Transcript

Arielle Angel 00:00

Hello and welcome back to On the Nose, the Jewish Currents podcast. I’m your host, Arielle Angel. Today, we have Hasan Piker joining us on the podcast. Hasan, thank you so much for being here.

Hasan Piker 00:22

Thank you for having me.

AA 00:23

So, by way of introduction, Hasan Piker is a Twitch streamer and a political commentator. He’s been on Twitch, which is primarily a platform where people watch each other play video games, since 2018, and he’s been streaming political commentary seven to 10 hours a day every day since then. I have just started watching the feed, to be honest, now that I am lesser employed and no longer the editor in chief of Jewish Currents, and it is pretty astonishing to watch you think and react in real time while also taking in hundreds of comments, a mile a minute, from your viewers—numbering about 30,000 at any given time. You have about 3 million followers on Twitch. But I think even people who aren’t watching your feed are familiar with you, basically because of the way that your name has become a synecdoche for a certain kind of conversation about the Democratic Party. For a younger, more left-wing segment, it’s evidence of how out of touch the party is and how hard it is for them to connect with their base. And obviously, for older centrists, liberals, evidence that the base (and maybe some of the candidates) have become too radical. 

AA 01:38

I think this has come up a lot more, obviously, as you’ve been doing more campaigning for specific candidates, which I’m sure we’ll talk a lot more about. But the reason that I wanted to talk to you is that, at least from where I sit, things have gotten interesting lately regarding Israel/Palestine, politics in the US, in good and bad ways. Some of that I think I probably would have anticipated. Maybe it happened even slower than I would have anticipated, given the genocide, in terms of some of the changes in the base of the Democratic Party. But I think what I didn’t expect at all was this like right-wing capture of parts of the Palestine movement, which we’ve talked a lot about on this podcast. I had Stefanie Fox from JVP and Izz al-Din Mustafa from Adalah Justice Project on a couple of weeks ago, talking about: What do we do about the ways that Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes have almost dominated the online space around Israel/Palestine and anti-Israel, anti-Zionist—however, you want to identify it—politics. 

AA 02:42

I feel like there’s no better person to talk to about that than you. I think there’s been a lot of conversation around: Are you the Joe Rogan of the left? But I almost feel like the question for me, being on the left, is: Who’s going to be the Tucker Carlson of the left Palestine movement, now that Carlson has become so ascendant? So, I wanted to start there with your impression of what’s been happening, at least since last fall, I think, with the compounding of Charlie Kirk, Epstein, and the Iran war, and the way that the right has moved into this space, and how you see your role within all of that.

HP 03:20

Yeah. So, I think that right independent media is a lot better at reading the room than, I would say, even the liberal, DNC-adjacent content creators are. They took their sweet time with that. That’s one factor. I think everybody loves a convert. That’s another reason why there’s this admiration for people who make that switch. It’s exciting to see someone who you would normally consider to be an ideological enemy come to your side on this issue. I think even liberals do this as well. Liberals love Never Trump Republicans.

AA 03:55

Oh, I mean, Peter Beinart from our side is a great example of the conversion narrative at play.

HP 04:00

Yeah. So, I think that’s part of the reason this is the left’s Never Trump Republican moment, where they think: Oh, we finally have converted some of these people, and they’ve made a sincere change. Now, I always let it be known that I don’t know what’s in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s heart. I don’t know what Tucker Carlson’s thinking. I can at least speak to some conviction with Nick Fuentes. Nick Fuentes has always been anti-Israel, and it’s because the Israel cause for him is a really good vehicle to drive home antisemitic conspiracies. But for Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, I’m perfectly willing to accept that they saw carnage and they thought: Okay, this is too much. And then, they also exercise a good deal of personal investment in maintaining a career. They understand where the environment is shifting toward. They see metrics for the likes of Ben Shapiro, Tim Pool, and all these other pro-Iran War, Republican-adjacent independent content creators. They see the downtrend, and they probably want to ride the wave up. 

