Pod Save America - Hasan Piker Has Thoughts on the Hasan Piker Discourse

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

Political commentator Hasan Piker stops by the studio to talk to Jon about his move into electoral politics and the discussion inside the Democratic Party about whether candidates should associate themselves with him and his audience. Then they debate Hasan's views on Israel and Hamas, and Jon asks him about how he thinks about the words he chooses and his theory of political organizing.

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This Sunday, Hassan Piker, somewhat I'm sure no one has a strong opinion about. Hassan stopped by the studio to talk about his move into electoral politics. He recently hit the campaign trail to Stump for Abdul Al-Sayed in Michigan, and to talk about, well, everything you've seen in the news about him lately. We ended up talking about the many statements he's made that have spoken. sparked a discussion inside the Democratic Party about whether candidates should associate themselves with him and his audience. We also debated his views on Israel and Hamas, how he thinks about the words he chooses, and his theory of political organizing. It's a conversation you need

to hear for yourself, so we will get right into it. But before we do, please consider becoming a cricket media subscriber if you haven't already, so that you don't miss out on any of the great content we're putting out for our friends of the pod. Subscribers get our new extra episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only Friends, other subscriber-only shows like Polarcoaster with Dan Pfeiffer, access to all of our excellent substack newsletters like Pots Save America Open Tabs, add free episodes of all your favorite Cricket pods, and you get to feel good about supporting one of the few independent, proudly pro-democracy media outlets left in Trump's America. So head to Kruger.com slash friends and subscribe.

All right, here's Hassan Piker. Hassan, welcome back to the show. It's good to be back. You've somehow become the most argued about figure in democratic politics over the last few weeks. So I'd like to have a conversation about why that is that is hopefully more nuanced and useful than much of the discourse. Yeah. I mean, I go show how serious we are as a movement, as an opposition party, that this is the primary focus. Central. Central to the discourse. Yeah. Just a quick recap to set the table for people who, lucky for them, maybe, haven't been following

along. A few weeks ago, third way, centrist Democratic think tank published a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling on Democrats to stop engaging with you. They describe you as anti-enumerous. American, anti-woman, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic. Their evidence is a long list of things you've said, which we'll get into. They also specifically single out a few Democrats, us, for inviting you to CrookedConn last year, Rokana, and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Said, also a former crooked host who a few of us have donated to and who you campaigned with this week, which fueled even more controversy. Now, you and I scheduled this conversation weeks ago. I'm sure some people have had enough Hassan Piker discourse. But I do think it's an important conversation to have

because, like, you know, even though you and I have different politics, we've actually debated our disagreements on this show. I think there's value in doing that in person in a format that's not mediated by algorithms or a fucking five-minute cable hit. So with all that said, here's why I want to start. I think the rallies with Abdul this week were the first time you've been a featured speaker at a candidate's actual campaign event. And I wonder how you, self-proclaimed Marxist, anti-imperialist, decided to be a campaign surrogate for a Democratic candidate, even one as progressive as Abdul. What was your thinking there and, like, what has made you get more involved in democratic politics? So I've been very involved in Democratic politics

for years at this point, but with AOC, Bernie Sanders and, you know, Rashida Tiliq, Ilhan Omar, who I'll be interviewing later today. But I've never, actively, I guess, stumped for a candidate. And I never, I didn't even realize, maybe I'm too, like, I'm not old school enough to understand this. But for me, the difference between Abdul coming on my stream, which I've done many times prior to this and me, like, going to Dearborn and us working out together and eating kebabs is probably more significant than me going on a rally and, like, talking for five minutes in front of a live audience. So I never thought of that as like this major new step. I guess it is because the DC bubble was like freaking out about it where they're like,

how dare you do this? This is the most devastating thing anyone's ever done. And I like the guy. That's the reason why I did this. Like I trust them. I think he has a lot of great policy opinions. I think he is much more responsive to the needs of the base than some of the other Democrats that I've been very upset with for many, many years.

And I think he's exactly the type of guy. that the party needs to have more of. My goal has been very clear since Zoran, when we linked up during the primary, it was a very crowded field, and he was able to, like, cut through that noise and become a beloved mayor of New York now. I want to get people into positions of power

that I align with politically, even if we don't 100% agree. I even have disagreements with Zoron from time and time. I'll text them some stuff. I'll be like, oh, you know, cut this out. What are you doing? But at the end of the day, I understand that, like, politics is in some ways the art of the possible, right? Like, and I see that.

I'm not, my expectation is never going to be someone coming out and advocating to seize the means of production. I'm a reformist, many to my left, which does exist, for those of you out there, there are people who are further to the left than me who will say elections, bourgeois elections are unnecessary. and all you're doing is taking away revolutionary potential and feeding it back into the Democratic Party. You're a shepherd for the Democrats and therefore a reactionary, a social fascist even. But all of that stuff is going to break the brains of your audience. I'm not even, I shouldn't even be getting into that.

Yeah, I think if someone wants to improve the material conditions of the working class in this country, if someone says no to unnecessary like endless wars and advocates to bring our productive output back home to work on ourselves. In some ways, not a dissimilar message to the lie that Maga told about isolationism and, you know, no new wars and being the peace president. If someone actually identifies with that and wants to advance that agenda, I'm going to be there for them. Just to broaden it out, because I do think it's useful for people who don't know and are now

wondering, like, what's he up to? What does he want? Like, what is your theory of political change? Like, how do we get from where we are now? What is the mechanism to get from where we are now to the world that you want to live in? Oh, great question. So I am a firm believer that one of the biggest issues in the United States of America, which is the heart of empire, one of the most capitalist countries, is a proto-capitalist country,

before capitalism and industrial revolution even happened, is the idea. that most people do not have class consciousness. Most Americans don't understand that they're a working class and that there are people who generate most of their revenue, most of their net worth off of capital accumulation. But the overwhelming majority of Americans, and the 99%, as Bernie likes to call it, they don't do that. They get a regular wage. They're not business owners. Or even if they're business owners, they oftentimes operate their own business. So like the overwhelming amount of money that they're making that they're putting in their pocket is coming from their own labor. and they don't identify with that at all.

