Front Burner - Hasan Piker on how Trump seized online culture

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

For decades, conservatives worried about losing the fight for cultural relevancy. During his campaign, Donald Trump aggressively courted Gen Z and young millennial men — appearing on podcasts, streams and alongside influencers, discussing everything from combat sports to cocaine use. A PR campaign which many have credited, in part, for his election victory. Hasan Piker is a rare political streamer on the American left; on election day, his coverage garnered 7.5 million views overall. He joins the show for a discussion about why many young men have drifted rightward, and he addresses what that appeal is fundamentally about.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. I want to thank some people real quick. I want to thank the Nelt Boys, Aiden Ross, Theo Vaughn, Bustle with the Boys, and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan. Hey, everybody, Jamie here. So before the election, you might remember, we talked on the show about the Manosphere.

This is essentially a corner of the internet dedicated almost exclusively to the interests and desires of young men. A home for male grievance and cultural angst related to everything from dating in the modern era to mental health and higher education. A place to articulate a kind of cultural dissatisfaction, which a lot of young men are feeling right now. You're going to go to school. You're going to get in debt.

You're going to get a job. You're going to get a wife. Divorce is coming. You're going to lose the house eventually. Your job's shit. Inflation's outpacing your wages. You're going to work, work, work. No one's going to appreciate it.

Now you're old and your life's over. That is the matrix for 99% of men. And you need to find a way to stay... If you're a young man today, it's likely the case that the manosphere touches some piece of your life, whether it's fitness, video games, self-help, history, sports, comedy,

gambling, or yes, politics. So that clip that we opened up with, that's Dana White, CEO of the UFC at Donald Trump's victory party last week, thanking a who's who of influencers and podcasters, all stars in the manosphere, for contributing to the cultural momentum that helped get Trump elected. Tens of millions of young people are no longer relying on traditional media for their news. And instead, they're turning to streamers on sites like Twitch and Rumble or influencers on TikTok and YouTube.

People whose voices they trust. And this marketplace is dominated almost exclusively by right-wing voices, some of whom center politics in explicit ways. Others sneak these ideas into otherwise unrelated content. Now, in this cultural tide, there really is only one exception, Hasan Piker. I'm Hasan Piker in this thoughts and I'm broadcast coming to you live from sunny Los Angeles, California, folks. We're live and alive. And I hope all the boys, girls and Emmys are having a fantastic moment because today is a beautiful day. Today's a wonderful day. Today is the day. It's E-Day. It's D-Day, it's Election Day, folks.

On Election Day, Hassan was the only non-conservative to feature as one of the 10 most watched streamers, pulling in 7.5 million live viewers over the course of the night. That, for comparison, is the same number as CNN's election broadcast on television. Hassan has been talking for a long time about the radicalization of young men and the viewing habits of young people, the fact that many have drifted rightwards, and what that appeal is fundamentally about. Now that this world may have helped crown the next president of the United States, we wanted to talk to Hassan and try to demystify this cultural alliance between influencers and the conservative movement

and why the left seems to have no real answer for it. Hassan, thank you so much for being here. It's such a pleasure to have you. Thank you for having me. This is exciting. with you today. Before we get into it, though, I'm just curious, is there any part of you that was surprised at just how influential streamers and influencers ended up being in this election? No. And that's probably because I myself am a streamer. I think that 46% of Republicans and around 45% of Democrats get their news from social media. It's a pretty large number. And when you think about the landscape, that can be a cause for concern, or that can be something that is quite beneficial for maybe even the future of organizing

and the future of activism in this country, for maybe even the future of organizing and the future of activism in this country and maybe in the Western world. I caught your reaction to Dana White, head of the UFC, shouting out a bunch of your peers on stage. No! Thank you, America. Thank you. Have a good night. What is this country? Hey, yo, we're done. We're done. He's an amazing, he's really an amazing guy. Take me through what you were thinking in that moment. Um, in that moment, I thought we're cooked. We're absolutely cooked as a country because it's not necessarily that, uh, you know, podcasts and independent media has played such a prominent role in outreach.