HP 05:06

Candace Owens, of course, struck gold after she was fired from the Daily Wire, and she was fired from the Daily Wire not for antisemitism but for being against Israel. And the only reason why I say that is because she was antisemitic when they hired her for the Daily Wire, but she was pro-Israel. Ben Shapiro has made it very clear: He doesn’t care if someone is antisemitic; he just cares if they’re pro-Israel or not. He said that about Ann Coulter, and he certainly made that decision with Candace Owens when he hired her after she had said: Hitler wanted to make Germany great; it was when he became a globalist, when he started invading other countries, that’s when it became a problem. Ben Shapiro saw that and was like: That’s my gal. I’m going to hire her. So, it’s clear that there is a lot of appetite in the broader media market for someone who’s going to say: I don’t really like Israel. Israel is a horrible country.  

HP 05:57

So, one of the reasons I think—and I’ve thought about this quite a bit—one of the reasons why I think it’s much easier to craft a narrative from a reactionary side against Israel is because there’s a lot of face-saving for patriotic Americans, Americans who want to believe in American exceptionalism here. The stab-in-the-back myth; the idea that Israel is the primary reason why we’re doing all these wars. The Iraq War, even. Like, that was an American invention. With the Iran War, there’s definitely a lot more weight on Benjamin Netanyahu, but it’s much easier to tell Americans that American exceptionalism is real, and that it was actually the Jewish state that has either blackmailed all of our politicians, and it’s the Jews—they control the media, they control the banks. Americans understand simple narratives. That’s a very simple narrative. 

HP 06:50

So, I think that’s part of the underlying reason as to why right-wingers have been able to gain so much prominence. Because no one wants to listen to someone explain the convoluted reasoning behind why America has always associated itself with Israel and has seen Israel as a forward operating base, an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and that’s given Israel tremendous allowance to genuinely dominate American politics—at the domestic level, mind you. Not just like American foreign policy—constantly demanding billions of dollars of economic aid, and financial support, and the best weapons contracts, unlike any other foreign ally that we have—but also dominate domestic politics in a very meaningful manner, by way of AIPAC, by way of the entire sophisticated influence peddling operation. But when I explain that concept to most Americans, they’re like: Oh, you just sound woke; you just don’t want to say it’s the Jews. It’s much simpler to just say, “It’s the Jews,” and move on. 

HP 07:50

So, it’s appealing, it’s easy to understand. It’s being reinforced by a lot of prominent defenders of Israel and mainstream institutions, in virtually every mainstream institution. Like, if you say a guy like me is an antisemite, if you say Ms. Racial is an antisemite, or even if you lean into the allegations of antisemitism, the controversies—which is a cheap trick that the media always deploys; when they don’t want to directly say, “This guy is antisemitic,” they’ll say, “Many people are saying this person is an antisemite”— When you do that for Ms. Rachel, when you do that for people like myself, most Americans look at that and go: Oh, here we go again. They’re calling every critic of Israel an antisemite.

AA 08:31

There’s a few things I want to pick up on. One is this question of American innocence, and we talk about this a lot on the podcast. I’m in complete agreement with you. I mean, I thought all of us on the left—I mean, forget just the average person—I thought all of us on the left were agreed that America is not a good actor in all of this, and that this couldn’t happen without America, that America has agency here. But I think there’s a lot more people on the left where that’s starting to erode, and I would even say the Young Turks, where you got your start, with your uncle Cenk Uyghur and Anna Kasparian. Like, I hear a lot of: America is besmirching its good name by associating with Israel, as if there is a good name there to begin with. And so, I’m wondering why you think this is gaining steam on the left. Like, I thought we were all on the same page about the malignancy of American empire, basically. So, that’s one question I have. And the other question, which I think is related, is: I know that there’s been a narrative that you’ve been drawing people off of the kind of Fuenteses of the world, away from groyperism. Are you starting to see any pushback from your audience on some of the ways that you’ve been talking about this?

