It is weird how many people in American "media" are straightforwardly doing propaganda for geopolitical enemies. Hasan, Pokimane and Ludwig for China right now. Tim Pool for Russia. (I'm sure there are people who would add Israel and have a list for that as well)
It feels like in a heathy political environment anyone doing this kind of thing would be cut out of polite society.
I have a theory that so much journalism is inward now. Journos are all looking to boost their own profiles, to become influencers in their own circles. They want to be cool so they trave on status and not actual reporting.
I agree, this seems increasing common on Substack too.
There are so many times I read an article and am not really sure why it was written only to have it turn out to be the answer to some Twitter criticism the author received once.
It’s endemic. And online spaces are worse, with the proliferation of bots actively under the direction of Russia and China. It boggles my mind why we as a people aren’t more concerned with this as it has observable negative impacts on our politics for over a decade!
It's not weird considering they were indoctrinated in academic institutions stuffed to the rafters with academic far-leftists spewing Russian, Chinese and Iranian propaganda through all their course material.
"Hasan Piker doesn’t have an ideology in the classic sense. What he has is a massive case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder that leads him to frame every argument as America Bad and anything against America as good"
Hasan being a propogandist is its own thing but I think this is more closely describing the issue than anything else.
"America Bad" is a pretty common view among some Americans in a way that opens the door to all kinds of crazy ideologies and beliefs.
My experience with some younger leftwing people is that it would be considered out of line to be "Patriotic" and the America First branding has really poisoned the well.
If American politicians and political parties can't present a positive vision of the country then everyone is just trying to get their cut before it all burns down.
It's really something on the left because they like to condemn the US for our backwards social views and it's like...what? Cuba and China do not have gay rights. In China people do not have the freedom to even move to a different city. 10% of Cuba's population have just straight up left the country because of how bad it is. Their standard of living is something no one, even the poor in these United States, would not put up with. Same with China which is widely much poorer than the USA.
I'd understand, as Jeremiah pointed out, if they were saying we should be more like Scandinavia, I get that. But to defend and champion countries with much more extreme poverty and authoritarian leaders is just insane and I am led to believe that they are not just "want healthcare" but the total destruction of democracy no different than the GOP.
This is an age-old problem. Orwell's The Lion and the Unicorn discusses how Britain's intellectual Left's oft-expressed disdain for the patriotism deeply felt by Britain's working classes invariably hampered efforts to make progress on social issues.
Well, this is all just because no one has actually found a way to solve the core problem, right? Everyone thinks their movement is immune to extremist takeover because everyone believes their movement is full of pure and reasonable people. Until it happens to them and they realize this doesn't help. That your own side is also full of dark emotions just waiting for someone to exploit.
If you are a serious political party or group trying to make policy based on any kind of facts and reason in the information age, you will be systematically outcompeted by charismatic populist liars. These liars will succeed through their virality and extremism, which will make them more capable of commanding attention than you. And because they are not restricted by truth or accountability, they can always deny reality and claim that they have all of the answers and they're boldly telling truth to power, right up until the point that they get into power themselves.
Every movement is vulnerable to this. Left, right, it doesn't matter. The inherent rewards of virality means that a thousand influencers will try a thousand different tactics until something works on your emotions. A more educated movement might have a little more resistance to this in its DNA, but it's hardly going to be immune. The power of posting is too strong.
The core appeal of both Trumpism and Tankie-ism actually has nothing to do with any specific policy or rational idea. It's all more disconnected from reality than that. Extremist movements of the modern day deny the entire idea of shared reality, and they just want you to believe whatever feels compelling and emotional in the moment.
It's a real problem and liberal society needs a solution to survive.
"The core appeal of both Trumpism and Tankie-ism actually has nothing to do with any specific policy or rational idea. It's all more disconnected from reality than that. Extremist movements of the modern day deny the entire idea of shared reality, and they just want you to believe whatever feels compelling and emotional in the moment."
