Latest / Pod Save America / Hasan Piker Has Thoughts on the Hasan Piker Discourse

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

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. This Sunday,
1:56
Speaker 3: Hasan Piker, someone I'm sure no one has a strong
1:59
Speaker 3: opinion about. Hasan stopped by the studio to talk about
2:01
Speaker 3: his move into electoral politics. He recently hit the campaign
2:05
Speaker 3: trail to stump for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. And to
2:08
Speaker 3: talk about, well... Everything you've seen in the news about
2:11
Speaker 3: him lately. We ended up talking about the many statements
2:14
Speaker 3: he's made that have sparked a discussion inside the Democratic
2:16
Speaker 3: Party about whether candidates should associate themselves with him and
2:19
Speaker 3: his audience. We also debated his views on Israel and Hamas,
2:22
Speaker 3: how he thinks about the words he chooses, and his
2:24
Speaker 3: theory of political organizing. It's a conversation you need to
2:28
Speaker 3: hear for yourself, so we will get right into it.
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3:01
Speaker 3: All right, here's Hasan Piker. Hasan, welcome back to the show.
3:09
Speaker 2: It's good to be back.
3:10
Speaker 3: You've somehow become the most argued about figure in democratic
3:13
Speaker 3: politics over the last few weeks. So I'd like to
3:15
Speaker 3: have a conversation about why that is. That is hopefully
3:18
Speaker 3: more nuanced and useful than much of the discourse.
3:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
3:21
Speaker 4: I mean, I go show how serious we are as
3:23
Speaker 4: a movement, as an opposition party, that this is the
3:27
Speaker 4: primary focus.
3:29
Speaker 3: Central to the discourse.
3:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
3:30
Speaker 3: Just a quick recap to set the table for people who,
3:33
Speaker 3: lucky for them maybe, haven't been following along. A few
3:36
Speaker 3: weeks ago, Third Way- Centrist Democratic think tank published a
3:39
Speaker 3: Wall Street Journal op-ed calling on Democrats to stop engaging
3:42
Speaker 3: with you. They describe you as anti-American, anti-woman, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic.
3:48
Speaker 3: Their evidence is a long list of things you've said,
3:50
Speaker 3: which we'll get into. They also specifically singled out a
3:53
Speaker 3: few Democrats, us, for inviting you to Crooked Con last year,
3:56
Speaker 3: Ro Khanna, and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, also a
4:01
Speaker 3: former Crooked host who a few of us have donated to,
4:03
Speaker 3: and who you campaigned with this week, which fueled even
4:06
Speaker 3: more controversy. Now, you and I scheduled this conversation weeks ago.
4:12
Speaker 3: I'm sure some people have had enough Hasan Piker discourse,
4:15
Speaker 3: but I do think it's an important conversation to have
4:16
Speaker 3: because even though you and I have different politics, we've
4:20
Speaker 3: actually debated our disagreements on this show. I think there's
4:23
Speaker 3: value in doing that in person in a format that's
4:25
Speaker 3: not mediated by algorithms or a fucking five-minute cable hit.
4:29
Speaker 3: So with all that said, here's where I want to start.
4:32
Speaker 3: I think the rallies with Abdul this week were the
4:35
Speaker 3: first time you've been a featured speaker at a candidate's
4:40
Speaker 3: actual campaign event. And I wonder how you, self-proclaimed Marxist anti-imperialist,
4:47
Speaker 3: decided to be a campaign surrogate for a Democratic candidate,
4:50
Speaker 3: even one as progressive as Abdul. What was your thinking there?
4:54
Speaker 3: And what has made you get more involved in Democratic politics?
4:59
Speaker 4: So I've been very involved in democratic politics for years
5:03
Speaker 4: at this point, but with AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Rashida Tlaib,
5:08
Speaker 4: Ilhan Omar, who I'll be interviewing later today. But I've
5:12
Speaker 4: never actively, I guess, stumped for a candidate. And I never,
5:16
Speaker 4: I didn't even realize, maybe I'm too like, I'm not
5:19
Speaker 4: old school enough to understand this. But for me, the
5:21
Speaker 4: difference between Abdul coming on my stream, which I've done
5:24
Speaker 4: many times prior to this, and me like going to
5:26
Speaker 4: Dearborn and us working out together and eating kebabs, is
5:30
Speaker 4: probably more significant than me going on a rally and
5:33
Speaker 4: like talking for five minutes in front of a live audience.
5:36
Speaker 4: So I never thought of that as like this major
5:40
Speaker 4: new step. I guess it is because the DC bubble
5:44
Speaker 4: was like freaking out about it where they're like, how
5:46
Speaker 4: dare you do this? This is the most devastating thing
5:48
Speaker 4: anyone's ever done. And, and, I like the guy. That's
5:54
Speaker 4: the reason why I did this. I trust him. I
5:56
Speaker 4: think he has a lot of great policy opinions. I
6:00
Speaker 4: think he is much more responsive to the needs of
6:02
Speaker 4: the base than some of the other Democrats that I've
6:06
Speaker 4: been very upset with for many, many years. And I
6:09
Speaker 4: think he's exactly the type of guy that the party
6:12
Speaker 4: needs to have more of. My goal has been very
6:14
Speaker 4: clear since Zoran, when we linked up during the primary,
6:19
Speaker 4: it was a very crowded field and And he was
6:21
Speaker 4: able to like cut through that noise and become a
6:24
Speaker 4: beloved mayor of New York.
6:26
Speaker 2: Now, um, I, I want.
6:29
Speaker 4: To get people into positions of power that, uh, I
6:34
Speaker 4: align with politically, even if we don't 100% agree. I
6:37
Speaker 4: even have disagreements with Zoran from time to time. I'll
6:39
Speaker 4: text him some stuff. I'll be like, yo, you know,
6:41
Speaker 4: cut this out.
6:41
Speaker 2: What are you doing?
6:42
Speaker 4: Uh, um, but, uh, at the end of the day,
6:45
Speaker 4: I understand that like politics is in some ways the
6:48
Speaker 4: art of the possible, right? Like I, and I see
6:51
Speaker 4: that I'm not, my expectation is never going to be someone, uh,
6:55
Speaker 4: coming out and advocating to seize the means of production.
6:58
Speaker 4: I'm a reformist, many to my left, which does exist
7:01
Speaker 4: for those of you out there. There are people who are, uh,
7:04
Speaker 4: further to the left than me who will say, uh, elections,
7:08
Speaker 4: bourgeois elections are unnecessary. And all you're doing is taking
7:11
Speaker 4: away revolutionary potential and feeding it back into the democratic party.
7:13
Speaker 4: You're a shepherd of, for the Democrats and therefore a reactionary,
7:18
Speaker 4: a social fascist even. But all of that stuff is
7:22
Speaker 4: gonna break the brains of your audience. I'm not even,
7:25
Speaker 4: I shouldn't even be getting into that. Yeah, I think
7:29
Speaker 4: if someone wants to improve the material conditions of the
7:33
Speaker 4: working class in this country, if someone says no to unnecessary,
7:37
Speaker 4: like endless wars and advocates to bring our productive output
7:42
Speaker 4: back home to work on ourselves, in some ways, not
7:44
Speaker 4: a dissimilar message to the lie that MAGA told about
7:47
Speaker 4: isolationism and no new wars and being the peace president.
7:51
Speaker 4: If someone actually identifies with that and wants to advance
7:55
Speaker 4: that agenda, I'm going to be there for them.
7:57
Speaker 3: Just to broaden it out, because I do think it's
8:00
Speaker 3: useful for people who don't know and are now wondering,
8:04
Speaker 3: what's he up to?
8:05
Speaker 2: What does he want?
8:07
Speaker 3: What is your theory of political change? How do we
8:10
Speaker 3: get from where we are now? What is the mechanism
8:14
Speaker 3: to get from where we are now to the world
8:16
Speaker 3: that you want to live in?
8:17
Speaker 2: Oh, great question.
8:19
Speaker 4: So I am a firm believer that one of the
8:24
Speaker 4: biggest issues in the United States of America, which is
8:26
Speaker 4: the heart of empire, one of the most capitalist countries,
8:29
Speaker 4: is a proto-capitalist country before capitalism and industrial revolution even happened,
8:34
Speaker 4: is the idea that most people do not have class consciousness.
8:39
Speaker 4: Most Americans don't understand that they're a working class. And
8:42
Speaker 4: that there are people who generate most of their revenue,
8:46
Speaker 4: most of their net worth off of capital accumulation. But
8:49
Speaker 4: the overwhelming majority of Americans, and the 99%, as Bernie
8:52
Speaker 4: likes to call it, they don't do that. They get
8:56
Speaker 4: a regular wage. They're not business owners. Or even if
8:59
Speaker 4: they're business owners, they oftentimes operate their own business. So
9:02
Speaker 4: the overwhelming amount of money that they're making, that they're
9:04
Speaker 4: putting in their pocket, is coming from their own labor.
9:07
Speaker 4: And they don't identify with that at all. Uh, they're,
9:11
Speaker 4: they're hopped up on American exceptionalism, American individualism. So my
9:15
Speaker 4: goal is to, to instill class consciousness in people and
9:18
Speaker 4: help them identify what would be more, um, like help
9:21
Speaker 4: them identify who is actually causing harm to them. And
9:25
Speaker 4: in my assessment, it's the billionaires and the corporations, uh,
9:28
Speaker 4: who actually control the levers of power in this country and,
9:31
Speaker 4: and not the vulnerable populations, the marginalized communities that the
9:35
Speaker 4: Republicans very effectively. Take people's frustrations and redirect them towards.
9:41
Speaker 1: Right.
9:42
Speaker 4: It's not a trans person or a Guatemalan migrant that's
9:45
Speaker 4: like raising your rent.
9:46
Speaker 2: It's your landlord.
9:47
Speaker 4: It's not a trans person or a Mexican undocumented immigrant
9:51
Speaker 4: that's working in a field that is responsible for why
9:55
Speaker 4: your grocery prices.
9:56
Speaker 2: Are going up. That's, you know.
9:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
10:00
Speaker 4: That's greedflation and corporate consolidation that's at the heart of
10:05
Speaker 4: that issue.
10:05
Speaker 3: And when you think about your own show and your
10:07
Speaker 3: own audience, like, what do you think actually changes people's minds?
10:11
Speaker 3: Like what has worked for you?
