel you because you attacked me. OK, say whatever you want. This is your right. This is your right.
What I'm hearing you say is that America, which is supposed to be a place that lives by the virtues of freedom of expression and freedom of thought and freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, is becoming a more closed place, is becoming a place more like the places that you fled. Exactly. Is this really what we want? You and your family have lived through an attempt to cancel you and to cancel your business.
What lessons have you learned? If there's someone listening to this who maybe is living through something like that themselves, they're at the center of the storm, what advice do you have for them? That's a very tough question. In general, you know what? Stay strong. Stay strong and keep fighting. Do not keep your mouth shut. Keep fighting. And this is the message that I give my daughter, Leanne, every single day. Look, she got a job last month.
Finally, she got a job. And imagine after three weeks, they fired her. They fired her, that restaurant that she got a job as a manager there, they fired her because they found out who she is. Because somebody called the restaurant and says, oh, you're hiring Leanne Wadi, and Leanne Wadi did one, two, three, without even them asking any question, without even asking her. She went to her job, they said, you no longer work here, we're really sorry.
Oh, my God. It's a life sentence. It's a life sentence. Thank you. You took the word from me. It's a life sentence for a girl that in 2012, once she was 16 years old, it's horrible. I'm not defending the tweets. It's bad. It's horrible. Name it anything that you want. But the system, if somebody does a mistake, you go to court, they put you in jail.
You finish your sentence in jail, you come back as a normal citizen and you start working your way up to become a very positive part of the community, right? Here it's a life sentence. I'm not defending again. I'm going to repeat this again because I know some people might have misunderstood my message. No, horrible, bad things, okay. But I mean, if the police stop somebody for speeding, they cannot shoot him in the head.
They cannot give him life sentence. It's a speeding ticket. There's no sense of proportion. No, zero. This makes me so angry and sad. Believe it or not, she's leaving next week to London.
My other daughter goes to school there. She's trying to find a job in London. Because she said, even if I find a job in Miami, down the road, they're going to keep hunting me for what I did, Baba. What should I do? Every day she keeps crying and telling me, what should I do? What should I go? I mean, I said, sorry, I was stupid. I was ignorant. I was this. I know how much people I hurt. I know what. So she's from inside hurting in a way. Honestly, I'm so worried and concerned about her well-being.
How, my biggest struggle now is to make Leanne, which is, she represents the whole cancel culture, how I can make her believe that there is still a hope. You're living in the land of opportunity. There's still a hope. Yes, there's bad people going to come after you, but there's so many good people that can understand who you are. And the minute that we convince her she got a job and all of a sudden she's going excited, making changes in her job, you're done, Leanne.
Have you thought about hiring her back? Yes. And I want to do that, but she's refusing. Why is she refusing? Because she still believes, she said, look, if I come back that and people find out that I'm back, they might attack me and I might hurt. She still believes that she's responsible for all the people that they lost their job.
She knows that most of our employees at Holy Land here, 15 years, 16 years, 17 years, 20 years, all family, you know. I have people been working with me for the past 25 years. Everybody knows her. So she felt that she's responsible. Why these people lost their job? Because of what I did. Why the family suffered losing the business? Because of what I did. She's not taking this away from her brain. So she said, no, I'm not going to come back. I don't want people to pay more prices. She's beating herself up.
She's not who they think she is. She's a great person. She's a lover. Leanne was in the street fighting for you guys. It's not who she is. A tweet, a stupid, horrible, name it, anything that you want. But as long as I have the guts to take the sense that I'm really sorry, I was wrong, I did a mistake, I will do whatever it takes to make you believe that who I am, that's it. It's over. It's over. But zero forgiveness.
Why do you think this is happening here? And why are so few people standing up against it? Because the social media mob and the people that they believe and they have principle, they took two steps back. It's our mistake. Once we stop saying, it's not my problem, then the problem will get solved. Because it is our problem. It's everyone's problem. Exactly. We cannot keep our mouth shut. We're going to keep talking. Yes, people might get mad and angry, but every time, if we convince five people, five,
And it's a domino effect. Once somebody starts doing it, everybody will follow. Yes. Once somebody, we need somebody that who has the guts, who has really believed in a principle that says, you know what? This is wrong. This is completely wrong by us doing this one. We're not defending Holy Land. We're not defending Lianwadi or Majdiwadi or Holy Land. The principle of what this America is all about.
Guys, wake up, please. The whole world is changing and we have to stay united and to get together. Let's disagree. We have to disagree with each other from here till tomorrow. It's healthy. America for me is not a place to collect money only. This is home. This is home. I'm going to defend my home. I will pay my life defending this home. I'm very proud to call myself American.
I'm very proud. I'm very proud this country gave me where nowhere else in the world gave me, which is a place to call home. We're going to keep pushing. I promise you, I'm not going to quit. It's a principle. I'm going to fight for this principle to the last breath that I have. This is the right thing to do. Majdi Wadi, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. Thank you very much for having me. Thanks for listening. This is our very first episode and we've got a lot more coming.
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