A Conversation with Daniel Maté

YS talks about Gaza, the upcoming election, music, and childhood trauma in a wide-ranging interview

Being in local, independent journalism is not an easy feat these days. My days are filled with more work than play, but at least the work is of great value to me. While I read enormous amounts of news, white papers, and media articles and absorb documentaries for my Friday night escape, the time to sit down and read a book was stolen years back. Despite my lack of carving out time to read a good book, I have been a fan of the Maté family for some time and watched just about every video made by or about Gabor Maté. His revolutionary work on trauma and addiction has helped to start changing how we treat those with substance use disorders and how we treat trauma. Gabor Maté’s book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts,  is a major reason we even talk about trauma today. 

Daniel and Gabor Mate (ltr), Photo: Maté Family Archives

I became a fan of Daniel Maté unwittingly. I follow many independent journalists so that I am informed beyond the filtering that mainstream media currently provides. I was watching Katie Halper’s interview with Matt Lieb, and Daniel, who was speaking as a Jewish person on Israel and Zionism. I thought, wow, this guy sounds smart, and when I caught his last name, I decided to look him up. Indeed, he is Gabor’s son. 

Daniel is quite accomplished in his own right as a composer, playwright, and lyricist for musical theater performed in New York and B.C.. His work has been performed at the Kennedy Center in D.C. and the Lincoln Center in New York as well. In addition to his MFA degree from  New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, he also holds a BA in psychology and philosophy. He is recognized with the Edward Kleban Prize for Most Promising Lyricist in American Musical Theatre, a Jonathan Larson Foundation Grant, and the ASCAP Foundation’s Cole Porter Award for Excellence in Music and Lyrics.  

But I want to write about more than his accomplishments. These are insights into the work he values and thrives in, but they don’t tell the whole story of who Daniel Maté is.

Shavonne Blades: I started listening to you speak, and I’m like, who is this guy? Then I started looking you up and then I found the Brené Brown response and learned you were Daniel, Gabor Maté’s son. 

The first thing I wanted to ask is, you grew up with a father who was a rabble-rouser, an activist in the 60s, and always having deep conversations around with your brother and father. All of you seem to have this amazing conscientiousness about humanity about you, you seem to irradiate this sense of understanding humanity. And so my first question is what was it like growing up being Daniel Maté?

Daniel Maté: It was complicated. I think every childhood can be complicated. Being from the family I’m from had its own unique complications. My father was a very impressive presence when he was present. He’s the first to say that there were ways in which he could be quite absent both physically and emotionally. To say I looked up to him would be an understatement I kind of worshiped him.

It wasn’t just him. His brother was a political activist. Organizing peace marches in Vancouver an event called “Give Peace a Dance” every year about nuclear disarmament. This is in the 1980s, and so the Reagan Era. Essentially, I grew up with an Anti-Imperialist perspective. Not just a left-wing domestic liberal perspective, but a radical opposition was baked into me that the United States is one of the world’s “Evil Empires” and the leading one. 

So it was thrilling actually because [my father] was able to cut through mainstream propaganda. It was also highly inconvenient because then I go to school. and I have to be the one to dissent from my teachers, and I’m kind of talking out of my ass because I’m 11 years old,  but I’m saying what I know and now I’m a peacenik and getting made fun of by my friends who are all into G.I. Joe and the video game called “Contra” where you’re actually, part of a western force killing terrorists or whatever. 

And then there was the extra complication that this Anti-Zionist father of mine, who had been an idealistic little Zionist in his teens but did some reading and cured himself of that, became quite the opposite. Although he doesn’t call himself, I think, functionally, he is Anti-Zionist. But he also sent me to a Zionist summer camp where there were Israeli counselors fresh out of the army telling us stories about Israel’s glory, history, and the kibbutz. The furthest left there was a kind of “Israel’s gone too far, and the occupation is bad.” But the word ‘Nakba’ was never used, But here I am, and I know better because my dad exposed me to things, and I’ve read Noam Chomsky by age 13, and I’m kind of a freak. Not great for the social life. It gave me a sense that there are things more important than popularity, or at least so I told myself.

It was a mixed bag and then mixed into that was all the emotional and psychological dynamics of the family. My father’s activism was often motivated by a kind of rage – a kind of anger, which on the one hand was very impressive to me and the other hand reminded me of the emotional climate that had pretty much terrorized me in my early years in the home. So I was both in awe of him and afraid of him at the same time and those two things kind of got coupled together which creates an interesting sort of dynamic. 

There’s a lot but overall but it was a rare and precious thing to grow up in a family where you get a counter-hegemonic narrative. You can already go into the world with your eyes open and with some tools of what Chomsky calls intellectual self-defense.

SB: I was gonna say emotional intelligence as well because you admit that even though there are all these complications, you emit sort of a sense of self in how you’re navigating your emotional space as well. Less reactionary and more responsive.