HP 09:44

I think the left assessment is very different. I think the Young Turks—I love my uncle; we have significant disagreements on a lot of domestic issues—but I think their assessment on this is different than the broader left. I would say there are definitely a lot of people that I call ultras, people to my left, I guess—Maoists, Leninists, Third Worldists—who don’t necessarily care about defending the integrity or the infallibility of American empire. Not at all. They are just hyper-focused on the left flank of politics because I think that’s their starting point in their own ideological journey, in their own personal development. So, there is this personal animosity there, and there is a little bit of truth there, too. Not even a little bit of truth. There’s a lot of truth that the Democratic Party, under the leadership of the Biden administration, absolutely had every opportunity to stop this genocide, and they did not take it at all, and they actually continued it. They contributed to it, and in the moments where it mattered the most, the Biden administration engaged in lies and propaganda at the behest of the Israeli state. Biden is an ultra-Zionist. He is genuinely an ideologically committed ultra-Zionist. So, of course, a lot of people are never going to forgive that, and they shouldn’t forgive that, necessarily. But I think that’s the reason why they consider any kind of defense of a Democrat—even if they’re an anti-Zionist, even if they’re committed—to be the same as defending the Republican Party or to be the same as defending Israel. I get called a Zionist a lot by a very tiny group of people, and some of those people—as a matter of fact, a lot of those people—love Marjorie Taylor Greene now. 

HP 11:27

I find that to be fascinating because I’ve been very critical of AOC on numerous occasions. But part of that stems from the cycle of misinformation that I also am a victim to, in many respects, where these algorithms are unbelievably right-wing, so they are already tuned against AOC, in many respects, and I do think that some people on the left fall for that misinformation. A lot of people genuinely think she’s voted to give weapons to Israel. AOC has never, in her entire congressional track record, voted to fund Israeli weapons, in any way, shape, or form. She’s either abstained or voted against it. She’s never voted in favor of it. She didn’t even vote in favor of the overall bill. She voted against the one provision that Marjorie Taylor Greene put out, where she made no distinctions between offensive and defensive weapons, which I disagree with. I think she should have been the one who is putting that provision out herself and leading this conversation. And I think her reluctance to be a leader consistently, and her reluctance to use populist language at times, and her way of tackling some of these issues—I think the optics of it are very frustrating for those on the left, and they just focus on their own personal distaste. And then, that expands into a cycle of looking for any kind of information or misinformation you can grab onto to continue this narrative that she’s bad,

AA 12:56

And yet, her recent assertion that she’s not going to support even defensive weapons, I think, kind of overnight shifted the line in the Democratic Party, and you have a lot of people coming over there now. I mean, this is kind of what I’m talking about with the sudden weirdness of this entire debate. You do have prominent leftists online, basically pissed at AOC for saying anything about Marjorie Taylor Greene, for saying that she’s not an ally. And I don’t know. I mean, I’ve heard you, in various interviews now, talk about the way in which we have to stay open to the possibility of changing people’s minds. We have to keep talking to people. Are there limits to that, as it relates to not just the rank and file but to leaders? Where do you stand on this question of how to engage with some of these figures?

HP 13:50

Yeah, I think if Marjorie Taylor Greene stayed in Congress and then tried to exercise what limited power she had and then ran for re-election, in the same way that Thomas Massie is currently, I think I’d have a little bit more respect for her. Overall, I’m on board with anybody that says they’re done with Israel, and that we have to do something about the influence Israel has on our elections, and that Israel’s doing a genocide. Whether they’re a Republican or a Democrat, it doesn’t matter to me at all. I don’t place a lot of emphasis on that. I don’t even care about her inconsistency, in many respects. So, on that issue, I think it’s great. I’m just not gonna go out to bat, and defend her, and welcome her with open arms, partially because I don’t necessarily think she has much to bring to the table. I don’t think these guys have a real audience of right-wingers that they’re prying away from Donald Trump. We’re seeing that with the Bill Cassidy primary race—that ended up with Bill Cassidy getting third place in Louisiana because he had opposed Donald Trump. The party’s base is still very much 100% on board with Donald Trump. I haven’t seen enough evidence that there are a lot of Republicans that are just moving away from Donald Trump in a meaningful manner, in large enough numbers. So until I see that, I’m just going to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene and others at arm’s length. However, there are people, who I vehemently disagree with, that I have a lot more respect for on the Republican side. The editor of American Conservative magazine—not a person that I agree with in any way, shape, or form when it comes to most issues. I’m not a conservative. I find reactionary ideas to be poisonous, and I’ve spent my entire life combating it, but I think that there’s a sincere anti-war allegiance there.