But the types of podcasts and the types of people that Dana White was presenting as being playing a formative role, while I'm a fan of some of those podcasts, well, I've actually appeared on some of those podcasts and I know some of them or have at certain points in my life been even friends with some of these people, maybe had a falling out. I still don't think that that is a very serious space for very serious political conversations to take place in. Let's get into that a little bit more then. Trump and his team clearly aggressively targeted Gen Z and young millennial men, especially young white men. I think it's fair to say he went on this podcast tour, talked about everything from cocaine use to combat sports. And what do you think that

Team Trump successfully identified there about our cultural moment that the Democrats didn't? there about our cultural moment that the Democrats didn't? I think Donald Trump had a deck of cards that was stacked against him because he was already president. And a lot of the high propensity voters had already made up their minds about Donald Trump. And we saw the results of that in the 2022 midterms, as a matter of fact, where the Republican Party was supposed to be very successful. I mean, you're you're talking about massive amounts of inflation that people were experiencing, and the Democratic Party was seen as the responsible party for that. And instead of people coming out and punishing the Biden administration in 2022 midterms, they actually ended up voting for the Democratic Party in many instances,

surprising the Republican Party. And I think given that environment, a lot of people, I think, correctly understood that Donald Trump had to go to new veins to tap into from the base of support. And who better to tap into than young men who are obviously feeling uncertain about the future of this country and young men who have maybe felt increasingly more isolated and alienated in the post-covid world young men that most likely saw covid as their most formative experience the lockdowns and and maybe found a sense of community and shared purpose in a lot of these online spaces a consequence of that these people were too young to remember the trump administration or at least were not that interested in politics maybe back then and uh for them i mean for the

trump campaign it was a perfect place to draw support from. It was a gamble because these guys are not historically likely to go out and vote. Right. The low propensity voters. Yeah, they're low propensity voters and they normally don't vote. But Trump was able to go meet them where they're at and speak to them directly or even better than that, speak to someone

that they might even have a parasocial relationship with in a non-hostile, non-adversarial quite positive manner. Did you ever hear of Trump derangement syndrome? He's got it. He's got it for sure. Well, Kimmel has it too. Kimmel has it too. Kimmel threw shots at us for having you on the first time. He's got it. He's got it for sure. Well, Kimmel has it too. Kimmel has it too. Kimmel threw shots at us

for having you on the first time. He called us doofuses. I hope you like watches. Oh, that's a beautiful watch. You should open it and then show the camera. That's a great watch, actually. I just appreciate you giving me your time today, Donald Trump.

Thank you so much. Good luck with your situation. You're going to do it. You beat it, right? You beat it. Good luck with it. Thank you, brother. Thank you very much.

And I think that not only humanized them, uh, but also it made him look personable. I've talked to a lot of the people that have actually interviewed him. Even like Bradley Martin is my friend. Uh, he is, uh,

a part of the nilk boys podcast he has his own podcast as well and i've known him for years i've had him on my podcast i've been on his podcast so uh you know i reached out to him and i was like let's have a conversation about like why you supported donald trump and a lot of the points that he a lot of the points that he put forward revolved around how personable donald trump was and uh and there was he a lot of the points that he put forward revolved around how personable donald trump was and uh and there was definitely a lot of downplaying of the most severe consequences of trump's uh deportation mass deportation policies for example like these like people when they find you charismatic i think as a political figure uh they give you a lot of leeway uh they they feel secure in voting

for you and they think oh the most damaging impacts that this guy is just saying i don't believe it but uh all the good stuff that he says i do believe it i i do believe he's going to lower the price of eggs the lower the price of goods and i think that's what a lot of these guys were running on uh the the idea that that things have not gotten better. There's this feeling that things are not getting better and that maybe we should destroy these institutions once again. So how did the left and how did the Democrats seed so much ground here to the right? It's, you know, it's very obvious that they have lost touch with what a lot of these people want. And the most significant problem for young men is not necessarily that they're just like watching right wing podcasts and have become more and more right wing.