DM: That’s something I’ve had to work at. Any emotional intelligence I had, I grew up thinking I was emotionally intelligent, but a few years ago, after a particularly disastrous relationship fell apart, I realized I’m intelligent about emotions, and there’s a difference.

My dad’s anger was so toxic when I was a kid. My own anger was so… what can I say? Criminalized. I mean at least I had to suppress it. I had to be right, I had to be persuasive. I had to be reasonable, all these other things. I was working way too hard rather than just saying that makes me angry. So that was one of the features of my childhood wounding. I guess you could say. So when my anger would erupt, it would usually be followed by a torrent of tears. It was a kind of despair. I’m all alone. That I am all alone with this conscience, why can’t people see it? So it’s a more sensitive kind of outrage that’s mixed with loneliness rather than just moral indignation, which Is more my father’s stuff. Either way it can fuel good activism and it can get in the way depending on your relationship to it.

SB:  I wrote a poem about when actists go after activists, it’s called “Kill the Dove.” You’re co-authoring books with [your father], so there’s been healing along the way I would assume?

DM: Yeah, and it’s hard to say, what’s the chicken and what’s the egg. We certainly had to do some healing before we could write together. In order to be able to write together, we got to get our sh*t together. We got to get into the present which is what healing is.

I have to learn to see myself in a new way and relate to him in a new way. And give up old reactions based on certain stories. He has to learn to see me as a separate person. Collaboration is the kind of scaffolding for setting boundaries. Because, as his son, it was always hard for me to say no to him. As his collaborator, it’s just as plain as ‘Sorry, I’m not gonna work under these conditions. And you need me so make your choice.’ 

So suddenly, for the first time in my life, I had leverage. It’s crude to stay, but it kind of worked that way. Because we were in a relationship where there was something at stake bigger than either of our feelings, opinions, or positions. It induced us I think to find new ways of relating to each other.

And of course, the meta aspect of that is that our next book, which I assume will be our last book together, is about parent and adult child relationships.

SB: My parents were very unique people as well. At 40 my dad got sober, decided to go study God, got a theology degree, and then told the church he wanted nothing to do with them. He became an independent counselor in a hospital and then realized that they were not really there to heal people, that they were just pumping patients in and out. I remember one of the things my mom said to me as a teenager, there’s been stories that have been formed as children and we really want you to know those are not the stories of who you are and now as an adult woman, I look back and realize the work they were trying to put into to healing and just how lucky I was even if we had some dysfunction going on,

DM: What a gift.

SB: You’re an accomplished musician. Have you listened to the Macklemore song [Hind’s Hall]?

DM: I have. It’s the, best thing he’s ever done. His style of rap is not generally my thing. and I could quibble with some aspects of the craft of that song, but who gives a f*ck, it’s necessary, it’s heartfelt. It’s full of facts. It’s got great punchlines, a great point of view and it’s very uncompromising. I mean just holds no punches at all.

It’s full of facts. It’s got great punchlines. It’s got a great point of view and is very uncompromising. And it’s urgently needed from someone that big so props.

SB: I’m curious how many will follow now. I mean the 60s were all about the music?

DM: The 60s were all about the music, in what sense you mean?

SB: The protest music.

DM: It’s funny. People always say that. I mean you had active protest movements going on and you had songs like ‘War, what is it good for?’ and you had Neil Young’s ‘Ohio’ about Kent State, and you had songs that were topical, but when it comes to political commentary I’m gonna stand by the 80s and say that I grew up in the best era for topical songs.

SB: Okay name one.

DM: Prince, ‘Sign of the Times,’ Genesis’ ‘Land of Confusion,’ Sting had a song called ‘Russians Love Their Children Too,’ songs about nuclear Holocaust. Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car,’ which is a song about social class.

Heavy metal was taking on politics. Metallica was singing songs about nuclear annihilation and not cheering it on at all. Punk and Ska, Fishbone had a song about nuclear annihilation, and Hip-Hop had ‘The Message.

It was a great time for a kind of music that was really responding to the times in an urgent way, but in a sense that was in the absence of any strong protest movement. I mean the 80s was a time of control. The nuclear disarmament thing was a big deal, but the U.S. Security State and the imperialist state had won by that point and Reagan was the victory lap for conservatives. So either way, I’m so grateful that I came of age in the 80s. I just think it’s the best.

SB: One of the things that really touched me is; ‘Take a walk with Daniel.’ I’ve had a very very close relationship pull away. I love this person dearly, and a couple of others that just we’re not seeing things the same [on Israel and Palestine]. ‘It can’t be fun defending Israel these days,’ I’m imagining, was coming out of the same experiences that I’ve been having. It changed me, it made me feel less alone.

