TRIGGERnometry - I’ve Got No Problem With Communism - Hasan Piker

Episode Date: November 23, 2025

Hasan Piker is a Turkish-American Twitch streamer, political commentator, and influencer, best known for his progressive views, gaming streams, and sharp critiques of U.S. politics and global issues. | We use Ground News to escape the echo chamber and stay fully informed. Go to https://ground.news/triggernometry to save 40% on the Ground News unlimited access Vantage plan. Follow Hasan: Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/hasanabi X - https://x.com/hasanthehun Triggernometry is proudly independent. Thanks to the sponsors below for making that possible: - We recommend Brad Vs. Everyone podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts - Protect your wealth with The Pure Gold Company. Get your free investor guide at https://pure-gold.co/trigger - Ready to disconnect from Big Tech? Secure your privacy with the UP Phone by Unplugged. Visit https://unplugged.com/triggernometry and use TRIGGERNOMETRY for $20 off your case. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 - Introduction 08:15 - What Are Progressive Values? 20:51 - How Would You Convince People That Socialism Can Work? 27:10 - Is There A Country That Has Done Socialism In The Way That You Like? 30:05 - Mass Immigration And Integration 36:07 - Are Muslim's In The UK Trying To Create An Islamist State? 39:03 - Would You Like Communism In America? 53:26 - Communism Leads To Authoritarianism And Repression That You Just Won't See In The West 01:11:18 - The Assassination Of Charlie Kirk 01:16:08 - Is Nigel Farage's Reform Party Fascist? 01:29:00 - What's The One Thing We're Not Talking About That We Really Should Be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The San Paica, welcome to Trigonometry. Nice to be here, guys. Why the big side? Italy's Mussolini and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany were ruthless, fascist forms of governance. My fear is that that is where capitalism inevitably leads. There's too much instability, there's too much chaos. We need to restore order. Is there a country that's done socialism the way that you like?

I would say China is probably the closest, I would say, to an example that we should follow. Like communism in America? I think that communism would be most likely an international thing. It'd be like the Star Trek universe. You think the Reform Party is a fascist? I think Reform Party, as it stands currently, is a nascent, fascist parliamentary group that hasn't reached its full potential yet. Relax! Relax!

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Visit Botox Chronic Migraine.com or call 1-800-44 Botox to learn more. PICA, welcome to Trigonometry. Nice to be here, guys. Why the big side? We'll see. We'll see how this goes. I'm getting cooked right now for those of you at home watching. And this has got to be extra weird for you guys because you're British.

And this is what the sun looks like normally. Yeah, no, it's nice to know. We're enjoying it. I'm sorry about the sun. This is not deliberate. We're not trying to cook you literally. But welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about you.

Like you obviously have got a massive Twitch channel. You're very successful streaming. Twitch is a gaming platform, but you talk on there. And that's what people follow you for. How did you get there? What's been your journey through life? I started my professional media career, I guess, as a nepotism recipient at my uncle's 26-person YouTube startup media network. I feel like calling it a media network is interesting because at that time, at that point,

it was smaller than like a mid-tier podcast, you know? But I started there because I just wanted to not live it. in New Jersey. I want to live in L.A., and that's where the Young Turks headquarters were. And I, much like virtually all of my peers, came out of college with double major, great marks, and no job prospects whatsoever. So I was like, all right, I'll just start off my journey here. And it'll allow me to not be in, it'll allow me to be in L.A. where I want to be, right? And slowly but surely, I worked my way through the ranks there, offering a lot of free work, just as a fill-in producer or filling guest hosts whenever someone didn't show up, they were sick or something. While I was actually doing the advertisement stuff on the back end, I was basically the singular advertisement operations person.

Not only was I creating client list, but doing cold calls, trying to do. get DR campaigns going for the Young Turks and like fill the inventory of the Young Turks with some brand names that I think everyone is now familiar with like Squarespace and things of that nature. That was a big client of mine initially. But I hated it. And I thought, you know, I think I could do better if I were on an on-camera position. And so, but the problem was I was horrible. on camera at first. And I just kept going through it. My girlfriend at the time was like a model trying to become an actress. She was like, one of us has to actually work. And she was like, you should keep doing the advertising stuff to make money so that I can be, you know, a model,

an actress, whatever. And I was like, okay. And even a bunch of my friends were like, maybe you should stop doing this on camera stuff. You're not very good at it. And I was like, no, I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep doing. I'm going to keep doing. it because eventually I'll get better at it. And I guess over the years, I did get somewhat better at it. But while it was at The Young Turks, I was doing all this stuff. I set up the show called The Breakdown. It was very successful because it aligned perfectly with the Facebook algorithm

turning on the faucet for video content. This was when everyone was doing the pivot to video, BuzzFeed and all these other places. There's a company called Upworthy. I don't know if you guys recall way back in the day. They were getting like tens of millions of views a week. And my videos were getting like 30 million views a week. I was contesting Tommy Lawrence, right-wing commentary at the time. And that was when I first made a name for myself, I guess, as a leftist political commentator.

But I wanted something more. I wanted something that I could call my own. I wanted a sense of community for myself. I didn't want to be under the umbrella of the young Turks as much as I was. So I thought to myself, I play video games already when I'm not working. Might as well go to this platform called Twitch. It was a video gaming platform at the time, even though there were some commentary happening there as well.

And I decided I'm just going to strap on a PlayStation camera onto my PlayStation 4 at the time and start live broadcasting while I play Fortnite. and I have a bunch of other friends who are journalists, activist, organizers and whatnot that I play Fortnite with anyway. So we'll just talk about political issues while I do this. Now, there's a couple different reasons why I did that. Like I said, one, because I wanted to have something of my own, a media property of my own. The other reason was because I recognized that the gaming side of things, like the gaming culture side of that space, was heavily dominated by right-wing commentary. Whereas gamers were much more diverse in their opinion, myself included.

And I wanted to to present an alternative. I also wanted to go against the grain because at the time, this is we're talking like 2016, 2017, at the peak of like woke SJW cartoonish depictions of what the left represented. And there was some validity to the arguments that were being presented. Obviously it was like the most maximalist, most ridiculous, depiction of the left, but some people would lean into that a little bit, where they were like, no, we are like this, we are joy killers, we are woke skulls. And I was like, I don't think you

have to be that. I think you can have fun and also still have progressive values. And I wanted to basically show that to a audience that had maybe never really encountered that. And I wanted to be in an environment that I was comfortable in. As a man, Who Games, and that was a very male-focused gamer space, which was. And last but now least, I wanted to get better off the cuff. Because up until that moment, I had always scripted my content. I was writing it, and then I would actually take the writing on my videos and turn it into a Huffington Post article.

So I would just reformat my scripts into an actual article, and that was fine. but I wasn't very good off the cuff. So I thought to myself, if I can play a video game and talk about politics at the same time and be able to entertain people, maybe 30 at a time, maybe 300 at a time, if I'm lucky,

then I can get a lot better at public speaking and speaking off the cuff. And as you guys might have figured out by now, I never shut the fuck up. So I guess it worked. I guess it worked. And you mentioned progressive values on that being something that's important to you. What are progressive values, would you say?

