Why Henry Kissinger would have approved of MSNBC canceling Mehdi Hasan

It seemed that no revelation about Henry Kissinger’s role in war crimes committed in the name of American realpolitik — from the illegal bombing of Cambodia that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, to overthrowing the democratically elected government of Chile for a murderous dictator, to a trail of tears from East Timor to Bangladesh and beyond — stopped the world’s rich and powerful from fawning over the former secretary of state or begging for his advice.

So it was in 1988 that Kissinger — the foreign policy strategist of the Nixon and Ford administrations who died last week at age 100 — found himself dispensing his brand of wisdom to a small gathering of influential Jewish Americans at a session he thought was off the record. Instead, the New York Times got the memo, literally.

“Israel should bar the media from entry into the territories involved in the present demonstrations, accept the short-term criticism of the world press for such conduct, and put down the insurrection as quickly as possible — overwhelmingly, brutally, and rapidly,” stated a memo summarizing Kissinger’s views on the late 1980s’ “first intifada” in Gaza.

Kissinger’s opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and his dim view of press freedom, was hardly an outlier. Although most criticism of the late diplomat came down, understandably, for his role in bombing civilians or backing coups, Kissinger also had an autocrat’s feel for the power of censorship and propaganda. He ordered the illegal wiretapping of U.S. journalists and his own National Security Council staffers to find the source of 1969 news leaks about Richard Nixon’s actions in Southeast Asia — even as he wooed other Beltway reporters to boost his image as a power broker, even a sex symbol.

Kissinger’s belief in the power of crafting a narrative was epitomized by his walking out of the U.S. State Department in 1977 with a virtual truckload of classified and top-secret documents, including more than 15,000 pages of his recorded phone transcripts, in order to boost his reputation in a flurry of post-government books, but also to deny access to prying investigative reporters. The world’s most cynical practitioner of Machiavellian politics understood that storytelling is arguably the ultimate power trip.

Two things immediately jumped to mind after reading Kissinger’s 35-year-old pro-Israel advice on social media last week, after his death.

The first is that — while it might be a total coincidence — the current right-wing government of Israel sure seems to have taken Kissinger’s idea and turned it into 21st-century reality. Although it’s impossible to impose a total news blackout in a time of smartphones and satellites, Israel’s shock-and-awe bombardment of Gaza has created a culture of death that has rendered the work of journalism all but impossible. The authoritative Committee to Protect Journalists currently lists 61 journalists killed in the Middle East conflict. Four Israeli journalists were killed in the unconscionable Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, but the 57 who’ve died since then have been mostly Palestinian, mostly killed by air strikes, all or almost all by Israel. That likely doesn’t include several more prominent Palestinian journalists killed this weekend.

Even as the conflict — in less than two months — is by far the deadliest for journalists in modern times, with the profession’s death toll almost equal to the Vietnam War that dragged on for 20 years, Israel denies targeting journalists. But an in-depth investigation by Reporters Without Borders found the Oct. 13 death of the clearly marked Reuters visuals journalist Issam Abdallah was a deliberate attack by Israeli forces using “precise targeting,” while other free press and human rights groups are concerned the unprecedented onslaught on reporters might be deliberate.

Clearly, Israel — in the spirit of Kissinger — is working aggressively to control the narrative, whether it’s a cabinet minister in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu urging sanctions on Israel’s most critical news outlet, Haaretz, or in the way spokespeople for the Netanyahu regime have flooded the zone on American TV outlets, aggressively spinning the conflict even as its bombs have been blamed for killing more than 15,000 Palestinian civilians.

Which is why Kissinger’s 1988 anti-media advice also had me pondering the fate of MSNBC journalist Mehdi Hasan.

Hasan — raised by his Indian Muslim parents in the U.K., where he made himself known as a college debater before coming to the United States in 2015 — has been one of a gaggle of Muslim American journalists on MSNBC, along with Ali Velshi and Ayman Mohyeldin, who have generated both praise and criticism since Oct. 7 for covering the Middle East conflict with a wide lens. In the early days of the war, a controversial Semafor report said that MSNBC had made moves to make all three journalists less visible at a moment when the Biden administration was pledging full support for Israel.