DM: I had an inkling on October 8th that I could put things in a light that would make people feel less insane. I sensed that something horrible was around the pike. I did not expect it to have the reach or the impact that it’s had on people. I thought I was going to do one video and be done with it. But it’s turned out to be something that at this point. I haven’t been posting nearly as much recently. I just don’t know what to say anymore.

SB: The Brené Brown response was incredible. Do you want to speak to that at all? I will add this. So, I was learning meditation a few years ago and getting into more self-care and Oprah with Deepak Chopra did this one on hope. After watching all 12 I realized it’s easy for you to talk about sitting on your beach being grateful. I’m struggling to pay the mortgage and do journalism…

DM: You’re just not manifesting hard enough Shavonne. [both laugh]

SB: You were responding to America siding with Israel without understanding the whole scope of the reality?

DM: She was siding with Israel without admitting that she was siding with Israel. It was the disingenuity of it. And she didn’t even know that she was doing that.

I’ve never been particularly drawn to her work. but I know that it’s had a positive impact for a lot of people, especially women in the corporate world, which at best as a way of coping with a toxic situation but it’s not worthless. But if you’re going to be silent for a long time and then speak up with that kind of platform I think you’ve got to be open to some pushback and I just felt the need to provide it. I’m very surprised by how widely seen that video has been. Anytime I see videos or statements like that, there are so many unquestioned hidden assumptions while cloaked in language that sounds touchy-feely and universal… ‘I see God in the eyes of every child,’ if you actually drill down into what they’re not saying, it’s pretty nasty. And it’s pretty bigoted. [It’s like if] you buy a health food product that says organic and it turns out that maybe the wheat is organic, but there is MSG. It’s a poison pill, in the sense, that kind of nice even-handedness. Peter Tosh said ‘Don’t talk to me about peace. I don’t want no peace. I want equal rights and justice.’

SB: Yeah, it took me a minute as I started to become aware that my thoughts always told me, I wasn’t trying hard enough. I wasn’t working hard enough. It’s the mental health of our societies. It’s not that we don’t have a mental health crisis. We have a societal crisis.

DM: That’s the entire thesis of The Myth of Normal, the first book I wrote with my dad.

SB: We have a young Palestinian who’s working with us and we are publishing a story today on Canary Mission. I’ve checked, I’m not on the list yet. I don’t know if I’ll end up there. What kind of backlash have you received? And are you still welcome in Jewish spaces?

DM: I wasn’t frequenting Jewish spaces, to begin with, so I don’t know. I’m sure that some places I went I would looked at funny, especially if I wore my keffiyeh and my ‘end the genocide’ hat.

People in my comment sections love to use the word ‘Kapo,’ which is a word for Jewish collaborators in the concentration camps. Jews, who in order to survive, took positions of either snitching on their fellow Jews or having privileged positions in the concentration camps to save their own skins. It’s just not even an accusation worth making. It’s a testament to the actual contempt that zionists have for victims and the self-loathing they have about being descended from Holocaust victims.

A lot of people have come to me with a kind of respect or at least kind of bewilderment. Why are you taking this position? And when I respond with respect, some people have changed their minds I haven’t found it to be terrible.

I had no job to lose. because I work independently, and the book had already been published. My dad and my positions on Gaza haven’t hurt sales at all over the world. There are people including Jewish people who have put things on the line. I’ve been in a position where I don’t have to.

SB: That’s nice that you recognize that. When YS was one year old, and we were just a little flyer, 9/11 happened and I knew I had to make a decision about what kind of media outlet we were going to be. We had a column called ‘The Wrecking Ball’ that was very critical of George W. Bush. I came out extremely critical of the Iraq War right from the beginning. 

I’m surprised we haven’t gotten as much negative backlash [surrounding Israel] as Yellow Scene because we have published things and taken a stance. 

I wanted to ask you, and I don’t know if either one of us has the ability to answer this, but we know what’s going on right now [in Gaza] can’t last forever. A lot of people support a two-state solution. I’m a big believer in equal rights for all. I think a religious state is going to automatically be based in racism. But do you have any predictions or any hope, any thoughts on what is your vision for how a solution would work?

DM: I don’t prognosticate. I have no idea. I’m not a political analyst, and my vision is kind of worth the paper it’s written on.

Obviously, I like the idea of a non-authoritarian, non-ethnostate, democratic state for all and a dismantlement of Zionism.

It’s a vision and I’m glad people are working towards that. One of the things I’m coming to grips with is whatever the solution is, it’s going to have to be created by the people on the ground. Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims, and Christians, the people in the land who live there. We can sometimes think that we are making a difference by yelling slogans and prescribing this solution or that solution. Nothing wrong with slogans and nothing wrong with a vision of freedom and justice and as long as there’s an occupation, resistance, I think, is mandatory. But there are Palestinians who if you said to them ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, they would not know what you’re talking about. They just want to live. 