This is overstated, as it prompts the question of why anyone chooses Trumpism or Tankie-ism to begin with. If it's truly just an instinctive moment to moment appeal to emotions, of what use are ideologies and political milieus at all?
I think people are drawn to these ideologies because holding an ideology that's based on truth is genuinely hard. The world is complicated and understanding it is difficult. Sometimes your enemies are right, or the actual thing you should do to solve a problem is complicated and unsatisfying to our lizard brain. It would be so much easier to live in a world where things are simple, and extremism offers this.
In practice, this is usually a gradual cycle of an audience and a content-creator reinforcing each other. The audience cheers the loudest when the creator posts ragebait, and so the creator posts more and more ragebait and applies less charity and rational thought to their attacks on their enemies. This process continues until both the creator and the audience have pushed themselves into extremism.
A big part of why extremist disordered ideology is so compelling is because it frees you from all the complexity of rational thought. Want to believe that January 6th was both a gathering of patriots and an antifa false-flag? Believe it! Want to believe that America is evil for engaging in colonialist foreign wars and also evil for not intervening on Palestine's behalf? Do it!
A lot of people don't enjoy thinking about complex issues. The whole thing makes them feel stupid and lost. Emotional responses are easier to grasp.
The difference now is that we've removed the mechanisms of reality that would have once pushed back against that. It's easy to surround yourself with a social community (of real people or chatbots) who will support all of your ideas with no attempt at verification or accountability. Immersing yourself in an environment where you're always right was once the domain of billionaires and kings, now the technology to do it is available to everyone.
The real rift at the heart of so many of these extremist ideologies isn't about Trump or Israel or any particular policy, it's about two different approaches to reality. Do you observe reality as it exists and try to make decisions based on the evidence, or do you decide what reality would be most satisfying and fun, and try to control your environment to reinforce that version?
There is an IQ threshold above which people can be interested in ideology over base instinct and emotional vibes. Actually it’s probably not discontinuous, it’s more a of a spectrum of more objective analysis at higher levels of intelligence. American politics is becoming more stupid and more dominated by those who believe stupid things.
Totally agree. Fuck leftists. They are enemies of freedom and liberalism - no different than their buddies on the far right.
Communism is a failed system (that China actually abandoned some time ago because it doesn't fucking work), and anyone who espouses it is not our friend.
There is no left or right anymore, just normal people who love freedom and democracy and modern life, and those who are evil hateful morons. The ends of the horseshoe must be sawed off!
And we also need to jettison "wokeness" while we are at it.
- Signed, Will I Am, a reliable Democrat (donated to the DNC in both 2020 and 2024)
It's a pity the center also buddies up to enemies of freedom and human rights abusers, while also refusing to offer any changes to the status quo.
But what makes me laugh is your demand to jeteson 'woke', when woke is pretty much the entire difference between the US and the countries you excoriate. Valorizing human rights, equality, freedom- that's where woke comes from.
I'm not even sure how to respond. Who are the enemies of freedom and human rights abusers? What "countries" do I excoriate? China?
My problem with woke is not that I take issue with having a heightened concern for minorities, etc (that's actually good).
My problem with woke is the parts about making it into a secualr religion, using it to glorify oneself at the expense of destroying others, inisting that tradeoffs do not exist, refusing to make compromises, refusing to set priorities, staking out outlier positions that are politically untenable, staking out positions that are contradictory, etc.
It's not just immoral and ridiculous, it's bad politics.
It seems like the issues you have with woke vibe from anthropomorphizing a leaderless group- of course you are going to get contradictions in priorities, disagreement on compromises, etc. it's also a reaction to both previous authoritarian takeovers of similar movements, and an opposition that targets leaders via cops and lawsuits. Iterative improvements on prior efforts.
I was thinking Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as Israel, when I suggested that centrists have the same problem as the left and right with embracing human rights abusers.
Great stuff. I think the Crooked people are very representative of the young Dem staffer class, and it’s genuinely bad that they hold people like piker or chapo hosts in high esteem
Especially because piker and chapo quite openly loathe the democrats as much if not more than republicans!
