It's a shame that the Bulwark doesn't have an excellent interviewer who does a daily broadcast who could interview Hasan and let us hear directly from him. I know that I have 20 year old twin nephews who both listen to him. He talks about so much more than politics. Hasan allowed me to find a path into talking with with nephews about why it is important to vote and it is important to vote Democratic. I have listened to so many clips of Hasan where he is specifically speaking against anti-semitism. He is anti-Zionist and anit-Israel and to me he is simply reflecting the beliefs of a huge majority of Gen Z, and I understand why they feel that way. I really see this as a Third Way hit job, and my entire being believes it was the corporate funded, consultant driven Third Way and their ilk who played a huge role in why the populist MAGA message so dangerously resonated with so many. Tim Miller, please interview him.
I have to start out saying that I don't listen to Piker and never have, but I have watched bullshit over on the subreddit for thebulwark and saw some serious astroturfing for a few days related to this Piker stuff.
I do a lot of arguing on that subreddit and I sometimes post articles so I notice when there's a sudden change in what people argue and how they vote on comments.
What I saw was:
1) a number number of people attacking part of a post mentioning that Rachel Maddow reported a leak that Saudi Prince Mohammad Bin Salman has been calling Trump up and urging ever more bombing of Iran.
About half a dozen people called Rachel a liar, and made specious arguments that a war on Iran would not be in Saudi Arabia's interests. And dozens of people downvoted all comments to the contrary.
2) a huge number of downvotes for criticisms of Democratic leaders like Jeffries and Schumer, something that hadn't been seen on that subreddit before.
Vote wars have not been a thing on r/thebulwark before.
3) oh I forgot to add the main thing. They were agitating for a rule to stop people from posting anything on the subreddit other than comments about Bulwark articles. Of course that's dumb, that's what substack is for. That's not what reddit is for. Those complaints devolved in a number of ways but I think the point was that they didn't want anyone criticizing this war or Israel.
Now, in the end, other people picked up reporting the same about the prince maybe 4 days later, and then Trump even leaked it himself, calling the prince "a mighty warrior" or something.
Someone said to me that a streamer who is apparently now a huge "influencer" for the Democrats lead this invasion of the subreddit. I won't name him because he doesn't deserve any oxygen.
He is what a never Trumper might be if instead of being Bush and Weekly Standard people, he was an Alex Jones/Ron Paul "Influencer" ie a con man.
Now his thing is to debate people to support Israel. And to him the main enemy is not Trump it's the left part of the Democratic party and Piker because Piker is a rival streamer.
And I followed a commenter back to the streamer's subreddit where Trump is never mentioned and the enemy is Hasan Piker and Cuba.
Invasion by idiots.
And I guess they wanted to suppress the idea that Saudi Arabia supports the war in Iran because they see it as Netanyahu's perfect war and they don't want its provenance sullied.
The Republicans have already modeled this path. A strategy of winning at any cost will result in winning. Who would have thought! Having no guardrails and no standards will bring in voters who otherwise wouldn't have voted for your side (or likely at all). Also not deeply surprising.
But then the conservatives (all four of them) looked around and discovered they were surrounded by cranks, crazies, and also... some really bad people. Really Bad People.
By then it was too late. They had taught their voters that this was fine, actually. And isn't winning grand? Who wants to give up winning? All this talk of standards, and not being corrupt, and not hating minorities and not shooting moms in the face, that was for losers. And Republicans win elections!
This is what we want to emulate? We want to "big tent" our way into becoming the party of the alt-left, full of tankies and China shills and people who think maybe Stalin had a point, actually?
Am I being a little hyperbolic? Piker is a China shill who is happy to look past their actual current genocides against multiple minorities. He hates the US, because he is one of the alt-left, who thinks America=bad and thus anti-America=good, even if that means celebrating China, Cuba and Venezuela. Who in this comment thread would prefer to live in those countries? No, not Piker either. Hypocrisy -- also fine! Another lesson from how Republicans win.
And once he is in, and we have all determined that standards are for no political parties, the next guy will lean harder left to get clicks, and the cycle will repeat. The Ben Shapiro to Candace Owens pipeline.
I say no. We win that way and we actually lose.
I would no more want the alt-left in charge than the alt-right (spoiler alert: they are the same).
