Yaghoobzadeh’s mother stood behind him on the steps of a Delaware courthouse, as he expressed his pride in “exposing the truth and holding those who knowingly spread lies accountable.”
You know what they say, behind every successful Jewish Persian man is his mother. Literally. Just standing there. Maybe slowly, meticulously peeling a cucumber because her son could use a little refreshment after taking on a powerful billionaire media mogul.
There’s a lot to unpack about the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, but one fact that is actually significant is that the man who filed the suit is Jewish Iranian immigrant Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, co-founder and managing director of Staple Street Capital, which owns a controlling stake in Dominion Voting Systems Corporation.
Dominion, which State Street Capital had bought for $38mn, filed a lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for 1.6 billion dollars but settled for $787.5 million.
“Fox News acknowledged in a statement that the court found that it aired false claims about Dominion, but it did not apologize,” according to Axios. “The settlement does not require Fox News or anchors like Maria Bartiromo to tell on-air viewers about the falsehoods.”
“They just showed up,” Yaghoobzadeh told the Financial Times, like most Persian parents do, and expressed their concerns about Fox’s claims that Dominion had stolen the election from Trump and given it to Biden by bribing election officials. “They were just worried for me personally because we are immigrants, we came to this country when I was five from Iran . . . and my parents thought they saw the beginnings of what led them to leave their home.”
There was more to their concern than the death threats Dominion employees received from Trump supporters. What he means by “beginnings of what led them to leave their home” is the massive and shameless use (or misuse) of media to spread false information and propaganda to incite violence and push a malicious agenda. It’s a strategy that was used in Iran in the late ’70s that led to the Islamic Revolution and a major migration of not only religious minorities from Iran but also many Muslims.
And I can’t believe this still works in 2023, but it’s a strategy Fox News is all too familiar with. They feed people what they want to hear, or at least what they think they want to hear to validate their already dogmatic beliefs. (Like when I look for articles that debunk the health benefits of drinking water because I hate water, but it’s not going to work and I’m going to die from dehydration).
This lawsuit is hopefully a great step in the slow demise of Fox News and the disengagement of their viewers.
Tucker Carlson was just fired, and I’m sure his private text messages revealing him for the batshit crazy liar he is finally did him in. On screen he was simping for Trump, but he was keeping it real in the group chats.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”
“I hate him passionately. … I can’t handle much more of this.”
“We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest,” he wrote referring to the “last four years.”
“But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”
There are many lessons to be learned here. One, as an Iranian Jew, let me tell you, we’re very litigious. In fact, Dominion has six more pending defamation cases: My Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell; Rudy Giuliani; Sidney Powell; Patrick Byrne; and right-wing cable news networks One America News and Newsmax. Part of our birthright is having personal connections to lawyers, doctors and at least one shady cousin who knows where to procure an ingeniously crafted fake Rolex (shout out to all the “Cousin Mikes.” We see your hustle).
However, the most important lesson to be learned is for the overwhelming population of Jewish Iranians in Los Angeles who continue to support Donald Trump, trust Fox News as a legitimate news organization and relentlessly share their racist uncles’ Facebook rants about how the liberals are going to steal all their money and make their kids gay.
I could never wrap my head around why so many Iranian Jews, who’ve experienced antisemitism and persecution not too long ago, support Trump. One theory is that they see him as the epitome of a successful self-made businessman. The 34 criminal charges against him are not a moral shortcoming of his, but rather a testament to his “clever and savvy business acumen.” He wants all of us to be rich, bask in the glow of opulent chandeliers and poop on golden toilets. But mainly it’s because he supports Israel.
But the truth is he’s a raging narcissist who doesn’t give a fuck. Honestly I’m not even sure if he’s antisemitic or not. He’s just really smart about utilizing the overly zealous, racist, antisemitic demographic who quite literally see him as a savior. He’s always been about feeding his ego and gaining power however he can. Remember, he used to be a Democrat until it didn’t serve him anymore.
Trump’s track record, as far as Jews are concerned, is not very kosher. White American Jews know this. The rest of us have turned a blind eye to his dinners with Holocaust deniers and vocal antisemites, and to his poorly camouflaged defense of Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us” because, as I’ve been told over and over, “he supports Israel”, or a favorite, “how could he hate Jews? His grandchildren are Jewish.”
“How then, does one reconcile Trump’s pro-Israeli record with his anti-Jewish associations and gaffes?” writes Amotz Asa-El of The Jerusalem Post. “Before answering this oddity, one must understand that Israel, in its capacity as the Jewish state, has considerations that transcend the Middle East. One of these is antisemitism, which Israel is sworn to confront wherever it might sprout. That is why a president of any country, let alone an aspiring leader of the free world, who hosts antisemitic hate-mongers, is for us Israelis a very serious problem.”
With all this said, you can imagine my surprise when one of our very own, a nice Persian Jewish boy, ended up suing not just Fox News but other right wing news organizations and political trolls for defamation and actually winning.
Yes, I’m disappointed that Yaghoobzadeh didn’t take the Dominion suit as far as it could have gone, make them pay the $1.6 billion and, most importantly, apologize on air. But he did manage to get Fox to admit they lied, win one of the largest defamation payouts ever, and get Tucker Carlson fired.
All because he listened to his Persian Jewish mother. And that’s really the moral of the story.