They're hopped up on American exceptionalism, American individualism. So my goal is to instill class consciousness in people and help them identify what would be more, like, help them identify who is actually causing harm to them. And in my assessment, it's the billionaires and the corporations who actually control the levers of power in this country. And not the vulnerable populations, the marginalized communities, that the Republicans, very effectively take people's frustrations and redirect them towards, right? It's not a trans person or a Guatemalan migrant that's like raising your rent. It's your landlord. It's not a trans person or a Mexican undocumented immigrant that's working in a field that is responsible for why your,

grocery prices are going up. That's, you know, that's that's greedflation and corporate consolidation. That's at the heart of that issue. And when you think, about your own show and your own audience. Like, what do you think actually changes people's minds? Like, what has worked for you? I mean, talking to them and explaining to them exactly what I'm explaining right now, which is that, I mean, I had this conversation with the O'Von where I felt like, you know, a light switch came on in his mind. Really? When we were having this back and forth, when I said exactly this thing about, you know, it's not a trans person that's like hurting you at all, but it's in a weird that the Republicans are constantly angling it in that direction and never really

talking about big corporations and, you know, big pharma and all of these capital owners, all these very powerful people that basically run the show in an almost bipartisan manner. And when I have that conversation with a lot of regular Americans, ordinary Americans, that haven't put a lot of thought into it. They go, wait a minute, that does kind of make sense. Yeah. I feel like that's, not only do I think that that's true, but I also feel like it's a very effective way to try to unlock people's class consciousness. Yeah, and sort of build coalitions of people who are different. You have over 3 million followers on Twitch, 1.75 million on YouTube. I saw that you've done something like 20,000 hours of live streaming that is all off-the-cuff

political takes and responding to viewers in real time, which I imagine must be like constantly fighting with people in your mentions real time. Yes. Yes. No, it's Exactly. I mean, so, like, I am not surprised that you've said some stupid and offensive things. I'm even less surprised that you've said stuff that sounds even worse when it's clipped out of context. Here's what I'm wondering. As you've grown your audience and influence and as you've gotten more directly involved in electoral politics, do you feel a responsibility to choose your words more carefully or at least in ways that are less likely to be misconstrued? Yes and no.

So yes, because obviously, I don't. want to cause any harm to any of the candidates that I'm associating with or this movement that I am obviously a part of, what I like to call the left flank candidates or the Bernie crats, people who are more responsive to the needs of the, to the working class folks all around the country, I don't want to ever be a burden of them. Because being associated with them is not beneficial for me. The way that DC media perceives the situation is like, oh my god, he went out to stump for Abdul. All of a sudden, he's like a legitimate political force.

I'm like, I've been doing that already. Like, I was infinitely more effective sitting at home and just talking shit. Yeah. Right. Then I am sitting in front of a live audience with like 600 people, although that's still good. And I enjoy it personally. And I do that for candidates that I trust, candidates that I want to endorse and fight for. But I'm already fundraising for a lot of these.

folks, right? Small dollar donations from all around the country keep flooding into all the campaigns that I work with. But yeah, I am cognizant of that. On the other hand, one thing that I'm thinking about is, well, this medium lends itself so perfectly to being clipped out of context. And I think we are now in a media environment where that doesn't matter as much. I mean, Donald Trump's the president, right? Like, he is the president. It's not just his words that are messed up, that galvanized some of the most reactionary forces in this country and normalized some of the most heinous, most toxic, repulsive types of politics. I mean, he campaigned on saying Haitians are eating cats and dogs. Like, that's unbelievable.

That's white supremacy through and through. And he won. So on the one hand, I think that we are now existing in a very different media environment to the one that like MS now, New York Times and CNN. want to exist in. I think that that kind of stuff is over. Like you're a vulgar person as an independent content creator. I think most people don't care about that. Most people care about who you are and what your values are and what you represent. And I've been able to withstand these kinds of smear campaigns on even the independent side far before I ever drew the ire of RNC Research Department. So and as a matter of fact, they're using a lot of

of the same clips that I've had to deal with that are circulating on the internet anyway. So it's not, it doesn't bother me that much. It doesn't do anything to my audience. My audience knows what I stand for. They're listening to me for eight hours a day. They know exactly what my values are. I'm sure it might stop some people or maybe cause them the second guess, whether or not they want to be charitable to what I have to say. And that's a problem. But at the end of the day, most people that see that stuff go, wait a minute, I have the capacity to, I have free will. I can, I have the capacity to think critically, what's going on here? Why is the Republican Party saying this claiming that this guy is racist or claiming that this guy is a misogynist?

When I know what the Republican Party stands for, let me go check them out. And I think a lot of people do that. And then they check me out. And then they realize, oh, they were just lying. Like, that's that simple. And I have experienced this myself and have thought about it over the last couple weeks because I'm like, if I had not, if I did not know you, if I hadn't interviewed you before, I hadn't like been familiarized myself with your content, which I came to probably later than most. And I just read the coverage of the last couple weeks. I would be like, oh yeah, he's a

fucking asshole. Yeah. To be fair, I am. I am an asshole. Yeah, but you're an asshole and I think in different ways than you are being portrayed. Yeah. I'm an asshole to bullies. Like I bully bullies. I'm an asshole to reactionaries across the board. I'm an asshole to Nazis. It doesn't matter to me. If you're right wing, if you're a Nazi, if you're a reactionary, I'm not going to be nice to you. And I don't think we should be nice to them. They're not nice to us. They're not nice to random uninitiated people. They're not nice. The entire swaths of the population. So yeah, if that's your ideology, if that's your worldview, I find that to be very damaging. I find that it'd be very toxic. I find that it'd be violent and dangerous. I'm going to fight back.

I'm going to use some mean words every now on that. Yeah. Well, and it's less than mean words, right? Because like at least for me because I was looking through the hit list, which I want to get into here. All right. Or at least some of them. Because there's some where I'm like that was clearly taken out of context, whatever. There's somewhere I think like the underlying point is still worth debating or talking about. So the one I've seen just about everywhere is, I think this is the most common one, is your comment that America deserves 9-11. Yeah.