One final point. I know this one will earn me few friends, but here goes. There is no such thing as "thoughtful antizionism." Maybe there was prior to 1948. Now it's a call to ethically cleanse about 8 million people. That's the reality. This isn't the thread to re-hash every position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so I won't. But "antizionism" has become -- in practice -- a form of bigotry. And Piker is a bigot against Israelis and yes (his cover from left-wing Jews is unconvincing) against Jews. I say this as an opponent of the right-wing Israeli government. But at least here Piker is consistent -- because he hates America, not just our right-wing government.
But this isn't just about him. It's about whether the Democrats just want to win or want to make the country better. I'm not a fan of Third Way either! But after all, they were correct that the Biden re-elect was a mistake. And they are correct now.
Not a huge fan of Hasan but I am not his target audience.
This bit, "Cowan made it clear that he’d rather accept some electoral risk than see the party show flexibility on this front." is sickening. Dems need to win. We cannot allow the Right to keep all of the power so Third Way doesn't feel sad that their way didn't work everywhere.
If Hasan is a problem, this guy will lose. If he's not, the Dems might win. End of story. Third Way have always been a group that sounds good to republicans.
Piker seems like an epic jerk. From what I know of him, he strikes me as your basic faux-lefty edgelord. Third Way, on the other hand, embodies everything that's wrong with the Democratic Party and its endless, futile quest to court the mythical (white) moderate voter, the unicorn of American politics. As someone with lefty sympathies who's been a consistent Democratic voter for many years, my take is that I could not care less about Piker or Third Way. If Dems want to go on Piker's stream to make their case to his audience, fine — but I expect them to push back against his bigotry and dumbassery when necessary, and it's always necessary.
Democrats have to remain true to their values. IMHO, part of the reason for the current unpopularity of the Democratic Party is that they’ve strayed from their (more) socially libertarian, economically populist roots with the rise of corporate Democrats. I’m not sure my Depression era parents, FDR Democrats, would recognize today’s party. Those values must include a rejection of any type of hate, whether antisemitic. islamaphobic, misogynistic, anti-lgbtq+, anti-immigrant, whatever. All hatred of “the other” comes from the same poisoned well. That doesn’t mean ignoring wrongs committed by members of any particular group, but it does mean not demonizing entire groups of people. That’s what concerns me about Plattner in Maine, but I don’t know enough about him to come to a firm conclusion. Nor do I know enough about Piker to judge him, but I’m for Mallory McMorrow anyway.
The more I read about this silly fiasco the more I come back to a point that Tim and JVL frequently make. Trump and MAGA won a lot of the cranks. America is full of cranks. If you want to win national and meaningful power, you need cranks.
Well…you aren’t gonna win the cranks by playing by the rules. Welcome to modern America. Not exactly demonstrating our best, but politics is about power and wielding it. Eye on the prize.
Here’s a litmus test: you’ll vote for the Democratic nominee no matter how much that candidate deviates from your personal beliefs because job 1 is extracting the Fascists.
Also, my daughter is a huge fan of Hasab and I know he’s OK because she would never admire anyone who wasn’t. I’ve listened to the candidate for Senator Dr. Abdul and he makes perfect sense. He’s the only one who wants everybody to have healthcare.
Post election, 2024, NYT ran a poll. The headline? “Many Americans Say the Democratic Party Does Not Share Their Priorities”. I will let you read it, but for some issues that Democrats think voters (especially independents) care about, they were not a priority when voting. Those core issues certainly change and have changed post election 2024, but there is a lesson here.
Much of what Trump et al said was lies and projection. Actions do speak louder than words, are credibility and integrity intact? Still, based on polling across the political spectrum, voters increasingly are calling for more alignment with their own core priorities rather than the far left and right. There is no doubt that polarization and social media amplification has pushed both to their limits, this needs to shift back towards the center if "representation" (and winning elections) is the objective. And I think there is always room for everyone's voice, but do not always expect it to align with the majority. Today it seems there is no bottom. In the medium and long term, politicians often ignore the polling and comprehensive focus groups that can drive consistently supported messaging and policy, but they do it at their own peril.
I want transparency in policy making (established priorities, who/what supports it, what is the expected result) along with solid metrics to quantify outcomes justifying those policies. Alignment is representation. Alignment is not blind obedience to party, donors, groups, corporations, or executives consolidating power. Restore integrity and credibility.
That quote really got me too. Sounds like the same schtick we heard from Trump and Vance et al... Then he went further and said it was better to accept electoral risk. Third Way sounds pretty butthurt for a group that preaches constantly about big tents and no questionnaires etc.
The funny thing as a social democrat, I actually think Hasan is deeply wrong about some stuff, kind of dumb about other things, and is bad on strategy, but the Centrists seem to really focus on either superficial stuff (oooh he's rich but wanta more taxes) or the stuff he's basically correct about (Israel is doing a genocide and Democrats shouldn't support them).