10:13
Speaker 4: I mean, talking to them and explaining to them exactly
10:16
Speaker 4: what I'm explaining right now, which is that, I mean,
10:18
Speaker 4: I had this conversation with Theo Vaughn where I felt like,
10:21
Speaker 4: you know, a light switch came on in his mind
10:23
Speaker 4: when we were having this back and forth, when I
10:26
Speaker 4: said exactly this thing about, you know, it's, it's not
10:28
Speaker 4: a trans person that's like hurting you at all, but the,
10:31
Speaker 4: isn't it weird that the Republicans are constantly angling it
10:34
Speaker 4: in that direction and never really talking about big corporations and,
10:37
Speaker 4: and Big Pharma and all of these capital owners, all
10:41
Speaker 4: these very powerful people that basically run the show in
10:45
Speaker 4: an almost bipartisan manner. And when I have that conversation
10:49
Speaker 4: with a lot of regular Americans, ordinary Americans that haven't
10:53
Speaker 4: put a lot of thought.
10:53
Speaker 2: Into it, they go, wait a minute, that does kind
10:55
Speaker 2: of make sense.
10:56
Speaker 4: I feel like that's not only do I think that
10:58
Speaker 4: that's true, but I also feel like it's a very
11:01
Speaker 4: effective way to try to.
11:04
Speaker 2: To unlock people's class consciousness. Yeah.
11:08
Speaker 3: And sort of build coalitions of people who are different.
11:12
Speaker 3: You have over 3 million followers on Twitch, 1.75 million
11:15
Speaker 3: on YouTube. I saw that you've done something like 20,000
11:19
Speaker 3: hours of live streaming that is all off the cuff
11:22
Speaker 3: political takes and responding to viewers in real time, which
11:26
Speaker 3: I imagine must be like constantly fighting with people in
11:29
Speaker 3: your mentions real time?
11:30
Speaker 2: Yes. No, exactly.
11:31
Speaker 3: I mean, so I am not surprised that you've said
11:34
Speaker 3: some stupid and offensive things. I'm even less surprised that
11:37
Speaker 3: you've said stuff that sounds even worse when it's clipped
11:40
Speaker 3: out of context.
11:42
Speaker 2: Here's what I'm wondering.
11:43
Speaker 3: As you've grown your audience and influence, and as you've
11:46
Speaker 3: gotten more directly involved in electoral politics, do you feel
11:49
Speaker 3: a responsibility to choose your words more carefully, or at
11:54
Speaker 3: least in ways that are less likely to be misconstrued?
11:57
Speaker 2: Yes and no.
11:58
Speaker 4: So yes, because obviously I don't want to cause any
12:03
Speaker 4: harm to any of the candidates that I'm associating with
12:05
Speaker 4: or this movement that I am obviously a part of.
12:08
Speaker 4: What I like to call the left flank candidates or
12:10
Speaker 4: the Berniecrats, people who are more responsive to the needs
12:13
Speaker 4: of the working class folks all.
12:16
Speaker 2: Around the country.
12:17
Speaker 4: I don't want to ever be a burden to them
12:20
Speaker 4: because being associated with them is not beneficial for me.
12:25
Speaker 4: The way that DC media perceives the situation is like,
12:28
Speaker 4: oh my God, he went on, he went out to
12:30
Speaker 4: stump for Abdul. All of a sudden he's like a
12:31
Speaker 4: legitimate political force. I'm like, I've been doing that already.
12:36
Speaker 4: Like I was infinitely more effective sitting at home and
12:39
Speaker 4: just talking shit.
12:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
12:41
Speaker 4: Right. then I am sitting in front of a live
12:45
Speaker 4: audience with like 600 people.
12:47
Speaker 2: Although that's still good.
12:49
Speaker 4: And I enjoy it personally, but like, and I do
12:51
Speaker 4: that for candidates that I trust, candidates that I want
12:54
Speaker 4: to endorse and fight for. But I'm already fundraising for
12:57
Speaker 4: a lot of these folks, right? Small dollar donations from
13:00
Speaker 4: all around the country keep flooding into all the campaigns
13:04
Speaker 4: that I work with. But yeah, I am cognizant of that.
13:09
Speaker 4: On the other hand, one thing that I'm, thinking about is, well,
13:13
Speaker 4: this medium lends itself so perfectly to being clipped out
13:18
Speaker 4: of context. And I think we are now in a
13:21
Speaker 4: media environment where that doesn't matter as much. I mean,
13:24
Speaker 4: Donald Trump's the president, right? Like he is the president.
13:28
Speaker 4: It's not just his words that are messed up, that
13:31
Speaker 4: galvanized some of the most reactionary forces in this country
13:33
Speaker 4: and normalized some of the most heinous, most toxic, repulsive
13:36
Speaker 4: types of politics. I mean, he ran on He campaigned
13:39
Speaker 4: on saying Haitians are eating cats and dogs. Like that's unbelievable.
13:43
Speaker 4: That's white supremacy through and through.
13:45
Speaker 2: And he won.
13:46
Speaker 4: So on the one hand, I think that we are
13:50
Speaker 4: now existing in a very different media environment than the
13:52
Speaker 4: one that like MSNOW, New York Times and CNN want
13:58
Speaker 4: to exist in.
14:00
Speaker 2: I think that that kind of stuff is over.
14:01
Speaker 4: Like you're a vulgar person as an independent content creator.
14:05
Speaker 4: I think most people don't care about that. Most people
14:07
Speaker 4: care about who you are and what your values are
14:09
Speaker 4: and what you represent. And I've been able to withstand
14:14
Speaker 4: these kinds of smear campaigns on even the independent side
14:18
Speaker 4: far before I ever drew the ire of RNC research department.
14:26
Speaker 4: And as a matter of fact, they're using a lot
14:28
Speaker 4: of the same clips that I've had to deal with
14:30
Speaker 4: that are circulating on the internet anyway. So it's not
14:34
Speaker 4: It doesn't bother me that much. It doesn't do anything
14:37
Speaker 4: to my audience. My audience knows what I stand for.
14:39
Speaker 4: They're listening to me for eight hours a day. They
14:41
Speaker 4: know exactly what my values are. I'm sure it might
14:44
Speaker 4: stop some people or maybe cause them to second guess
14:47
Speaker 4: whether or not they want to be charitable to what
14:49
Speaker 4: I have to say.
14:50
Speaker 2: And that's a problem. But at the end of the day.
14:53
Speaker 4: Most people that see that stuff go, wait a minute,
14:55
Speaker 4: I have the capacity to, I have free will. I can,
14:58
Speaker 4: I have the capacity to think critically, what's going on here?
15:01
Speaker 4: Why is the Republican party saying this, claiming that this
15:04
Speaker 4: guy is racist or claiming that this guy is a misogynist?
15:08
Speaker 4: When I know what the Republican party stands for, let
15:10
Speaker 4: me go check him out. And I think a lot
15:12
Speaker 4: of people do that. And then they check me out
15:14
Speaker 4: and then they realize, oh, they were just lying. Like
15:17
Speaker 4: that's that simple.
15:18
Speaker 3: And I have, experienced this myself and have thought about
15:21
Speaker 3: it over the last couple of weeks. Cause I'm like,
15:24
Speaker 3: if I had not, if I did not know you,
15:26
Speaker 3: if I hadn't interviewed you before, if I hadn't like
15:29
Speaker 3: been familiarized myself with your content, which I came to
15:34
Speaker 3: probably later than most. and I just read the coverage
15:37
Speaker 3: of the last couple weeks, I would be like, oh yeah,
15:40
Speaker 3: he's a fucking asshole.
15:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. To be fair, I am. I am an asshole.
15:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you're an asshole, I think, in different ways
15:46
Speaker 3: than you are being portrayed.
15:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.
15:49
Speaker 4: I'm an asshole to bullies. Like, I bully bullies. I'm
15:52
Speaker 4: an asshole to reactionaries across the board. I'm an asshole
15:55
Speaker 4: to Nazis. It doesn't matter to me. If you're right-wing,
15:58
Speaker 4: if you're a Nazi, if you're a reactionary, I'm not
16:00
Speaker 4: going to be nice to you. And I don't think
16:02
Speaker 4: we should be nice to them. They're not nice to us.
16:05
Speaker 4: They're not nice to, to, to random uninitiated people.
16:08
Speaker 2: They're, they're not nice to the.
16:09
Speaker 4: Entire swaths of the population. So yeah, if that's your ideology,
16:12
Speaker 4: if that's your worldview, I find that to be very damaging.
16:15
Speaker 4: I find that to be very toxic. I find that
16:16
Speaker 4: to be violent and dangerous. I'm going to fight back.
16:19
Speaker 4: I'm going to use some mean words every now and then.
16:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.
16:21
Speaker 3: Well, and it's, It's less the main words, right? At
16:23
Speaker 3: least for me, because I was looking through the hit list,
16:27
Speaker 3: which I want to get into here.
16:28
Speaker 2: All right.
16:28
Speaker 3: Or at least some of them. Because there's some where
16:31
Speaker 3: I'm like, that was clearly taken out of context, whatever.
16:33
Speaker 3: There's some where I think the underlying point is still
16:37
Speaker 3: worth debating or talking about. So the one I've seen
16:40
Speaker 3: just about everywhere is, I think this is the most
16:42
Speaker 3: common one, is your comment that America deserved 9-11.
16:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
16:45
Speaker 3: Which you watched back in 2019 by calling it inappropriate,
16:48
Speaker 3: a poor attempt at satire, and said that you meant...
16:51
Speaker 3: America the government, not Americans as people. But do you
16:56
Speaker 3: still think that America as a country deserved 9-11? Because
16:59
Speaker 3: saying America... or any country deserved to be attacked to
17:03
Speaker 3: me is different than saying you understand why they were
17:06
Speaker 3: attacked and what actions might have contributed to that attack.
17:09
Speaker 3: I get the blowback argument, but that is different than deserved.
17:13
Speaker 3: Deserved is more of a normative kind of.
17:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was me responding to Daniel Crenshaw, ironically enough,
17:19
Speaker 4: on the Joe Rogan experience where he was making this
17:22
Speaker 4: ridiculous argument that we have to go out and fight
17:26
Speaker 4: these people all the time.
17:27
Speaker 2: Because they hate us because they ain't us. And I
17:29
Speaker 2: was like, that's insane. That's not the reason.
17:32
Speaker 4: And this was actually echoed by Robert Kagan, one of
17:35
Speaker 4: the godfathers of neoconservatism just last week, where he came
17:41
Speaker 4: out and was like, yeah, actually, we have been messing
17:45
Speaker 4: around in the Middle East for upwards of 60 years.