Which you watched back in 2019 by calling it inappropriate, a poor attempt at satire and said that you meant America, the government, not America. Americans as people. But do you still think that America as a country deserve 9-11? Because saying America or any country deserve to be attacked, to me, is different than saying you understand why they were attacked and what actions might have contributed to that attack. Like, I get the blowback argument. But that is different than deserved as like a more of a normative kind of. Yeah, that was me responding to Daniel Crenshaw, ironically enough, on the Joe Rogan experience where he was making this ridiculous argument that. like, you know, we have to go out and fight these people all the time because they hate us because

they ain't us. And I was like, that's insane. That's not the reason. And this was actually echoed by Robert Kagan, one of the godfathers of neo-conservatism just last week where he came out and was like, yeah, actually, we have been messing around in the Middle East for, you know, upwards of 60 years. And that's precisely the reason why 9-11 happened. And that's precisely the reason why these guys say death to America and Iran, for example. So, like, that was exactly the same sentiment that I've addressed a million times over. But, of course, in this moment, it was a heated response and an impassioned response. And people will consistently use that against me over and over again.

Some people hear that and they think, I understand exactly what's going on here. Some people hear that and go, how heinous. Oh, my stars and garters. I am clutching my pearls. I don't even want to learn what this is about. I don't want to understand what he's saying. His name is Asan. He must be al-Qaeda.

I mean, and that's fine. You also can bring it to the present because I have a very real fear right now that because of what Donald Trump has done in Iran, he has increased the risk of terror attacks on Americans abroad and maybe even here. And God forbid, one of those happens, we will know that it could be a result of,

or at least Donald Trump will have contributed to that. It will 100% be a direct byproduct of everything that we've done. It's like impossible not to recognize it at this point. Yeah. And it's very easy at that point for me to say, oh, now we know what led to that versus, yeah, you know what? We deserved it. Like, I wouldn't say that. Yeah.

But I would say, like, I understand. Civilians don't deserve it. I mean, I'm anti-civilian murder. I'm anti-civilian death. I'm going to put that down. That's like one of my, one of my first principles is that I'm anti-imprillus. I'm anti-war. for that reason, because I don't want civilians to die.

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I want to say in the theme of violence just for a minute because I think it connects to another comment of yours that's been circulating. This is one from January. Hamas is a thousand times better than a fascist settler colonial apartheid state. I stand by that. Well, so I will say this is the one that bothered me most when I first heard it. And I remember, I remember having a reaction to it when I first saw it in January. Because I think even if you believe what happening in Gaza is genocide and what's happening in the West Bank is apartheid, those are different claims from Hamas is a thousand times better. Because like Hamas is an organization that has massacred, raped, kidnapped civilians on October 7th. They've also been

catastrophic for Palestinians by almost every measure. They, governance, corruption, They made choices they knew would result in mass civilian death of their own people. So my question is, when you say Hamas is a thousand times better, do you actually mean that? Or is that a rhetorical move or like a solidarity signal? Like what, I mean, it's all of the above. I do mean it. I think it's a rhetorical move because it frustrates a lot of people. I've also said I'm a harm reduction voter.

I'm a lesser evil voter. And therefore I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time because I'm looking at the situation as as, as, as, as, a paramilitary organization that has like a political party as well, a Politburo as well, that is entirely comprised, not as an alien force, but of orphaned children that have, you know, had their parents killed by an apartheid state that has been dominating the lives of, of Palestinians for 80 years at this point. And they've done a genocide at this point as well, but like it started off with the NACPA and has only evolved as technology has gotten better to become more heinous. And Gaza is this hermetically sealed area that many people correctly point to

as the world's largest open-air prison before October 7. So my perspective on this has always been that I think that Hamas's tactics, which I oppose at times, right, or it's like internal governance issues are secondary to this conversation because they're it's like placing a lot of emphasis on the Nat Turner rebellion or or instead of talking about the much larger, much more consequential, much bigger harm that, you know, chattel slavery was to black people, to like sell black people and to rape them and and treat them as though they weren't human. I think that's, That's a far larger systemic force that is going to be, is going to make the natural rebellion look inconsequential in comparison to the greater harm. Same with, for example, the ANC.

The ANC had a militant wing called the MK. I'm not going to try to even attempt to say it. And, you know, Nelson Mandela went to prison and was imprisoned by the apartheid state. And MK and the ANC did a lot of stuff to collaborators. The collaborators that are worked alongside the apartheid administration, they had a practice called necklacing, where they would put a tire around the necks of collaborators and light it on fire. It was heinous practice. And it was, of course, condemned after the fact, but none of the people that were engaged in it, if I recall correctly, even in the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, were actually legally charged for it. Because there's this understanding when we look back at some of the more heinous things that resistance groups have done and militancies have done. We match that up against the far larger, far broader systematic violence that an entire people have been subjected to. And it makes me feel silly to consistently talk about what Hamas has done, especially when there has been in October 7 times a thousand,

if not more than a thousand at this point, in the hands of Israel against the Palestinian population in its entirety. I mean, they're doing an October 7 to Lebanon, right? and that was we speak. Just take it from the Palestinian perspective. Yeah. Don't you think Hamas's decision to attack on October 7th and to massacre civilians on October 7th was a catastrophic mistake for them,

for the Palestinian people? Like, do you think the Palestinian people are in any way better off than they were before October 7th? No, of course not. But at the end of the day... That's why I'm asking more... I mean, it's more for me like a resistance movement, wherever they are, need to come up with strategies.

Yeah. Right? And I think, I guess my view is, and I understand that there is a huge power imbalance here. But I think that resistance movements that engage in, you know, mass slaughter or civilian targeting and all. Like, they just have less success than resistance movements that are nonviolent. I mean, it's obviously in history. Oh, I know, we've had a revolution here. I get it.

I wouldn't agree with that one. I get armed revolution. Yeah. But I do think if you look back over the last hundred years, nonviolent movements have been more successful than armed resistance movements. I think they were hand in hand, but I think it was, it might have been Kwame Tori who said it. You know, you can only shame someone who has a conscience. And if your enemy has none, it's impossible to get them to react to your civil movement. Because the Palestinians have tried civil movements.