I think progressive values, for me at least, are founded around empathy, first and foremost, to try and uplift everyone's material conditions to the best of our ability, and focusing on protecting those who need protection, and simultaneously advancing a cause of the way I think about it, It means of the cause of unlocking the potential of every single person, no matter where they are. Because right now, there are probably billions of brilliant people that never actually get the opportunity to unlock their true potential because of where they're born. Like, am I born a Sudan in a village that is being overtaken by the RSF? They might be born in India to an impoverished neighborhood and are not going to have the access to,

education and therefore be able to truly revolutionize whatever sector they might be interested in revolutionizing. And I think that's what I want to do. What do you think is the way to, because I think that's probably something the left and right actually agree on in my experience, you know, the center left, the center right, they're kind of moderate. But I suppose the disagreement probably is about what you think is the way by which that happens. So the right might say, well, the answer to that is capitalism, right? I imagine you don't agree. So how do you think those things get those people who don't currently have opportunity both in this country, in other Western countries, but around the world? What's the mechanism by which they get those opportunities? I think creating a robust

base of support, like a minimum, a minimum social safety net for all is the way to do it. And there are many different ways of achieving that result. I don't think capitalism has been able to do that. What I mean by that is capitalism still revolves around the inherent contradiction of at its most reductive way to put it, someone's got to clean the toilet. And in an effort to make sure that there is always going to be people

that are wage laborers, there is this dynamic where we can't advance humanity too much. This plays itself out in the international scale and unequal exchange where if we were to allow

a lot of the third world to develop to a certain degree, then things would be far too costly. We wouldn't get the cheap materials and the cheap natural resources that we need to extract. so that we can have an iPhone for the reasonable price of $500. Or, I mean, even that's increasing now.

I personally think that if we were to do that, if we were to do that by stopping our endless and needless and cruel militarism in the global South and allow these places to develop, extend an open hand to them, that we would allow society to flourish. in ways that we previously have not foreseen. I guess your point about cleaning toilets is interesting because something we've addressed a lot on this trip with guests, right, left, center, et cetera,

is the incredible wealth inequality and the speed of which the gap is, you know, that's growing. There's a big problem. People on the right don't want to admit it, and it's true. But on the other hand, someone is always going to have to clean the toilets, right? Like, we have a pretty big safety net in the UK. And what that's mainly done is trapped a lot of people in a place where they don't have to work and they therefore don't. And also you talk about,

you know, important people from other countries to work for less. Kind of the consequence of that is it suppresses wages for the people in the country as well. So who would clean the toilets if we... So great question. Let me address the wage depression aspect of this, because this is the one area where sometimes I hear Tucker Carlson talk about it and there's like some nuggets of truth in there. Because, yes, importing labor into the country will always depress wages in the absence of good regulation. And good regulation in that format would be demanding wage parity and also not creating any other external factors that actually cause you to have a more servile labor force. What I mean by this is I want to use the example of H-1B visas. The reason why H-1B visa system exists on paper is because there are certain highly skilled positions

that, as it stands, our American companies, are unable to fulfill. They're not able to fill those roles with the domestic labor force, right? That's the on paper. In practice, of course, it creates a more pliable labor force that you're bringing in, oftentimes from highly skilled countries that are still desperate, even if there is high, higher wages on average on the H-1B visa program because if you lose your job, you get deported. Nobody wants to get deported. So they will do everything in their power to stay and work as hard as they physically possibly can. So this creates an environment where I think our bosses,

our capital owners in America, are like, why would I get an American worker who is in comparison to an Indian worker that's coming into the country that is desperate to keep this job, why would I hire the American worker? I can pay the same fee to the Indian worker or even a higher fee as a matter of fact of the Indian worker because I know that he is going to work harder than the American labor force. So there is this competition. The way to solve that competition is through regulation. If the workers that were coming in from poorer countries were coming in with the knowledge that they are not going to be immediately deported, for example, and they have wage parity with a domestic labor force.

This would actually make American companies think twice before hiring someone just as a replacement for the American worker because they wouldn't get any additional benefits as a boss. They wouldn't get the additional benefit of like, I'm going to work you to the bone, right? Because I know if I fire, you're gone. you're gone out of the country and you want to be here. So that is a regulatory mechanism that we never implement in this country because we, our capital owners actually enjoy the two-tiered labor structure that we have here. And come back to the who cleans the toilets, even when there's a social welfare system.

I think that ultimately there's going to be people that fulfill these roles no matter what. And increasingly with automation and with AI, we're getting to a point where the route tasks are already being delegated to robots to begin with. So the way I see it is the person, there's always going to be someone that is tasked with this, tasked with either overseeing it, if it's a robot doing it or directly doing it. But since it's an important factor in the commodity production

because someone has to engage in sanitation, I think it's much more valuable to, ensure that they have a sense of autonomy and that those positions are hired and have enough they have enough replacement labor force so that they do less hours in general and still get a decent amount of pay and so that they can still feel human and have some sense of autonomy in the labor force where they can do that job and still make an honest living and be able to feed their family and also have some free time on the side to do to pursue whatever hobbies that want to pursue. So the way to achieve that would be like what a really high minimum wage

or like what's what's the way to get there? Like because I agree with the idea that people who are working every kind of job should have free time and make a good living. The question is how do that? Because in a market economy, what you are paid is a function of what you produce, right? Well, I think in a market economy, what you are paid should be what you produce. I don't think that that's how it works in the market economy. I think in the market economy, your replaceability is what determines your wages, especially if you are replaceable by a non-domestic labor force. For example, that depresses your wages even further on the domestic front for the citizen labor force.

So I think you're right, though. in the market economy, your output should be the determining factor. That's actually a socialist position, ironically enough. Not all socialists are against the market. And I would say that the output is the most consequential factor in that regard. I agree. What that means, however, is that if the company is actually, for example, increasing its output and therefore generating more revenue overall,

then everyone down to the, down to the most replaceable aspect of labor, which would be sanitation in this regard, should still get paid a just wage, like fair compensation. Minimum wages is one way of doing it as a Band-Aid solution. I mean, but there are Nordic countries, for example, where there is no minimum wage, because the minimum wage would, ironically, be a depressing factor

on the overall average wages that people get. How have they achieved this, though? they've achieved this through sectoral bargaining. They've achieved this through robust unions and labor participation in these wage negotiations. And that is the reason why they don't need to have a minimum wage. The minimum wage in it of itself is a big point of contention

in the United States of America and a lot of other Western countries only because our labor union participation in the United States is at less than 10% right now, which is unimaginably low. It's lower than countries that we have dominated, Chile, where we rewrote their constitution basically and wanted to unleash a wave of neoliberalism, sometimes in the hands of a dictator like Pinochet. Even in that country, there's still 15% labor union participation.

So it's still higher than the United States of America, which is crazy to me. If you've been following the immigration debate, you'll know how different the headlines can look depending on where you get your news. We use ground news to help us step outside the echo chamber. It shows you how the same story is framed differently across the political spectrum, so you can compare headlines and decide for yourself. Take the story about a massive immigration raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, USA. Follow along at ground.news slash trigonometry.

Using ground news, straightaway we can quickly see that the story is being covered by outlets across the board. However, scrolling down the page, ground news allows me to easily compare the headings. We can see CNN, which is firmly on the left, highlighted that nearly 500 workers were taken, while Fox News, on the right, framed the raid as bold action. Ground News shows us that broadly, left-leaning outlets focused on immigrants and workers, center-leaning outlets simply reported the number detained, and right-leaning outlets emphasized illegal workers. Ground News compiles these divergent perspectives into one place.

Another feature we use heavily at trigonometry is their blind spot feed, which shows you where coverage is lopsided, lets you compare headlines across the political spectrum and helps you identify what's being emphasized or ignored. If you care about getting to the truth by seeing things from all angles, ground news is essential. Go to ground.com.com.com slash trigonometry and get 40% off their unlimited vantage plan. That's the plan we use. That link again is ground.news slash trigonometry. Hassan, I've got a lot of empathy for some of your positions, particularly when you talk about low-skilled labor.

So for context, my mother is a Venezuelan immigrant to the UK. When she was in the UK, she was a childminder. There was no minimum wage. My mum, roughly, I remember earning £2,000, an hour. There weren't no pension rights. So thankfully, I help my parents out. My dad helps my mum out, so she's not destitute. But that's what my mom's position would be if she didn't have me or my father.