17:48
Speaker 4: And that's precisely the reason why 9-11 happened. And that's
17:51
Speaker 4: precisely the reason why these guys say death to America
17:53
Speaker 4: and Iran, for example. So like, That was exactly the
17:57
Speaker 4: same sentiment that I've addressed a million times over. But
18:00
Speaker 4: of course, in this moment, it was a heated response,
18:04
Speaker 4: an impassioned response. And people will consistently use that against
18:11
Speaker 4: me over and over again. Some people hear that and
18:14
Speaker 4: they think, I understand exactly what's going on here. Some
18:17
Speaker 4: people hear that and go, how heinous. Oh, my stars
18:20
Speaker 4: and garters. I am clutching my pearls. I don't even
18:23
Speaker 4: want to learn what this is about. I don't want
18:25
Speaker 4: to understand what he's saying.
18:27
Speaker 2: His name is Hassan. He must be Al Qaeda. I mean,
18:31
Speaker 2: and that's fine.
18:31
Speaker 3: You also can like bring it to the present because
18:34
Speaker 3: like I have a very real fear right now that
18:36
Speaker 3: because of what Donald Trump has done in Iran, he
18:39
Speaker 3: has increased the risk of terror attacks on Americans abroad
18:44
Speaker 3: and maybe even here. And God forbid one of those
18:47
Speaker 3: happens again. we will know that it could be a
18:50
Speaker 3: result of, or at least Donald Trump will have contributed
18:53
Speaker 3: to that.
18:53
Speaker 4: 100% be a direct by-product of everything that we've done.
18:57
Speaker 4: It's like impossible not to recognize it at this point.
18:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
18:59
Speaker 3: And it's very easy at that point for me to say, Oh,
19:02
Speaker 3: now we know what led to that versus, yeah, you
19:05
Speaker 3: know what? We deserved it. Like, I wouldn't say that,
19:08
Speaker 3: but I would say like, I understand.
19:10
Speaker 4: Civilians don't deserve it. I mean, I'm, I'm anti-civilian murder.
19:13
Speaker 4: I'm anti-civilian death. That's like, One of my first principles
19:18
Speaker 4: is that I'm anti-imperialist. I'm anti-war for that reason because
19:22
Speaker 4: I don't want civilians to die. I don't want random
19:24
Speaker 4: people to die. I don't even want people to go
19:26
Speaker 4: out and die in the process of trying to kill people.
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22:47
Speaker 3: I want to stay on the theme of violence just
22:49
Speaker 3: for a minute because I think it connects to another
22:51
Speaker 3: comment of yours that's been circulating. This is one from January.
22:54
Speaker 3: Hamas is a thousand times better than a fascist settler
22:56
Speaker 3: colonial apartheid state.
22:58
Speaker 2: I stand by that.
22:59
Speaker 3: Well, so I will say this is the one that
23:01
Speaker 3: bothered me most when I first heard it. And I
23:03
Speaker 3: remember I remember having a reaction to it when I
23:05
Speaker 3: first saw it in January. Because I think even if
23:08
Speaker 3: you believe what happened in Gaza is genocide and what's
23:10
Speaker 3: happening in the West Bank is apartheid, those are different
23:14
Speaker 3: claims from Hamas is a thousand times better. Because Hamas
23:18
Speaker 3: is an organization that has massacred, raped, kidnapped civilians on
23:22
Speaker 3: October 7th. They've also been catastrophic for Palestinians by almost
23:26
Speaker 3: every measure. Governance, corruption, they made choices they knew were
23:30
Speaker 3: would result in mass civilian deaths of their own people.
23:33
Speaker 3: So my question is, when you say Hamas is a
23:35
Speaker 3: thousand times better, do you actually mean that? Or is
23:39
Speaker 3: that a rhetorical move or like a solidarity signal?
23:42
Speaker 2: I mean, it's all of the above. I do mean it.
23:45
Speaker 4: I think it's a rhetorical move because it frustrates a
23:47
Speaker 4: lot of people. I've also said I'm a harm reduction voter.
23:50
Speaker 4: I'm a lesser evil voter. And therefore, I would vote
23:51
Speaker 4: for Hamas over Israel every single time because it's I'm
23:56
Speaker 4: looking at the situation as a paramilitary organization that has
24:01
Speaker 4: a political party as well, a Politburo as well, that
24:04
Speaker 4: is entirely comprised not as an alien force but of
24:08
Speaker 4: orphaned children that have had their parents killed by an
24:12
Speaker 4: apartheid state that has been dominating the lives of Palestinians
24:18
Speaker 4: for decades. 80 years at this point. And they've done
24:21
Speaker 4: a genocide at this point as well. But like it
24:23
Speaker 4: started off with the Nakba and has only evolved as
24:27
Speaker 4: technology has gotten better to become more heinous. And Gaza
24:32
Speaker 4: is this hermetically sealed area that many people correctly point
24:37
Speaker 4: to as the world's largest open air prison before October 7th.
24:41
Speaker 4: So my perspective on this has always been that I
24:46
Speaker 4: think that Hamas's tactics, which I oppose at times, right,
24:51
Speaker 4: or it's like internal governance issues are secondary to this
24:56
Speaker 4: conversation because.
25:00
Speaker 2: It's like placing a lot of emphasis.
25:03
Speaker 4: On the Nat Turner rebellion or instead of talking about
25:08
Speaker 4: the much larger, much more consequential, much bigger harm that,
25:12
Speaker 4: you know, chattel slavery was to black people, to like
25:16
Speaker 4: sell black people and to rape them and treat them
25:20
Speaker 4: as though they weren't human. I think that's a far
25:23
Speaker 4: larger systemic force that is going to make the national
25:30
Speaker 4: rebellion look inconsequential in comparison to the greater harm. Same with,
25:34
Speaker 4: for example, the ANC. The ANC had a militant wing
25:37
Speaker 4: called the MK. I'm not going to try to even
25:39
Speaker 4: attempt to say it. And Nelson Mandela went to prison
25:42
Speaker 4: and was imprisoned by the apartheid state. And MK and
25:48
Speaker 4: the ANC did a lot of stuff to collaborators, the
25:51
Speaker 4: collaborators that have worked alongside the apartheid administration. They had
25:56
Speaker 4: a practice called necklacing, where they would put attire around
26:01
Speaker 4: the necks of collaborators and light it on fire.
26:03
Speaker 2: It was heinous practice.
26:05
Speaker 4: And it was, of course, condemned after the fact, but
26:08
Speaker 4: none of the people that were engaged in it, if
26:10
Speaker 4: I recall correctly, even in the Truth and Reconciliation Committee,
26:12
Speaker 4: were actually.
26:13
Speaker 2: Legally charged for it.
26:15
Speaker 4: Because there's this understanding when we look back at some
26:18
Speaker 4: of the more heinous things that resistance groups have done
26:21
Speaker 4: and militancies have done, We match that up against the
26:25
Speaker 4: far larger, far broader systematic violence that an entire people
26:30
Speaker 4: have been subjected to. And it makes me feel silly
26:32
Speaker 4: to consistently talk about what Hamas has done, especially when
26:39
Speaker 4: there has been an October 7 times a thousand, if
26:42
Speaker 4: not more than a thousand at this point, in the
26:45
Speaker 4: hands of Israel against the Palestinian population in its entirety.
26:48
Speaker 2: I mean, they're doing an October 7 to Lebanon right
26:51
Speaker 2: now as we speak.
26:51
Speaker 3: Just take it from the Palestinian perspective, don't you think
26:56
Speaker 3: Hamas's decision to attack on October 7th and to massacre
27:01
Speaker 3: civilians on October 7th was a catastrophic mistake for them,
27:04
Speaker 3: for the Palestinian people? Do you think the Palestinian people
27:06
Speaker 3: are in any way better off than they were before
27:09
Speaker 3: October 7th?
27:09
Speaker 2: No, of course not. But at the end of the day...
27:12
Speaker 2: That's why I'm asking more.
27:13
Speaker 3: It's more for me like a resistance movements, wherever they are,
27:17
Speaker 3: need to come up with strategies.
27:18
Speaker 2: And I think.
27:21
Speaker 3: I guess my view is, and I understand that there
27:23
Speaker 3: is a huge power imbalance here, but I think that
27:28
Speaker 3: resistance movements that engage in mass slaughter— or civilian targeting
27:36
Speaker 3: and all that. They just have less success than resistance
27:40
Speaker 3: movements that are nonviolent. I mean, it's obviously in history. Oh,
27:44
Speaker 3: I know, we've had a revolution here.
27:46
Speaker 2: I get it. I get armed revolution, yeah.
27:49
Speaker 3: But I do think if you look back over the
27:50
Speaker 3: last hundred years, nonviolent movements have been more successful than
27:53
Speaker 3: armed resistance movements.
27:55
Speaker 2: That's just the scholarship.
27:55
Speaker 4: I think they were hand in hand, but I think
27:57
Speaker 4: it was, it might've been Kwame Ture who said it.
28:01
Speaker 4: You can only shame someone who has a conscience. And
28:05
Speaker 4: if your enemy has none, it's impossible to get them
28:08
Speaker 4: to react to your civil movement. Because the Palestinians have
28:13
Speaker 4: tried civil movements. I mean, the Great March of Return,
28:17
Speaker 4: where hundreds of Palestinians were sniped directly by the Israeli
28:21
Speaker 4: occupation forces. And they openly celebrated that too. They said,
28:25
Speaker 4: we have an accounting of every single bullet that we
28:28
Speaker 4: shot at the Palestinians.
28:30
Speaker 2: And then they had to delete that.
28:32
Speaker 4: I mean, this is just, the tip of the iceberg
28:34
Speaker 4: as far as the war crimes galore that we're talking about,
28:36
Speaker 4: because even the everyday maintenance of apartheid, which Israel is,
28:42
Speaker 4: is an incredibly violent endeavor. That maintenance requires you to
28:45
Speaker 4: constantly be a military force that is ever present, that
28:48
Speaker 4: is dominating and ritualistically humiliating and subjugating millions of people.
28:53
Speaker 4: So my perspective is always looking at this from the
28:58
Speaker 4: perspective of the people that are being dominated rather than
29:02
Speaker 4: placing a lot of the emphasis on structural violence or
29:06
Speaker 4: rather on state-backed violence, which we have a predisposition to
29:11
Speaker 4: lean into no matter what. Someone fights back against a cop,
29:15
Speaker 4: the automatic suspicion is, well, the police are actually maintaining
29:18
Speaker 4: law and order, so it must be a criminal, right?
29:21
Speaker 4: That might not always be the case. So I like
29:23
Speaker 4: to look at this stuff with a more open-minded framework
29:27
Speaker 4: where I can try to a day like October 7
29:34
Speaker 4: that was unbelievably violent, right? And I think it's pretty
29:39
Speaker 4: clear that 75 years at that point of ethnic cleansing
29:43
Speaker 4: and apartheid and subjugation was a big part of the
29:48
Speaker 4: driving force. And as far as Hamas goes, we oftentimes
29:51
Speaker 4: talk about just Hamas. It's almost like a catch-all term.