If somebody said Hasan shouldn't be supported because refuses to say China is trying their own ethnic cleansing with the Uyghars and is basically pro-Russia, that'd be a good argument. Instead, 'he said something kind of true about 9/11 a decade ago and is mean to Israel!"
Ya everyone is missing the big picture and defaulting to idiotic squabbles. Your last paragraph is exactly what I was thinking while reading the article. Great post!
If Democrats want to chase fascist, Communist or Islamist adjacent young white males, they're obviously entitled to do so. The obvious question is whether they're intrigued by extremists like Piker because of the size of his audience, are planning to parrot or defer to his toxic talking points, or hope publicly to put him in his well deserved place.
Knowing most liberals, they'll probably be suckered into legitimizing him because they're too polite to tell him where to get off.
Knowing most progressives, they won't need to be suckered.
But I'd note (again) that Father Coughlin's weekly audience at its peak reportedly included up to a third of the entire US population, and remained at about one sixth even after he went down the Nazi rabbit hole. Then Pearl Harbor happened and Coughlin was toast. It's hard to tell if Piker's post adolescent audience buys into his dreck or is just there for the lulz. But either way, Democrats will flirt with him at their peril. Does anybody actually think such assignations will improve their national brand?
Whose tent is The Big Tent? Is it AIPAC's or pro-Palestinianian's, is it corporate Capitalist's or left-wing NGO capitalist's, is it any number of unresolved conflicts many see being played out in the Big D tent. I'm a former moderate Republican turned independent to escape MAGA (NeverTrumper) looking in and holding a share of what probably 2/3rds of Americans hope for in the Big Tent Democratic party. Party leaders, activists and pundits need to figure out what real people feel about this situation.
It's a shame that the Bulwark doesn't have an excellent interviewer who does a daily broadcast who could interview Hasan and let us hear directly from him. I know that I have 20 year old twin nephews who both listen to him. He talks about so much more than politics. Hasan allowed me to find a path into talking with with nephews about why it is important to vote and it is important to vote Democratic. I have listened to so many clips of Hasan where he is specifically speaking against anti-semitism. He is anti-Zionist and anit-Israel and to me he is simply reflecting the beliefs of a huge majority of Gen Z, and I understand why they feel that way. I really see this as a Third Way hit job, and my entire being believes it was the corporate funded, consultant driven Third Way and their ilk who played a huge role in why the populist MAGA message so dangerously resonated with so many. Tim Miller, please interview him.
I have to start out saying that I don't listen to Piker and never have, but I have watched bullshit over on the subreddit for thebulwark and saw some serious astroturfing for a few days related to this Piker stuff.
I do a lot of arguing on that subreddit and I sometimes post articles so I notice when there's a sudden change in what people argue and how they vote on comments.
What I saw was:
1) a number number of people attacking part of a post mentioning that Rachel Maddow reported a leak that Saudi Prince Mohammad Bin Salman has been calling Trump up and urging ever more bombing of Iran.
About half a dozen people called Rachel a liar, and made specious arguments that a war on Iran would not be in Saudi Arabia's interests. And dozens of people downvoted all comments to the contrary.
2) a huge number of downvotes for criticisms of Democratic leaders like Jeffries and Schumer, something that hadn't been seen on that subreddit before.
Vote wars have not been a thing on r/thebulwark before.
3) oh I forgot to add the main thing. They were agitating for a rule to stop people from posting anything on the subreddit other than comments about Bulwark articles. Of course that's dumb, that's what substack is for. That's not what reddit is for. Those complaints devolved in a number of ways but I think the point was that they didn't want anyone criticizing this war or Israel.
Now, in the end, other people picked up reporting the same about the prince maybe 4 days later, and then Trump even leaked it himself, calling the prince "a mighty warrior" or something.
Someone said to me that a streamer who is apparently now a huge "influencer" for the Democrats lead this invasion of the subreddit. I won't name him because he doesn't deserve any oxygen.
He is what a never Trumper might be if instead of being Bush and Weekly Standard people, he was an Alex Jones/Ron Paul "Influencer" ie a con man.
Now his thing is to debate people to support Israel. And to him the main enemy is not Trump it's the left part of the Democratic party and Piker because Piker is a rival streamer.
And I followed a commenter back to the streamer's subreddit where Trump is never mentioned and the enemy is Hasan Piker and Cuba.
Invasion by idiots.