I mean, the Great March of Return, where, you know, hundreds of Palestinians. were sniped directly by the Israeli occupation forces, and they openly celebrated that, too. They said, we have an accounting of every single bullet that we shot at the Palestinians, and then they had to delete that. I mean, this is just the tip of the iceberg, as far as the war crimes galore that we're talking about, because even the everyday maintenance of apartheid, which Israel is, is an incredibly violent endeavor. That maintenance requires you to constantly be a military force that is ever present, that is dominating and ritualistically humiliating and subjugating millions of people. So my perspective is always looking at this from the perspective of the people

that are being dominated rather than placing a lot of the emphasis on structural violence or rather on state-backed violence, which we have a predisposition to lean into no matter what. Someone fights back against the cop, the automatic suspicion is, well, the police are actually maintaining law and order, so it must be a criminal, right? That might not always be the case. So I like to look at this stuff with a more open-minded framework where I can try to figure out exactly what led to a day like October 7 that was unbelievably violent, right? And I think it's pretty clear that 75 years at that point of ethnic cleansing and apartheid and, you know, subjugation was, was a big part of the driving force. And as far as Hamas goes, we oftentimes talk about just Hamas. It's almost like a catch-all term.

Hamas is only one component of the Palestinian resistance. The Al-AXA flood was actually conducted not only by Hamas, but Palestinian Islamic jihad's own militant forces, PFLP, DFLP, and numerous other, even including Fatah militias as well that still existed in Gaza. So this was, this was a military operation initially that was conducted by virtually every single active organization inside of Gaza. So it's not, that's why I always say like Hamas is not an alien entity in the way that we think about them or we say, oh, they are, they're these like evil oppressors of the Palestinian people. Are there disagreements within the Palestinian coalition against Hamas's governance? Absolutely. No people are a monolith. But the only thing that every single

Palestinian, with the exception of those who work for like the Atlantic counselor or whatever, that are there to just, you know, do regime propaganda, do Israel propaganda. With the exception of those people, every Palestinian I've ever talked to, Christian Palestinians, who might even have major disagreements with Hamas, who might even be critical of Hamas, will always say the number one thing that we want is the end to the occupation, is the end to the apartheid. The number one thing we want is dignity and sovereignty. And that is what Hamas has been trying to achieve militarily. The message that you just said that Palestinians want, end to the occupation, dignity, self-determination. Yeah. For people who are not as familiar with the issue as you, but that you want to reach

and that you want to, because I assume the purpose here is to build a movement that supports Palestinian self-determination. And if I was someone who didn't know a lot about it, and I knew that Hamas committed October 7th, and then I heard a message that Hamas is better than Israel, I would be less receptive to the person delivering that message than I would, someone saying, look what Israel has done and what the Palestinian people really want, aside from this organization that is serving them poorly, is most Palestinians just want dignity and they want an end to the impression. Like, I would feel like, okay, I could get behind that and I'm going to be more attracted to that message.

I have a policy of saying the truth unconditionally and standing by my principles, even if that's sometimes hard to hear. And that's precisely what I did after October 7 on October 8 when I went live and talked about the systematic forces that have led to October 7 and a lot of people were not receptive to that message at all. And some of which actually became haters of mine and left the community where I lost a third of my entire community for like the first year of Israel's maximum violence, Israel's genocide, where people simply did not want to hear that message at all. But I know, and I knew back then, that as long as I say the truth, that, one, history will vindicate me. And two, as long as I say the truth, there will always be people who are more

charitable and more receptive to that regardless. Because I see no reason in sheltering people from that perspective. Do I obviously manage in a much longer format, in a much longer conversation like the one that we're having? Yes, I am obviously more capable of explaining that position. but I think saying what I said there that Hamas, a thousand lives better than Israel, cuts across that, cuts across that narrative in a way that I think even liberals have to think about, because someone who is immediately reactive to that kind of sentiment that goes, wait a minute, but liberal, but Israel is a liberal democracy. It's the only democracy in the region.

Why is he saying that? They understand at least one part of it, where they think, okay, he's saying. you know, Hamas killed 1,200 people, you know, a third of them were soldiers, a third of them were, you know, military people who were like, you know, active duty in the military. And then civilians as well, Israel has done that, you know, a thousandfold to the Palestinians. So I think, like, even in the most reductive ways, even in the most reductive ways to try to comprehend what I'm saying there, people can understand that. Like, I think people, are not stupid. We assume that they're stupid. I will tell you, well, I'll tell you how it landed

with me because I was like, it wasn't like, oh wait, why did he say that? Israel's some great, I was like, Israel has committed just horrific atrocity. Like what I, like, you know, I have moved so far on this. But I'm like, Hamas is, they're fucking, what did they do? Like, October 7th was catastrophic for them. It was also like, we've all seen the images like, like kids and people. And a lot of like very, these are like leftist peacenics, Israelis at a concert and they fucking massacred them. And I'm like, these people are like, I just want to have, and I do think it's important in politics to have like universal principles, right? Which is like if violence, violence is always wrong. Civilian violence is always wrong.

Targeting children and women always wrong. No matter which side does it. Right. And I do think that it's important not just from a moral perspective, but from like a building a political coalition perspective. to say if I think one thing is wrong, one action is wrong on this side, then it also has to be wrong on the other side. Even if there is an obvious power imbalance and even if there is a history that got us to this. But we don't always do that is my point. Oh, I know. We don't do that when the dust is settled. We don't do that when the historic forces have played itself out and we look back at it.

And I don't see a reason not to apply that same interpretation because I see both, I'm I see the civilians on both sides as human beings worthy of dignity. And I think a lot of people don't realize that they do have a little bit of an implicit bias where we've been trained as Americans living here during the global war on terror to collateralize one side and to see the other side as like a European-style country that's under attack. So we have the capacity to see the violas that Israelis are subjected to as like real human beings, maybe even your neighbor dying in the hands of scary brown people, as opposed to Palestinians that die, entire city blocks reduce the rubble, is something that we've seen so many times on the TV, whether it be the Syrian Civil War, whether it be, you know, Iraq, Afghanistan.

So we automatically collateralize the lives of those Palestinians. So that's part of the reason why. And I will say that those images are, I think, the most popular. Like that is what personally has moved me. Yeah. The most is seeing those images. Like I remember like in, you know, post-October. September 7th and we talked about it a lot here and the student protest movement and all the

craziness over that. And I remember thinking like it was, there was that Columbia student who I think was eventually suspended or expelled or whatever for saying like you're like getting killed more Zionists and all that. And I remember thinking to myself like I someone says something like that and it's just a reaction that I can't even like it's just a human reaction. to be like, oh, maybe I don't want to be with these. Like, this is bad.