As somebody who is from Venezuela, I worry when people mention socialism because I've seen what's happened to my country. How would you assuage the fears of people like me or people who come from a Cuban background who've seen the socialist dream, as it were, descend into authoritarianism? Well, first and foremost, I would say that all countries, to varying degrees, engage in authoritarianism. In general, it's just something that it's a function of the government. It obviously has the capacity to get out of hand due to external factors in many instances like combating much more powerful forces that want to cause instability in your country. It's not a justification for it, but it is analysis in terms of why these guys engage in the

actions that they do in terms of suppression of all dissent. or even censorship and sometimes even jail time. And the example I always use is the United States of America, not only in the Cold War, but even preceding the Cold War during World War I and World War II, actually had a practice of jailing all conscientious objectors, for example, who said, I don't want to fight in this war. They were like, all right, well, this is a world war, sucks to suck, you're going to jail. One of the famous examples is Eugene Debs, a socialist who actually ran from prison

and I think achieved like 1.3 million votes at the time, which was probably the most electoral success socialist that ever achieved. He was a conscientious objector of World War I, which was the international Marxist position at the time. There was some deviation there. So I see it in a similar vein when these countries also engage in authoritarian actions, suppressing dissent censorship, or trying to manage this dynamic of trying to continue doing governance,

while at the same time they have to like make sure that they're avoiding American intervention or Western intervention in general. As far as the fears that people have, assuaging the fears that people have in terms of what they've seen in their countries, whether it be Venezuela or Cuba, I think each country is different. Each successful and unsuccessful revolution is different. And I think it's important to understand the lessons and the failures,

as well as some of the areas of success that these countries have been able to implement. Avoid the failures and try to focus on the successes, and hopefully you'll be able to have a long-standing and relatively happy form of governance. I mean, I take your point as to the conscious and just objective, but you look at Venezuela, for example, and the reason I'm using it is because that's the example I know best. Yeah. You know, you've got rigged elections. You've got politicians who go up against Maduro.

They're put in, they're either thrown in jail, as in the case of Leopoldo Lopez, solitary confinement for two years, or you have, I think it's Corrina Machado, who got nominated for Nobel Peace Prize, but she is currently in hiding in her own country because she knows the moment that her whereabouts are known, she's going to get thrown into jail may not be seen again. Yeah.

I'm not going to defend Maduro, but I would say that the life, logical through line. And it's important to understand the opposition's logical through line in this instance is that these are forces that are very directly working with the United States of America that have tried to facilitate coups, even had an unsuccessful one all the way back in 2002, with Chavez and numerous other instances, openly talked about implementing coups under the first Trump administration and is openly now waging war, or at least threatening to wage war with Venezuela right now, encircling the entire coastline of Venezuela with some of the most sophisticated

weaponry known demand. In that regard, I think they see it as treason. I would go so far as say in a similar scenario in the United States of America, I think, and this is not even a one-to-one dynamic because America is the most powerful nation on the planet, but China is getting up there, right? Let's see if China had in a hypothetical, if China had encircled the United States of America and let's say in this hypothetical, I'm like

very clearly someone who is going to China and talking to the CPC and saying like we want Chinese intervention in this country because I hate Donald Trump, please. I think in that regard America would probably treat me in the exact same way

if not in a worse way, ironically. enough. But would they throw you in jail for trying to run democratically? I don't think personally that they would. Absolutely would, I think. You think the American government would not throw me in jail if I was in a comparable scenario where China had encircled the United States of America, and I was saying, I want to run democratically, I want to be, and I'm demanding that China intervene, I think they would do the same, if not worse, for sure. Because like I said, it's all a matter of of the conditions on the ground. With respect to Eugene Debs, as I was talking about before,

America felt threatened even at that time. You were talking about wartime, though. This is not a fair comparison, in my opinion, because wartime is wartime. It's about survival. Britain suspended elections during wartime, right? America didn't actually, they did, even during the Civil War.

But Britain did, America wasn't in war in the same way that Britain was. That's why is it during a civil war? Yeah, well, yeah, that's fair. But again, it's different. I guess you said something interesting because, you know, I was born in the Soviet Union, so we both have direct experience of socialism in various shapes and forms. You talked about, well, there's positives and there's negatives.

So is there a country that's done socialism the way that you like? I would say that I am hypercritical of all forms of governance, including the American one. I think that's not a surprise to you guys. right? And in that same vein, I think like there is critiques to apply to all forms of governance, even socialist ones. And as far as like getting closer to what I think has been relatively successful, because if ultimately the point of government is to improve the material conditions of all people to the best of your ability, it's not always going to be perfect, but when you are getting,

I don't know, the poorest people, the poorest or the dispossessed mass, out of a situation where they were servile the landed gentry or they were peasants from an agrarian society or they were they were you know dominated by the landlords but then ultimately they were able to to come into modernity and become like a powerhouse an industrial powerhouse that is competitive with the largest superpower on the planet I would say if that's the point of good governance and I think you guys might agree with me on that I would say China is probably the closest And there are still plenty of failures within the Chinese system as well, plenty of issues within the Chinese system as well. But that's probably the closest, I would say, to an example that we should follow and lessons that we should learn from.

This is something that I talk about quite a bit. Ironically enough, we only utilize some of the most repressive elements of Chinese governance here in the United States of America, especially in the second Trump administration, and none of the good stuff. We don't have any high-speed rail. we don't have any even development. There is seemingly nothing to look forward to in America in terms of economic prosperity, in terms of overall health of society,

in terms of scientific achievements. And I think a lot of younger people also feel the same way, where they feel like there's nothing to look forward to here. And I'll give you guys an example from the UK. I remember seeing this TikTok of this guy that goes around and is like asking, young British people, would they serve in the British military? And I am not even remotely nationalistic by any measure.

I don't care about those sorts of things. But I think it's important to understand, like, it's a good way to see the temperature of society. And a lot of the young British people were like, no, why would I fight for England? Why would I fight for the UK when it seems like my government's not even fighting for me at all? And see, the reason a lot of them will say that, though, is it's not so much about that we're not like China in terms of building high-speed rail, although that is a big issue in the UK. Yes. I agree with you. The main reason is they feel like they've been let down by mass immigration that's eroding the values of their country.

And of course, you know, this is where I think people on the right are very blind to this issue that we already raise, which is wealth and equality and opportunity. I'm sure there are some people who feel that way. course, but... Well, think about this first hand. Hold on. Let me just finish the point. Like, stereotypically speaking, is it left of center people or right of center people that are going to go and fight for their country? Typically, it's going to be right of center people because of the mindset that they have.

I think when push comes to shove, everybody fights for the country because that's why you have to have a draft. In a war. But what we're talking about in this situation is, will you go and serve in armed forces? That is going to be a more right-leaning perspective. And those people, you know, we probably, fair to say, no, the UK pretty well. those people are concerned about the national identity of their country. It's like, why would I fight for a country that doesn't feel like my country is the issue for them?

This is where the big point of division comes for someone like myself. You're Venezuelan originally. Like your family came from Venezuela. Your family came from the USSR. You guys are the most British people I've ever encountered. I have a very British face. You're correct. Yeah, exactly.

You're British to the bone. Yeah. And yet your families also came from countries that were somewhat far away from England, right? And I'm Turkish. I grew up in Turkey. My whole family lives in Turkey still, with some exceptions. And I would say I'm pretty assimilated to American culture. I grew up being fascinated by American culture. I grew up consuming American pop culture, as do many people all around the world. And what I always always was, always find interesting is when people focus on the newcomers to say that this is actually destroying the social fabric or social cohesion, not realizing that there are a ton of polls conducted on this stuff. I can just speak for America, especially, where by the second generation, assimilation is almost complete. And by the third one, it's like virtually impossible to distinguish which in terms of performance, educational output, and job performance in general. It's just like everyone becomes American.