AA 15:53

Just one note is that we have a big profile of Curt Mills in the next issue, and I’ll drop the link in the show notes.

HP 15:59

Yeah, Curt Mills, very interesting guy. The same goes for Cato when it comes to all of the anti-ICE work that they do, all of the pro-immigration work that they do—going through the data and disparaging the common conservative lies that the Republicans spread, with regular frequency, about the dangers, the national security dangers that migrants actually are responsible for. So, I’m no stranger to finding strange allegiances, but what I do get frustrated by, I think, is when people throw the baby out with the bathwater. AOC has made a lot of bad decisions—decisions that definitely create scrutiny on her otherwise pretty solid track record, especially on the legislative side. Decisions that I think are born out of some of her instincts of worrying about friction and worrying about being a movement leader. I guess it’s hard for me not to be sympathetic to that because I know what it’s like when you are sticking your neck out, and you’re at the front. If you’re at the tip of the spear when it comes to discourse, a lot of people are going to yell at you. Nobody wants to be called a terrorist or an idiot. Nobody wants their entire family to be doxed, to have mainstream media outlets pore through everything you’ve ever said, to be like: Here’s why this guy is a bad guy. 

HP 17:21

I mean, Nicholas Kristof got a piece of that. Immediately, there were these articles coming out about how his dad is a Nazi, and his dad was a supporter of Nazis, and maybe there’s some sort of epigenetic memory that caused Nicholas Kristof to write an article about the Israeli occupying forces raping Palestinian prisoners. No one wants to experience that, and I think that’s part of the reason why AOC plays this tactical move that comes across as very insincere and calculating for a lot of people who are on the advocacy side of this. And they think Marjorie Taylor Greene, on the other hand, is more sincere because she has bravado, and she has almost the superpower of not being all that intelligent, where she’ll just say it like it is. She doesn’t have to craft a delicate message because she’s worried that she’s going to get a bunch of phone calls from Jewish advocacy organizations, being like: Why did you say it like that? Why did you say Israel’s doing a genocide? Why did you say Israel’s an apartheid state? Now we’re going to do a seminar where you talk about the dangers of antisemitism, where you not so subtly disparage a lot of anti-Zionists that you bracket under this broad antisemitism umbrella. And then, those activists hear that, and they go: Well, what the fuck is this? You’re calling me an antisemite now? And they see that, and they understandably get frustrated by that. And I think that’s the reason why they don’t trust AOC as much.

AA 18:48

Well, I want to get into your involvement in electoral politics. You’re obviously a player in a number of races right now. Abdul El-Sayed, the Senate race in Michigan, you’ve been campaigning with him, and there’s been a lot of attention on that. The Third Way centrist think tank has basically said there should be a line in the sand, and you’re a Jew hater, whatever. Just for those listening, if you’re expecting me to go into that stuff, I’m not going to. But there’s a great piece that I’ll put in the show notes from the New Republic by Aaron Rutenberg, where Hasan, you, in your own words, explain or talk about the few things that they’ve been able to pull.

HP 19:26

Even Ezra Klein defended me.

AA 19:27

Even Ezra Klein, yeah.

HP 19:29

That was out of nowhere. I did not expect that at all. And seemingly no one cared about it either. He wrote that piece, and people were like: No, he’s still a Jew-hater.

AA 19:37

Yeah. I’ll put both of those in the show notes because I think that they’re helpful. And I want to talk about the antisemitism stuff, just from a meta perspective later on. But you’ve been involved also in California politics, with Saikat Chakrabarti in San Francisco, a little bit in the LA mayor’s race, etc., etc. And obviously, you’ve had different people on the stream. Famously, you had Ilhan and AOC on, playing video games in 2020, I think, and Zohran, of course. And I’m wondering: What does it mean? I mean obviously, you’re on the record as someone who wants to redistribute the wealth, and I’m in agreement with you there, but what does it mean, essentially, to have those principles and then to start from the very next step? What does it mean to tie yourself to these candidates, knowing that they’re then going to disappoint us when they’re in office? And what does it mean to lend your credibility to them when you know that’s not the full scope of your vision?