I mean, that certainly plays a role in this. It does. But I think the largest problem is that young men, much like every other demographic, has basically felt the same economic struggles, the economic pressures that have been around since 2016 that led to Donald Trump winning in the first place. And the Democratic Party did not really acknowledge that pain and then maybe even try to combat the Republican Party actively with a left-wing economic populist message that would go to where these people were and say, we see you, we hear you. This is a real problem. We're going to solve it. I just, I want to come back to this so-called

manosphere for a bit, because I take your point that the issue here is in that they're watching all of these podcasts and streams, but they're upset with their material conditions. But at the same time, all of these podcasts and streams have been able to channel those grievances, those feelings, right? And just how is it that this entire media ecosystem, save for you, frankly, has been essentially captured by the right wing? Algorithms play a big role in this, think uh and another another part of this is that people do have some socially conservative opinions i mean we we take for granted uh social conditioning but yeah if you're growing up in the united states of america where you take certain

things for granted and and you see them as truth and you see it as common sense you're of course going to learn uh certain things and if there is a if there's an inability from the democratic party or even like any kind of left-wing progressive activism in reaching out to these people and understanding where they're coming from and then successfully presenting an alternative solution and trying to maybe even communicate with them that these sorts of inherent hostilities towards marginalized people are not, you know, they're understandable that you might have these opinions, but they're not exactly correct. And trying to talk to people in a confident and convincing manner, and maybe even try to build confidence amongst young men, yeah, it's going to be quite difficult to

to change the trajectory of a lot of people. So I guess my point is, these people were organically right-wing. Joe Rogan is a great example of this. Do you think, though, because everyone keeps talking about how the left needs their own Joe Rogan, but Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders. Exactly. No, that's what I was going to say. Joe Rogan in 2020 endorsed Bernie Sanders. Who are you going to vote for in the primary? I think I think I'll probably vote for Bernie.

Him as a human being when I was hanging out with him. I believe in him. I like him. Joe Rogan wasn't always the Joe Rogan that we know now. And I say this as someone who's been a fan of his, someone who's actually talked to him personally way back in the day, back in like 2016, when he used to be a fan of the Young Turks where he used to work there.

And he wasn't always the Joe Rogan that we know now uh and i think he became increasingly more right-wing post-covid and uh when he moved to austin texas and surrounded himself with a lot of these people that were right-wing uh but he organically arrived there my point is he did not get paid to be right-wing It wasn't like a media operation. It was simply him arriving at these conclusions on his own. And I think there are multiple different reasons as to why he got there. And as someone who's like followed him closely, I can point to a few. But I think COVID was definitely one of the big aspects.

Another part of it was also that I think the left overall does have a a messaging problem i i don't think uh i don't think we make a very convincing case usually we're very quick to just like cast people aside that certainly uh that certainly is going to make for shaky allegiances with a lot of people who are maybe even starting off on the journey of learning about, uh, you know, left-wing values. And, uh, it's something that I don't do. I, I regularly and routinely, uh, will, will welcome people with different perspectives and I try to convince them. Uh, and I will always, as long as they are respectful back to myself, uh, I will always be as respectful as possible in, in having these conversations. And I think always, as long as they are respectful back to myself, I will always be as respectful as possible in having these conversations. very good way of just kind of casting that aside and presenting the quote unquote left as this,

uh, this cartoonish, angry, woke, scold, uh, demeanor. So I think that that certainly plays a role in this. I think that makes marketing progressive ideas a lot harder for sure. And for a lot of apolitical people, when they see that, they're convinced by it, and then they lean further and further into maybe some underlying reactionary perspectives that they might have had. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. What do you make of the tone and tenor of the election that we just had?