Oh and Codepink is funded by the Chinese and based in Shanghai now
On the point about Hasan attending Zohran Mamdani’s election party: to be fair, Hasan seems to have attended as a regular member of the general public. He was denied entry into the VIP section of the party. Mamdani knows to not affiliate himself too closely with Hasan, and he himself does not share that same illiberal ideology given that he does condemn Maduro and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel.
It's definitely a problem on the right. Imagining that 'genocidal antisemitism rapidly becoming a plank in the dem platform' is just a child screaming 'I'm rubber you're glue!'
Anti-genocide is the plank. That you see that as antisemitic should be enough to make you reflect on where you went wrong.
The same day Schmuck Schumer was congratulating Mamdani the NYC DSA, Mamdani’s actual political party, declared terrorist Elias Rodriguez to be a “political prisoner”. The Democratic Party’s problem isn’t just Piker, it’s the DSA already infecting the party from within. The DSA doesn’t want “Swedish style ‘socialism’”, they want Soviet style police states. That’s why they embrace totalitarian regimes including Hamas, sorry “Palestine”.
I am far more concerned with right wing extremists in the Democratic Party who are far more influential than Hassan. These people are sitting in Congress and have been so extreme as to have voted in line with Trump on extremely egregious issues.
The most troubling extremism in the Democratic Party is right wing extremism and not left-wing extremism . After all the people have voted over and over for progressive policies on the Democratic left flank; that's where the people power exists. And yet over and over progressive are viewed as extremist not only by Republicans but by so-called Democratic "centrists" who have been losing election after election.
The problem is right wing extremism in the Democratic Party
I agree with the spirit of your post, but I'd hesitate to call what we're seeing within the Democrat party as "right-wing extremism", at least in comparison to what that same term equates to among Republicans. There is definitely a disturbingly large number of democrats who have deluded themselves into thinking Trump is just another president who can be reasoned with and who has some good policies, as if he hasn't made a thing out of blanket referring to everyone under the Democrat tent as far-left lunatics. Too many deals with the devil have been made and I don't think we've seen the last of them. Fingers crossed we get a lot more people like Mamdani in the party
You're right! I should be calling this right flank extremism and not right wing. A subtle difference that characterizes the segment of the party more accurately.
Yeah, this piece seems to just hand-wave away the fact that Piker is not a Democrat and that no member of the party looks to him for policy advice or proposals, which is very different than what the extreme right has been doing to the Republican Party for over a decade.
It's the country the centrists love, like the right loves Russia and the left China. It's the awkward point that this isn't about horseshoes, the center is as bad as the extremes.
I mean, if we are making a list of countries for whom defending their bad behavior is an excommunicable offense, then I think it is important to know whether Israel is included, given that includes many prominent democratic politicians.
Russia, China, and Venezuela are all explicitly authoritarian states that brutally repress their people if there is any dissent. Israel does not. Thank you.
The anti-LGBTQ, anti-women Hamas heroes trying to defeat the white colonialist Israelis - and destroy the only democracy in the Middle East, the only place in the region where Jews have not already been cast out - BY.ANY.MEANS.NECESSARY, including murder, rape, torture and baby-killing, must be shown the proper respect.
How do you not understand this?
The monocause is everything, and every part of the monocause must be continually “respected”.
Especially the antisemitic part. It needs to be front and center.
The article is claiming that Hasan's actions are so bad as to deserve excommunication. The action in question is defending the CCP. I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask how far you should take this principle. Why should one refuse to engage with people who disagree about China but not about Israel.
You forgot the biggest issue with Hasan : He's a horrible political analyst who is not very intelligent. I genuinely do not understand how his fans listen to him, his takes are the most vanilla version of "America bad" said at a sixth grade reading level at best.
“America Bad” is college educated progressives in a nutshell. That’s all the academic far-left ever produces. Well, that, and a tsunami of antisemitic drivel.
Thank you for writing this. It really needed to be said.