That's not true in the UK, though, unfortunately. So if you look at, for example, Islamist radicalization, second and third generation, Muslims are much more radical than first generation. Yeah. So we're not, we, that's the issue that a lot of people in Britain are concerned about is not everyone's assimilating the way that the three of us have them. So here's the interesting point about that. Well, two things I want to address.

First, like I said, people assimilate, and they become a part of the normal forces of society. They become a part of the culture, or they bring some aspect of their culture into British culture. They change the cuisine and people seemingly enjoy it, even if they also simultaneously go attend an EDL rally and then, you know, get a little quick curry afterwards or a little kebab on the side. But beyond that, the reason why... people are angry is always going to be because the trains are not running on time, because the, the NHS is improperly managed due to underfunding. That's what I believe. I think it's a, it's always an issue of underfunding, where they're not getting the same services that they want to use to, and also things are becoming more and more costly. So in that anger,

it's much easier for them to be guided by a right wing, guided by the right wing forces to turn around and say, you're angry and you're right to be angry. And the reason why you're angry, the reason why all of these things are happening is because we are importing all of these random strangers into the country who don't speak your language, who you aren't scared by.

And that, I think, causes division. And it causes friction that makes it harder for people. to integrate. And that is part of the reason why, I think, especially in place like the UK, you see a little bit more of this resilience towards full-blown integration into society. I also think, as well, Hassan, if we're being honest, it's also because we have had such huge amounts of immigration coming to the country. The people understandably go, this pace of changes too much. And you have to think, let's go back to 2016, which was the Brexit referendum. Now, Brexit was about many things, but really it was about people wanting to immigration to be

lowered. And that was nine and ten years ago. Immigration hasn't been lowered. In fact, it's been ratcheted up. So people are, you know, people voted to lower immigration. And I'm, for instance, I voted Remain. People voted Brexit. I'm like, well, that's democracy. We get on. We're going to make the best of it. I do believe that when you ignore people's wishes, at the ballot box and people explicitly vote for something and you ignore them for the best part of a decade, that does generate a lot of anger and understandably so. Yeah, I think in that same time frame, if there was enough appetite by the government to address the financial harm that people were experiencing, the economic struggles

that people were experiencing, there would still be a lot of people who say, I don't want a brown person, I don't want black person around in my neighborhood, but ultimately those numbers would be far smaller. And that's what I always go back to. I'm a leftist. I believe in economic improvements. And I believe that a lot of the reactionary forces actually take advantage of that instability, the economic volatility that exists in an effort to shift the attention away to people who have the same exact interests as you and I do. because ultimately, I don't believe that anyone is coming into the United States of America or the UK as a matter of fact because they want to bring about a Salafist-style Islamic Caliphate in London. I know you won't agree with me on this.

Not about whether I agree. It's about whether the facts agree with you. I don't think that's the case. Hold on. Let me just give you some facts then. We have a terrorist attack on a monthly basis by an Islamist effectively. We just had two in the space of the last month as we're recording this. 33% I think of British Muslims want Sharia law in Britain, like, according to polls. More than half want to ban... I haven't seen these polls. Well, we can put them in for people to see.

More than half want to ban homosexuality, right? So when you say people aren't coming in to introduce an Islamist. Well, some of them want to, if they're in a position to do so. We have five MPs who are effectively elected on a sectarian ticket, like as in we are Muslims vote for us because you're a Muslim. Who would you say those MPs are? The five independent MPs that call the Gaza MPs or whatever way you want to call them. Are you talking about like Zara Sultanah?

I don't know if she's one of them. I think one of them is called Adnan Hussein. There's five of them. You can look them up. We can put them in for people to see. Right. So I think it should be said that the overwhelming majority of British Muslims don't want Sharia law. But if 33% of them do, you can see why a lot of people who don't want Sharia law might be concerned about that, right?

Sure. I don't know what, I haven't seen these polls. And I also don't know what British Muslims or the 33% that are saying they want Sharia law, like what they're talking about. If you want smart, fearless commentary on the craziest things happening in media, politics and online culture, you'll love the Brad versus Everyone podcast. Hosted by Brad Palumbo, an independent journalist who calls it like it is, The podcast covers viral madness from across the political and cultural spectrum, and no one's safe.

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The counter example always is, I mean, there's plenty of right-wing forces in the country that also want to ban homosexuality. And, no, I'm... I mean, or trans people in general, right? Like, there is... No one wants to ban trans people in Britain. No. Okay. Well, that's not... what I have seen so far, but maybe I'm wrong on this. What do you mean? But I mean, I feel like there's a lot of,

this is a point of contention for you guys as well, but it's like when you want to ban trans people altogether, when you want to remove access to medication for trans people to transition to transition and conform their own gender identity, you don't start off by saying we want to altogether ban trans people. You start off by trying to find the most successful approach that the broadest majority of the masses would be in tune with, would be in agreement with, and then you slowly but surely expand on it. Wouldn't that be like me saying, wouldn't that be like me saying, well, you say you want socialism, but actually you're a communist? Because you just want to edge your way towards communism step by step.

I mean, that seems like an unfair way of looking at it. No, my retort of that would be that while I don't call myself a communist, I don't have an issue with an end goal of, communism. I don't think it's like a, I just think that it's probably not likely to happen, a stateless, moneyless, borderless society. But moving towards that angle, I don't have any real... You'd like communism in America. I think that communism would be most likely an international thing. It'd be like the Star Trek universe. And it feels, especially at this point, it feels far too utopian to achieve. So while I think that the concept in and of itself is not one that I disliked, disagree with. And I don't think you would either. Don't you think it would be nicer?

I grew up in a communist country. I very strongly disagree with the concept of communism. The USSR was, as you know, as well, trying to implement communism. They never actually were able to successfully implement communism. How do you mean? Well, it wasn't a borderless, moneyless, classless society. Right? It would be like... I was never the goal of communism. It was never to be a borderless, moneyless society. No, that is what communism is. Well, that's not how the communist and Russia defined it. Well, there was a big debate within communism quite early on,

which was about are we pursuing a global state of communism? Ross versus Stalin. I'm very familiar. Right, but for our audience, this might be worth explaining. Yeah. Some of them wanted to, they basically recognize the only way you might ever get to a communist society is if everyone in the world gets it. Otherwise, there will always be a capitalist system to which people would be keen to defect.

or this is the Stalin option that they ended up going for is you pursue communism within the realm of one country. And in order to do that, they took the wealth away from people who had it. They tried to distribute it to everybody else. They tried to create a state of equality, uplift the poor, as you were talking about. And actually, if you take those measures alone, they were very successful at it. The only problem is they ended up putting millions of people in camps in order to do that, creating a tyrannical regime with a secret police that murdered people. And that is the reason communism, in my opinion, doesn't work,

is because in order to achieve that goal of equality, and basically you're making everybody equally poor as the end result, you actually have to use a lot of force, right? So that was communism, what we had in the USSR. Well, the end goal was never successfully achieved in the USSR in terms of establishing what I'm talking about, though. And that's why I'm saying it's important to understand. and recognize the failures of this implementation in the aftermath of a socialist revolution

and choose not to repeat those mistakes. So how would you do it differently? Well, that's the reason why I pointed to China. China is run by the Communist Party of China. It builds itself as it builds itself as communist. China is not a communist country. Would you say China is a communist country? It's a mixed country.

It has some elements of communism, but it's also got a lot of capitalism going on. So it's a mixed market economy is what you're saying, right? But so is the United States of America, if you look at it from that perspective. Because America also has some semblance of social safety nets. The UK also has some social safety nets, some state-run enterprises, you know, especially pre-Margaret Thatcher, I would say, versus private enterprises as well. Venezuela at its peak, I think, had more privatization and more private enterprise in its economy than France did, as a matter of fact.