In my mind anything short of a dismantlement a complete and total defeat of the ethno-supremacist Zionism is mandatory because it’s a cancer. Zionists say Islamic fundamentalism is also a cancer, it might be, but I see Zionism is the far greater threat because it’s not tied to a resistance movement reacting to Western imperialism. Islamic fundamentalism thrives under conditions of occupation and oppression.

Zionism is a power structure with a massive selection of weapons and institutions, and it also has the Israeli mind captive, it’s just poison. Whereas if you ask most Palestinians, they’ll go with whoever the resistance is. But Israelis are completely and totally captured by the dogma except for the noble ones who are standing up and waking up. So all of that to say, I just don’t know.

SB: One of the things that’s horrible, I mean I understood from Citizens United how much control outside forces have over our Congress, but I don’t think my mind could grasp how much AIPAC controls our Congress and our President. One of the things I said on Jeff Fard’s [brother jeff] show is that when Netanyahu did that speech that ‘America needs to fix its universities, these students are out of control. They’re Nazis. They’re Hamas.’ Then Monday, there’s [Biden] calling them violent — when they are absolutely not — and he is sending in an army of police, and It is just mind-boggling to me. It’s just gonna piss the students off.

DM: You’re going to lose them [the students] and if there’s any justice, it’ll lose the Democrats the election. I’m not praying for their opponent, but they deserve to be obliterated based on their performance here. The Republicans are no better. Mike Johnson’s been absolutely disgusting. It’s a complete and total coup by a foreign country of the U.S. political system, and whether you want to argue the lobby is the primary influence or whether you want to say ‘No it’s just more about U.S. geopolitical interests and expediency’ or some combination of both — which strikes me as the most likely — either way it’s a total capture and it’s disgusting.

Some rare people in Congress have somewhat redeemed themselves or been strong on this from the start, but they are way too few and far between. Even the best ones — except Talib and Omar, who actually have skin in the game — are susceptible to all kinds of fallacies. Once you play that game you lose.

SB: The Black Lives Matter movement made progress. I mean, we haven’t ended racism, and police are still beating people up, but…

DM: I mean not if the system has anything to do about it, and it does. The hope of a Jill Stein or Cornell West is not that they’re going to win. Bernie was both an aberration and a kind of exception that proved the rule because even he couldn’t stick to his principles and had to cave and endorsed Biden with getting bupkis in return. Jill Stein can pull some votes, and again, the point of a third party is not to carry the hopes for victory but to put a thorn in the side of those in power and try to let them know. you could lose your people.

There’s been moments when democracy threatened to break out in America, but the Empire always strikes back. It has these built-in contingencies systems. The media is the main. arm of enforcement of the status quo, bounding the terms of the debate as Chomsky outlined, all under the guise of a free democratic society. We have a free exchange of opinions unless you’re saying anti-Israel rhetoric, or whatever.

SB: Progressive on everything but Palestine, right? I know Chomsky wrote that progress moves very slowly, and the lesser of two evils is still less evil, but this year, I don’t know if I can vote for the less evil

DM: Yeah, I don’t know that you can actually make a categorical determination of which one is less evil quite frankly. The ‘blue no matter who’ logic of: Orange Man Bad, always struck me as disingenuous. You got as many war criminals if not more in the Democratic Camp these days. Trump’s the only president in recent memory who hasn’t started a new war, but he’s a loathsome amphibian, and morally empty. But I’m regularly more disgusted by the Democrats than I am by the Republicans. 

SB: The D’s supposed to be better.

DM: Because of the pretense, and the sanctimony, and the condescension. ‘Who else you gonna vote for? What are you going to do? And then claiming to stand with Black lives and brown people and oppressed people, it’s absurd.

SB: My dad at the end of his life, said ‘All you can do is look back and say did I live a life of value, dignity and respect?’ One of the things is we have a tendency to value human life on net worth in this culture. I know that I am not my bank account. It took me a minute to realize that but I am not my bank account. I want to look back and say ‘Did I live a life of value dignity and respect?’

DM: Yeah in the aggregate.

SB: What do you see ahead for you?

DM: Finishing this book with my dad. We’re on Deadline and got to get it done. I probably have another book to write myself on a whole modality that I’ve developed and I’d like to share with people. I’ve got a huge amount of creative backlog. I’m a musical theater writer. I am a songwriter, composer, and lyricist for musical theater, and I’ve got shows that are sitting on the shelf that need to find a home to develop themselves and be produced. It hurts my heart that I’m not working on them right now. I feel an obligation to them. They are the closest thing to children that I have. I miss that part of my life. I’m a bit nervous about going back to it. The theater world can be very institutionally timid, and a lot of zionists there too who might be disinclined to do business with me. I don’t know we’ll find out.

This interview was originally recorded on 5/9/2024

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