MSNBC denied that report — with some credence, as Velshi did get a high-profile assignment to the conflict zone — but then issued a surprise announcement last week that Hasan’s show, which ran Sunday nights on the network and weekdays on the Peacock streaming outlet, will be canceled at the end of the month. The news caused ripples of outrage on social media, where clips of Hasan’s aggressive grilling of politicians and ideologues often go viral.

The outrage is justified. Those Oxford-honed debating skills made Hasan the best interviewer on TV, bar none. (So much so that he has even written a book on how to win arguments.) His relentless questioning of self-important public officials — backed by a moral core, which is a foundational belief in human rights — has produced moments of must-see television. In the present crisis, Hasan’s ability to cut through propaganda is priceless.

Last month, Hasan sparred on live TV with a top adviser to Netanyahu, Mark Regev, who insisted the controversy over the number of children in Gaza was a result of Hamas controlling the images the world sees. The MSNBC host responded, “I have seen lots of children with my own lying eyes being pulled from the rubble.”

“Because in the pictures, Hamas wants you to see!” Regev replied. “Exactly my point!”

“They’re dead, Mark,” Hasan said. ”But they’re also children your government has killed. You accept that, right? You’ve killed children? Or do you deny that?”

“No, I do not.”

Three weeks later, Hasan’s show was bagged. (He’ll remain with MSNBC as a commentator and fill-in host.) In the murky business world of TV, the real reason for the cancellation may never be known. MSNBC’s anonymous leakers point to low ratings for a slot opposite the most popular show in America, Sunday Night Football, during which a tag team of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow would have struggled to attract viewers.

I don’t know about the business stuff. All I know is that Hasan’s contrarian opinions were a breath of fresh air in the fetid world of American TV punditry. In that true contrarian spirit, I didn’t always agree with Hasan, and it’s worth noting that he has vocal critics not only among those who don’t like his liberal perspective but also from some Democrats for some long-ago controversial positions or his 2020 leftist skepticism about President Joe Biden’s candidacy.

That’s not what matters here. What matters is losing a voice willing to question authority, and the official narrative, in an age of Orwellian-level spin.

It’s beyond alarming that MSNBC canceled Hasan’s show just a few days after Donald Trump — all but certain to be the GOP’s 2024 nominee, with a slight lead over Biden in the (very early) polls — attacked the network on social media and threatened to investigate MSNBC if he becomes president in January 2025. “Our so-called ‘government’ should come down hard on them and make them pay for their illegal political activity,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, without actually citing any illegal activity. “Much more to come, watch!”

» READ MORE: From Niagara Falls to Texas to Gaza, a horrifying look into the abyss of a post-truth future | Will Bunch

I’m afraid to watch. I’m terrified, frankly, that Trump was offering a sneak preview of the climate of fear, hostility, and First Amendment nullification that would permeate a second term, and that MSNBC was — intentionally or not — also giving us a sneak preview of the craven ways major media might respond to such White House pressure.

Kissinger, for what it’s worth, at least tried to keep his contempt for press freedom off the record, while Trump’s loud declarations at Nuremberg-style rallies that journalists are “the enemies of people” are poisoning everything, from several American small towns where reporters and editors are now arrested or newsrooms are searched by local cops and prosecutors no longer honoring the Bill of Rights, to the killing fields of the Gaza Strip.

Hasan’s cancellation is far from the worst crime in an age when you or even your loved ones might get zapped from a drone or a fighter jet just for writing the truth. Yet this episode is critically important for what it suggests: that the people who don’t want the world to see or know what they are doing are winning right now. From a place that’s surely 100 times hotter than a Vietnam jungle during a napalm attack, Henry Kissinger is no doubt looking up and smiling.

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