29:55
Speaker 4: Hamas is only one component of the Palestinian resistance. The
29:58
Speaker 4: Al-Aqsa flood was actually conducted not only by Hamas, but
30:01
Speaker 4: Palestinian Islamic Jihad's own militant forces, PFLP, DFLP, and numerous other,
30:06
Speaker 4: even including Fatah militias as well that still existed in Gaza.
30:11
Speaker 4: So this was a military operation initially that was conducted
30:17
Speaker 4: by virtually every single active organization inside of Gaza. So
30:22
Speaker 4: it's not, that's why I always say like Hamas is
30:24
Speaker 4: not an alien entity in the way that we think
30:27
Speaker 4: about them or we say, oh, they are, they're these
30:31
Speaker 4: like evil oppressors of the Palestinian people. Are there disagreements
30:34
Speaker 4: within the Palestinian coalition against Hamas's governance?
30:38
Speaker 2: Absolutely. No people are a monolith. But the only thing
30:42
Speaker 2: that every.
30:43
Speaker 4: Single Palestinian, with the exception of those who work for
30:46
Speaker 4: like the Atlantic Council or whatever, that are there to just,
30:49
Speaker 4: you know, do regime propaganda, do Israel propaganda, with the
30:54
Speaker 4: exception of those people, Every Palestinian I've ever talked to,
30:57
Speaker 4: Christian Palestinians, who might even have major disagreements with Hamas,
31:02
Speaker 4: who might even be critical of Hamas, will always say
31:04
Speaker 4: the number one thing that we want is the end
31:07
Speaker 4: of the occupation, is the end of the apartheid. The
31:10
Speaker 4: number one thing we want is dignity and sovereignty. And
31:14
Speaker 4: that is what Hamas has been trying to achieve militarily.
31:18
Speaker 3: The message that you just said that Palestinians want, an
31:21
Speaker 3: end to the occupation, dignity, self-determination.
31:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.
31:26
Speaker 3: For people who are not as familiar with the issue
31:29
Speaker 3: as you and, but that you want to reach and
31:32
Speaker 3: that you want to, cause I assume the purpose here
31:35
Speaker 3: is to build a movement, um, that supports Palestinian self-determination.
31:40
Speaker 3: And if I was someone who didn't know a lot
31:42
Speaker 3: about it and I knew that Hamas committed October 7th,
31:47
Speaker 3: and then I heard a message that, um, uh, Hamas
31:51
Speaker 3: is better than Israel. Um, I would be less receptive
31:55
Speaker 3: to the person delivering that message than I would someone saying,
31:59
Speaker 3: look what Israel has done and what the Palestinian people
32:02
Speaker 3: really want, aside from this organization that is serving them poorly,
32:06
Speaker 3: is most Palestinians just want dignity and they want an
32:09
Speaker 3: end to the oppression. I would feel like, okay, I
32:12
Speaker 3: could get behind that and I'm going to be more
32:14
Speaker 3: attracted to that message.
32:15
Speaker 4: I have a policy of saying the truth unconditionally and
32:20
Speaker 4: standing by my principles and Even if that's sometimes hard
32:24
Speaker 4: to hear. And that's precisely what I did after October
32:27
Speaker 4: 7 on October 8 when I went live and talked
32:30
Speaker 4: about the systematic forces that have led to October 7.
32:35
Speaker 4: And a lot of people were not receptive to that
32:37
Speaker 4: message at all. And some of which actually became haters
32:40
Speaker 4: of mine and left the community where I lost a
32:43
Speaker 4: third of my entire community for like the first year.
32:47
Speaker 4: of Israel's maximum violence, Israel's genocide, where people simply did
32:53
Speaker 4: not want to hear that message at all. But I know,
32:57
Speaker 4: and I knew back then, that as long as I
33:00
Speaker 4: say the truth, that one, history will vindicate me, and two,
33:04
Speaker 4: as long as I say the truth, there will always
33:06
Speaker 4: be people who are more charitable and more receptive to
33:09
Speaker 4: that regardless. Because I see no reason in sheltering people
33:13
Speaker 4: from that perspective. Do I obviously manage in a much
33:17
Speaker 4: longer format and a much longer conversation like the one
33:19
Speaker 4: that we're having. Um, yes, I am, uh, obviously more
33:22
Speaker 4: capable of explaining that position, but I think saying what
33:26
Speaker 4: I said there that, uh, Hamas is a thousand times
33:29
Speaker 4: better than Israel cuts across in that cuts across that
33:32
Speaker 4: narrative in a way that I think even liberals have
33:35
Speaker 4: to think about because, uh, someone who is, is immediately
33:40
Speaker 4: reactive to that kind of sentiment that goes, wait a
33:43
Speaker 4: But Israel is a liberal democracy.
33:45
Speaker 2: It's the only democracy in the region. Why is he
33:48
Speaker 2: saying that?
33:50
Speaker 4: They understand at least one part of it where they think, okay,
33:54
Speaker 4: he's saying, you know, Hamas killed 1,200 people. You know,
33:58
Speaker 4: a third of them were soldiers. A third of them were,
34:00
Speaker 4: you know, military people who were like, you know, active
34:06
Speaker 4: duty in the military. and then civilians as well, Israel
34:11
Speaker 4: has done that, you know, a thousand fold to the Palestinians.
34:14
Speaker 4: So I think like, even in the most reductive ways,
34:18
Speaker 4: even in the most reductive ways to try to comprehend
34:21
Speaker 4: what I'm saying there, people can understand that. Like, I
34:24
Speaker 4: think people are not stupid. We assume that they're stupid.
34:27
Speaker 4: I will tell you, well, I'll just, I'll tell you
34:28
Speaker 4: how it landed with me. Cause I was like, it
34:30
Speaker 4: wasn't like, Oh wait, why did he say that? Israel's
34:32
Speaker 4: some great, I was like, Israel has committed just horrific atrocity.
34:36
Speaker 4: Like what I, like I, you know i have moved
34:38
Speaker 4: so far on this but i'm like hamas is they're
34:41
Speaker 4: fucking what did they do like october 7th was catastrophic
34:45
Speaker 4: for them it was also like we've all seen the
34:48
Speaker 4: images like like kids and and people and a lot
34:51
Speaker 4: of like very these are like leftist peaceniks israelis at
34:56
Speaker 4: a concert and they fucking massacred them and i'm like
34:58
Speaker 4: these people are like i just want to have and
35:01
Speaker 4: i do think it's important in politics to have like
35:02
Speaker 4: universal principles right which is like If violence is always wrong,
35:08
Speaker 4: civilian violence is always wrong, targeting children and women always wrong,
35:13
Speaker 4: no matter which side does it. And I do think
35:15
Speaker 4: that it's important, not just from a moral perspective, but
35:18
Speaker 4: from like a building a political coalition perspective to say,
35:22
Speaker 4: if I think one thing is wrong, one action is
35:24
Speaker 4: wrong on this side, then it also has to be
35:25
Speaker 4: wrong on the other side.
35:26
Speaker 3: Yeah. even if there is an obvious power imbalance and
35:30
Speaker 3: even if there is a history.
35:31
Speaker 2: But we don't always do that is my point. Oh,
35:33
Speaker 2: I know. We don't do that when the dust is settled.
35:35
Speaker 4: We don't do that when the historic forces have played
35:39
Speaker 4: itself out and we look back at it. And I
35:44
Speaker 4: don't see a reason not to apply that same interpretation.
35:48
Speaker 2: Because I see both, I see the civilians on both.
35:52
Speaker 4: Sides as human beings worthy of dignity and And I
35:54
Speaker 4: think a lot of people don't realize that they do
35:56
Speaker 4: have a little bit of an implicit bias where we've
35:59
Speaker 4: been trained as Americans living here. during the global war
36:02
Speaker 4: on terror to collateralize one side and to see the
36:07
Speaker 4: other side as like a European style country that's under attack.
36:10
Speaker 4: So we have the capacity to see the violence that
36:13
Speaker 4: Israelis are subjected to as like real human beings, maybe
36:17
Speaker 4: even your neighbor dying in the hands of scary brown people,
36:21
Speaker 4: as opposed to Palestinians that die, entire city blocks reduced
36:24
Speaker 4: to rubble is something that we've seen so many times
36:27
Speaker 4: on the TV, whether it be the Syrian civil war, whether.
36:29
Speaker 2: It be, you know, Iraq, Afghanistan.
36:33
Speaker 4: So we automatically collateralize the lives of those Palestinians.
36:37
Speaker 2: So that's part of the reason why- And I will say.
36:39
Speaker 3: That those images are, I think, the most, like that
36:43
Speaker 3: is what personally has moved me the most is seeing
36:46
Speaker 3: those images. Like I remember like in, you know, post
36:50
Speaker 3: October 7th and we talked about it a lot here
36:53
Speaker 3: and the student protest movement and all the craziness over that.
36:58
Speaker 3: And I remember thinking like it was– there was that
37:01
Speaker 3: Columbia student who I think was eventually suspended or expelled
37:06
Speaker 3: or whatever for saying like you're lucky I didn't kill
37:10
Speaker 3: more Zionists and all that. And I remember thinking to
37:13
Speaker 3: myself like I– someone says something like that. And it's
37:17
Speaker 3: just a reaction that I can't even, like, it's just
37:20
Speaker 3: a human reaction to be like, oh, maybe I don't
37:22
Speaker 3: want to be with these. Like, this is bad. I
37:24
Speaker 3: don't want to hear, like, now you want to kill Zionists? Like,
37:27
Speaker 3: that's fucking crazy. That's hurting your movement. Yeah, no, I've been, look,
37:30
Speaker 3: here's the thing.
37:31
Speaker 4: I've been around protest movements my whole professional media career
37:35
Speaker 4: for a very long time.
37:36
Speaker 2: I've been doing this for a decade plus. There's going
37:37
Speaker 2: to be cringe people.
37:38
Speaker 4: There's going to be passionate people that say unhinged things
37:40
Speaker 4: that I totally disagree with.
37:42
Speaker 3: Yeah.
37:42
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, um, this is exactly
37:44
Speaker 4: what happened with black lives matter as well, where, you know,
37:46
Speaker 4: there'd be like, uh, uh, there'd be someone that says like, yeah,
37:50
Speaker 4: fry them like bacon. And then the media would laser
37:52
Speaker 4: in on that to disparage the entire movement. So I
37:54
Speaker 4: have a policy of looking at what the actual movement represents.
