Lessons - My Family Fled Soviet Oppression with $90 - Now I Fight for American Freedom | Elizabeth Pipko - RNC Spokesperson

In this lessons episode, explore what freedom means in American culture and why it remains both a privilege and a challenge. Discover how generational shifts affect patriotism and fuel anti-American sentiment, understand how education and social media reshape liberalism and influence youth views and uncover why protecting free expression even for opposing ideas is vital to democracy. What in your mind does it mean to be American outside of legal definition? It's weird because again, I have this mentality because my parents are immigrants. So I always say I have the privilege of being the daughter of two immigrants. I think about things very differently, but knowing how my parents were raised, knowing that my mom was beaten in school for being a Jew. My dad said goodbye to his father, never seeing him again, finding out later on after his father died and the Soviet Union collapsed, but there was a KGB file on his family and that the KGB was tracking his father, and that's why he never got to see him. To me, that's what it means to be American is that my parents had to live a very different life that I had to live. But being a merit, I mean, we say freedom, right, like what is freedom? I mean, that's really what it means to be an American. A lot of people everywhere around the world have to live their life a certain way. And no, they don't have to legally live it a certain way even, but they all live a certain way because it's not a part of their blood and their culture and their personalities to try to be different. It's kind of a part of ours, you know, that you can do whatever you want and you can fail at everything in the world, but we encourage you to try. That's American. Which I love. And I guess then the follow up question is, we give so much leeway to try new things to think differently, like that is freedom, right? Now with that much leeway and freedom, do you see younger generations having this rise of like anti-American sentiment, like I don't understand how just the ability to be anti-American, like do you understand how privileged you are to be able to go through life and to even think those thoughts and vocalize those thoughts because if you go to any other country in anywhere, anywhere, almost anywhere, you would not be alive for long or ever heard of again. So I'm so curious how freedom leads to anti-American sentiment, which you see in colleges and I mean, a, it's almost a beautiful thing as much as I hate to see it. How incredible that we live in a country where you can burn that American flag and that was going to do anything to you. Like how amazing that these kids can spout whatever nonsense they want and say how horrible this country is and they actually get applauded because we support speech even if we hate it. Even if it makes us physically sick, we will defend your right to say whatever you want. So a part of me, even when I see it, I'm actually happy because my parents weren't allowed to criticize anyone, I'm packing a rest, right? Definitely not, no. So as much as I disagree, a people fought and died so that you can say whatever you want and it's beautiful that we let in 2025, we continued the American way and you can still do that because that's what I fight for every day. It's very easy to fight for people to speak who you agree with. So hey, I think it's great at the same time. It's concerning. It's very concerning. If you look at the numbers, people get less patriotic with every generation and young people don't know what they have. And I think if people put their phones down and professors started, you know, teaching a little more and maybe stopped being activists and started being professors again. People opened a history book maybe, maybe even look around at what's going on in the world right now and it'd feel a lot better. But you know, it's a combination of being super grateful that I live in the country where you can criticize it as much as you want and be being concerned that every generation loves America a little bit less and people are to this day fighting and dying so that we can appreciate what we have and many people don't understand that. I mean, what is that? What does that lead to in 10, 15 years from now? I did knock it out with like, again, like even if, just to give context, even if colleges or universities, how we call them in Canada, were a little bit more liberal, which they were. I think college universities are always skew a little bit more liberal. It was liberal in terms of like criminal justice reform or maybe immigration is a little bit easier, but it was all under the context of this country's great and we're going to try and improve the country and we're going to try and make it easier for people to win in this country. Not this country's shitty. It was never replacing the country. It was like, how do we under the frameworks that exist make it make life better? This new anti-American, whatever anti-country really idealism is very scary and I've never seen a generation grow up hating the country that they're born into. It's also like I'm watching a