I don't want to hear, like, that's, now you want to kill Zionists or you know, like, that's fucking crazy. That's hurting your movement. Yeah, no, I've been, look, here's the thing. I've been around protest movement as my whole professional media career for a very long time. I've been doing this for a decade plus. There's going to be cringe people. There's going to be passionate people that say unhinged things that I totally disagree with.

Yeah. At the end of the day, this is exactly what happened with Black Lives Matter as well, where, you know, there'd be like a, there'd be someone that says like, yeah, fry him like. bacon and then the media would laser in on that to disparage the entire movement. So I have a policy of looking at what the actual movement represents. Do I identify with those values? Do I agree with them? Rather than, you know, key offenders that have said something that I consider to be heinous as well, right? And I don't spend a lot of time or put a lot of emphasis on people like that because I've been to these campuses. I've been to these encampments.

and they were some of the best organized movements I have ever seen. They had messaging discipline. They had all of the right things. They had protest marshals that would keep everything intact. They refused to talk to the media unless they had someone who was doing communication for the entire encampment that would talk to the media. And they still got brutalized. UCLA is the one I went to. I couldn't believe it.

Like these pro-Israel groups were, they set up the, these massive, they set up just like massive auditorium, or not an auditorium, I don't know what it's called, but like a projector where they were blasting October 7 footage and calling these student encampment, student protesters like heinous words, they threw fireworks into the encampment, they brutalized these students. And these weren't students that were doing that. These were pro-Israel people that just came from around the area, right? And I couldn't believe what I saw where like the media's coverage was either both siding it or oftentimes siding with the pro-Israel uh with the pro-Israel people so like for me again it's uh i look at the values and i also don't place a lot of emphasis on like

whatever the media narrative is because we love doing that yeah we love having a conversation about like whose feelings are being heard in the western world when the conversation should be about you know who's dying in gaza I have a personal story. Okay. I had two drinks last night and forgot the Zbiotics. What a shame. Yeah.

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Try them today. Only at booster juice. Canadian-born. Blending since 1999. On Zionism, you know, being an anti-Zionist, when you say you're an anti-Zionist, are you rejecting the premise? that a Jewish homeland is a legitimate project at all, or is your anti-Zionism specifically about the policies and practices of the Israeli state as it exists today?

I think Zionism is a fascist ideology. It truly is. Because I think part of the issue, I think this is like a definitional issue for two. Oh, yeah. For sure. Obviously. But I do think that like there's probably a lot of, I think a lot of probably secular liberals and even secular Jews in this country who think of Zionism as. They do.

Like, I like the idea of a Jewish homeland and do not think ethno state, do not think any of that other stuff. And then there's people who, you know, who very much define it as, no, it must always be a Jewish majority state. And if democracy and equal rights come second, then so be it. Yeah. Well, that is what has happened, right? That is, which is. De facto, that's what we have right now. It's de facto what we have right now.

And it was something that we were always going ahead in the direction. of because, I mean, even Stalin was a big advocate of Israel initially. I mean, they were the ones who trafficked weapons in 1947 that were used on Palestinian villages by way of Czechoslovakia, right, illegally going through the blockade. There was this idea that like initially, labor Zionism and, you know, Bangarian was a socialist, right? Like, this was going to be like almost like a Marxist project, but it was just ethnic cleansing from the start. And, My assessment on Zionism as an ideology is not that different from Albert Einstein's assessment of Zionism. Because when he saw Diyadhsin and the violence that the early Zionist brigades were engaging in, Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, these militia movements before the IDF existed, before Israel existed, and he was actually asked to be the first president of Israel.

He wrote about what Zionism was turning into. And he warned that what he was seeing was exactly what the Nazis were doing. And he warned about it. He said, if we do not have a commitment to binationalism, if we do not have a commitment to the people that are already living there, the atrocities that I'm seeing that, you know, Zionist brigades are engaging in right now, committing right now against the Palestinians,

is going to turn into exactly what the Nazis have done. And he was right. He saw it ahead of time. I mean, he knew what the Nazis were. He lived through it, right? And so my perspective is shaped by people who have done either extensive research on this, like, you know, Israeli historian like Elon Pape, Avi Shalame, or people who have lived through this process, many of which are Jews who have lived through this process.

and could not comprehend it. One of the first people that I interviewed after October 7 was Dr. Ofer Kassiv. He is the only Jewish anti-Zionist in the Knesset. There's a Palestinian citizen of Israel who's also an anti-Zionist in the Knesset. They have like two people, basically. It's a lone voice, but they exist, right? I care about the perspective of people like that as well. So I develop a better understanding of like what it looks like to have to fight fascist forces,

in the country that you're a part of, in the country that you love, in the country that you want to change in a better, change towards a better future, towards a better trajectory. Because I see it as the same fight that I'm fighting here in America. Because Zionism, at the end of the day, like I said, is an ethno-religious supremacist ideology that is exterminationist. And it's in many respects no different than what we see in MAGA, right? Christian nationalism. That is a fascist ideology.

I don't think you would disagree with that, right? No, but there's, I mean, there's also ethno nationalism. Israel has, like, laws that have put this into place. Yeah. But, like, there's de facto ethno nationalism in many different countries around the world. You could make the same critique of Hindu nationalism, the Turkish treatment of the Kurds. Again, right? Japanese immigration policy.

Things that I oppose vehemently and things that I talk about extensively, oftentimes people will yell at me for my criticism of both of those things. Yeah. You've said you abhor anti-Semitism. You've drawn a distinction between. being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. Yeah. I take that at face value. Here's the harder question.

Like, where exactly do you draw the line? Because I think most serious people agree that anti-Zionism isn't automatically anti-Semitism. But there is disagreement where the line runs in specific cases. And I think, you know, some of your rhetoric, whether it's out of context or not, has landed in the gray zone, like calling ultra-Orthodox Jews inbred, comparing liberal Zionists to liberal Nazis, the pig dogs comments. The Pink Dog one is, I didn't even know that it was like a thing. Did you know that it was like? Nope. Yeah, I don't, because even Jake Tapper, when he brought it up, he's like, I don't know what this is.