I believe there was like a report at around 2012, maybe, where they were talking about how Venezuela is not socialist. When these sorts of countries, and you're not wrong, it's a mixture of both, right? It exists. Social safety exists. Some extrapolation initiatives exist. Like when you think about Norway, for example, the entirety of the extraction industry in Norway is actually nationalized from the forestry all the way down to the the oil and gas industry

but then there's also the the private market as well private enterprise as well so as far as that goes i wouldn't say that china is a communist and neither would you but it's run by a communist party and and so far they have seen a pretty successful pretty robust level of growth and development overall So they have analyzed the failures of previous communist and socialist formations, and they have responded to it in their own way. The challenge is, Hassan, when you centralize power and you give exactly practically all the power to the government, what happens with that is you're far more likely to have corruption, you're far more likely to have abuse of power, and inevitably what happens is that the government can't do everything. things that are far better done by private practice than done by state control.

I agree with that. Would you also agree that there are things that are far better done in the hands of the government, or at least with like heavy market regulation and intervention? I completely agree. Because like healthcare, I think, is a great example of this, where like it's an inelastic demand, good and service, right? If you don't have health care, you die. So you will pay whatever price you have to pay for health care.

And therefore, I think the American system, that is the most maximalist, most capitalist, most like free enterprise system, has been an abject failure in terms of delivering good results. And what I mean by that is healthcare as a whole is supposed to improve people's living standards and also make sure that everyone is getting the best quality care possible, right? And in the United States of America, we don't have that. We do have nicer hospitals that resemble hotels as opposed to like... It would be difficult not to have a noisor hospital than the UK, mate. Yeah, no, but I understand that.

I'm from Turkey. I've seen the Turkish public hospitals, but I would rather have, I would rather try to focus on the diminished quality of service and try to improve that in a socialized system than to altogether, altogether limit healthcare at the point of being able to pay for it in the way that we have in the United States of America. And I think this is a major issue with America. general is that we are so invested in improving our GDP, we're so invested in in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in many others, corruption still thrives. We have it in the

form of corporate consolidation here in the United States of America, because in the absence of any sort of government intervention, trust busting, uh, and, and, uh, heavy, uh, regulatory, uh, intervention, all corporations end up trying to seize one another. and become a force, a monopolistic force, and if not, an oligopoly, right? And many sectors have seen this. And when you become an oligopoly, you can diminish the quality of service that you're offering slowly but surely because there's no market competition that exists any longer. So I guess the way I look at it is in terms of corruption, you're right.

There is a tendency if the government is all powerful, even though the governments are always all powerful, there is a tendency in more centralized. governance that if someone wants to be a ruthless autocrat, they can do so. And the people don't always have the capacity to rise up against that. But I would say that in the United States of America, for example, we also experience a similar dynamic. We just don't see it in the same way because it's not the most direct form of authoritarianism, where a lot of people think, well, as long as I can eat a Big Mac, you know, as long as I can watch TV, as long as I can consume, porn and, you know, gamble on the unregulated crypto currency market or gamble my modest income

away, what remains after I give the rest of my landlord, then, you know, things are probably fine. And I think we dull our sensibilities in that regard. And I think it's a different form. It's a different mechanism of control that makes you think that you are actually an active participant in this. Well, I mean, I think that's quite a stretch, Hassan, with all respect, because the difference between, I mean, you talk about, we talked about some societies that have attempted to pursue communism, China, the Soviet Union, Venezuela, et cetera, right? The difference between those countries is not that they can't eat a Big Mac. The difference is that if they criticize the government, in Russia today even, but of course, in the Soviet Union previously, you're going to get killed, right? In America, that's not what happens, right? In America, you don't get proven. We don't know where we're going to go yet. I mean, Hassan, to be fair, you've got to, you've got to, you've got to, you. You are very successful. I agree with you. You in China or in the Soviet Union would be killed if you were critical of that regime.

I would definitely be jailed. You'd definitely be jailed. So that's the difference between these countries and America. It's not a big mac. It's freedom. No. So I love that you brought that up because I agree with that. I'm from Turkey, a country that has never had the First Amendment or Freedom of Speech.

And ironically enough, the current regime, the person in charge of the current regime, Richard Taibardoan, was jailed in the past for a poem that he wrote for incitement, right? He read a poem about Altitude, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. and he was jailed, and now he's one of the most ruthless jailers of the press in the country. Right. Now, so I come from that background. I can't go back to Turkey, for example, for these reasons. I've written about Turkey extensively, and, you know, let's just say the administration is not super fond of me in my perspective.

Having said that, that is the reason why I want the First Amendment to remain in the United States. America, even though, as I brought up earlier, there have been instances throughout American history where the First Amendment has been actively violated or threatened. There are still contemporary examples of violations of the First Amendment. One example I will use is the anti-boycott divestment and sanctions laws that exist in the United States of America. Famously was Bernie Sanders and Diane Feinstein, rest in peace, who actively called it out. Two prominent Jewish politicians in the country, it's a, these are laws. directly written by A-PAC that dictate that if you want to become a schoolteacher in the state of

Texas, for example, you have to sign a loyalty pledge to ensure that you never protest against the state of Israel. It's ridiculous, right? And it's a direct violation of the First Amendment. So there is encroachment towards the First Amendment. Well, that will always happen because people will always contest it. But the point I'm making to is when you compare China and the Soviet Union and Venezuela to America, you are not, that is not an accurate comparison. It's not an accurate comparison. But if you recall earlier, I just said, I'm worried that we here in the United States of America are now moving in that direction in terms of social repression, in terms of political repression. And this is something that I very much fear. And I think the entry point to this is usually around Israel and what people decry as anti-Semitism. But that's not where it's going to end. If you look at the Trump administration's

active the active initiatives of the administration is taking yesterday my friend kat abogzal who used to be a reporter who is now running in illinois for congress was indicted she was indicted because she participated in the protest against ice outside of an ice facility and there are videos of her getting slammed to the ground in the concrete but this militarized massed federal police force right not only they beat her up, which was already ridiculous to begin with, but then they also chose to indict her. There are examples of students writing for their student newspaper and getting kidnapped and thrown into an immigrant detention facility, whether it be Mahmoud Khalil, who still has an ongoing legal case for being a student activist, a student protester, and having a green

card while doing it. We have the same thing in our country in different ways. I hear you. Sorry, the reason I'm interrupting you is we've moved sideways from the topic. So remember where we started this conversation, right? So just to address your point. Repression didn't start in China by everybody being like, all right, it's over. We're throwing you in jail. It builds up to it, is what I'm. And it's entirely dependent on the starting point. Because if you were looking at China, if you're looking at the Chinese Civil War, post-World War II, 30 million Chinese people have been slaughtered ruthlessly by the Japanese imperialists. Like, that's a very different material, that's a very different set of material circumstances

for the end of that civil war and to develop governance. Similar to the U.S.S.S. I'm just trying to bring you back to the central argument, with central discussion we're having. Francis made the point that when the government is in a position to be authoritarian, where it seems to inevitably end up in every communist country in the history of the world, right, that is a situation which inevitably then leads. to levels of repression of the kind that you will not see in America for 100 years. Hold on.

I take your point about individual protesters or individual people who've made statements about a highly controversial issue today. We have the same thing in our country where people are being sent to prison for tweets that Dave Datton, right? Left and right. We've got Palestine action on the left. We've got right-wing people criticizing immigration. So I agree with you.