HP 20:40

I mean, Zohran is a great example of this. Like, I’m under no illusion that he was going to come in and automatically seize the means of production in New York or anything like that.

AA 20:49

Nor would it be possible to do so.

HP 20:50

Yeah, exactly. So, I find electoralism as a vehicle to reach out to the masses in a very meaningful way, in a much more meaningful way than just sitting around and discussing theory in a book club and trying to maintain some kind of ideological purity. In my commentary, my job is to literally not do that. I’m trying to foment class consciousness. I’m trying to shake people out of the reactionary stupor that they find themselves in. Most Americans don’t identify with class politics or have been antagonized against class politics in general. They find that to be a bad thing. They might have real socialist tendencies internally, but when they’re faced with the idea that what they’re describing—their perfect society they’re describing—is socialist, they get scared. So, I want to break through that. 

HP 21:41

For that reason, I look to Bernie Sanders’ success. Not his success in the primaries in 2016, but his broader success and the impact that he had on American politics, with the recognition that he’s a democratic socialist. He came out, and he said: I’m a democratic socialist; I’m running as a Democrat, even though I’m an independent senator from Vermont, and I’m running against Hillary Clinton in 2016. This was an unbelievably successful insurgent campaign. The party did everything it could to destroy Bernie Sanders, and that obviously caused a lot of disillusionment, caused a lot of anger within the base that were supportive of Bernie. But that wasn’t necessarily bad friction. That was good friction because it caused people to go down this ideological journey where they realized that there is an alternative. There is an alternative beyond just a straight, down-ballot, lifelong “vote blue, no matter who” Democrat. And that is what I want to recreate to the best of my ability. I want to build a caucus, almost, within this party of insurgents, of Berniecrats. I think that’s what Bernie’s doing too, and I think that’s the appropriate way to go about it. 

HP 22:45

And the reason why I want to do that is because I want that democratic socialist association, or the socialist association, to show Americans that identifying as a socialist is not a bad thing. It’s not a scary thing. It’s just a more responsive politics. It means that you can have a politics that will center the working class. A politics that’s uncompromising in the face of demands of austerity. A politics that’s not going to compromise to the influence of corporations, the corporate elite, that demand we only get tax cuts—no expenditures on social safety nets, no money spent on infrastructure or fixing our crumbling infrastructure. All the money goes to endless militarism overseas. That’s business as usual. That’s what the Democratic Party represents. That’s part of the reason why a lot of people have a distaste for the Democrats. I want to show people that there is an alternative out there, and I think that electoralism within the two-party system that currently exists creates a unique opportunity. Not through entryism and redefining the Democratic Party into a workers’ party or a socialist party. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m simply saying it’s a weak party. The two parties in this country, they’re both brands. There’s no party membership. There’s no money that you’re paying for membership. It’s not like a traditional party that you would have in any other setting. It’s just the brand.

AA 24:06

So, you’re saying it’s not even entryist, basically, because there’s nothing to enter. Like you could just roll in there in the right circumstance.

HP 24:15

Yeah. Instead of litigating ballot access all around the country and trying to start at point zero, there’s an opportunity here to start at 0.75, if 100 is the goal. So, I think it’s silly not to take advantage of that. But many, many people to my left don’t understand that or think I’m just insincerely sheepdogging people back into the Democratic Party so that I cut away at the revolutionary fervor. And to them I say: Where is the revolutionary fervor? There is none right now. I don’t think people understand. They see a modicum of success, and they think: That’s it, it’s over, we’re now ready to build the vanguard. And it’s just not there at this point.