You know, much has been said about how there was like the lecturing, you know, Barack Obama telling Black men, like how could you think of voting for, you know, give your heads a shake kind of stuff. You're thinking about sitting out or even supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you? What role do you think that played? And I say this because, you know, I can't help think about these influential guys in this kind of manosphere podcasting space. Aidan Ross, Nelk Boys, like they're not overly political, right? They make party content and prank videos and they listen to music. They're also kind of having a good time.

videos and they listen to music they're also kind of having a good time um i'm not even sure if they could name a sitting u.s senator senator like i'm not trying to say that in a pejorative kind of way right i know they're not interested in politics at all they're just no aiden ross like struggled to define and even pronounce fascism what does a fascist mean um it means you are a far-right authorization on you on ultra does it ultra ultra but people respond to them because i i think they don't feel like they're being talked down to right yeah i think, I think it is kind of vibes-based, I think, in many respects. And yeah, people respond to that. It offers a permission structure to be right-wing. I think that's what's most important here. For a lot of young men, it shows you that having these sorts of opinions that are edgy, that piss off the system, right? especially if you're feeling vulnerable insecure very angry at the system for

good reasons and maybe even some bad reasons like uh you're it directly can translate to your uh to your immediate experiences right um on the main stage you're pissing off the democrats who are seen as like the the teachers and the principles of society but uh in your immediate life you're pissing off your teacher when you behave like this you're pissing off your mom maybe when you behave like this and adults in your life and i think uh i think it creates a sense of of uh it creates a sense of community in that regard where a lot of people will just go oh okay i like this i'm i'm angering people uh and i'm doing it with my friends and i think uh that that definitely plays a role especially for young men uh who are uh understandably feeling uh vulnerable and scared and maybe insecure about their future.

It's interesting because like progressivism used to be the cool and subversive thing, right? Like civil rights, anti-war organizing, but it's really flipped like in so many, in some ways. Yeah. Yes and no. I'll just say it like this. I think, um, I think that the type of progressivism that we've always considered to be cool was always, uh, outside of the boundaries of, of liberalism. It was always to the left of liberalism. The type of, uh, activism that we look at fondly, uh, throughout history has always been like the anti-war movement right like people who were always subversive and anti uh anti-system right anti-establishment uh were were always on the left outside of the boundaries i would say of even like normal politics and and and

yes liberalism tries to uh commodify, capture it, capture its essence and basically soften its its impact regularly. And that's why you saw Black Lives Matter, which was a somewhat radical movement that started under Barack Obama that liberals were not fond of originally under Barack Obama, become this mainstay. This mainstreamification of Black Lives Matter occurred with mass protests happening all around the country, all around the world, as a matter of fact. And then you had corporations like Walmart throwing up the Black fist and saying Black Lives Matter. That's not real politics you're just uh yeah you're you're now simply uh using the emancipatory language and the veneer of of radical progressive politics while simultaneously uh you're you're maybe doing that either deliberately or or inadvertently uh to to soften its impact and that's why I laugh when people say like,

oh, conservatism is counterculture. It's not, you cannot be counterculture while, uh, you advocate for the same things that your dad is advocating for. You can't be counterculture when you're advocating for the same things that your grandfather is advocating for. Um, it's not real. It's not a, it's not a real thing at all. And I think liberalism presenting itself as progressive inherently is, I guess, part of the reason why everyone just looks at that and goes like, see, everything is liberal. Everything is left. Everything is progressive. um and that uh you know we got to fight against that so there is this uh there's this way that conservative uh independent media can present itself as like against the man i mean there's no better representation of this uh dynamic than the fact that fox news which is the most popular mainstream news network in the United States of America, will regularly rail against mainstream networks. They'll say, oh, mainstream news is so liberal,

is so liberal. It's like your mainstream news, right? Yeah. You know, another thing on the culture front I wanted to ask you about was celebrity endorsements, right? Conservatives have complained for years about how they couldn't break into culture. Hollywood, the music industry, the American pop culture machine seemed to be conspiring against them in some way, right? They were unable to get a real foothold with the youth, but that does not seem to have helped them this time around. You know, I've read someone describe this phenomenon as conservatives own digital media, liberals own Hollywood. Hollywood is irrelevant. And I just want to give you one example. What comes to mind for me, you know, the Democrats have historically rolled out a red carpet of great

American stars at every election. This time around, they got Will.i.am to re-record that 2008 Obama song. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed the trail toward freedom. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Remember when Yes, We Can, which was a big cultural touchstone back in 2008. I didn't even see the Will.i.am song, to be honest. I mean, you missed nothing. He re-recorded it this time around, and it was like, yes, she can, right?