And I guess they wanted to suppress the idea that Saudi Arabia supports the war in Iran because they see it as Netanyahu's perfect war and they don't want its provenance sullied.
The Republicans have already modeled this path. A strategy of winning at any cost will result in winning. Who would have thought! Having no guardrails and no standards will bring in voters who otherwise wouldn't have voted for your side (or likely at all). Also not deeply surprising.
But then the conservatives (all four of them) looked around and discovered they were surrounded by cranks, crazies, and also... some really bad people. Really Bad People.
By then it was too late. They had taught their voters that this was fine, actually. And isn't winning grand? Who wants to give up winning? All this talk of standards, and not being corrupt, and not hating minorities and not shooting moms in the face, that was for losers. And Republicans win elections!
This is what we want to emulate? We want to "big tent" our way into becoming the party of the alt-left, full of tankies and China shills and people who think maybe Stalin had a point, actually?
Am I being a little hyperbolic? Piker is a China shill who is happy to look past their actual current genocides against multiple minorities. He hates the US, because he is one of the alt-left, who thinks America=bad and thus anti-America=good, even if that means celebrating China, Cuba and Venezuela. Who in this comment thread would prefer to live in those countries? No, not Piker either. Hypocrisy -- also fine! Another lesson from how Republicans win.
And once he is in, and we have all determined that standards are for no political parties, the next guy will lean harder left to get clicks, and the cycle will repeat. The Ben Shapiro to Candace Owens pipeline.
I say no. We win that way and we actually lose.
I would no more want the alt-left in charge than the alt-right (spoiler alert: they are the same).
One final point. I know this one will earn me few friends, but here goes. There is no such thing as "thoughtful antizionism." Maybe there was prior to 1948. Now it's a call to ethically cleanse about 8 million people. That's the reality. This isn't the thread to re-hash every position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so I won't. But "antizionism" has become -- in practice -- a form of bigotry. And Piker is a bigot against Israelis and yes (his cover from left-wing Jews is unconvincing) against Jews. I say this as an opponent of the right-wing Israeli government. But at least here Piker is consistent -- because he hates America, not just our right-wing government.
But this isn't just about him. It's about whether the Democrats just want to win or want to make the country better. I'm not a fan of Third Way either! But after all, they were correct that the Biden re-elect was a mistake. And they are correct now.
Not a huge fan of Hasan but I am not his target audience.
This bit, "Cowan made it clear that he’d rather accept some electoral risk than see the party show flexibility on this front." is sickening. Dems need to win. We cannot allow the Right to keep all of the power so Third Way doesn't feel sad that their way didn't work everywhere.
If Hasan is a problem, this guy will lose. If he's not, the Dems might win. End of story. Third Way have always been a group that sounds good to republicans.
Piker seems like an epic jerk. From what I know of him, he strikes me as your basic faux-lefty edgelord. Third Way, on the other hand, embodies everything that's wrong with the Democratic Party and its endless, futile quest to court the mythical (white) moderate voter, the unicorn of American politics. As someone with lefty sympathies who's been a consistent Democratic voter for many years, my take is that I could not care less about Piker or Third Way. If Dems want to go on Piker's stream to make their case to his audience, fine — but I expect them to push back against his bigotry and dumbassery when necessary, and it's always necessary.
Democrats have to remain true to their values. IMHO, part of the reason for the current unpopularity of the Democratic Party is that they’ve strayed from their (more) socially libertarian, economically populist roots with the rise of corporate Democrats. I’m not sure my Depression era parents, FDR Democrats, would recognize today’s party. Those values must include a rejection of any type of hate, whether antisemitic. islamaphobic, misogynistic, anti-lgbtq+, anti-immigrant, whatever. All hatred of “the other” comes from the same poisoned well. That doesn’t mean ignoring wrongs committed by members of any particular group, but it does mean not demonizing entire groups of people. That’s what concerns me about Plattner in Maine, but I don’t know enough about him to come to a firm conclusion. Nor do I know enough about Piker to judge him, but I’m for Mallory McMorrow anyway.
The more I read about this silly fiasco the more I come back to a point that Tim and JVL frequently make. Trump and MAGA won a lot of the cranks. America is full of cranks. If you want to win national and meaningful power, you need cranks.
Well…you aren’t gonna win the cranks by playing by the rules. Welcome to modern America. Not exactly demonstrating our best, but politics is about power and wielding it. Eye on the prize.
Here’s a litmus test: you’ll vote for the Democratic nominee no matter how much that candidate deviates from your personal beliefs because job 1 is extracting the Fascists.
