Why Democrats Should Shun Hasan Piker
They shouldn’t repeat the GOP’s mistake.
HASAN PIKER, THE FAR-LEFT STREAMER, is having a bit of a moment. Or, more accurately, the Democratic party is having a bit of a moment with him, which obliges those of us in the pro-democracy-but-only-instrumentally-pro-Democratic camp to think about him, too. My Bulwark colleague Lauren Egan wrote about the intra-Democratic battles over Piker recently, and our colleagues Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell had an excellent colloquy the other night about whether Democratic leaders should appear on Piker’s livestream.
What kind of opinionator is Piker? He said in August 2019 that the United States “deserved 9/11.” When someone challenged him online about his anti-Israel rants in October 2023, Piker replied with vituperation: “You fucking baying pig. You fucking bloodthirsty violent pig-dog.” In the same stream as his 9/11 remark, Piker praised the al Qaeda terrorist who disfigured Rep. Dan Crenshaw. “What the fuck is wrong with this dude? Didn’t he go to war and like literally lose his eye because some mujahideen1—a brave fucking soldier—fucked his eye hole with their dick?”
Frankly, that should be enough right there to exclude that person from polite society. Whatever you think of Crenshaw, that kind of inhuman rhetoric is beyond the pale. How quaint, I hear you say. There is no such thing as polite society anymore. That’s how people talk. But stay with me for a minute here. Some of us knew in 2015, and frankly long before that if we lived in or near New York, that Trump was a sociopath. We knew because he said things that were cruel, crude, and demeaning to other people. If the Republican party and the country had drawn a line against him then, for mocking a handicapped reporter, making light of rape, disparaging the heroism of John McCain, or vowing to commit war crimes, we would have spared ourselves the current debacle.
Everyone—especially those who, like Tim, took a principled stand against Trump—should uphold line-drawing.
Speaking of making light of rape, Piker did precisely that regarding the conduct of Hamas on October 7th. “Even if there was multiple rapes that took place on October 7th,” Piker said, “this does not change anything for me in this dynamic.” And he has said that Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel.
Piker has valorized Luigi Mangione, labeling him an “adventurer.” He has praised the Chinese Communist Party (which is currently conducting a genocide against China’s Uighur Muslim minority, to say nothing of its myriad other crimes), saying there’s a “lot that we can learn” from how they run the country. He justified Russia’s annexation of Crimea: “I call it a part of Russian territory, bitch. . . . I call it Crimea River, a Russian river.” Piker styles himself a champion of left-wing causes, yet his sympathies extend not only to (highly nationalist) Communists in Beijing but to the theocratic terrorist warlords in Gaza and the radically conservative and “traditional” authoritarian in Moscow as well. His level of concern for the suffering that Communist regimes have inflicted is summed up in his commentary regarding a Vietnamese woman who testified about what she endured: “Fuck you, old lady. Shut the fuck up you stupid fucking idiotic old lady. . . . Suck my dick, old lady. Goddam. Go fuck this refugee.”
There are countless sincere, knowledgeable left-wingers in the world who would never think to deny or mock the suffering of refugees from communism. And while Piker calls himself a Marxist, this guy just seems drawn to aggression. Piker is a bully, a misogynist, and a boor on his livestream—that should tell you something. Someone who is so vile in his language and behavior is not going to respect boundaries in other areas of life, and sure enough, he is drawn to political violence, whether it’s Hamas rapists, Mangione shooting a defenseless and innocent health care executive, or Putin pursuing his imperialist expansion. Sounds awfully familiar.
So that’s who we’re talking about. Now to the matter of antisemitism.
There are two arguments advanced for why Democrats should campaign with Piker—as Abdul El-Sayed, candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, plans to do—and appear on his show. One is that he is reaching an angry audience that Democrats should want to tap. The other is that Piker has a fair point, that he’s right to hate Israel, and that it’s time Democrats dropped their evenhandedness.
My colleague Tim Miller made both of these points recently. Israel, he asserted, is a “malign influence on the world.” And he went further, essentially endorsing an antisemitic trope: “If you had said that ‘Israel is going to drag America into a war that we have nothing to do with based on their influence over our political leaders’ two months ago, people would have said, ‘That’s an antisemitic thing to say’—and now we’re doing that.”
There are a few disheartening lapses here. The first is that, for the first time I can remember, Tim is holding someone other than Donald Trump responsible for Trump’s actions. Tim didn’t patronize Trump in this way when he repeatedly bent over for Vladimir Putin, or when he did extraordinary favors for the Gulf states, or when he intervened repeatedly to prop up Viktor Orbán. Why, in this case, is the fault for Trump’s notorious suggestibility not Trump’s?
