Dignity and the Psychology of Sumud and Resistance | 🌱RIF Podcast ep. 40 Live

Forty episodes in—and the resistance is not just alive, it’s fertile.
In our latest live episode, our conversation wove together Palestinian steadfastness, psychological warfare, Western complicity, and the quiet rebellion of love, dignity, and dark humor under siege.
From Gaza to Venezuela, from the interrogation cell to the Instagram feed—this episode asks: What nourishes resistance—and what depletes it?
We unpacked Sumud—often translated as “steadfastness”—not as a static virtue, but as a dynamic, collective practice of psychological and political survival.
Benji introduced a powerful framework for evaluating any piece of content—news, video, post, or meme:
Ask: Does this nourish or deplete the resistance psyche?
And: Does it inflate or deflate the imperial/narcissistic psyche?
Too often, even well-intentioned anti-imperialists share graphic, dehumanizing images of Palestinian suffering—thinking they’re “exposing the truth.”
Sharing humiliation—even to condemn it—can feed the enemy’s narrative that resistance is futile… while reinforcing their own sense of power.
True resistance centers humanity—not horror porn.
Inspired by our recent conversation with Susan Abulhawa, we reflected on her definition of resistance: “Morality first.”
Not moral superiority—but moral fidelity: treating prisoners humanely, refusing to target medevacs, and honoring the dead.
We critiqued figures like Chris Hedges and Norman Finkelstein—not for their past courage, but for their current limitations. Even “progressive” Western analysts often underestimate the power of resistance, assuming geopolitical realism trumps people’s will to liberate themselves.
We discussed capital not as a system, but as a parasitic logic—an “artificial intelligence” that turns all life into commodity, all land into real estate, all death into profit.
From Hezbollah’s strategic resilience in Lebanon to Venezuela’s armed, popular sovereignty—and China’s quiet control of rare earths—the global balance of power is not what it was two years ago.
Every post you share, every image you circulate, every word you speak—falls somewhere on the matrix.
You are already in the psychological battlefield.
The question is: Will you nourish the resistance—or feed the machine?
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Resistance isn’t about never falling. It’s about always returning to the soil of solidarity.
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Free Palestine. Free the world.
Next live show: same time, same place. Bring your rage, your hope—and your humanity.
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Resistance Is Fertile is a podcast by Sacha and Benji—two therapists, revolutionaries, and students of liberation.
We explore the psychology of oppression, the psychology of resistance, the ethics of solidarity, and the art of staying human in inhuman times.