definition of liberalism change because liberalism at one point was a celebration of diversity of thought and most liberals would defend people that disagreed with them because they wanted them to have that polar opposite opinion. They wanted the diversity. Liberal nowadays doesn't mean that anymore. That's not what we see. So I think the problem is not that the colleges lean left. The problem is that they've changed the definition of what liberalism actually represents. They've made themselves into activists believing that liberalism is what they think is, you know, being a supporter of something on the left and they should fight to the death for that. The reality is that's not liberalism. It's embracing the fact that people around you disagree with you and being in a college or university is the time when you're supposed to have those debates and those conversations and those different thoughts and I think we should just go back to that and that might end up with people disagreeing with America. That's okay but that's not what they're doing right now. They're not thinking it through and having those debates. They're just teaching people that America is bad and that's the problem. If you let people think and you let people debate, they're going to end up in a very different conclusion. You obviously have been an advocate for Israel far before October 7th. So what happened to the world in October 7th when we stopped seeing, this is going to be a leading question and obviously you know my opinion and feelings on this but when we stopped seeing terrorists as terrorists, like this again, I feel like the way that I question what's happening in the world right now, it's as if, I don't know, it's as if like the reality that I lived in no longer exists. It's like black is white and black and drop me in some alternate reality where terrorists are no longer terrorists. No, they're celebrated. And they're celebrated and they're not only celebrated, their flags are celebrated in the U.S., and the U.S. flags are burnt and Israeli flags are burnt and a terrorist flags are like, you know, paraded down streets and nobody... Right by like the Twin Towers, right? That's the creative when you see the flags of terrorist groups, like marching down where the Twin Towers were. And I don't understand what's just it, I guess I was just surprised that there was such a dramatic shift that happened in sentiment that I was not aware of. Even when... So, my dad worked for Ceases, which is Canadian Security Intelligence Services, and he worked heavily with like Shinbet and also intelligence organizations in the U.S. And Canada, U.S., it was always like Israel is the bastion of democracy and intelligence as well in the Middle East. And it was always like, they're the ones that have sort of, they're the... What's the phrase? It's like you're the first... I guess first line of defense against... Yeah, they're fighting our enemies. Anything. And for some reason, all of that changed and I don't know when it happened, but I realized it happened on October 7th when people were like, oh, you know, I don't know if it really happened. Well, I think they had it coming, you know, excuse me. Yeah. What? Yeah, people asked me like, how did October 7th hit you? And it's as awful as that day was, and I remember sitting on the floor for like 10 hours straight watching the footage and sobbing, what happened after actually hurt more, because I thought I'd wake up to the entire world defending Israel. Kind of like post 9-11. Right. I thought the world was going to say released. I mean, I think at the point of October 7th, October 8th, we didn't actually know how many people were murdered yet. We didn't know how many people were taken hostage yet. It was very confusing. But I thought I'd wake up that day and have the entire world screaming for these people to, you know, come home. I know we knew some people were taken hostage. I thought we would, you know, be screaming about what just happened in the Middle East. I didn't think I'd lip through that in my lifetime. You know, I've run a Holocaust Museum, a digital Holocaust Museum, and I'm sorting through materials and images from the Holocaust weekly. I never thought I'd lip through a time when the imagery I was seeing actually reminded me so much of what I unfortunately have to sort through from, you know, 80 years ago. But that's what it was. And then I woke up to a bunch of people celebrating what happened, saying Israel deserved it. And ripping down, you know, posters of nine-month-old babies being held hostage, as if it was propaganda, or they deserved it, or whatever else God forbid people were saying. Have you thought about what shifted in the world that led to the change of sentiment? I mean, I think it was the last few years or a blur. Maybe it was after October 7th, but remember a year or two ago, maybe a year, when Al-Sahman Bin Laden's letter went viral on TikTok, and all the, you know, 15 to 19-year-olds were saying Al-Sahman Bin Laden had a point. Yeah. I mean, clearly the shift is greater than just to do with Israel, you know, like it's nothing to do with Israel. Anti-Sahmanism is easy. So we all bounce on attacking Israel