Same thing, same song. We. Same same thing. Same song. We could be better than we ever been. We about to have a woman president. Haters gonna say that we can't. But the word American says that I can. And we say, yes, she can. And it fell completely flat. You are super online and you hadn't even seen it. Right. completely flat. You are super online and you hadn't even seen it. Right. So what does, what does all that say to you? Do you think that the Democrats have to rethink their relationship to Hollywood and celebrity? Yeah, I think there is a deep and personal relationship that you, uh, have with your favorite podcaster that you will never have with your favorite musician, I think. And I say this from my own personal experience. People see me every day as exactly who I am.

I speak for eight hours every single day. As an aside, I truly do not know how you do that bit. And I have a back and forth conversation with people. I'm speaking to an entire stadium full of people. I'm speaking to 40,000 people every single day, live concurrent, fact, that you cannot replicate with a Taylor Swift even. Music is obviously very touching and has the capacity to change your emotions or maybe bring out certain nascent feelings that you might've had, right? And that can create stans and stan culture.

But ultimately, I think the way people see it uh hollywood comes across as somewhat out of touch there is no direct line of communication we we see these people as deities almost um we see them as like perfect figures and in many respects they are perfect figures like the way they present themselves is perfect so i think that there is like a level of separation and uh because people are more now more used to just like having immediate feedback from their favorite content creators and whatnot like there is a way that they can make a much more convincing argument and and it's not necessarily just that like the endorsements work like the joe Rogan endorsements work, because obviously in 2020, Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders. That didn't do anything right.

Like it's more so that it can work. It can only work if everyone is aligned, if independent media is aligned, if people who are organically conservative are personally going out to bat and promoting in person. And then there is a media ecosystem that actually cross-pollinates so perfectly all the way up to Fox News. And there's a direct line of communication between the media ecosystem and the party. The liberals do not have this. They run away from their base, whereas the Republicans are afraid of their base and actively give their base what they want, even if it actually ends up undermining them. There's a there's a political cost for Roe v. Wade. Right. And yet they still do it. They do it because they say you are our base, the white evangelical Protestants.

We love you. We want you to come out. We want you to turn out. And we're going to do everything we can to offer you things, even if it's deeply unpopular. And we'll we'll deal with the repercussions after the fact, right? Democrats don't do that. You've said that there being more of you, you being like a progressive streamer, podcaster, wouldn't actually help the Democrats. And just elaborate for me on why you think. Yeah, if the Democratic Party at the top the the mainstream outlets that are are actively priming the base of the democratic party into taking on certain positions are not going to respond to a million me's right uh then it doesn't it doesn't change that dynamic at all because people can still hear

them and see them and go okay well i like you has, but I don't like what she's saying. I like you, Hassan, but I don't like what the Democratic Party is saying. So my point is, this needs to be a broad shift within it needs to happen within the Democratic Party. Originally, you cannot message your way out of this problem. You cannot podcast your way out of this problem. way out of this problem. You cannot podcast your way out of this problem. I'm only one person, but even if there was a hundred of me out there and many of them were not like me and were actually actively defending the Democratic Party, I don't even know if they would see the same level of success. I guess the example I used throughout this entire campaign was this, right? There was a lot of issues that I had with Kamala Harris's campaign. It was a truncated campaign. She did not separate herself from Joe Biden. Joe Biden certainly played a major role in the way that she was perceived, for sure.