I've known about Hasan Piker for a while but didn't pay that much attention to what he was saying or doing. That all changed when he began to praise Yemen Houthis and give praise to one particular young Houthi. That immediately gave me pause. My concern only grew from there.
Seeing Hasan getting these glowing profiles from major media outlets, seeing him frequently show up Pod Save, and happily chatting with other progressive YouTube personalities was deeply troubling to me. I was also upset when Hasan Minhaj not only gave Piker a glowing interview on Minhaj's YouTube show but also seeing Minhaj show up on Piker's livestream and getting all chummy.
Speaking of livestream, Bulwark's Cameron Kasky had a friendly, easy going interview with Piker on Piker's livestream, in Piker's home studio. And Kasky is now running for New York's 12th Congressional District. (BTW, Tim Miller, what gives, man?).
Anyway, I hope this post helps make waves. Keep up the great work.
It is weird how many people in American "media" are straightforwardly doing propaganda for geopolitical enemies. Hasan, Pokimane and Ludwig for China right now. Tim Pool for Russia. (I'm sure there are people who would add Israel and have a list for that as well)
It feels like in a heathy political environment anyone doing this kind of thing would be cut out of polite society.
I have a theory that so much journalism is inward now. Journos are all looking to boost their own profiles, to become influencers in their own circles. They want to be cool so they trave on status and not actual reporting.
I agree, this seems increasing common on Substack too.
There are so many times I read an article and am not really sure why it was written only to have it turn out to be the answer to some Twitter criticism the author received once.
can you give an example?
It’s endemic. And online spaces are worse, with the proliferation of bots actively under the direction of Russia and China. It boggles my mind why we as a people aren’t more concerned with this as it has observable negative impacts on our politics for over a decade!
I wouldn’t say the others are doing propaganda but rather modern day China actually is amazing if you’re a foreigner with money.
I fear it's nothing new in American politics.
It's not weird considering they were indoctrinated in academic institutions stuffed to the rafters with academic far-leftists spewing Russian, Chinese and Iranian propaganda through all their course material.
Pokimane, for real?!?
"Hasan Piker doesn’t have an ideology in the classic sense. What he has is a massive case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder that leads him to frame every argument as America Bad and anything against America as good"
Hasan being a propogandist is its own thing but I think this is more closely describing the issue than anything else.
"America Bad" is a pretty common view among some Americans in a way that opens the door to all kinds of crazy ideologies and beliefs.
My experience with some younger leftwing people is that it would be considered out of line to be "Patriotic" and the America First branding has really poisoned the well.
If American politicians and political parties can't present a positive vision of the country then everyone is just trying to get their cut before it all burns down.
It's really something on the left because they like to condemn the US for our backwards social views and it's like...what? Cuba and China do not have gay rights. In China people do not have the freedom to even move to a different city. 10% of Cuba's population have just straight up left the country because of how bad it is. Their standard of living is something no one, even the poor in these United States, would not put up with. Same with China which is widely much poorer than the USA.
I'd understand, as Jeremiah pointed out, if they were saying we should be more like Scandinavia, I get that. But to defend and champion countries with much more extreme poverty and authoritarian leaders is just insane and I am led to believe that they are not just "want healthcare" but the total destruction of democracy no different than the GOP.
"Cuba doesn't have gay rights"
A simple google search would have shown you how wrong you are
Fair enough. Forgot they legalized marriage equality there in 2022.
This is an age-old problem. Orwell's The Lion and the Unicorn discusses how Britain's intellectual Left's oft-expressed disdain for the patriotism deeply felt by Britain's working classes invariably hampered efforts to make progress on social issues.
Well, this is all just because no one has actually found a way to solve the core problem, right? Everyone thinks their movement is immune to extremist takeover because everyone believes their movement is full of pure and reasonable people. Until it happens to them and they realize this doesn't help. That your own side is also full of dark emotions just waiting for someone to exploit.