He must ditch the pearls. He's treading on Tim Miller territory.
Also, my daughter is a huge fan of Hasab and I know he’s OK because she would never admire anyone who wasn’t. I’ve listened to the candidate for Senator Dr. Abdul and he makes perfect sense. He’s the only one who wants everybody to have healthcare.
Lauren, perhaps listen to Piker in his own words on anti-semitism.
https://youtu.be/jcIa2pE2D10?si=-EEh5bw8gsdln_-C
Let me know what you think.
Post election, 2024, NYT ran a poll. The headline? “Many Americans Say the Democratic Party Does Not Share Their Priorities”. I will let you read it, but for some issues that Democrats think voters (especially independents) care about, they were not a priority when voting. Those core issues certainly change and have changed post election 2024, but there is a lesson here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/us/democrats-ipsos-poll-abortion-lgbt.html
Much of what Trump et al said was lies and projection. Actions do speak louder than words, are credibility and integrity intact? Still, based on polling across the political spectrum, voters increasingly are calling for more alignment with their own core priorities rather than the far left and right. There is no doubt that polarization and social media amplification has pushed both to their limits, this needs to shift back towards the center if "representation" (and winning elections) is the objective. And I think there is always room for everyone's voice, but do not always expect it to align with the majority. Today it seems there is no bottom. In the medium and long term, politicians often ignore the polling and comprehensive focus groups that can drive consistently supported messaging and policy, but they do it at their own peril.
I want transparency in policy making (established priorities, who/what supports it, what is the expected result) along with solid metrics to quantify outcomes justifying those policies. Alignment is representation. Alignment is not blind obedience to party, donors, groups, corporations, or executives consolidating power. Restore integrity and credibility.
“He argued that if Piker had said offensive things about a minority group other than Jews, Democrats wouldn’t have hesitated to shun him.”
I dunno, man, I’ve been hearing a lot about the need to make nice with people who don’t think trans folks deserve human rights.
That quote really got me too. Sounds like the same schtick we heard from Trump and Vance et al... Then he went further and said it was better to accept electoral risk. Third Way sounds pretty butthurt for a group that preaches constantly about big tents and no questionnaires etc.
The funny thing as a social democrat, I actually think Hasan is deeply wrong about some stuff, kind of dumb about other things, and is bad on strategy, but the Centrists seem to really focus on either superficial stuff (oooh he's rich but wanta more taxes) or the stuff he's basically correct about (Israel is doing a genocide and Democrats shouldn't support them).
If somebody said Hasan shouldn't be supported because refuses to say China is trying their own ethnic cleansing with the Uyghars and is basically pro-Russia, that'd be a good argument. Instead, 'he said something kind of true about 9/11 a decade ago and is mean to Israel!"
Ya everyone is missing the big picture and defaulting to idiotic squabbles. Your last paragraph is exactly what I was thinking while reading the article. Great post!
Thank you for a deeper dive into Hasan P. He recently showed up in my reads and I did not get a fair assessment from them.
Thank you.
This is not a fair assessment. This is a smear job.
If you want to hear Piker in his own words, listen to this:
https://youtu.be/jcIa2pE2D10?si=R6y8vg-2UakvRmdr
If Democrats want to chase fascist, Communist or Islamist adjacent young white males, they're obviously entitled to do so. The obvious question is whether they're intrigued by extremists like Piker because of the size of his audience, are planning to parrot or defer to his toxic talking points, or hope publicly to put him in his well deserved place.
Knowing most liberals, they'll probably be suckered into legitimizing him because they're too polite to tell him where to get off.
Knowing most progressives, they won't need to be suckered.
But I'd note (again) that Father Coughlin's weekly audience at its peak reportedly included up to a third of the entire US population, and remained at about one sixth even after he went down the Nazi rabbit hole. Then Pearl Harbor happened and Coughlin was toast. It's hard to tell if Piker's post adolescent audience buys into his dreck or is just there for the lulz. But either way, Democrats will flirt with him at their peril. Does anybody actually think such assignations will improve their national brand?
Whose tent is The Big Tent? Is it AIPAC's or pro-Palestinianian's, is it corporate Capitalist's or left-wing NGO capitalist's, is it any number of unresolved conflicts many see being played out in the Big D tent. I'm a former moderate Republican turned independent to escape MAGA (NeverTrumper) looking in and holding a share of what probably 2/3rds of Americans hope for in the Big Tent Democratic party. Party leaders, activists and pundits need to figure out what real people feel about this situation.