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A panelist speaking at the “People’s Conference for Palestine” in Detroit on Friday called the United States “an evil country” and expressed a need to “destroy the idea of America in Americans’ heads.”
Speaking on a panel titled “No Weapons for Genocide: The People Demand an Arms Embargo,” Sachin Peddada, a Ph.D. student in economics and research coordinator at Progressive International, repeatedly ripped on the United States as an “empire” motivated by greed.
In response to a question about how Americans can get more involved, Peddada paraphrased a quote by deceased Palestinian author Bassel al-Araj, saying, “The average American will never understand the plight of the Palestinian person because the state of Israel is a carbon copy of the United States.”
“And therefore, the thing to do is to destroy the idea of America in Americans’ heads so that they can see the humanity of everybody outside the warping of American exceptionalism and imperialism and all these evil things.”
As Peddada said these words, the crowd broke into applause.
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The statue of George Washington at the university that bears his name wears Palestinian flags, kefiyeh and stickers in a Gaza solidarity encampment now in its 12th day, Washington, DC, May 6, 2024. (ALLISON BAILEY/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
Peddada continued, saying, “We have to dismantle this idea of American exceptionalism, of supremacy, of being beyond reproach.”
“I think it’s very important that we normalize criticism as a healthy process and learn from our experiments in the world to push the boundaries of what is possible to continue to fight for more and more and to see how the empire responds to us to continue to push farther and harder.”
At another point during the panel, Peddada declared, “We live in an evil country.”
He said that since Oct. 7, 2023, “We can say with certainty that the U.S. has been the most complicit country, complicit is not even the right word to use, but the most responsible country for what is happening not only in Gaza but also the West Bank and also all over the global south.”
Peddada claimed that the U.S. is a country that, as “functionally for decades been the sole superpower of the world,” has “an agenda that is driven primarily by the accumulation of profit at the expense of human lives.”
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Protesters rally outside the Indiana state House chamber in Indianapolis, Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024. (Isabella Volmert/AP Photo)
“To obfuscate that point or beat around the bush there does not serve us; we live in an evil country, that’s just what’s happening,” he said as the crowd again broke into applause.
“That doesn’t mean we’re all evil,” he added. “But it does mean we have a unique responsibility, we have a unique position here in the heart of the empire to act in solidarity with all of our siblings in Gaza and in the West Bank, all around the world.”
Commenting on the remarks, one user on X posted, “As an American, I find this galling.”
“My culture and history have already been relentlessly attacked — statues of Washington, Jefferson, and other Founders torn down as ‘controversial,’” he said. “Now we have conference speakers openly talking about ‘destroying the idea of America.’”
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Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gather at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City on Saturday, Dec. 19, 2023. (Stephen Yang for Fox News Digital)
The People’s Conference for Palestine, organized by a dozen pro-Palestinian groups, began on Friday and will run through Sunday. Even before it started, the gathering drew scrutiny for featuring speakers with extremist views—including two former prisoners of Israel released in a Hamas deal—alongside Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., a prominent anti-Israel congresswoman.
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The conference opened on Friday afternoon with an elaborate opening ceremony, in which a speaker, after leading the crowd in chants, invited attendees to rise for “our national anthem” as a band began playing a song in a foreign language and people wearing keffiyehs proceeded in, holding Palestinian flags.
Fox News Digital reached out to Progressive International and the People’s Conference for Palestine for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.