If you are a serious political party or group trying to make policy based on any kind of facts and reason in the information age, you will be systematically outcompeted by charismatic populist liars. These liars will succeed through their virality and extremism, which will make them more capable of commanding attention than you. And because they are not restricted by truth or accountability, they can always deny reality and claim that they have all of the answers and they're boldly telling truth to power, right up until the point that they get into power themselves.
Every movement is vulnerable to this. Left, right, it doesn't matter. The inherent rewards of virality means that a thousand influencers will try a thousand different tactics until something works on your emotions. A more educated movement might have a little more resistance to this in its DNA, but it's hardly going to be immune. The power of posting is too strong.
The core appeal of both Trumpism and Tankie-ism actually has nothing to do with any specific policy or rational idea. It's all more disconnected from reality than that. Extremist movements of the modern day deny the entire idea of shared reality, and they just want you to believe whatever feels compelling and emotional in the moment.
It's a real problem and liberal society needs a solution to survive.
"The core appeal of both Trumpism and Tankie-ism actually has nothing to do with any specific policy or rational idea. It's all more disconnected from reality than that. Extremist movements of the modern day deny the entire idea of shared reality, and they just want you to believe whatever feels compelling and emotional in the moment."
This is overstated, as it prompts the question of why anyone chooses Trumpism or Tankie-ism to begin with. If it's truly just an instinctive moment to moment appeal to emotions, of what use are ideologies and political milieus at all?
I think people are drawn to these ideologies because holding an ideology that's based on truth is genuinely hard. The world is complicated and understanding it is difficult. Sometimes your enemies are right, or the actual thing you should do to solve a problem is complicated and unsatisfying to our lizard brain. It would be so much easier to live in a world where things are simple, and extremism offers this.
In practice, this is usually a gradual cycle of an audience and a content-creator reinforcing each other. The audience cheers the loudest when the creator posts ragebait, and so the creator posts more and more ragebait and applies less charity and rational thought to their attacks on their enemies. This process continues until both the creator and the audience have pushed themselves into extremism.
A big part of why extremist disordered ideology is so compelling is because it frees you from all the complexity of rational thought. Want to believe that January 6th was both a gathering of patriots and an antifa false-flag? Believe it! Want to believe that America is evil for engaging in colonialist foreign wars and also evil for not intervening on Palestine's behalf? Do it!
A lot of people don't enjoy thinking about complex issues. The whole thing makes them feel stupid and lost. Emotional responses are easier to grasp.
The difference now is that we've removed the mechanisms of reality that would have once pushed back against that. It's easy to surround yourself with a social community (of real people or chatbots) who will support all of your ideas with no attempt at verification or accountability. Immersing yourself in an environment where you're always right was once the domain of billionaires and kings, now the technology to do it is available to everyone.
The real rift at the heart of so many of these extremist ideologies isn't about Trump or Israel or any particular policy, it's about two different approaches to reality. Do you observe reality as it exists and try to make decisions based on the evidence, or do you decide what reality would be most satisfying and fun, and try to control your environment to reinforce that version?
There is an IQ threshold above which people can be interested in ideology over base instinct and emotional vibes. Actually it’s probably not discontinuous, it’s more a of a spectrum of more objective analysis at higher levels of intelligence. American politics is becoming more stupid and more dominated by those who believe stupid things.
This
I have never once heard anything remotely interesting come out of Hasan's mouth. Performative anti-capitalism of the worst sort.
Totally agree. Fuck leftists. They are enemies of freedom and liberalism - no different than their buddies on the far right.
Communism is a failed system (that China actually abandoned some time ago because it doesn't fucking work), and anyone who espouses it is not our friend.
There is no left or right anymore, just normal people who love freedom and democracy and modern life, and those who are evil hateful morons. The ends of the horseshoe must be sawed off!
And we also need to jettison "wokeness" while we are at it.
- Signed, Will I Am, a reliable Democrat (donated to the DNC in both 2020 and 2024)
It's a pity the center also buddies up to enemies of freedom and human rights abusers, while also refusing to offer any changes to the status quo.