37:59
Speaker 4: Do I identify with those values? Do I agree with
38:01
Speaker 4: them rather than, uh, you know, key, uh, key offenders
38:07
Speaker 4: that have said something that I consider to be heinous
38:10
Speaker 4: as well. Right. Um, And I don't spend a lot
38:12
Speaker 4: of time or put a lot of emphasis on people
38:16
Speaker 4: like that because I've been to these campuses, I've been
38:19
Speaker 4: to these encampments. They were some of the best organized
38:24
Speaker 4: movements I have ever seen. They had messaging discipline. They
38:28
Speaker 4: had all of the right things. They had protest marshals
38:31
Speaker 4: that would keep everything intact. They refused to talk to
38:33
Speaker 4: the media unless they had someone who was doing communication
38:36
Speaker 4: for the entire encampment that would talk to the media.
38:38
Speaker 4: And they still got brutalized. UCLA is the one I
38:41
Speaker 4: went to. I couldn't believe it. These pro-Israel groups.
38:48
Speaker 4: Uh, were they, they set up these, uh, massive, uh,
38:52
Speaker 4: th th they set up this like massive auditorium or
38:54
Speaker 4: not auditorium. I don't know what it's called, but like
38:55
Speaker 4: a projector where they, uh, were blasting, uh, October seven
39:00
Speaker 4: footage and, and calling these, uh, student encampment, uh, student protesters,
39:04
Speaker 4: like heinous words. They threw fireworks into the encampment. They
39:08
Speaker 4: brutalized these students. And these weren't students that were doing that.
39:11
Speaker 4: These were pro Israel people that just came from around
39:13
Speaker 4: the area.
39:14
Speaker 1: Right.
39:15
Speaker 4: And I couldn't believe what I saw where like the
39:18
Speaker 4: media's coverage was either both sides in it or oftentimes
39:21
Speaker 4: siding with the pro-Israel, people.
39:24
Speaker 2: So for me, again, I look at.
39:28
Speaker 4: The values and I also don't place a lot of
39:32
Speaker 4: emphasis on whatever the media narrative is because we love
39:34
Speaker 4: doing that. We love having a conversation about whose feelings
39:38
Speaker 4: are being heard in the Western world when the conversation
39:41
Speaker 4: should be about who's dying in Gaza.
39:53
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41:12
Speaker 3: use the code crooked at checkout for 15% off. On Zionism,
41:20
Speaker 3: you know, being an anti-zionist when you say you're an
41:23
Speaker 3: anti-zionist are you rejecting the premise that a jewish homeland
41:28
Speaker 3: is a legitimate project at all or is your anti-zionism
41:32
Speaker 3: specifically about the policies and practices of the israeli state
41:36
Speaker 3: as it exists today.
41:37
Speaker 2: I think zionism is a fascist ideology um.
41:40
Speaker 3: It really it truly how do you because i do
41:42
Speaker 3: i think part of the issue i think this is
41:43
Speaker 3: like a definitional issue for two yeah obviously but i
41:47
Speaker 3: do think that like there's probably a lot of um
41:50
Speaker 3: I think a lot of probably secular liberals and even
41:52
Speaker 3: secular Jews in this country who think of Zionism as.
41:55
Speaker 2: They do.
41:57
Speaker 3: Like, I like the idea of a Jewish homeland and
42:00
Speaker 3: do not think ethnostate, do not think any of that
42:03
Speaker 3: other stuff. And then there's people who, you know, who
42:06
Speaker 3: very much define it as, no, it must always be
42:10
Speaker 3: a Jewish majority state. And if democracy and equal rights
42:14
Speaker 3: come second, then so be it.
42:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
42:16
Speaker 2: Well, that is what has happened.
42:17
Speaker 1: Right.
42:18
Speaker 2: That is, which is de facto.
42:19
Speaker 3: That's what we have right now.
42:20
Speaker 4: It's de facto what we have right now. And it
42:22
Speaker 4: was something that we were always going ahead in the
42:25
Speaker 4: direction of, um, because I mean, even Stalin was a
42:29
Speaker 4: big advocate of Israel initially. I mean, they were the
42:31
Speaker 4: ones who trafficked weapons in 1947. That was you that
42:35
Speaker 4: were used on Palestinian villages, uh, by way of Czech Slovakia, right.
42:39
Speaker 4: The illegally going through the blockade. Um, there was this
42:42
Speaker 4: idea that like initially, uh, labor Zionism and, and, you know,
42:46
Speaker 4: Ben-Gurion was a socialist, right? Like this was going to
42:48
Speaker 4: be like almost like a Marxist project. Uh, but, but it,
42:52
Speaker 4: it was just ethnic cleansing from the start. And my
42:56
Speaker 4: assessment on Zionism as an ideology is, is not that
43:01
Speaker 4: different from Albert Einstein's assessment of Zionism. Cause when he
43:04
Speaker 4: saw Dear Yasin and these, uh, and the, and the
43:07
Speaker 4: violence that the early Zionist brigades were engaging in Haganah, Irgun,
43:13
Speaker 4: these militia movements before the IDF existed, before Israel existed.
43:18
Speaker 4: And he was actually asked to be the first president
43:21
Speaker 4: of Israel. He wrote about what Zionism was turning into.
43:26
Speaker 4: And he warned that what he was seeing was exactly
43:30
Speaker 4: what the Nazis were doing. And he warned about it.
43:33
Speaker 4: He said, if we do not have a commitment to binationalism,
43:38
Speaker 4: if we do not have a commitment to the people
43:39
Speaker 4: that are already living there, the atrocities that I'm seeing
43:44
Speaker 4: that Zionist brigades are engaging in right now, committing right
43:48
Speaker 4: now against the Palestinians is going to turn into exactly
43:51
Speaker 4: what the Nazis have done.
43:53
Speaker 2: And he was right.
43:54
Speaker 4: He saw it ahead of time. I mean, he knew
43:56
Speaker 4: what the Nazis were. He lived through it, right? And
44:00
Speaker 4: so my perspective is shaped by people who.
44:04
Speaker 2: Have done.
44:06
Speaker 4: Either extensive research on this, like Israeli historian, like Ilan Pape,
44:11
Speaker 4: Avi Shalem, or people who have lived through this process,
44:16
Speaker 4: many of which are Jews who have lived through this
44:18
Speaker 4: process and could not comprehend it. One of the first
44:21
Speaker 4: people that I interviewed after October.
44:24
Speaker 2: 7 was Dr.
44:25
Speaker 4: Ofer Kasif. He is the only Jewish anti-Zionist in the Knesset.
44:30
Speaker 4: There's a Palestinian citizen of Israel who's also an anti-Zionist
44:34
Speaker 4: in the Knesset.
44:34
Speaker 2: They have like two people, basically. It's a lone voice,
44:39
Speaker 2: but they exist.
44:40
Speaker 3: Right.
44:41
Speaker 4: I care about the perspective of people like that as well.
44:44
Speaker 4: So I so I develop a better understanding of like
44:46
Speaker 4: what it looks like to have to fight fascist forces
44:49
Speaker 4: in the country that you're a part of, in the
44:51
Speaker 4: country that you love, in the country that you want
44:52
Speaker 4: to change in a better change towards a better future,
44:56
Speaker 4: towards a better trajectory, because I see it as the
44:59
Speaker 4: same fight that I'm fighting here in America, because Zionism.
45:04
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, like I said, is
45:06
Speaker 4: an ethno-religious supremacist ideology that is exterminationist. And it's, in
45:10
Speaker 4: many respects, no different than what we see in MAGA, right?
45:14
Speaker 4: Christian nationalism. That is a fascist ideology. I don't think
45:19
Speaker 4: you would disagree with that, right? No, and there's also ethno-nationalism.
45:23
Speaker 4: Israel has laws that have put this into place. But
45:26
Speaker 4: there's de facto ethno-nationalism in many different countries around the world.
45:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
45:31
Speaker 3: You could make the same critique of Hindu nationalism, the
45:33
Speaker 3: Turkish treatment of the Kurds. Also, again, Japanese immigration policy.
45:38
Speaker 4: Things that I oppose vehemently and things that I talk
45:40
Speaker 4: about extensively, oftentimes people will yell at me for my
45:44
Speaker 4: criticism of both of those things.
45:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
45:46
Speaker 3: You've said you abhor anti-Semitism. You've drawn a distinction between
45:49
Speaker 3: being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.
45:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
45:51
Speaker 3: I take that at face value. Here's the harder question.
45:54
Speaker 3: Where exactly do you draw the line? Because I think
45:56
Speaker 3: most serious people agree that— that anti-Zionism isn't automatically anti-Semitism,
46:01
Speaker 3: but there is disagreement where the line runs in specific cases.
46:05
Speaker 3: And I think some of your rhetoric, whether it's out
46:08
Speaker 3: of context or not, has landed in the gray zone,
46:10
Speaker 3: like calling ultra-Orthodox Jews inbred, comparing liberal Zionists to liberal Nazis,
46:16
Speaker 3: the pig dogs comments.
46:19
Speaker 4: The pink dog one is, I didn't even know that
46:21
Speaker 4: was like a thing. Did you know that it was like, yeah,
46:24
Speaker 4: I don't. Cause even Jake Tapper, when he brought it up,
46:26
Speaker 4: he's like, I don't know what this is, but it
46:28
Speaker 4: was like clearly reading a quote from in front of him.
46:30
Speaker 2: He's like, well, I know I.
46:31
Speaker 3: Went through it and I'm like, I've seen it. And
46:33
Speaker 3: there's like, well, there's a, it's, it's one of those.
46:35
Speaker 3: I didn't even, it's like one of those things.
46:37
Speaker 2: I guess the.
46:38
Speaker 3: Larger question is like, how do you think about, as
46:40
Speaker 3: you're talking about this, drawing the line. In a way
46:44
Speaker 3: where you're like, okay, if I'm going to, you know,
46:46
Speaker 3: I'm anti-Zionist, I want to make this argument, I want
46:49
Speaker 3: to talk about the project, but I really don't want
46:51
Speaker 3: anyone to take it as anti-Semitic.
46:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.
46:54
Speaker 3: Not just because it hurts your feelings, but because you're
46:57
Speaker 3: trying to. you're trying to build a political movement.
47:00
Speaker 1: Yeah.
