The Atrocities That Shaped the Modern Middle East

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube On this week’s episode of The David Frum Show , The Atlantic ’s David Frum opens with a discussion of the seemingly forgotten attack on the Yazidi people by ISIS in 2014.

Then, David is joined by the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore to discuss his new book, The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East .

David and Simon discuss how much of the present-day Middle East emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and the violence that took place both before and after the empire’s collapse.

David and Simon discuss how, one after another, different language groups and religious groups were pushed into exile or eliminated altogether.

Then, David finishes with a discussion of The Hidden Hand : The Information War and the Rise of Antisemitic Propaganda by Warren Kinsella.

The following is a transcript of the episode: Simon Sebag Montefiore: So, again and again, we have this pattern where if you don’t have a state, you’re nothing, and if you do have a state, the only way to enforce it is with autocracy or with repression.

David Frum: Hello, and welcome to The David Frum Show.

I’m David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic.

My guest this week will be Simon Sebag Montefiore, the acclaimed British historian and author of the new book The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East .

The book discussion at the end of the show will feature The Hidden Hand by Warren Kinsella, subtitled The Information War and the Rise of Antisemitic Propaganda.

But before either the dialogue with Simon Sebag Montefiore or the book discussion of The Hidden Hand , some opening thoughts on themes that will run all their way through today’s program.

Simon Sebag’s book The Cauldron describes the transformation of the Middle East from its existence under the Ottoman Empire a century and a half ago to the region of today, divided among many nations.

And yet while the map of the Middle East is much more tangled than it was when the Ottomans ruled almost everything from Tunisia to Iraq—although parts of it were under foreign influence: British and French colonial rule, Italian colonial rule—a simple map, but with a complex reality.

Simon Sebag describes how, one after another, different language groups, different religious groups, different groups with different histories were pushed into exile or eliminated altogether.