But having said that, she had 100 days and she should have immediately separated herself from Biden on many issues, right? Maybe even rest on the laurels, some of the electoral, I mean, some of the legislative successes, and then say, we still have to do so much more. It's not enough. We're going to do so much more. Right. And they didn't do that. And instead they came out with $50,000 in tax cuts for startups. Right. For small businesses. Yeah. For small businesses. This is the startup economy. This is the opportunity economy is what Kamala Harris- Yeah. And people are like, I don't, I'm not a small business owner i don't have four dollars four hundred dollars to cover yes yes and and that was so needlessly frustrating and and i kept

seeing that over and over again and they were like no no no this is a good this is a good solution for a lot of people and it was classic means tested uh ideas that were focused grouped ahead of time. And it was needlessly hyper-specific and hyper-targeted to each individual group that they thought they could potentially captivate. That's bad campaigning. That has never worked. It is a horrible idea. And you're not actually winning anybody over in that regard. And you're softening your message for no reason. You're moderating your message for no reason. And I kept repeating this position over and over again throughout the campaign. I was like, if the top down message is bad, you cannot outflank that, right? You can have the best door knocking operation.

You can have the largest war coffer, right, with a billion dollars that you fundraised early on from the initial success of responding to public pressure that caused a lot of small donations to flow in because people are like, oh, wait, this is different. I like this. This is exciting. It's no longer Joe Biden. They responded to what we were demanding. And then all of that, apparently, according to new reporting shows, kind of got cut down pretty aggressively after the DNC where they were like, no, no, no. We're the centrist right wing party. You misunderstood us. If the things that you're putting forward as your solutions to economic problems is bad and it's not responding to people's actual desires, not responding to people's actual hurt, then you can spend $30 million, $40 million

in ad spend, and it's not going to move the needle. And it wasn't moving the needle at the time. I kept repeating this. I kept showing the polls. I was like, look, Kamala Harris is spending $30 million in TV ads in Pennsylvania, and she is not moving even in a positive direction remotely in places like Pennsylvania. This, to me, says that there is a crisis in messaging. And they thought that they could just like outspend the Republicans and be fine with it. And it didn't work. Where do you think that this moment leaves the future of the Democratic Party? Because there's clearly this massive rift, right? There's people like you, even Bernie is now coming out saying that the party's abandoned working class people. But Nancy Pelosi was on The New York Times, their interview podcast on the weekend and completely shut that down.

Right. Shocking. Yeah. So so where are they? Where is the future of the Democratic Party right now, I think? Well, judging by the way that they're operating, the future of the Democratic Party does not look too great. It looks quite dire. As a matter of fact, I think everything that I've seen from all the consultants that, you know, got hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout this process and spent millions and millions on celebrities doing concerts, which I was shocked, by the way. I can't believe celebrities actually take money from political campaigns instead of just doing it for free. I know.

That was insane. This is a new piece of information I learned today that Oprah got like a million dollars. It's like, you don't need it, Oprah. Yeah. You don't need it. Shocking. Anyways. What are you doing?

You're a multi-billionaire. You really needed that million extra dollars? That's crazy. Anyway. Yeah, these guys are real mercenaries. I mean, holy moly anyway um the point is the uh entirety of liberal institutions like mainstream media for the most part only host people that basically failed time and time again people that worked on the clinton campaign and people that worked on the kamala harris campaign

go on television and defend that their unsuccessful campaign was actually successful. And it was either a, the voters were too stupid to get it. They were too sexist and too racist to understand it. Or that actually didn't fail. And it was actually something else, something that they never did.

Like it was, they focused too much on identity politics and trans people. And they focused too much on identity politics and trans people and they focused too much on uh you know woke they focus they focused too little on protecting israel that was a thing i heard i was like this is like this is crazy you know your opinion on on uh gaza aside it is objectively untrue that the Kamala Harris campaign did not sufficiently defend Israel. She, as a matter of fact, probably lost key constituencies because of the way she messaged around that issue. I mean, what more can you do in that situation, right? And it's wild that these guys are allowed to cover their asses after this spectacular failure and in the process

try to prime the base into believing that and into the next electoral defeat that they're going to face where they simply have only one solution tack more to the right and that's how we ratchet more and more to the right as a country when you prime your base into believing that oh we lost because we did not go right wing enough over and over again then they're gonna go okay well i guess we are right wing i guess we should be right wing i guess we should vote for right wing policies like and and that is what is so frustrating and you never see that from the republican party but i do want to ask you about this because we've been talking a lot today about how this election was about people's you know material well-being how they don't have four hundred dollars to cover every election by the way not just this one every