But what makes me laugh is your demand to jeteson 'woke', when woke is pretty much the entire difference between the US and the countries you excoriate. Valorizing human rights, equality, freedom- that's where woke comes from.
I'm not even sure how to respond. Who are the enemies of freedom and human rights abusers? What "countries" do I excoriate? China?
My problem with woke is not that I take issue with having a heightened concern for minorities, etc (that's actually good).
My problem with woke is the parts about making it into a secualr religion, using it to glorify oneself at the expense of destroying others, inisting that tradeoffs do not exist, refusing to make compromises, refusing to set priorities, staking out outlier positions that are politically untenable, staking out positions that are contradictory, etc.
It's not just immoral and ridiculous, it's bad politics.
It seems like the issues you have with woke vibe from anthropomorphizing a leaderless group- of course you are going to get contradictions in priorities, disagreement on compromises, etc. it's also a reaction to both previous authoritarian takeovers of similar movements, and an opposition that targets leaders via cops and lawsuits. Iterative improvements on prior efforts.
I was thinking Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as Israel, when I suggested that centrists have the same problem as the left and right with embracing human rights abusers.
Great stuff. I think the Crooked people are very representative of the young Dem staffer class, and it’s genuinely bad that they hold people like piker or chapo hosts in high esteem
Especially because piker and chapo quite openly loathe the democrats as much if not more than republicans!
Oh and Codepink is funded by the Chinese and based in Shanghai now
Btw your link on mamdanis staffer is wrong
What’s wrong with the link on Mamdani staffer?
On the point about Hasan attending Zohran Mamdani’s election party: to be fair, Hasan seems to have attended as a regular member of the general public. He was denied entry into the VIP section of the party. Mamdani knows to not affiliate himself too closely with Hasan, and he himself does not share that same illiberal ideology given that he does condemn Maduro and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us-streamers/hasan-pikers-viral-support-for-new-york-mayor-zohran-mamdani-turns-loud-as-hes-denied-entry-at-rally/amp_articleshow/125106980.cms
He went on his podcast and repeatedly talks about how much he likes the guy. See e.g. his Instagram here
https://www.instagram.com/p/DIJlcjEOY-4/
Been watching the delulu pro-ccp extremism of the bougie “left” for a while now. Its the most insane of reactionary black and white thinking.
Do they celebrate any of the stuff the *right* likes about China? Like build, baby, build?
It's interesting because domestically the Hasans have nothing but disdain for the Abundance movement.
What hill are you trying to die on with this comment?
none, as far as I know?
I confess to having never heard of this jackhole, so I am a part of one type of the problem.
I scarcely knew "politicial livestreaming" was a thing at all. So much of the internet was a damn mistake.
Of course, his genocidal antisemitism is never mentioned here, as it is rapidly becoming a plank in the Dem platform.
Well, yeah. Character assassination doesn't deserve space in actual discussion. Real issues only, please.
Is antisemitism not a real issue?
It's definitely a problem on the right. Imagining that 'genocidal antisemitism rapidly becoming a plank in the dem platform' is just a child screaming 'I'm rubber you're glue!'
Anti-genocide is the plank. That you see that as antisemitic should be enough to make you reflect on where you went wrong.
OK.
I know. He is as antisemitic as Piker is. Its not an issue for him at all. You either it seems.
“Platforming terrorists and promoting authoritarianism should have no place in a liberal Democratic party”
But the anti-First Amendment, captured by their oppressor-oppressed ideologue wing Dem party has not been “liberal” for many years now.
The same day Schmuck Schumer was congratulating Mamdani the NYC DSA, Mamdani’s actual political party, declared terrorist Elias Rodriguez to be a “political prisoner”. The Democratic Party’s problem isn’t just Piker, it’s the DSA already infecting the party from within. The DSA doesn’t want “Swedish style ‘socialism’”, they want Soviet style police states. That’s why they embrace totalitarian regimes including Hamas, sorry “Palestine”.
I am far more concerned with right wing extremists in the Democratic Party who are far more influential than Hassan. These people are sitting in Congress and have been so extreme as to have voted in line with Trump on extremely egregious issues.