The direction of travel in the West in terms of freedom of expression is not good. And I've made that point in my book and elsewhere. But that is not the same as the point we're trying to make, which is the system of government you are open to, based on our discussion today, at least, inevitably leads to authoritarianism, which inevitably leads to repression on a scale that a Western country won't imagine.

Isn't that, that's the reason that a lot of people are very worried about people like you who say they're open to communism. We all know smartphones are essential. but they've also become the ultimate surveillance machines. That's why we were so interested when former trigonometry guest Eric Prince created the Upphone. This isn't just another handset. The Upphone runs on unplugged OS, free from big tech ecosystems. It comes with a firewall that blocks third-party trackers and gives you

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The reason why the United States of America and countries that are under the security apparatus, the global security umbrella of the United States of America, have had a much more success with liberal democracy as opposed to all these other countries that are not in the, under the immediate security umbrella, is because it's been the domineering force around the globe, especially after the end of the Cold War, but even during the Cold War, it was a dominant force on the planet.

When you are the dominant force, you get to have these freedoms. Your people get to have these freedoms. Your people get to say whatever they want, because they're not a threat, right? I would be more of a threat in the respective nation that I'm in if they don't have that same level of security. And that is the reason why I'm very fearful, because as America's power on the global stage is waning, we are going to see more direct authoritarianism coming from Western nations as liberalism decays, as it did in the 20s and the 30s, and what came after that was a wave of fascism. Now, fascism at that time,

was seen as a revolutionary thing. It was seen as a new thing. In many instances, fascists were actually fashioning themselves as though they were like a different kind of socialist, even though they were mostly killing socialists and had their beef with socialists, and then they were able to align with liberals eventually and become the domineering authoritarian forces.

And I think you guys wouldn't disagree with me that, like, you know, Italy's Mussolini and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany were ruthless, fascist forms of governance. where there was unimaginable repression. My fear is that that is where capitalism inevitably leads. Why? If left unaddressed, because capitalism is always going to deteriorate.

It's slowly going to improve material conditions as opposed to feudalism. It's a far better system, for sure. It's far better than monarchies, right? I agree. But there will come a point where it outlives its usefulness and those who own the capital, the owners of capital, will have to make a decision. There's too much instability, there's too much chaos.

We need to restore order. And if they can't do that through liberal democracy, at least historically, especially when there is a counterbalance revolutionary socialism out there that they are genuinely fearful of, work stoppage is happening all around, and the flows of capital being disrupted and profit margins are threatened,

they end up finding fascism to be that domineering force that restores the law and order, so that people are still working in the factories, and any kind of dissent is directly and indirectly suppressed. And I fear that that is where we're moving in the United States of America, as America's global superpower status is threatened by the rise of China. So your thesis is that as a country, if a different kind of, was dominant, it was a global hegemon, they would have more freedom for their citizens. So you think the Chinese Communist Party would allow criticism of them if they were the dominant

country in the way? I think with respect to where they were in terms of like, I mean, the most maximumest position is the cultural revolution, right? Like if you look at the cultural revolution versus where China is now in terms of dissent, it's in comparison to the United States of America, yes, there's still heavy control over that sort of stuff. There's a lot of surveillance. Having said that, it has become far more tolerant as material conditions have improved. And that's my main thesis, is that countries, regardless of their individual forms of governance, as long as they are advancing the material needs of the broadest

subsect of the masses, and become like a domineering force on their own and have full sovereignty and full autonomy, they will inevitably become more tolerant to this kind of free. because this is the most successful way, I think, of making sure that the masses feel satisfied. Civil liberties is the most successful way that I think neoliberalism has become a hegemonic power. Beyond the endless militarism and whatnot, I think that that is the reason why people feel the way that they do in the United States of America, in spite of all of the alarm bells that are ringing about how, you know, economic devastation is imminent seemingly, or there's so much poverty and so much instability, and people still go, well, at least I got some freedoms, right,

as opposed to not having those freedoms elsewhere. So that's my main thesis, is that if they improve material conditions, they have to inevitably allow more civil liberties, more social liberties. So it's interesting what you've been saying about a matter of and that, you know, it's losing its power on the global stage. That is then reflected in more and more, shall we say, imbalance chaos in the actual society itself. And we've kind of seen that in a way with the assassination of Charlie Kirk,

with Luigi Mangione. I found some of your comments really interesting about Luigi, and I'd love to talk to you about them. So you've said, and correct me if I'm wrong, push back on if I'm wrong, that you think that he's innocent and unfairly maligned. How did you come to that position, if I'm correct? I mean, that's a meme for the most part.

What does it mean? It's a meme. The notion that someone is innocent until proving guilty or that he wasn't there, it's like a common thing that people do on TikTok and elsewhere as well. You don't think he's innocent? Well, I don't know. I don't know if he's the one that actually did or not. we'll see once the court case finalizes. But is he... Sorry, I may not understand what meme means in this context.

Like, I guess what I'm asking is when you say he's unfairly maligned, do you believe that or not? That's what I'm asking. Well, as far as unfairly maligned, it depends on where the quote is coming from. Because I could be talking about being perp walked or getting hit with a terrorism charge, which was actually taken off recently.

because the New York courts also found that it was over-extended to this case. I think there was a lot of panic around his actions, allegedly. And that is probably what I was talking about. If you were talking about that, but as far as, oh, Luigi's Innocent. It's just like a thing that people say. As far as innocent is a real deal. I think that is actually the more interesting conversation. Okay.

The reason that I now had a conversation with Ross Douth, about this on the New York Times, where he brought this up on numerous occasions. I think that people are experiencing tremendous anger and discontent, and one of the most visible aspects of that, one of the visible aspects of a system of health care that should not be privatized or should, at the very least, even if it's privatized, work to make sure that every single person is getting the adequate care that they need, otherwise they die, has created this environment of tremendous anger. It is almost virtually universalized the pain.

Every single American knows at least one immediate or distant relative that has suffered through chemotherapy as they have to hunt down their insurance provider to make sure that the thing that they were paying for, for years and years, the premiums, the costly premiums that they were paying into, actually end up helping them cover the cost of this life savings. quality care that they desperately need to survive. And I think a lot of Americans have so much discontent for that experience that they have seen personally that their immediate reaction, once, before they even found out who

had done the shooting, but their immediate reaction to who the victim was was met with a response that shocked me as well as I think many other people. What I mean by this, America's very draconian. They're very black and white. It's like you do a crime, you get punished. And a lot worse than you would get punished elsewhere, right? We talk about, you know, how Norway is much more understanding and much more rehabilitative in their prison structure because they're pussies. We throw you in jail and we torture you.

You have the death penalty. Yeah, we have the death penalty. In some states, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, in America's broadly, like American culture is broadly very receptive to that. We're fairly rugged in our approach to crime and punishment. And in spite of that, because of how much harm the private health care sector has done to so many different people in this country, I think they saw it as like, okay, well, this guy is the, now the faceless placeholder for the person, for the system that actually, you know, killed my grandparents.

You know, like, that's the way they saw it. I get the anger. which I don't think is healthy, for the record. Okay. Well, this is what I'm getting to is, like, I understand anger. And by the way, you know, I don't want to wait into the debate about American health care. I don't know a lot about it. I understand there's some really bad situations for people.

People should also know that in the UK, there's also lots of people who are dying without care because they're waiting for an operation for a year and a half, or they're waiting two months for a scan. But let's not get into that. No, but the NHS is, you're right. The NHS has had significant austerity measures implemented to it. The NHS budget keeps growing every year, but it doesn't matter. Because the population is grow. Let's not get into it.

What I'm saying is I understand people's anger. What I don't understand is why that would make Luigi Mangione, who allegedly killed this guy innocent. Because that's where we started, right? Why do people say he's innocent? The way people see it, and I'm not subscribing to this notion, but the way that I think people see it is, are you familiar with the concept of social murder?