because why not scapegoat the Jews were used to it? But it's a lot deeper than Israel. I mean, we're celebrating terrorists, and they will celebrate the terrorists if they did it here too. Like, how do we fall so far where a knife, whatever, an 18-19-year-old on TikTok thinks that Al-Sahman Bin Laden had a point, like actually, like what the fuck is wrong with people? Yeah, you can totally curse. This is fucking insane. And I just don't understand how, like, because who were the parents, who were the influences on those 19-year-olds? That part I think has been good, because a lot of parents talking to, I mean, I've talked to so many students and parents in October 7th, so many parents had no idea what was going on on these campuses, and they were, you know, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for this education, and then seeing their kid camped out in a tent with the flag, you know, camped out in a tent outside the campus with a Hamas flag, you know, displayed on their face. And they're wondering what the hell happened to my kid, my Jewish kid, very often too. So I think that's the good thing is people are like, wait, we can't put all this faith in our institutions. Maybe the Department of Education should not be educating my kid, and maybe I should be educating my kid. And I think a lot of people thank God woke up because of that. They had no idea that their kids were being sent away to these schools coming back four years later and thinking of Al-Sahman Bin Laden had a point. So that's been good. People have actually woke up. But when did the curriculum shift? It's a while ago. It's been, I mean- I don't even feel like I'm 34. Yeah. I was in university, okay, what, like, 14, 13, whatever, 12 years ago. I don't remember, like, this was not something that was believed by my generation. This is more to do with Israel, but I went to get my masters, 2022. Yeah. So I graduated in May a few months before October 7th. Before I went, and I went to UPEN, again, great school, large Jewish community. That's why I wanted to go to Penn. When I got into Penn, they had an orientation for students before they, you know, accepted their, like, accepted the, I guess they said acceptance letter, you have to, you know, accept the offer or not. Before you accept the author, the offer they had this orientation, there was a Jewish girl there who was completing her masters in the same program. And I asked her, what is it like to be a Jew on campus? Because I was curious, I had heard stories, I hadn't been in school in a while. She said to me, I'll never forget, the kids in this class would rather find out that you were at the January 6th Capitol riot than that you're a Zionist. And I was like, okay, so this is, things are, things are different. And again, Zionist just means you think Israel has the right to exist. That's, that's all that means that's been used for many others. Of course. So that's when I realized things had shifted. But I, nothing could have prepared me for October 8th. And for waking up and being told the Jews deserved it, these kids deserved it. It's propaganda knowing that, you know, the footage was blasted across every social media network. That's fake. Nothing could have prepared me for October 8th or the 17 months since. You know, I've had a couple conversations with, with, with friends about this. And they've kind of like oversimplified why there's so much anti-Semitism and I'm going to say this, but I don't agree with like anti-Zionism, whatever, which is, I think synonymous. But people will say that it's not, I think they're just trying to. Yeah. It's a fun, easy out to say. I hate the Jews. But a lot of the thought was, for some reason, like Hamas and pro-Palestine groups were really good at social media post-October 7th and pro-Israel groups were not to the same degree. And that was something that they leaned into and exploited. So much that you saw propaganda everywhere. And do you, I'm just curious because obviously you are in social media and I'm wondering how big of an impact you think that actually made on the world. I hate being this person because it becomes a very different conversation and we can talk about this for hours. But the fact is social media has allowed our enemies to infiltrate this country in the easiest way possible by hitting the next generation, right? No one knows what's going on, no one knows what 14-year-olds are doing on their phones, no one can stop them from being on their phones or being on these apps and anyone, anyone in the world can feed them whatever material that they want. That has been the largest problem and that's what it's taken over. I have a problem with politicians, I have a problem with professors, I have a lot of problems with a lot of people. But the fact is, when anyone in Russia and anyone in China, anyone in the Middle East can access your 13-year-old and tell them how to feel and how to think about things like terrorism and change their mind and educate them in a way you don't know what's happening because you're tuned out because your child is 13, doesn't want to listen to you? That's when you have a real problem. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.