The most troubling extremism in the Democratic Party is right wing extremism and not left-wing extremism . After all the people have voted over and over for progressive policies on the Democratic left flank; that's where the people power exists. And yet over and over progressive are viewed as extremist not only by Republicans but by so-called Democratic "centrists" who have been losing election after election.
The problem is right wing extremism in the Democratic Party
I agree with the spirit of your post, but I'd hesitate to call what we're seeing within the Democrat party as "right-wing extremism", at least in comparison to what that same term equates to among Republicans. There is definitely a disturbingly large number of democrats who have deluded themselves into thinking Trump is just another president who can be reasoned with and who has some good policies, as if he hasn't made a thing out of blanket referring to everyone under the Democrat tent as far-left lunatics. Too many deals with the devil have been made and I don't think we've seen the last of them. Fingers crossed we get a lot more people like Mamdani in the party
You're right! I should be calling this right flank extremism and not right wing. A subtle difference that characterizes the segment of the party more accurately.
I feel like the term you're looking for is blue dog democrat
Yeah, this piece seems to just hand-wave away the fact that Piker is not a Democrat and that no member of the party looks to him for policy advice or proposals, which is very different than what the extreme right has been doing to the Republican Party for over a decade.
> Whether it’s Russia, China, Venezuela or whoever else
What about Israel?
That Israel is not mentioned doesn’t detract from anything in the article
It's the country the centrists love, like the right loves Russia and the left China. It's the awkward point that this isn't about horseshoes, the center is as bad as the extremes.
I mean, if we are making a list of countries for whom defending their bad behavior is an excommunicable offense, then I think it is important to know whether Israel is included, given that includes many prominent democratic politicians.
Russia, China, and Venezuela are all explicitly authoritarian states that brutally repress their people if there is any dissent. Israel does not. Thank you.
Yes? So? Does that excuse Israel behavior?
My point is how is that relevant to the article? Can’t we just engage with what was written?
“Can’t we just engage with what was written?”
Absolutely not.
Loyalty oaths must be sworn.
The anti-LGBTQ, anti-women Hamas heroes trying to defeat the white colonialist Israelis - and destroy the only democracy in the Middle East, the only place in the region where Jews have not already been cast out - BY.ANY.MEANS.NECESSARY, including murder, rape, torture and baby-killing, must be shown the proper respect.
How do you not understand this?
The monocause is everything, and every part of the monocause must be continually “respected”.
Especially the antisemitic part. It needs to be front and center.
The article is claiming that Hasan's actions are so bad as to deserve excommunication. The action in question is defending the CCP. I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask how far you should take this principle. Why should one refuse to engage with people who disagree about China but not about Israel.
You forgot the biggest issue with Hasan : He's a horrible political analyst who is not very intelligent. I genuinely do not understand how his fans listen to him, his takes are the most vanilla version of "America bad" said at a sixth grade reading level at best.
“America Bad” is college educated progressives in a nutshell. That’s all the academic far-left ever produces. Well, that, and a tsunami of antisemitic drivel.
Thank you for writing this. It really needed to be said.
I've known about Hasan Piker for a while but didn't pay that much attention to what he was saying or doing. That all changed when he began to praise Yemen Houthis and give praise to one particular young Houthi. That immediately gave me pause. My concern only grew from there.
Seeing Hasan getting these glowing profiles from major media outlets, seeing him frequently show up Pod Save, and happily chatting with other progressive YouTube personalities was deeply troubling to me. I was also upset when Hasan Minhaj not only gave Piker a glowing interview on Minhaj's YouTube show but also seeing Minhaj show up on Piker's livestream and getting all chummy.
Speaking of livestream, Bulwark's Cameron Kasky had a friendly, easy going interview with Piker on Piker's livestream, in Piker's home studio. And Kasky is now running for New York's 12th Congressional District. (BTW, Tim Miller, what gives, man?).
Anyway, I hope this post helps make waves. Keep up the great work.