election is about that. white people still voted for Trump, though, while 85% of Black people voted against him. I understand that there's, you know, lots of factors like the war in Gaza and immigration, which swayed the vote for certain groups. But generally, you know, did this election, was it also about demographics, identity, politics, ultimately race in some ways as well. Well, that's a really interesting point. Um, I think that there is a generational divide that we are experiencing with the black vote in general. And, uh, the, and it's almost the reverse, I guess, of every other demographic that you expect to vote in for the more progressive person, right? On the ticket, whether it's the, I mean, usually it's just the liberals, right? For the black vote, the younger you get, the more likely black voters are to not vote at all,

right? And it's not the same for black women, but it's certainly, uh, this is certainly, uh, an, an issue for the democratic party so much so that they actually decided to scold black men, despite the fact that they still were, uh, very firmly committed to the democratic party. And that I think comes from the civil rights movement. If you're a black person in america and this is uh an assessment that i've made after talking to many black uh academics many black journalists who who uh not only study this stuff but also uh directly talk to black voters in general the further you are removed from the last time the Democratic Party actually expended political capital for you, the less likely you are to show loyalty to the Democratic Party.

So the older you get, the more likely you are to vote for the Democrats within the within the black community. The younger you get, the less likely you are to vote at all and maybe even are more likely to vote Republican. And obviously, racism and sexism is always going to play a role in every election, not just American elections, but across the board in every election in every country. Now, if your assessment is that people are just irredeemable, and they're just racist and sexist, and they're never going to vote for a Black woman, then you're basically throwing up the white flag and saying white men all the way we only can have a white man run and i don't agree with that and the example i always use is this

claudia scheinbaum of morena yeah i don't know if you said mexico but you're talking about oh sorry yes i i you're right thank you yes i'm talking about mexico claudia scheinbaum of morena in mexico won uh and delivered a spectacular defeat to the right in mexico as a jewish woman in a country that has a massive problem with femicides so it's not like mexico itself was uh you know more woke than america i guess in that sense and yet voted for her. And the reason why they did that is because AMLO expanded the welfare policies of Mexico and AMLO increased wages for a lot of people. And regardless of the many different difficulties and many different issues that Mexico still very much faces in terms of violence, in terms of cartels and and all this stuff people still were like i remember that and i like that and i will never forget that and i will always

reward you for it turns out when you give people something anything that immediately improves their material realities they respond very positively to that and i think that's what the democratic party has to do immediately. And they have to keep doing that over and over again to restore confidence that they have, not only in the Democratic Party, but in the institutions, in the government itself, because this is, we're staring down something very scary right now, I think, in the United States of America and in a lot of Western nations, as a matter of fact, where this fascist movement is growing globally. You have the AFD in Germany. You have the Reform Party now in the UK. And they are

more popular right now than the Labour government is. And tepid neoliberalism and tacking to the center policies are not making up for the harm that people are experiencing. And in that anger and resentment that they feel towards the institutions, they find themselves in the throes of right-wing politics. They find themselves responding to people that say, you're angry and you're right to be angry. And here's who you should be angry at. You are right to be angry and you should be angry at the liberals because all they care about is gay people. You should be angry at the liberals. All they care about is immigrants that are coming in and they're stealing your jobs and they're also stealing your welfare and you're stealing your homes. We've got to mass deport them. People are going to be like,

okay, well, at least this guy acknowledges that I'm angry and he says he's going to lower the prices. I don't know how he's going to do that by deporting 20 million people, but maybe I'll take a shot in the dark. Right. And I'll just say, you know, our conservative party here, definitely not the same as the AFD in Germany and our conservative leader, Pierre Polyev. Well, he's been compared to Trump.

I will say, I think that that's a very lazy comparison, although he has done a very good job at tapping into that anger. And similarly, young people and all sorts of groups are driving towards him in droves and away from our liberal party. So, you know, people here are going to hear a lot of echoes in this conversation. Hazan, I want to thank you so much for your time today. It was a pleasure to have you here. And I hope you'll consider coming back.

It was great. Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.