47:00
Speaker 4: Well, it's not just because I want to build a
47:02
Speaker 4: political movement. It's because I also genuinely abhor anti-Semitism. I,
47:06
Speaker 4: so it's a great question. It's one that I answer
47:08
Speaker 4: all the time because this is a real problem right
47:10
Speaker 4: now where like anti-Semitism is growing in this country. It's
47:13
Speaker 4: undeniable as it historically always has whenever Israel does these sieges,
47:18
Speaker 4: the mowing of the lawn operations and it's doing it
47:21
Speaker 4: and it's tying itself to Judaism in this very sinister way.
47:25
Speaker 4: And people see that and they think, okay, well, you know,
47:29
Speaker 4: this is the Jewish state doing this. Maybe it's the Jews, right?
47:33
Speaker 4: There's already a lot of people that have these opinions about,
47:38
Speaker 4: you know, Jewish billionaires and Jewish millionaires controlling the media,
47:41
Speaker 4: controlling the banking system. So like it pairs up perfectly
47:45
Speaker 4: with what they're seeing. And we've definitely seen a great
47:48
Speaker 4: deal of that, right? So what I try to do
47:52
Speaker 4: is stress the importance and showcase that this attitude is
47:57
Speaker 4: not monolithic inside of the American Jewry. The reason why
48:02
Speaker 4: I think it's very important, even though I'm a Muslim guy,
48:05
Speaker 4: so most people, when they hear me say that, they
48:07
Speaker 4: don't give a shit, right? Because they're like, you're goisplaining.
48:11
Speaker 4: But the reason why I stress that importance is because
48:19
Speaker 4: it's true. I mean, there's a funny saying. It's like, what,
48:23
Speaker 4: two Jews, three opinions, right? Like, no group is monolithic,
48:28
Speaker 4: and Jewish Americans certainly are not. They have very different
48:31
Speaker 4: assessments of what's going on, and we see that. We
48:34
Speaker 4: see that in the polling that.
48:36
Speaker 2: Is conducted, right?
48:37
Speaker 3: We see it within Israel as well.
48:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
48:39
Speaker 4: No, I mean, well, Israel is a little bit different because, like,
48:42
Speaker 4: at a certain point, there is an overwhelming force.
48:45
Speaker 2: Of people who are on board. Well, you're there.
48:46
Speaker 3: It's a different perspective.
48:47
Speaker 2: I get that.
48:47
Speaker 3: Yeah.
48:50
Speaker 4: What I show always to people is that there's a
48:53
Speaker 4: difference between a lot of Jewish institutions and how Jews
48:57
Speaker 4: actually feel. And I actually sometimes will make a plea
49:00
Speaker 4: to not only my Jewish fans, but just to whoever
49:03
Speaker 4: is listening, and hopefully people will take away this message
49:06
Speaker 4: as well, to try to separate Israel from their institutions
49:11
Speaker 4: and to show themselves as, if you consider what Israel
49:15
Speaker 4: is doing to be repugnant, then stress that there is
49:21
Speaker 4: that distinction between a Jewish institution that you might be
49:24
Speaker 4: a part of and how much they celebrate Israel or
49:27
Speaker 4: how much they try to fundraise for the IDF, for example,
49:30
Speaker 4: or do settler fairs, which are illegal inside of synagogues, right?
49:35
Speaker 4: Because From my experience, there are a lot of Jewish
49:39
Speaker 4: advocacy organizations in this country and a lot of Jewish
49:42
Speaker 4: institutions in this country that simply masquerade as Jewish institutions
49:47
Speaker 4: and Jewish advocacy organizations when they're just pro-Israel advocacy organizations
49:51
Speaker 4: and institutions. The ADL is a great example of this.
49:54
Speaker 4: The Apartheid Defense League, as I like to call them,
49:56
Speaker 4: led by Jonathan Greenblatt, is very obviously not invested in
50:03
Speaker 4: combating anti-Semitism at all. and is simply using antisemitism in
50:06
Speaker 4: this cynical way to attack critics of Israel, prominent critics
50:09
Speaker 4: of Israel that have spent decades fighting antisemitism and still
50:13
Speaker 4: continue to do so, myself included. And that separation, that
50:19
Speaker 4: lack of separation rather, is teaching Americans who have not
50:23
Speaker 4: been inundated with Zionist indoctrination, who don't have any association
50:29
Speaker 4: with Jews other than watching Seinfeld and thinking, oh, You know,
50:32
Speaker 4: they control the media, but they make good movies, right?
50:34
Speaker 4: Like that's the attitude of the average American about Jewish
50:37
Speaker 4: people who are some, I think the most celebrated religious
50:40
Speaker 4: minority in this country, most celebrated religious group in this country.
50:43
Speaker 4: I don't know where it is right now, but that's
50:45
Speaker 4: what the polling is consistently. And the least is I
50:48
Speaker 4: think Mormons, weirdly enough.
50:50
Speaker 2: But anyway, surprising.
50:53
Speaker 4: But the way that people see it is they watch
50:59
Speaker 4: heinous violence unfold. And they see the Israeli state call
51:04
Speaker 4: itself the Jewish state. And then they see Americans, American
51:08
Speaker 4: Jews and Jewish institutions say, yes, that is the Jewish state.
51:13
Speaker 2: Zionism is important to us. It is the most important thing.
51:16
Speaker 4: We are tied to Israel in this inseparable way. We
51:20
Speaker 4: do care about it. And you as an American should
51:22
Speaker 4: shut up. You as an American should be canceled. You
51:24
Speaker 4: as an American should not have a job if you
51:28
Speaker 4: speak out against Israel because you're being anti-Semitic. What lesson
51:31
Speaker 4: are we teaching Americans? We're teaching them that every Jewish
51:36
Speaker 4: person demonstrates dual loyalty, which is false.
51:38
Speaker 2: It's a trope. It's a lie. It's not true.
51:42
Speaker 4: But that's what we're teaching people. And we're also teaching
51:45
Speaker 4: people that everything that Israel does, it does for Jews.
51:50
Speaker 4: Every time we call Israel the Jewish state, that's what
51:52
Speaker 4: we're doing. That's what we're teaching regular Americans. So I
51:54
Speaker 4: try to combat those forces on a daily basis. And
51:57
Speaker 4: ironically enough, I would say this like at my size,
52:01
Speaker 4: in the streamer universe especially, where most of the prominent
52:07
Speaker 4: Israel critics are Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and
52:11
Speaker 4: many other right-wing forces, they don't care about making that distinction.
52:16
Speaker 3: I do.
52:17
Speaker 2: So it blows my mind that groups like the Apartheid
52:21
Speaker 2: Defense League spend most of their time trying to deplatform me.
52:27
Speaker 3: And when you hear them too, you'll hear I mean,
52:30
Speaker 3: some of them are just all conspiracy all the time,
52:32
Speaker 3: but like, you know, a Tucker Carlson's a good example.
52:35
Speaker 3: There'll be like a, he'll do like a, a very
52:37
Speaker 3: thoughtful critique of Israel and then suddenly like launch into
52:41
Speaker 3: a conspiracy where you're like, okay, now we're just, this
52:44
Speaker 3: is just now we're into anti-Semitic territory. Now it's like
52:47
Speaker 3: Jewish conspiracy for this and that and the other thing.
52:49
Speaker 3: And it's like, they do the, yeah, it's, it is a,
52:52
Speaker 3: it is a real difference. But I do think that like, look,
52:54
Speaker 3: I find as someone who has, Has not always talked
52:57
Speaker 3: about this issue, but has a lot recently. Like it
52:59
Speaker 3: feels often like a minefield as you're talking about it,
53:03
Speaker 3: because I very much like the idea that I would
53:08
Speaker 3: say anything anti-Semitic is like horrifying to me. You know,
53:11
Speaker 3: I believe anti-Semitism is very, very real. But it is
53:15
Speaker 3: quite difficult because a lot of very pro-Israel voices will say,
53:19
Speaker 3: that's anti-semitic by because of you've.
53:22
Speaker 4: Critiqued israel there's also a lot of stuff that israel
53:26
Speaker 4: does or or israel advocacy groups do that objectively does
53:31
Speaker 4: look insane when you explain it like like one of
53:35
Speaker 4: the things that i've talked about uh or one of
53:38
Speaker 4: the things i talked about early on was like sometimes
53:40
Speaker 4: you hear something that israel has done and you're like.
53:45
Speaker 2: Did they, did they do that?
53:46
Speaker 4: Are you being antisemitic right now? And then you find out,
53:48
Speaker 4: you're like, oh my God, they did do that. That
53:49
Speaker 4: is insane. So like, there is that element of it too,
53:53
Speaker 4: where on the one hand, a lot of defenders of
53:55
Speaker 4: Israel will call like anything that you say blood libel, like.
53:58
Speaker 2: Oh, Israel kills children. That's blood libel. How dare you
54:00
Speaker 2: say that?
54:00
Speaker 4: It's like, well, I've seen it. Like I've seen the children,
54:02
Speaker 4: the numbers are there. And I've also personally seen some
54:06
Speaker 4: of the children that have been murdered with these bombing campaigns.
54:09
Speaker 1: Right.
54:10
Speaker 4: So that already undermines the, the impact of, of blood
54:13
Speaker 4: libel as a, as a way to like, to have
54:16
Speaker 4: a conversation about blood libel to begin with, which is
54:18
Speaker 4: a real historic wrong, a real historic way to, to associate, uh, uh,
54:24
Speaker 4: people of the Jewish faith with like, you know, uh,
54:26
Speaker 4: whatever heinous acts that, uh, uh, led to the pogroms.
54:30
Speaker 3: Right.
54:31
Speaker 4: Um, so you're undermining antisemitism every time you do that,
54:34
Speaker 4: but then also simultaneously you're teaching people that like, This
54:39
Speaker 4: is a good thing. Like, this is something that you defend.
54:41
Speaker 4: This is something you consider to be defensible. And you're
54:43
Speaker 4: doing that while you're associating with Judaism. The way I
54:48
Speaker 4: explain it, I delivered a speech at the Oxford Union
54:52
Speaker 4: a year and a half ago at this point. And
54:55
Speaker 4: the way I explained it to people, and at the time,
54:58
Speaker 4: the change in attitude in the Western world was not
55:02
Speaker 4: so calcified, right? But my positions were obviously the same.
55:08
Speaker 4: And I explain to people, look, what a lot of
55:11
Speaker 4: people don't understand with this dangerous conflation, I will give
55:14
Speaker 4: you a warning as a Muslim American who has lived
55:17
Speaker 4: in the United States of America since 2009 and has
55:20
Speaker 4: experienced Islamophobia. A lot of people think that Israel is still,
55:27
Speaker 4: you know, an acceptable country. it's no longer an acceptable country.
55:30
Speaker 4: It will become a pariah state if it hasn't already.