AA 24:56

No, totally. I mean, the question really for them is: What is the alternative that’s being built? Like, what can I join? I’m really not such an electoralist either, but I don’t really see energy in any other direction right now, and I don’t personally feel like I have a choice point in front of me that isn’t part of that. So, I really agree with that. You’ve also talked about the way that the GOP is afraid of its base in a way that the Democratic Party has not been. And also, I think that’s starting to shift. Like, you have Weiner in San Francisco basically suddenly shifting on a dime and becoming kind of like a bandwagon.

HP 25:34

No one believes him on that, I think.

AA 25:35

No one believes it. Right. But something that the Republicans did is they allowed their base to bully them into having kind of crazier and crazier candidates, essentially. And on the one hand, you can say that’s because they were being responsive. On the other hand, going back to your point about the fact that people really want the easiest solution, that’s kind of what we’re gonna get. So, I am curious about that. I’ve been thinking a lot about this candidate whose congressional district—I think it’s San Antonio. Maureen Galindo. Have you paid any attention to her?

HP 26:10

Yes. Oh, my God, she’s fascinating. I love her.

AA 26:13

She is wild.

HP 26:15

Yeah. I think she’s the secret weapon. I think American politics is so busted. You know,  the Ezra Klein method of: Oh, no, you have to run anti-abortion Democrats. No, you actually have to run Democrats who are batshit crazy. Like, brilliant 80% of the way, and then the last 20%, you’re like; Oh my God, everything you just said is insane. How did this happen?

AA 26:37

She said that she wanted to turn a local immigrant detention center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking, and said that it will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists. And she won the primary very handily.

HP 26:55

With $11,000! She spent no money whatsoever, and she won the primary. And it’s crazy. I can’t speak to her soul—I mean, she has said a lot of antisemitic things. Like, she literally would just be like: Jewish Zionist pedophiles control Hollywood and are trying to make people more Zionist or more pro-Israel. All this stuff. And that’s objectively antisemitic rhetoric. There’s no debate around that whatsoever. But I wonder if it’s just like what she’s seen and she’s unbelievably malleable, or if she’s just conspiratorial. I also wonder how successful that is for districts that have a lot of people who are just like: We should throw ICE agents in prison, but also, they think every wealthy person is a Zionist pedophile. I don’t know. She’s fascinating.

AA 27:49

I agree with you. It’s very interesting, and it’s a new phenomenon on the Democratic side. It’s like something we’ve seen a lot on the Republican side.

HP 27:58

Yeah, I call her Marjorie Taylor Blue.

AA 28:00

Yeah.. But I guess this is my feeling about where you are really situated somewhere interesting. I mean, you’re talking about how hard it is to continue to insist on the more complex picture, and you also really understand the attention economy and the extent to which the easier thing is just right there, and very shiny, and accessible. I guess my question is: How do we actually get people in the right lane? What is it going to mean to like have a nuanced politics on these kinds of things moving forward, still in a way that feels doable? I mean, we can’t all stream seven to 10 hours a day. What do you think it’s going to take in a way that’s actually more structural or scalable for the left to do this work?

HP 28:48

Yeah, definitely not lean into Jewish conspiracies. I wouldn’t say that’s one method. I mean, look, I have a lot of messaging discipline on this stuff, or at least discipline in terms of communicating what my values are. And I try to not lean into these sorts of distractions because they’re either dangerous or, at best, unproductive. You just have to stay the course. You have to be stubborn about your beliefs, and you have to keep communicating them over and over again. Especially nowadays, with the limits of the institutional stigma of antisemitism, it’s unbelievably beneficial to just be an antisemite. It’s a much easier message to craft, and it’s also something that I’ve been disparaged as over and over again. So, I could just as easily be like leaning into that stuff while still, of course, maintaining the posture that I’m not antisemitic, to be like: Well, see, isn’t it strange? Isn’t it strange how this stuff works? I don’t do that because that’s fundamentally at odds with the way I see the world. The idea that there is this collaborative international Jewry that’s behind everything that’s going on is just not something that I believe. It’s ridiculous, and the same goes for every group. I mean, it’s fundamentally an anti-Marxist position, the idea that these are major motivators for many people, and it’s not just people behaving in their class interest.