Netanyahu may have been successful in playing upon Trump’s vanity, and damn him for that if you like, but the people who put such an emotionally unstable person in the White House deserve a far larger share of blame. Israel cannot lead America by the nose. Tim said that “Israel got us into this war.” As recently as June, Trump was ordering Israel to stop bombing Iran, and Israel complied, as the junior partner in alliance with a superpower must. It is Trump who got us into this war.
The second lapse is Tim’s suggestion that the war with Iran has “nothing to do with” us. I think this war is a disaster, but it’s just not the case that the United States has nothing at stake here. To sum up fifty years in a few sentences: The Islamic Republic of Iran has since its inception been waging asymmetric war on the United States. It started with the attack on the American embassy in Tehran in 1979 and the subsequent holding of American hostages for 444 days. It continued with attacks on the American embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut that together killed nearly 300 Americans. A thorough list of the hijackings, kidnappings, assassinations, and other terrorist attacks against Americans and American interests can be found here. Before 9/11, Iran was responsible for more American deaths through terror attacks than any other source. During the Iraq War, Iranian proxies caused hundreds of American fatalities. For decades, the mullahs have referred to the United States as the “Great Satan” and to Israel as the “Little Satan.”
Trump initiated this war for his own (mostly) asinine reasons—his desire to show up his supposedly overly timid predecessors, his lingering sense of humiliation over the hostage crisis of 1979–81, his belief that it really would be dangerous for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons (not wrong), his absurd belief in his own infallibility, and his faith in force as the solution to all thorny problems. While one can deplore Trump’s terrible judgment, inviting people to blame Israel for its “influence over our political leaders” simply encourages scapegoating.
PIKER, LIKE TRUMP and like demagogues everywhere, is seeking to stoke hatred rather than inform or enlighten. He said of Israel: “You are left with a country that is packed to the fucking gills with the most inbred, uneducated, ultranationalist, rabid, Haredi population.” When Trump used such language about immigrants, or Muslims, or any group, Tim was among the first to call it out. Why now give Piker a pass? The difference, Tim explained, is that Piker isn’t running for president. But Tim has been eloquent in denouncing other bigots like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, who are also not running for president.
Finally, Tim makes the pragmatic point that many people, particularly young men, are angry about the war and looking for leaders who will channel their rage. For Democrats to blackball Piker, he argues, is political malpractice. They should be speaking to everyone, he urges—and in fairness, Tim has said many times, and continues to emphasize, that he deplores antisemitism and doesn’t think the Democratic party should tolerate it. It’s not “cozying” up to Piker to appear on his show, he says. In fact, not going on his show only elevates him.
That’s doubtful. If you hear that Politician A declined to appear on the Alex Jones show, does that elevate Jones? Perhaps in the eyes of a few (if they even hear of it). On the other hand, if Politician A shows up, she will have to exchange pleasantries with the host—she’s attempting to reach his audience after all—and even if she registers some disagreements, she will be perceived as legitimizing him. And if Democrats pander to the bigots and haters on the left, as Republicans have done with the bigots and haters on the right, there will be nothing left of the pro-democracy movement. It will be red shirts versus brown shirts, as in Weimar Germany.
Finally, Tim argues that Democrats will be helped electorally by appealing to angry constituencies such as those who tune in to Piker. On the contrary, Democrats need to win over people who previously voted for Trump but are more moderate in outlook, as Tim has often argued in the past. As Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who defeated her opponent in 2025 by 15 points, admonished a few years ago, the words “defund the police” had badly damaged Democratic candidates. She continued, “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again. . . . We lost good members because of that.” As it happens, Piker is a fan of “defund the police.”
Even if it were true that Democrats would profit electorally by becoming a little more hateful, a little more misogynistic, a little friendlier to America’s authoritarian antagonists, a little more vulgar, and a little dumber—is it worth it? What kind of victory is that? We’ve seen one party lose itself that way. If the other falls into the same sewer, it’s game over.
There are so many arguments against the war in Iran they practically write themselves. And frankly, the public doesn’t need persuading that it was a huge mistake. They already believe that. Democrats need not flatter Piker or his audience to win elections. On the other hand, if they taint themselves with his hateful rhetoric and extremist views, they will be making a moral and strategic mistake—one Tim documented clearly and at length when the Republicans did it not so long ago.