No. Engels wrote about this. He said that the systematized death and destruction of the masses is oftentimes hidden. It's oftentimes invisible. I think private health care is a great example of this, where it's to the recipient, to the victim or the victim's families, they see that as murder, right? They see that as an unnecessary death that took place. And they feel that pain all the same in the same way that Brian Thompson's family, I'm sure, was, and it still is mourning the death of Brian Thompson. There are millions of Americans out there that have individuals in their lives that they loved,

loved ones, immediate loved ones, distant relatives that they've seen suffer in their last, in their final moments as they go through the process of trying to figure out the paperwork in a system that is designed to, let's be real, take as much money as possible from you in the form of premiums, and then create a profit incentive by refusing to pay for the healthcare. With Hassan, I get all that and I empathize with that pain that those people feel. But what I'm getting at is you said he's innocent, then you said it's a meme. You say it's just a thing that people say. What I'm trying to understand is...

The reason why people say that is because I think... Their anger doesn't make him innocent, right? No, of course not. If he shot a man who runs a healthcare company, health care insurance company. Yeah. And they are angry with health care in America. That doesn't make him innocent. right? It doesn't. So isn't you and them saying that just flat out wrong? Well, my reason for saying

it is because you're innocent until proven guilty. But as far as what everyone else is saying, or if I'm to analyze it, which I do as a part of my job, what I'm trying to explain to you guys is that from their perspective, it's revenge. And this is an very, very unhealthy feeling to have. This is why I talked about with Ross Dahl, the concept of adventurism. This is a sense of adventureism. This is something that traditional Marxists actually are very critical of. Adventurism does not lead to any sort of serious changes, any sort of serious revolutionary changes, especially. And all it does is create an environment of instability. I think that the perfect solution to ensure that this never happens, to ensure that there's no level of discontent that bubbles up to this

degree that would require a mechanism of enforcement by the government to enact stability, of course, which would also be just as violent, if not even more brutal to a larger percentage of the population to ensure that there is another, you know, Luigi Mangioni-style situation is good legislation, is fixing the systemic problems. Luigi Mangioni is the breaking point. Luigi Mangioni is the perfect demonstration of the system failure. killing people. And I think that Luigi Mangione and the response to him has been one of the clearest examples that I have seen in a country like the United States of America where people are normally

supposed to be like horrified by a cold-blooded murder in the middle of the day. Their response being much more receptive to the action shows me that there is so much pain in people's immediate experiences that they recognize this instability. They don't have a vehicle to communicate it. They don't have a vehicle to communicate this discontent. And they're simply moving into the least productive way to do politics, which is revenge, violent revenge. I think that that is something that we have to solve immediately, because it can't go on. You can't have more people just like randomly gunning people in the streets. That's not what a civilized society is supposed to work towards. That's instability, that's chaos. I don't want that.

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Click the link in the description or go to pure-dashgold.com slash trigger to get your free copy of the investor guide. That's Pure-gold.com slash trigger. take control of your financial future today. So one of the things that I found shocking with the assassination of Charlie Kirk is obviously the incident itself, but it's also the reaction and the rhetoric that went around it.

The people on the left who were celebrating it, which to me is, and to most right-thinking people, is absolutely abhorrent, and also the reaction on the left, and there were some people, particularly large influences, who's what they said was unforgivable. Where did you stand on it and what were your opinions on the whole incident? I mean, I was shocked.

It was horrifying, but mainly horrifying because, like, it's impossible for me not to have a personal stake in this because I was about to debate Charlie in two weeks, like two weeks prior to his assassination, or two weeks after his assassination, we were supposed to be debating at Dartmouth College. And this was a person that I had basically developed a political career in competition with, if that makes sense. Like I was on the left side, he was on the right side.

We debated plenty of times. We debated a politicon. We were very familiar with one another. And seeing that the number one fear that every person that does what I do, become reality in real time was shocking. It was devastating. As far as my opinions on it, I mean, I have, I had the misfortune of seeing it in real time happen as I was like trying to figure out what had taken place. And we were one of the first media outlets that actually broke the story. And my first thought was that this is going to

lead to even more violence, even more violence in the form of revenge, decentralized violence, and also that this is going to lead to state repression as well in an effort to stamp out any kind of political discontent or any kind of political dissent, which hasn't fully come to fruition yet, thankfully, but the administration certainly tried to use this as an opportunity to to build new guidelines around surveillance and build new surveillance targets in general. The Trump administration has this, they released a memorandum, national security memorandum that declared the intelligence communities to shift their priorities and attention of surveillance to Antifa, which they had previously declared a domestic terrorist organization,

which is not a designation that exists in the United States of America, because it is a direct odds with the First Amendment. This is the reason why the KKK is not considered domestic terror organization. This is the reason why the proud boys in the, and Atamoffin, which is like a neo-Nazi formation that tries to recruit from the military, none of these guys are, none of these organizations, even if you would normally consider them domestic terror organizations, are actually considered that.

So it was a severe violation of the First Amendment. the follow-up to the surveillance targets and the surveillance priorities, maybe even more fearful about where this administration was going, where they declared any sort of anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-American sentiment to be an indication of someone being an extremist, violent terrorist potentially. But then on top of that, there was even more vague things that they brought up. I think it was like American, being critical of the American moral family unit or something like that. Basically, it was just the, what the Republicans consider the entirety of the liberal, and all the way to, you know, extreme leftists or

whatever think about the Republicans was now up for grabs in terms of priority targets for the surveillance apparatus. And like I said, we don't know where this is going to go for the time being. It is directly at odds with the First Amendment, but there have been some instances where people have been indicted. Kat Abu Ghazali, like I said, who's running for office is one of the first high-profile

politicians that have been targeted in this way. And I worry that once free speech goes away and once due process goes away in this country, we are full-tilt fascist.

But do you I think that's a very valid point. My concern is as well, and it's the rhetoric that is getting ratcheted up on both sides, both on the right, but both on the left. So for instance, I'll give you an example. In my own country, we have Zara Solano, who's a very prominent left-wing politician. She said the words, we need to fight the fascists in Parliament. Okay. We need to fight them in the ballot books, and we need to fight them in the streets. Now, the problem is, If you ask most people what fascism is, I don't think they would be able to give you a clearer, coherent explanation or an analysis of the political ideology. Well, let's be honest. By fascist, she means people like reform who are not fascist. They are a center-right party. They're not fascist.

I don't know if I'd agree with that. But the point... Hold on a second. You think the Reform Party is a fascist. As it stands currently, is a nascent fascist parliamentary group that hasn't reached its... is full potentially. Could you define the same way that I would... Fascism in this instance? In the same way that I would say the modern Republican Party is, or was throughout most of his history,

a liberal party, a far right, but liberal party nonetheless, and it is becoming an illiberal or post-liberal party that is moving in the direction of fascism. Fascism is... what's the best definition for it? Palian genetic ultranationalism

a in-group out-group dynamic that is constantly seeking to destroy the out-group and dominate the out-group, even if the out-group is actually a part of civilized society, and surrounding itself with this mythologized understanding of this national or ethnic or religious mythology of the higher group. But it would also include authoritarianism, the end of one-party state. Like all of these? Not always, but yeah, usually. Usually, yeah.

So by which of those standards, would you say reform is a fascist or ne? I can't remember how you said a nascent fascist party. Well, the reason why I said it is because, I mean, Mussolini's fascist party was not a party that, that, that, I mean, Mussolini's fascist party was an active fascist party within the parliament before it became the centralized form of governance. But they said we are fascists.

I know, but that was because the word fascism was just being invented at that point. And therefore, it was still packaged as like a revolutionary, new, illiberal way. They didn't come into power. We now live in the post-World War II universe where, like, you can't say that you're fascists. So you think that if Nigel Farage, which is currently there leading the polls, you think that if he is elected, eventually he will suspend democracy. he will start pogroms against Muslims using the state, he will have a one-party state.