AA 30:10

But I would say that you’re pretty unique in this regard. I just want to say. I’m not trying to like gas you up, but I feel a little bit like when I’m listening to you, your analysis really reminds me of a lot of the ways that anti-Zionist Jews talk about it. There’s a real comfort making this distinction in a way that would be very comfortable in Jewish Currents. I just want to say a lot of people don’t do that, and that puts you in a really specific lane where you’re both being constantly attacked and held up as an antisemite par excellence, and, at the same time, I would say one of the few real bulwarks on the left against antisemitism. I don’t know, that must be pretty disorienting.

HP 30:50

I’m used to it. I’m an anti-imperialist, I’m a Marxist. I’ve been doing this for 13 years at this point. I’m used to people just being like: You’re out of your mind. What are you even saying? It’s annoying, but who cares? It’s something that I’m going to continue fighting for regardless, because this is what I believe, and I’ve been very transparent about my beliefs and my advocacy. So, it is what it is. It just comes with the territory. And I’m unbelievably fortunate, regardless. I’ve been able to develop such a large network of fans all around the country, all around the world, who also do see the world in a similar manner. I think that’s what keeps me going, for the most part. There are some changes that we have made, whether it be fundraising millions of dollars for charities that operate inside of Gaza. Very early on, immediately after October 7th, I was actually talking to someone from Anira, who came up to me at one of these events that I was at recently, and he was like: You know you’re the first person that did a fundraiser for us? And I was shocked by it. I was like: What do you mean? He was like: Yeah, nowadays a lot of people do fundraisers for charities that operate inside of Gaza, but at the time, it was right after October 7th, and you were literally the first like major media figure that actually did this huge fundraiser directly for a charity that’s operating inside of Gaza because people were very scared to associate with anything that could be perceived as anti-Israel, especially after October 7th. So, that’s the information environment I’m used to existing in.

AA 32:29

Well, but you’re one person. And so, the question that I keep returning to—and I’ve heard you say elsewhere that actually, we don’t need more media. We don’t need more Hasan Pikers. Without the structure in the Democratic Party to capture that energy, we can’t really do much with it. Do you still feel that way, even with the more receptive elements within the party?

HP 32:51

Yeah, I mean, it’s not bad if there’s more people like myself out there, because it does get lonely in many respects. Especially on the internet, because a lot of people don’t even realize how unbelievably reactionary and also stupid the independent media cycle is. They think these well-read, Yale-graduate, right-wing columnists are bad? They haven’t encountered a guy who has done zero reading and is like functionally illiterate, throwing on a camera and just going: Duh, I think this guy’s woke and gay. And then that gets like 10 million views. They don’t even understand—the well of depravity is far worse on the independent media side, so that’s another reason why I’m used to all of these mainstream media attacks now, many of which have come from the independent media side, ironically enough. They’re just like following along now. 

HP 33:41

So, it would be great. More allies. More allies that are speaking truth to power, more allies that are anti-Zionist with prominent audiences. That would be fantastic. But I think ultimately, from the Democratic Party’s perspective, it was very clear to me from the start that they just didn’t necessarily want to design a media environment where people like myself would be messaging in a way where the Democrats would have to concede to my worldview. They very clearly wanted a mouthpiece for the party that would then also reach the masses in a way that Joe Rogan has been able to. And that fundamentally misunderstands the point. The party is what needs to change; the platform is what needs to change. And then, you will probably have an organic group of influencers and content creators that are defending those changes. If the party was universally in support of Medicare for All, then certainly, you’d probably have a lot more popularity amongst the independent media side.

AA 34:42

I know we’re almost out of time. I have one more question for you. We’ve been talking a lot on the podcast about basically how to deal with, welcome, liberal Zionists who might be waking up or moving. I think there’s like a double-sided thing that’s happening, because on the one hand, I think that you and I are in agreement about this. American Jews are Americans, and that means that actually showing them that their viewpoints are outside the norm of American opinion, I think, will actually move some people. And it will also make some people dig in. And also, I think that you have said over and over that you believe in people’s ability to change, and that’s why you do this. I think that Zionists—I think this is wrong, by the way—that they’ve become the personification of a bad thing in left politics. And obviously, it’s very hard for people to understand why people would see the images that they’re seeing on their phones and be like: Yes, we support this. But I think there’s still just this question about what we do with American Zionists—whether we try to move them, whether we try to speak to them. How do we engage with them while also pushing them, and pushing them in some ways that are also about essentially ostracization? Because I think that can be an effective tool, but not the only one. There has to be a way to pull them over. So, I just wanted to ask you about that as a last question.