But it was like clearly reading a quote from in front of him. He's like, the 80-old gave me the phone. Well, I went through it and I'm like, if I've seen it and there's like, well, it's one of those. I didn't even, it's like one of those things. I guess the larger question is like, how do you think about as you're talking about this, drawing the line in a way where you're like, okay, if I'm going to, you know, I'm anti-Zionist, I want to make this argument. I want to talk with the project, but I really don't want anyone to take it as anti-Semitic, not just because it hurts your feelings, but because you're trying to build a political movement. Yeah, well, it's not just because I want to build a political movement. It's because I also

genuinely abhor anti-Semitism. I, so it's a great question. It's one that I answer all the time, because this is a real problem right now where, like, anti-Semitism is growing in this country. It's undeniable, as it historically always has, whenever Israel does these sieges, the, the mowing of the law and operations and it's doing it and it's tying itself to Judaism in this very sinister way. And people see that and they think, okay, well, you know, this is the Jewish state doing this. Maybe it's the Jews, right? There's already a lot of people that have these opinions about, you know, Jewish billionaires and Jewish millionaires controlling the media, controlling the banking system. So like it pairs up perfectly with what they're seeing. And we've definitely seen a great deal

that right so what I try to do is stress the importance and showcase that this this attitude is not monolithic inside of the American jury the reason why I think it's very important even though I'm a Muslim guy so most people when they hear me say that they don't give a shit right because they're like yeah you're you're goysplaining but um the uh the reason why I I stress that importance is because it's true. I mean, there's a, there's a funny saying. It's like, what, two Jews, three opinions, right? Like, no group are, no group is monolithic and Jewish Americans certainly are not. They have very different assessments of what's going on, and we see that. We see that in the polling that is conducted, right? We see it within Israel as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I mean, well,

Israel's a little bit different because, like, at that, at a certain point, there is an overwhelming force of people who are on board. Well, you're there. It's a different perspective. Yeah, so So what I show always to people is that there's a difference between a lot of Jewish institutions and how Jews actually feel. And I actually sometimes will make a plea to not only my Jewish fans, but just to whoever is listening. And hopefully people will take away this message as well to try to separate Israel from their institutions and to show themselves as if you consider what Israel is doing to be

repugnant, then stress that there is that distinction between a Jewish institution that you might be a part of and how much they celebrate Israel or how much they try to fundraise for the IDF, for example, or do settler affairs, which are illegal inside of synagogues, right? Because from my experience, there are a lot of Jewish advocacy organizations in this country and a lot of Jewish institutions in this country that simply masquerade as Jewish institutions and Jewish advocacy organizations when they're just pro-Israel advocacy organizations and institutions.

The ADL is a great example of this. The Apartheid Defense League, as I like the column, led by Jonathan Greenblatt, is very obviously not invested in combating anti-Semitism at all and is simply using anti-Semitism in this cynical way to attack critics of Israel, prominent critics of Israel

that have spent decades fighting anti-Semitism and still continue to do so. myself included. And that separation, that lack of separation, rather, is teaching Americans who have not been inundated with, you know, Zionist indoctrination, who haven't, you know, who don't have any association with Jews other than watching Seinfeld and thinking, oh, you know, they control the media, but they make good movies, right? Like, that's the attitude of the average American about Jewish people who are, I think,

the most celebrated religious minority in this country, most celebrated religious group in this country. I don't know where it is right now, but that's what the polling is consistently. And the least is, I think, Mormons, weirdly enough. But anyway, surprising. But the way that people see it is they watch heinous violence unfold. And they see the Israeli state call itself the Jewish state. And then they see Americans, American Jews and Jewish institutions say, yes, that is the Jewish state. Zionism is important to us. It is the most important thing. We are tied to Israel in this inseparable way. We do care about it and you as an American should shut up. You as an American should be canceled. You as an American should not have a job if you speak out against Israel because

you're being anti-Semitic. What lesson are we teaching Americans? We're teaching them that every Jewish person demonstrates dual loyalty, which is false. It's a trope. It's a lie. It's not true. But that's what we're teaching people. And we're also teaching people that everything that Israel does, it does for Jews. Every time we call Israel the Jewish state, that's what we're doing. That's what we're teaching regular Americans. So I try to combat those forces on a daily basis. And ironically enough, I would say this like at my size in the streamer universe especially, where most of the prominent Israel critics are, you know, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and many other right-wing forces, they don't care about making that distinction. I do. So it blows my mind that groups

like the apartheid Defense League spend most of their time trying to de-platform me. And when you hear them, too, you'll hear, I mean, some of them are just all conspiracy all the time, but like, you know, Tucker Carlson's a good example. They'll be like, he'll do like a very thoughtful critique of Israel and then suddenly like launch into a conspiracy where you're like, like, okay, now we're just, this is just, now we're into anti-Semitic territory. Now it's like Jewish conspiracy for this and that and the other thing. And it's like they do, yeah, it's, it is a real difference. But I do think that like, look, I find as someone who has,

has not always talked about this issue, but has a lot recently. Like it feels often like a minefield as you're talking about it because I very much, like the idea that I would say anything anti-Semitic is like horrifying to me. You know, I believe anti-Semitism is very, very real. But it is quite difficult because a lot of very pro-Isible voices will say that's anti-Semitic by, because of you've critiqued Israel. But there's also a lot of stuff. There's also a lot of stuff that Israel does or Israel advocacy groups do that objectively does look insane when you explain it. Like one of the things that I've talked about or one of the things I talked about early on was like sometimes you hear something.

that Israel is done and you're like, did they, did they do that? Are you being anti-Semitic right now? And then you find out, you're like, oh my God, they did do that. That is insane. So like, there is that element of it too where on the one hand, a lot of defenders of Israel will call like anything that you say blood libel. Like, oh, Israel kills children. That's blood libel. How dare you say that? It's like, well, I've seen it. Like, I've seen the children. The numbers are there. And I've also personally seen some of the children that have been murdered with these bombing campaigns, right? So that already undermines the impact. of blood libel as a as a way to like to have a conversation about blood libel to begin with which is

a real historic wrong a real historic way to associate uh people of the jewish faith with like you know whatever heinous acts that uh led to the pogroms right um so you're undermining anti-semitism every time you do that but then also simultaneously you're teaching people that like this is a good thing. Like, this is something that you defend. This is something that you consider to be defensible. And you're doing that while you're associating with Judaism. The way I explain it, I delivered a speech to Oxford Union a year and a half ago at this point. And the way I explained it to people, and at the time, the change in attitude in the Western world was not so calcified, right? but my positions were obviously the same.