55:33
Speaker 4: It has always been a pariah state for the third world,
55:35
Speaker 4: but now in the first world, in the developed nations,
55:39
Speaker 4: people are beginning to recognize Israel as a pariah state.
55:42
Speaker 4: The previous ways of defending Israel by saying it's the
55:46
Speaker 4: most moral nation on earth, it's the only democracy in
55:48
Speaker 4: the region, no matter how racialized those tropes were and
55:50
Speaker 4: how silly they were, it worked because most people were
55:53
Speaker 4: oblivious to what Israel does.
55:55
Speaker 2: Now they know.
55:56
Speaker 4: So This would be equivalent to me running around and saying,
56:01
Speaker 4: you can't criticize Saudi Arabia because the Mecca is there,
56:05
Speaker 4: Medina is there, the Kaaba is in Saudi Arabia. You
56:08
Speaker 4: cannot criticize Saudi Arabia's blockade against Yemen, for example, because
56:12
Speaker 4: you're Islamophobic.
56:13
Speaker 2: This would be the equivalent of me running.
56:14
Speaker 4: Around as a Muslim saying, I'm a Muslim and our institutions,
56:18
Speaker 4: our mosques, are fundraising for ISIS. And if you criticize ISIS,
56:23
Speaker 4: if you dare say anything about the Islamic State that
56:26
Speaker 4: are trying to implement a caliphate, that's true Islam, you're Islamophobic.
56:31
Speaker 4: And then the media was also defending that position. And
56:35
Speaker 4: all of our institutions were defending that position.
56:37
Speaker 3: Well, I also think it's easier now for, unfortunately, very unfortunately,
56:42
Speaker 3: for Americans to understand because we are seeing something like
56:45
Speaker 3: that happen here in the United States under Trump. But also, like,
56:49
Speaker 3: I think this will sound crazy, but I thought one
56:53
Speaker 3: of the most compelling things, maybe one of the only
56:55
Speaker 3: compelling things Joe Biden said after October 7th, right after
56:58
Speaker 3: October 7th, was.
56:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. Yeah, it was that.
57:02
Speaker 3: He warned, he gave a warning to Israel, don't do
57:05
Speaker 3: what we did after 9-11. Yeah. Don't make that mistake. No.
57:10
Speaker 2: We know what happens. And then he went and hugged Benjamin. Right.
57:13
Speaker 3: We all know what happened from there. But I think
57:15
Speaker 3: about that often because– and now all these years later
57:19
Speaker 3: as Trump's second term has– he's charging towards an authoritarian
57:25
Speaker 3: state as well. I'm always like how can you– like
57:28
Speaker 3: of course– It's easy to imagine another country doing something
57:32
Speaker 3: like this because it's happening here.
57:34
Speaker 4: Yeah.
57:34
Speaker 2: No, that's my argument. Exactly.
57:36
Speaker 3: That's why it's not– it doesn't have to do with
57:38
Speaker 3: anything about the specific religion. It's what happens when people
57:41
Speaker 3: are in power and they decide to use that power
57:43
Speaker 3: to oppress other people. Like that is the– All right.
57:46
Speaker 3: Let's get back to American politics before we close.
57:49
Speaker 4: I mean, I would say Israel politics is American politics.
57:51
Speaker 2: It is right now, yeah.
57:51
Speaker 4: Just like you also brought up. And not just like
57:54
Speaker 4: foreign policy. I mean, what you're talking about is correct.
57:56
Speaker 4: It's the same exact fascist forces. And sometimes it's the
57:59
Speaker 4: same exact like ethno-religious attitudes, like the ethno-religious supremacist attitudes
58:04
Speaker 4: that is, you know, the guiding principle of this growing
58:09
Speaker 4: MAGA fascist movement in this country.
58:10
Speaker 3: Stephen Miller.
58:15
Speaker 1: I would like the answer to be zero, frankly. Rocket
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59:35
Speaker 3: We got midterms in November. 2028 Democratic primary is already beginning.
59:38
Speaker 3: We had a bunch of potential candidates for a Sharpton's
59:40
Speaker 3: event in New York. The DNC winter meeting kicked off Thursday.
59:44
Speaker 3: How do you see your role in electoral politics over
59:47
Speaker 3: the next few years?
59:48
Speaker 2: I see myself as a megaphone for the people.
59:52
Speaker 4: Uh, and, uh, if, I mean, I have, I'm fortunate
59:56
Speaker 4: enough to have a fairly large platform at this point. So, uh,
1:00:00
Speaker 4: the way I look at it is, look, I have
1:00:02
Speaker 4: a lot of door knockers, phone bankers, fundraisers in my community, community, uh,
1:00:07
Speaker 4: you know, community leaders, uh, and people that are, you know,
1:00:10
Speaker 4: running for office as well, running for office themselves, um, uh,
1:00:14
Speaker 4: labor organizers, uh, and the media as well. So like
1:00:18
Speaker 4: these are some of the most tuned in people, the politics,
1:00:20
Speaker 4: they're tuning in the politics when it's boring. They're tuning
1:00:22
Speaker 4: in the politics before the primaries.
1:00:24
Speaker 2: Right.
1:00:25
Speaker 4: And they're certainly tuning in, in the general, um, you
1:00:28
Speaker 4: want to talk to these people because even if size wise,
1:00:32
Speaker 4: they might not be the biggest force. Like I don't
1:00:34
Speaker 4: have the same audience as like Joe Rogan, for example, um,
1:00:38
Speaker 4: their impact is outsized.
1:00:40
Speaker 2: So you want to be able to convince these people that.
1:00:42
Speaker 4: You're their guy and that A lot of politicians have
1:00:47
Speaker 4: recognized that. And it's really interesting because these past two weeks,
1:00:51
Speaker 4: they've been writing all of these different things about how
1:00:54
Speaker 4: dangerous it is and Democrats shouldn't associate with me. And
1:00:57
Speaker 4: then they're like, associate with us the third way instead.
1:00:59
Speaker 4: And it's like, no one fucking cares about that. But
1:01:02
Speaker 4: I have fielded hundreds of requests at this point leading
1:01:07
Speaker 4: up to the primaries. After those articles came out, it
1:01:12
Speaker 4: probably 10x' d.
1:01:14
Speaker 2: It's insane. People were just like, yeah, okay, I don't care. Yeah, please, please,
1:01:18
Speaker 2: let's do campaigns. Yes, yes.
1:01:23
Speaker 4: And places that you would find very interesting as well.
1:01:26
Speaker 4: It's not just like, you know, radical lefty candidates either.
1:01:29
Speaker 4: There are a lot of people who are like, this
1:01:31
Speaker 4: is clearly a massive audience. You have the capacity to
1:01:35
Speaker 4: communicate with, you know, young men especially. And we want
1:01:38
Speaker 4: to be able to reach out to those people that
1:01:40
Speaker 4: we've lost. So, you know, that's it.
1:01:44
Speaker 3: Before this last media cycle for you, there was one,
1:01:47
Speaker 3: I think, in March. You said you wouldn't vote for
1:01:49
Speaker 3: Gavin Newsom against J.D. Vance in 2028. You'd vote third party.
1:01:54
Speaker 2: I don't even think that's going to be a problem.
1:01:56
Speaker 3: A lot of people, including people who share a lot
1:02:01
Speaker 3: of your critiques of the Democratic Party, hear that and
1:02:03
Speaker 3: think this is the problem. When the stakes are concrete,
1:02:07
Speaker 3: a Vance presidency, another four years of what we're living through.
1:02:10
Speaker 3: The people who say they're building a movement would rather
1:02:13
Speaker 3: preserve their own power than do what winning requires and
1:02:17
Speaker 3: hold your nose and vote for what you believe would
1:02:19
Speaker 3: be the lesser of two evils. How do you respond
1:02:22
Speaker 3: to that? I realize that you are a California voter,
1:02:24
Speaker 3: but you have fans and audience, I'm sure, in a
1:02:28
Speaker 3: lot of the swing states. What do you tell people
1:02:31
Speaker 3: who follow you, who respect you, who happen to live
1:02:33
Speaker 3: in swing states as we head to 2026 and 2028?
1:02:36
Speaker 3: I want the Democratic Party to treat me.
1:02:37
Speaker 2: Like a never-Trumper.
1:02:40
Speaker 4: I want the Democratic Party to treat me like a
1:02:42
Speaker 4: triple Trump voter, okay? Because it turns out that's all
1:02:46
Speaker 4: they're tuned into. So if what it takes for the
1:02:49
Speaker 4: Democrats to turn around and be like, wait a minute,
1:02:51
Speaker 4: we're losing this guy.
1:02:52
Speaker 2: We have to win him over again or whatever.
1:02:54
Speaker 4: Instead of just like taking my vote for granted as
1:02:56
Speaker 4: they've done so over and over again for the left flank. Um,
1:03:00
Speaker 4: and then, you know, I'm going to say things that
1:03:02
Speaker 4: may or may not end up being true, but it
1:03:04
Speaker 4: doesn't matter. We're so far out from the election anyway,
1:03:06
Speaker 4: that it's like, I'm just saying, look, now is your
1:03:09
Speaker 4: opportunity to find a good candidate instead.
1:03:11
Speaker 3: But you see, but you see, as we head into
1:03:14
Speaker 3: these that like, after what we've lived through these last years,
1:03:17
Speaker 3: the stakes and the stark difference between even a Democrat who, um,
1:03:22
Speaker 3: you and I might find, uh, not up to par
1:03:26
Speaker 3: to say the least. versus Vance or whoever the fuck
1:03:29
Speaker 3: they put up.
1:03:30
Speaker 2: Of course.
1:03:30
Speaker 4: I mean, I, I hate Republicans. I oppose them. I,
1:03:34
Speaker 4: I say that all the time. I think that the
1:03:36
Speaker 4: Republicans are, are far more damaging. The biggest terrorists, uh,
1:03:40
Speaker 4: the biggest domestic terrorists in this country, the biggest terrorists
1:03:42
Speaker 4: internationally is the Republican party. And not only that, but
1:03:45
Speaker 4: it's just like, uh, they like, I, I want to
1:03:49
Speaker 4: fight against the, the growing fascist movement in this country.
1:03:53
Speaker 4: My frustration with the Democrats is their conciliatory attitude towards
1:03:57
Speaker 4: that and their lack of investment in this struggle, this
1:04:01
Speaker 4: idea that, you know, on the one hand, you say
1:04:04
Speaker 4: Donald Trump's a dangerous force.
1:04:05
Speaker 2: I see that.
