judith butler joins us today from paris. welcome to democracy now!ould respond, we were just speaking to dr. ashrawi who said the palestinians have "been refused the recognition of our own humanity and rights." you have written extensively on the way in which different lives are valued differently. >> yes, well, let me simply say that everyone on this show who you have interviewed in palestine has used the word "genocide." i think we need to take this word quite seriously because it does describe the situation in which a population is targeted, not just the military part but the civilian part, bombarded, dislocated forcibly, and plans are being made for relocation or the absolute razing of gaza's. as you know, there are legal groups like the center for constitutional rights that have published a 40 page study on why it is correct to call what is happening to palestinians now genocide. and other groups are studying international law and showing genocide is -- it doesn't always look like the nazi regime, but it can be the systematic undercutting of the

i mean, i think the the the main sort of driver for that narrative was judith butler and it's sort oflike it's an external take on what's going on. it's almost an ethnic ethnographic sort of take on it right? there's so many different categories, pardon the pun, to because you got to kind of approach it from all angles, right? like so i've at talks for the book and people have said, well like isn't it kind of capitalist like for folks to wear like to name their their house balenciaga and then like, you know, buy or steal that stuff and walk down the runway, you know, in a lot of other capacities, whether or not someone holds that philosophy that could be seen as punk rock, right mm hmm. on the one hand. but also, like, okay, so the if ballroom an answer to marginalization based on white patriarchal capitalist, whatever. right. so does that mean in your criticism of it? folks have to still be poor to make you feel good about it being art like you know and you know someone, twiggy said to me twiggy poochie garson, who is a friend of mine in the book and like a family, a gay family siste