And I explained to people, look, what a lot of people don't understand with this dangerous conflation, I will give you a warning as a Muslim American who has lived in the United States of America since 2009 and has experienced Islamophobia. A lot of people think that Israel is still, you know, an acceptable country. It's no longer an acceptable country. It will become a pariah state if it hasn't already. It has always been a pariah state for the third world, but now in the first world, in the developed nations, people are beginning to recognize Israel as a pariah state. The previous ways of defending Israel by saying it's the most moral nation on earth, it's the only democracy in the region.

No matter how racialized those tropes were and how silly they were, it worked because most people were oblivious to what Israel does. Now they know. So this would be equivalent to me running around and saying, you can't criticize Saudi Arabia. because the Mecca is there, you know, Medina is there, the Kaaba is in Saudi Arabia. You cannot criticize Saudi Arabia's blockade against Yemen, for example, because you're Islamophobic. This would be the equivalent of me running around as a Muslim saying, I'm a Muslim, and our institutions are mosques, are fundraising for ISIS. And if you criticize ISIS, if you dare say anything about the Islamic State that are trying to implement a caliphate,

that's true Islam. You're Islamophobic. And then the media was a lot of. also defending that position. And all of our institutions were defending that position. Well, I also think it's easier now for, unfortunately, very unfortunately, for Americans to understand because we are seeing something like that happen here in the United States under Trump. But also, like I think, this is, this will sound crazy. But I thought the only, one of the most compelling things, maybe one of the only compelling things Joe Biden said after October 7th,

right after October 7th was. Hababud was that. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, was that. He warned. He warned. He, he, he, he, he, he, he, He gave a warning to Israel, don't do what we did after 9-11. Yeah. Don't make that mistake. Now, we know what happens. Yeah. And then we all know what happens.

And then we all know what happened from there. But I think about that often because, and now all these, you know, these years later, as Trump, as Trump's second term has, you know, he's charging towards a, you know, an authoritarian state as well. I'm always like, how can you, like, of course, it's easy to imagine another country doing something like this. because it's happening here. Yeah, no, that's my argument, exactly. That's why it's not, it doesn't have to do with anything about the specific religion. It's what happens when people are in power

and they just like to use that power to oppress other people. Like that is the, all right, let's get back to American politics before we close. I mean, I would say Israel politics is America. It is right now, yeah. It's like you also brought up

and not just like foreign policy. I mean, what you're talking about is correct. It's the same exact fascist forces. And sometimes it's the same exact, like ethno-religious attitudes. ethno-religious supremacist attitudes that is, is, you know, the guiding principle of this growing mega-fascist movement in this country.

Stephen Miller. Pots of America is brought you by Rocket Money. I realized that because you can, in some of the streaming apps, you can have other streaming apps inside of those streaming apps, and also Ari had some streaming apps, and I realized, like, how many different places am I paying for? I would like the answer to be zero, frankly. Rocket Money allows you to track subscriptions and cancel them within the app in just a few taps.

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Only at booster juice. Canadian-born. Blending since 1999. We got midterms in November. 2028 Democratic primaries already beginning. We had a bunch of potential candidates where it Sharpton's event in New York. the DNC Winter meeting kicked up Thursday. How do you see your role in electoral politics over the next few years?

I see myself as a megaphone for the people. And if, I mean, I have, I'm fortunate enough to have a fairly large platform at this point. So the way I look at it is, look, I have a lot of door knockers, phone bankers, fundraisers in my community, community leaders and people that are, you know, running for office as well, for office themselves, labor organizers, and the media as well. So like these are some of the most tuned in people, the politics. They're tuning in the politics and it's boring. They're tuning in the politics before the primaries, right? And they're certainly tuning in in the general. You want to talk to these people because even if size-wise, they might not be the biggest force,

like I don't have the same audience as like Joe Rogan, for example, their impact is outsized. so you want to be able to convince these people that you're their guy. And a lot of politicians have recognized that. And it's really interesting because like these past two weeks, they've been writing all of these different things about, you know, how dangerous it is. And Democrats shouldn't associate with me. And then they're like, associate with us the third way instead.

And it's like no one fucking cares about that. But I have, you know, fielded hundreds of requests at this point leading up to the primaries. after those articles came out, it probably 10xed. It's insane. People were just like, yeah, okay, I don't care.

Yeah, please, please, let's do like from campaigns. Yes, yes. And places that you would find very interesting as well. It's not just like, you know, radical lefty candidates either. There are a lot of people who are like,

this is a, this is clearly a massive audience. You have the capacity to communicate with, you know, young men especially and we want to be able to reach out to those people that we've lost. So, you know, so that's it. Before this last media cycle for you, there was one, I think, in March, you said you wouldn't vote for Gavin Newsom against J.D. Vance in 2028 and vote third party. I mean, I don't even think that's going to be a problem. Well, but like a lot of people, including people who share a lot of your critiques of the Democratic Party, hear that and think, like, this is the problem.

You know, when the stakes are concrete, like, advanced presidency and other four years of what we're living through, you know, the people who say they're building a movement would, you know, like rather preserve their own power than, you know, do what winning requires and, you know, hold your nose and vote for what you believe would be the lesser of two evils. Like, how do you respond to that? I realize that you are a California voter, but you have fans and audience, I'm sure, in a lot of the swing states. Yeah. Like, what do you tell people who follow you, who respect you, who happen to live in swing states? as we head to 2026 and 2028. I want the Democratic Party to treat me like a never-trumper. I want the Democratic Party to treat me like a triple-trump voter, okay?