1:04:06
Speaker 4: I recognize that. But then you turn around and you
1:04:08
Speaker 4: take on his anti-immigrant narratives and anti-immigrant messaging from the
1:04:14
Speaker 4: 2020 election that you won and decide you're going to
1:04:17
Speaker 4: be the sincere candidate that ends up, you know, dealing
1:04:20
Speaker 4: with the growth of migration in this country, it's a failure.
1:04:25
Speaker 4: If you were serious about being an anti-fascist, if you
1:04:27
Speaker 4: were serious about combating these forces, you would take it
1:04:30
Speaker 4: more seriously. You would do everything you can. You wouldn't
1:04:33
Speaker 4: try to win by your own coalition that you want
1:04:36
Speaker 4: to build and parade Liz Cheney around and act as
1:04:39
Speaker 4: though you're going to win with Never Trumpers or whatever.
1:04:42
Speaker 4: You would do everything in your power to talk to
1:04:44
Speaker 4: people on your left flank. And we're seeing that now
1:04:49
Speaker 4: better than ever before with people like Plattner in Maine, right?
1:04:52
Speaker 4: That like you can actually be an outspoken leftist that says,
1:04:57
Speaker 4: I'm pro-Medicare for all.
1:05:00
Speaker 2: I'm an anti-Zionist. I'm anti-genocide. You have candidates like.
1:05:04
Speaker 4: That winning, at least, you know, inshallah, winning in places
1:05:08
Speaker 4: like Maine and unseating Republicans.
1:05:10
Speaker 2: Even you got Dan Osborne. Like not every single one
1:05:12
Speaker 2: of these guys is the same, right?
1:05:14
Speaker 3: They don't always have, like all their positions are going
1:05:17
Speaker 3: to line up. Yeah.
1:05:17
Speaker 4: They're not, they're not uniform, but there is this broad
1:05:21
Speaker 4: left flank, left populism, Bernie crat attitude that I'm seeing
1:05:26
Speaker 4: from a lot of candidates. And, and I think the
1:05:29
Speaker 4: centrist forces are very afraid of the movement that is
1:05:33
Speaker 4: building the movement that is brewing on that side because, um,
1:05:37
Speaker 4: They don't want 1,000 Zorans. I want 1,000 Zorans to bloom, okay?
1:05:42
Speaker 4: Let 1,000 Zorans blossom all around the country.
1:05:45
Speaker 2: That's what I want.
1:05:46
Speaker 3: He's very popular right now.
1:05:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:05:48
Speaker 3: Do you want to say something nice about Jon Ossoff,
1:05:51
Speaker 3: or do you like him enough that you realize saying
1:05:54
Speaker 3: something nice about him would be bad?
1:05:56
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think... See, that's the thing.
1:05:59
Speaker 4: I don't believe that, because if I believed that I
1:06:02
Speaker 4: would be a burden to campaigns, I wouldn't go out
1:06:04
Speaker 4: and campaign with people that I like.
1:06:07
Speaker 1: They.
1:06:07
Speaker 4: They, ironically enough, did think that way back in the
1:06:10
Speaker 4: day when I first actually worked with the Ossoff campaign
1:06:13
Speaker 4: and then the Raphael Warnock campaign, the first election that
1:06:15
Speaker 4: they did.
1:06:16
Speaker 2: Right.
1:06:17
Speaker 4: And I work with them privately. I set it up
1:06:19
Speaker 4: for them to do something on Twitch. But I did
1:06:21
Speaker 4: it on background because they were worried that like associating
1:06:24
Speaker 4: with me even back then would be bad for Georgia.
1:06:27
Speaker 2: I don't agree. I don't think that's the case at all.
1:06:29
Speaker 2: You look at all these places, you look at like
1:06:31
Speaker 2: some of the most conservative places in like Virginia and uh, or,
1:06:35
Speaker 2: or West Virginia even, and you, you pull them on,
1:06:37
Speaker 2: on things like, what do you think about the DSA?
1:06:39
Speaker 2: What do you think about Israel? And it's like, they're
1:06:42
Speaker 2: a lot closer to me than they are to an
1:06:43
Speaker 2: establishment Democrat.
1:06:45
Speaker 1: Right.
1:06:45
Speaker 4: And, and the same goes for Medicare for all. So like, um,
1:06:48
Speaker 4: the idea that, that we have not also polarized in
1:06:53
Speaker 4: the exact same way that the Republicans have is very silly.
1:06:56
Speaker 4: We're in a very different political environment now, and we're
1:06:58
Speaker 4: in a very different media environment right now. Um, And
1:07:02
Speaker 4: it's actually mainstream media that's trying to play catch up.
1:07:04
Speaker 4: It's actually the establishment Democrats that are trying to play
1:07:07
Speaker 4: catch up to where the public is actually at. Most
1:07:10
Speaker 4: people don't care about this stuff. They see the clips
1:07:13
Speaker 4: and they go, okay, that sounds kind of crazy. Let
1:07:17
Speaker 4: me go check this guy out. And then they hear
1:07:19
Speaker 4: what I have to say because I'm not a political
1:07:23
Speaker 4: operative that doesn't have his own platform. I'm a political
1:07:27
Speaker 4: operative with his own platform that is competitive with these
1:07:31
Speaker 4: other platforms that are speaking over me.
1:07:33
Speaker 2: So I'm endlessly accessible.
1:07:35
Speaker 4: You can just come and see what I have to say,
1:07:37
Speaker 4: see what I'm about, and very quickly realize that perhaps
1:07:41
Speaker 4: the way that I'm being presented in mainstream news is
1:07:45
Speaker 4: maybe not the right way. Maybe it's a little bit
1:07:49
Speaker 4: of a manufactured outrage campaign. And one example I'll use
1:07:53
Speaker 4: is this. I was monitoring the situation on my flight
1:07:57
Speaker 4: back from Michigan To Los Angeles, which apparently some agent
1:08:04
Speaker 4: of Laura Loomer took a photo of me sleeping, which
1:08:06
Speaker 4: was so crazy. But while I was monitoring the situation,
1:08:10
Speaker 4: I was listening to Dana Bash talk about what's going
1:08:12
Speaker 4: on in Iran. Then all of a sudden Dana Bash
1:08:13
Speaker 4: starts talking about me. And it had my choice quotes
1:08:17
Speaker 4: up there, you know, like, uh, the, the, the most
1:08:20
Speaker 4: insincere one is me actually defending, uh, or, uh, claiming
1:08:25
Speaker 4: that I'm, you know, defending rapes or, or whatever, like denying.
1:08:27
Speaker 2: I didn't bring that one.
1:08:28
Speaker 3: Up because I do think that was the most out
1:08:30
Speaker 3: of context one.
1:08:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:08:31
Speaker 2: That was so messed up.
1:08:31
Speaker 3: You weren't saying rape doesn't matter.
1:08:33
Speaker 2: You were saying.
1:08:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:08:34
Speaker 2: It doesn't justify genocide.
1:08:35
Speaker 3: The rape doesn't. Yeah. It doesn't change the moral calculus
1:08:37
Speaker 3: on either side. I think, which is, I'm just like, it's,
1:08:40
Speaker 3: you know, Hamas did something fucking catastrophic and, and committed
1:08:44
Speaker 3: horrible atrocities, whether rape or not existed like that, it
1:08:48
Speaker 3: was still- You brought.
1:08:48
Speaker 2: Up a really good point.
1:08:50
Speaker 4: Israel had a literal pro-rape January 6th style riot after
1:08:54
Speaker 4: six of the Israeli occupation forces, concentration camp guards, as today, Tamar,
1:09:00
Speaker 4: were prosecuted for raping Palestinian prisoners. And they released them.
1:09:08
Speaker 4: And then Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for even attempting to prosecute them.
1:09:12
Speaker 4: And now one of them is like a famous television guy.
1:09:15
Speaker 4: I still don't think... I think that's the most heinous thing.
1:09:18
Speaker 4: That's the most insane thing I've.
1:09:19
Speaker 2: Ever heard, right?
1:09:20
Speaker 3: Back to my universal principles. But I still don't think
1:09:22
Speaker 3: Israel should be wiped out.
1:09:23
Speaker 2: Sexual violence.
1:09:24
Speaker 3: Horrific, no matter who commits it.
1:09:26
Speaker 2: But I don't think Israel should receive what.
1:09:30
Speaker 4: uh israel has done to the palestinians in in uh
1:09:34
Speaker 4: you know in retaliation to that that's my uh assessment
1:09:37
Speaker 4: that's my uh attitude but uh wait what was i
1:09:41
Speaker 4: saying oh sorry so there's a guy sitting next to
1:09:44
Speaker 4: me and he's looking at the tv he's also watching
1:09:47
Speaker 4: cnn he turns around it's.
1:09:49
Speaker 2: Like that's He's like, is that you? And I was like,
1:09:52
Speaker 2: ha ha, no. And then I was like, yeah, it's me.
1:09:56
Speaker 4: And the quote that was on screen was America deserved 9-11.
1:10:02
Speaker 4: So I'm going through the motions of like, this guy
1:10:06
Speaker 4: is sitting next to a big bearded dude who is
1:10:10
Speaker 4: on a plane associated with 9-11? Like, and I was
1:10:14
Speaker 4: just like, oh, that's, you know, they're taking me out
1:10:18
Speaker 4: of context. Like, you know what it is? And he
1:10:19
Speaker 4: was like, He turns to me, he's a liberal guy.
1:10:22
Speaker 4: He's flying back to LA. He goes, I fucking hate CNN.
1:10:25
Speaker 4: He's like, I hate Dana Bash. So he automatically was
1:10:29
Speaker 4: on my side because of the resentment that he has
1:10:33
Speaker 4: towards CNN.
1:10:34
Speaker 3: That is, maybe that's a good place to leave it.
1:10:37
Speaker 3: That's a good place to leave it. And look, we
1:10:38
Speaker 3: love Dana Bash here. Maybe we'll get her here and
1:10:40
Speaker 3: we can talk about this too. Hasan, thanks for coming on.
1:10:43
Speaker 3: You'll have to come on again next time you're causing
1:10:45
Speaker 3: a lot of trouble.
1:10:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's probably going to keep happening, it seems.
1:10:49
Speaker 3: Well, we'll see you.
1:10:49
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
1:10:50
Speaker 1: Of course.
1:10:56
Speaker 3: Thanks to Hasan Piker for coming on the show. Tommy
1:10:58
Speaker 3: Lovett and I will be back in your feeds on
1:11:00
Speaker 3: Tuesday with a new episode. If you want to listen
1:11:08
Speaker 3: to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts,
1:11:11
Speaker 3: go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube,
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Speaker 3: That helps boost this episode and everything we do here
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