You think that's what this is heading? Bearing in mind that the chairman of Reform Party see your use if he's a Muslim. Yeah, still. It doesn't matter. I mean, there was Jews that worked within the Nazi government Kamashashire as well. It's just like there are always going to be people that come from this,

they come from the background of the targeted outgroup in general. And it doesn't even end with Muslims is what I mean. It's going to, it always has to, it always has to excise what it considers aberrations. And there is always, like with Nazi Germany, for example, the next stage, if they hadn't failed so dramatically in its endless militarism, would have most likely been to create the Uber Mensch structure. like the start going after people who were maybe brown-haired and didn't have blue eyes. Like it was, there's an endless expansion of that sort. And you think that's what reform will do. They'll suspend democracy.

They'll start a one party to say. I mean, this is super, super in the future if they actually get to that point. But I don't think that it is far-fetched to assume that, yes, reform through a process of initially reforms. I could totally see them getting to that, getting to that position. Yes. What's your basis for saying that, but? entirely dependent on how how material conditions unwind.

If it gets to a point where there's tremendous economic stability, then instead of solving those issues in the same way that the American movement, the Trump movement, is not solving these issues, they will continue to be a force

of political repression. But what's your evidence for this? This is a thing I don't understand. The evidence is the historical patterns that I'm looking at. The historical patterns of why fascism has been implemented in the past. And now, like I said, we live in a post-fascist world. We live in a nuclear world. The dynamic is different, okay?

So fascism will not come as a third way, as an outsider any longer. I think instead you will see far-right elements within liberal society, within the parliamentary structure, move in that direction. But my worry with this is, and this is why I... I'm not trying to like debate bro you or anything. I'm genuinely engaging with what you're saying. I hope you feel that, right? Yeah.

The issue I have in the context of the discussion we're having about Charlie Kirk is you've got a situation where people, you are calling reform fascists. I know some people in reform. They're not fascists. They don't believe in a one party state. They don't want to end democracy, right? We've had Nigel Farage on our show. It's very clear where he's, he's an old school Thatcherite kind of guy, right? But you're saying he's a fascist.

And my worry is... I think he will get there. Okay, you're saying he will get to fashion. Fair. If material conditions get to a point where people, there's mass instability in an effort to risk... It's a nascent fascist party

that in the right context will become fascist. I get it, right? And the same, not dissimilar to... But here's my point. The AFD, the nationalists in France. Reform is very different from the AFD, but it doesn't matter.

My point is this, if I thought the fascists were coming, I would feel it's my duty to participate in armed resistance against that. And my worry is part of where the political violence is coming from is people like you who are using this term, in my opinion, far too loosely and projecting historical analogies onto people that you're not that familiar with, actually. And then you're really putting a target on their back. And my worry is the reason Charlie Kirk was killed is there were far too many people calling

him a fascist, which he wasn't, right? And that's my concern with all of this irresponsible language, which I think it is. So what's interesting about the utilization of language here is the fact that you can't really point to a single Democratic Party politician that has celebrated Charlie Kirk's death. Sure. But you can actually, in many instances, point to Republican politicians that have made a mockery of the Democratic. And we've had people make that point in the show. You don't need to make it because we've had, but you're on the left. I'm asking you about the left.

The reason why I'm saying that is because, like, there are always going to be people on the right and on the left that engage in this kind of commentary as a reflection of how much discontent that they experience. But ultimately, if we're talking about... You're one of them. You are calling reform fascist. No, no, no, no. That's a totally...

First of all, my analysis on the way... Like, calling someone a fascist if they're exhibiting. fascist, historic fascist tendencies is perfectly valid. The consideration that this actually is like turning up the temperature as opposed to like directly calling for violence against a nascent fascist party as opposed to trying to deal with it through the existing means within the democratic structure is ridiculous. There's no comparison here. Fascist movement is when they initially, when they were initially forming, albeit in a much more violent, time engaged in street protests and there were counter protest against it.

Like, I am in favor of always exhausting all available options within the confines of liberal democracy. And I think what the problem is, is that a lot of people point to the endpoint of fascism and what they know is the end point of fascism and say, well, they have to be dealt with militarily. And the time for that is now. I'm saying the time for that is not here. And I hope that it never gets there so that we can successfully resist against.

growing fascist movements that are born out of initially distractions or red herrings that put the cross-airs on some of the more vulnerable populations and try to deal with it within the confines, within the existing confines of liberal democracy, and then try to get our politicians to address some of these material problems so that we don't have to exhibit the instability and even potentially a fascist form of governance that comes out of that instability that then at that point will be resisted against militarily through sabotage

or through direct acts of war. The issue that I have with your argument, Hassan, is this, is you're saying they're exhibiting sort of, you know, on the way to fascism. You can make that argument about Kirstama and go, we're on the way to communism. But you laugh, but there are people on the right who say that, right?

Do you feel like there are. Do you feel like they're also... But that's not my point of the... They're putting a cross-air on Kier-Stymer when they say that? Yeah, we don't have the same issues with communism, but I think if you describe people as communists in this country, I think you're putting the crosshairs on people. I really do, because there are people...

I mean, I get called a terrorist every day. I know, I think that's disgusting. That's putting cross-hairs on you. And I absolutely vehemently would say that is unacceptable. But my point is, when you use that language of facts, or Communists, these are labels that have a very, very real emotional trigger to people, understandably so. And what you have in this country is, unfortunately, there is a decent sway to the population

who have severe mental illnesses plus access to guns. And what inevitably happens is it leads to a Charlie Kirk situation. Or it leads to somebody on the left like you, you know, God forbid happening. Oh, I get a lot of death threats. Don't worry. No, but I do worry. Because it's a sign that a society is in crisis. And I think...

I agree. And I think that it's our responsibility, both people on this side, both people on your side, that we ratchet it down, that's hand. I think that if we're talking about increasing the tension, people in positions of power have a lot more responsibility than random citizens that are, in many instances, reacting to that.

In all due respect, we're not random citizens. We've both successful. We've both got huge. But no, no, I was just talking about, like, the broader left that you were talking about to say, like, oh, they're celebrating Charlie Kirk or whatever. But beyond that, in terms of applying analysis to the actions of any person, Charlie Kirk or Nick Fuentes or whoever, and say that these are people who are implementing a lot of bigoted tendencies, a lot of racist opinions, and moving the American political direction towards

fascist governance. I don't think that saying that you shouldn't be able to say that because you're invoking, you're invoking violent sentiment against your political opposition. It's crazy. I don't mind if people call me a communist. I don't mind if they call me a terrorist. It's not true, and it certainly makes a lot of people very angry and they want to talk to me all the time about how they want to kill me and come to my house and murder me and my family. But it is unfortunately a part of the political discourse. I wish it didn't exist. But having said that, I am never going to stop myself from making accurate assessments and warning people that at this stage, we are at the precipice of something far more dangerous, especially in Western liberal democracy as liberalism is

genuinely failing, and that collapse is most likely going to bring about a lot of fascist governance that will try to restore order in the most militant ways, and it will resemble historic fascist patterns. Hassan, look, firstly, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for entering to the spirit of debate in the way it's intended. Really appreciate it. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be. I mean, we did talk quite a bit about the collapse of liberalism around the globe. I guess in this instance, and I can't speak to all the other conversations that you guys have had, we didn't get to talk about Israel too much.

And that's something that I wanted to talk about, which has also exhibited historical patterns of fascism in and of itself, in a vein that is not dissimilar to what we're seeing in Western liberal democracies as well. All right. I wish we had more time. Maybe next time we can pick up some other topic. All right. Appreciate your time. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.