Because it turns out that's all they're tuned into. So if what it takes for the Democrats to turn around and be like, wait a minute, we're losing this guy, we have to win him over again or whatever, instead of just like taking my vote for granted as they've done so over and over again for the left flank, then, you know, I'm going to say things that may or may not end up being Trump. true, but it doesn't matter. We're so far out from the election anyway that it's like, I'm just saying, look, now is your opportunity to find a good candidate instead. But you see, but you see as we head into these that like, after what we've lived through

these last years, the stakes and the stark difference between even a Democrat who you and I might find not up to par, to say the least, versus Vance or whoever the fuck they put up. Of course. I mean, I hate Republicans. I oppose them. I, I, I, I, say that all the time. I think that the Republicans are far more damaging. The biggest terrorist, the biggest domestic terrorists in this country, the biggest terrorist internationally is the Republican Party. And not only that, but it's just like, they, like, I want to fight against the growing fascist movement in this country. My frustration with the Democrats is their conciliatory attitude towards that and their lack of investment in this struggle, this idea that, you know, on the one hand,

Donald Trump's a dangerous force. I see that. I recognize that. But then you turn around and you take on his anti-immigrant narratives and anti-immigrant messaging from the 2020 election that you won and decide you're going to be the sincere candidate that ends up, you know, dealing with the growth of migration in this country. It's a failure. If you were serious about being an anti-fascarist, if you were serious about combating these forces, you would take it more seriously. You would do everything you can. You wouldn't try to win by your own coalition that you want to build and like, you know, parade Lish Cheney around and act as though you're going to win with like never Trumpers or whatever. You would do everything in your power to talk to people on, on your left flank. And we're seeing

that now better than ever before with people like Platner in Maine, right? That like you can actually be an outspoken leftist that says I'm for pro, I'm pro-medicare for all. I'm an anti-Zionist. I'm anti-genocide. You have candidates like that winning, at least, you know, inshallah, winning in places like man and unseating Republicans. Even you got Dan Osborne. Like, not every single one of these guys is the same. Yeah. Right. They don't always have... And not, like, all their positions are going to line up. Yeah, they're not, they're not uniform. But there is this broad, left flank, left populism, Berniecrat attitude that I'm seeing from a lot of candidates. And I think the centrist forces are very afraid.

of the movement that is building, the movement that is brewing on that side, because they don't want a thousand Zorons. I want a thousand Zorons to bloom, okay? Let a thousand Zorons blossom all around the country. That's what I want. He's very popular right now. Yeah. Do you want to say something nice about John Ossoff or do you like him enough that you realize saying something nice about him would be bad? Well, I don't think, see, that's the thing. I don't, I don't believe that. Because If I believe that I would be a burden in campaigns, I wouldn't go out in campaign with people that I like. They, ironically enough, did think that way back in the day

when I first actually worked with the Aalov campaign and then the Raphael Warnar campaign in the first election that they did, right? And I worked with them privately. I set it up for them to do something on Twitch, but I did it on background because they were worried that like associating with me even back then would be bad for Georgia. I don't agree.

I don't think that's the case at all. You look at all these places. you look at like some of the most conservative places in like Virginia or West Virginia even and you you poll them on on things like what do you think about the DSA? What do you think about Israel? And it's like they're a lot closer to me than they are to an establishment Democrat. Right. And the same goes for Medicare for all.

So like the idea that we have not also polarized in the exact same way that the Republicans have is very silly. We're in a very different political environment now and we're in a very different media environment. now. And it's actually mainstream media that's trying to play catch up. It's actually the establishment Democrats that are trying to play catch up to where the public is actually at. Most people don't care about this stuff. They don't, they see the clips and they go, okay, that sounds kind of crazy. Let me go check this guy out. And then they hear what I have to say because I'm not a political operative that doesn't have his own platform. I'm a political

operative with his own platform that is competitive with these other platforms that are speaking over me. So I'm endlessly accessible. You can just come and see what I have to say, see what I'm about, and very quickly realize that perhaps the way that I'm being presented in mainstream news is maybe not the right way. Maybe it's a little bit of a manufactured outrage campaign. And one example I'll use is this. I was monitoring the situation on my flight. back from Michigan to Los Angeles, which apparently some agent of Laura Lumer took a photo of me sleeping, which was so crazy. But while I was monitoring the situation, I was listening to Dana Bash talk about what's going on in Iran. Then all of a sudden Dana Byr starts talking about me.

And it had my choice quotes up there, you know, like the most insincere one is me actually defending or claiming that I'm defending rapes or whatever like denying sexual I didn't bring that one up because I do think that was the most out of context one yeah that was so messed up you were saying rape doesn't matter you were saying yeah it doesn't justify genocide the rape doesn't yeah it doesn't change the moral calculus on either side I think which is I'm just like it's you know Hamas did something fucking catastrophic and and committed horrible atrocities

whether whether rape or not exists like that it was still a really good point Israel had a literal pro-rape January 6-style riot after six of the Israeli occupation forces concentration camp guards as today Taman were prosecuted for raping Palestinian prisoners. And they released them. And then Benjamin Nanyahu apologized for even attempting to prosecute them. And now one of them is like a famous television guy. I still don't think that I think that's the most heinous thing. That's the most insane thing I've ever heard, right?

Back to my universal principles. But I still don't think Israel should be wiped out. Sexual violence. Horrific, no matter who commits it. Yeah. But I don't think Israel should receive what Israel has done to the Palestinians in, you know, in retaliation to that. That's my assessment. That's my attitude.

Wait, what was I saying? Oh, so I saw D'Annebash. So there's a guy sitting next to me. And he's looking at the TV. He's also watching CNN. he turns around. It's like, that's,

like, is that you? And I was like, ha, no. And then I was like, yeah, it's me. And the quote that was on screen

was America deserve 9-11. So I'm going through the motions of like, this guy is sitting next to a big bearded dude on a plane, who is on a plane associated with 9-11? Like, and I was just like,

oh, that's, you know, they're taking me, out of context, like, you know what it is? And he was like, he turns to me. He was a liberal guy. He's flying back to L.A. He goes, I fucking hate CNN. He's like, I hate Dana Bash. So he automatically was on my side because of the resentment that he has towards CNN. That is, maybe that's a good place to leave it. That's a good place to leave it. And look, we love Denabash here. We're

we'll get her here and we can talk about this too. Hassan, thanks for coming on. You'll have to come out again next time you're causing a lot of trouble. Yeah, I mean, that's probably going to keep happening, it seems. Okay, well, we'll see you. Thank you for having me. Of course. Thanks to Hassan Piker for coming on the show. Tommy Lovett and I will be back in your feeds on Tuesday with a new episode.

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