HP 36:08

I mean, it’s a push and pull. If it gets to a point where it’s very obviously impossible to get your message across, and they’re being unbelievably harmful, then it’s fine to give up. I say it all the time. I choose not to. I always fight; I always try to change people’s perspectives. But at a certain point, you have to calculate whether or not this is an appropriate use of your time. Some people have a higher degree of tolerance, and some people don’t. I feel like, as someone whose name is Hasan, who is an anti-Zionist, I will admit it’s a little difficult for someone like myself to communicate this perspective to a lot of Zionist Jews because Zionism is a racist ideology. So, they go: Of course, this fucking Muslim terrorist hates all Jews and hates Israel because he hates all Jews. That’s what I’ve experienced. So, I think the emphasis here should be on the internal conversations that should be taking place, on Jewish institutions separating themselves deliberately and actively from the state of Israel, doing basically the opposite of what Jewish institutions have fucking done for the past three years—or for the past 80 years, but certainly, for the past three years, when there was a lot more attention to what was going on, both in Israel and also how Jewish institutions have navigated this discourse.

AA 37:38

Yeah, to be clear, I don’t think it’s your job to talk to liberal Zionists. I think it’s my job, actually. I guess what I mean to say is, I think it is like the left’s job to make room for that work to happen. Because if it can’t happen, we’ve just condemned a whole swath of people to infinite badness forever, or something. Which is something that we probably won’t want to do, even just with like, blue-collar white workers, or whatever—with any group of people who are kind of our ideological enemies who we would hope to bring over, you know?

HP 38:11

Yeah. I think the reason why there’s this interesting attitude—that I’ve also noticed, as well—where people are just like: I don’t really give a shit about antisemitism mentality. One, it stems from the very valid perspective, also demonstrated by Norm Finkelstein, which is that there is no systemic discrimination toward Jews. As a matter of fact, there is institutional stigma that still remains against antisemitism.

AA 38:35

And there’s state protection.

HP 38:38

And it doesn’t exist for any other minority group right now. Especially because the anti-DEI initiatives were at the forefront of the Republican agenda. So, at a time when systemic racism has not been solved, and the Republican Party is basically saying, “DEI is bad except for Jews,” for the average American, they’re like: Well, what am I supposed to do? Like, I’m supposed to care about antisemitism? What the fuck are we talking about? Especially as it pairs up with the other side of that argument, which is that Jews have done fairly well in the United States of America, by and large, in comparison to other minorities. To say that there was no institutional antisemitism in America is also ridiculous. Obviously, there was. There very clearly was. It’s just not a part of contemporary American politics. And it can change, but for the time being, that argument rings hollow. 

HP 39:26

So, that’s part of the reason why I think a lot of people disregard it. And I think it’s short-sighted. To disregard that argument is short-sighted. I mean, to deny the reality that anti-Blackness or Islamophobia is far more systemic and certainly permissible in comparison to antisemitism, especially amongst institutions, is also ridiculous. But the reason why I maintain the position that I maintain is because it’s just, at the end of the day, objectively untrue, the assumption that all Jews are born with this kind of loyalty to Israel, and it’s unchanging. I do think just like any other human being, any other group, people are malleable, people are persuadable, and people change their minds. So, that’s the reason why I advocate for the things I advocate for.

AA 40:09

Well, Hasan Piker, thank you so much for coming on On the Nose. It was really a pleasure to talk to you.

HP 40:17

Thank you for having me.

AA 40:19

This has been another episode of On the Nose. Thank you to our editor, Jesse Brenneman. If you like this episode, share it, rate it, and as always, subscribe to Jewish Currents, JewishCurrents.org. See you next time.