Axios & MS NOW Cynically Farm Outrage Off of Hasan Piker Interviews

So, at this point, I don't think it's enough to say that billionaire owned news businesses are failing to do their jobs. Because I actually believe that they're an impediment to the truth. They're the reason why most Americans are profoundly ignorant and why our government gets away with so much [ __ ] Because mainstream media isn't a check on government power like they're supposed to be. At best, they're stenographers of the powerful, but at worst, they're an extension of said power. Because the same oligarchs who buy off our politicians have also bought up all of the media and they now totally control the flow of information which allows them to easily marginalize voices that oppose the status quo. And we got a perfect example of them doing this exact thing with Hassan [ __ ] So Axios to their credit actually decided to talk to Hassan [ __ ] instead of just talking about him. And it was clear that this was nothing more than a cynical attempt to form outrage off of him. I say this because the very first thing that they advertised about said interview was this quote Hassan [ __ ] on the Axio show. America worse than al-Qaeda poundforpound. Now I think that most of us watching already know the point that Assan is trying to make. But to the average person, I think they're going to see that and assume that Hassan just dropped a new America deserve 911 and think that he's explicitly taking a pro-terrorist pro- al-Qaeda stance. But when Axios dropped the clip with additional context, it was clear that Hassan's point was that terrorism is bad. Actually, predictably so. But here's what he said. >> You once said that America is the top dog in terrorism. >> Yes. >> Do you think America then is worse than al-Qaeda? >> Poundfor-pound as far as the number of deaths. Yes. We have caused tremendous terror all around the world. I think that that is not only terror that we are waging on regular civilians in nations in the periphery, but it's also having consequences on ourselves. It's it's having dramatic consequences on the home front. One one clear example of this is what we did in Minab, right? There's no distinction between blowing up a school, triple tapping it with tomahawk missiles. If you're killing 140 school girls, that is an act of terror. This doesn't mean that all Americans are terrorists, but the reality of the matter is we have to create an environment of accountability to ensure things like that never happen again. >> He's right. Regardless if what he said was politically correct or not, what he said is objectively and empirically correct. And also, it's the prevailing belief among most people around the globe. A democracy perceptions index report from earlier this year found that 65 out of 84 countries believe that America is the top global threat. a belief shared by Americans as well in the same survey, by the way. And this view isn't common around the world because everybody just has some irrational hatred for America and our freedom. It's an informed viewpoint based on facts and evidence. The entire world is effectively being held captive by a global American dictatorship. We've killed millions and millions of people in dozens of countries in just the last couple of decades alone. The problem is you're apparently not supposed to say that because Americans expect to be coddled and they don't even want to entertain the idea that their tax dollars make them complicit with unfathomable levels of death and destruction around the globe. It's apparently offensive to acknowledge reality even though it was my generation that was told again and again that we're the ones who are too sensitive and we need to stop getting offended so easily. But it turns out feelings really do matter more than facts because Hassan's correct statement stirred up a [ __ ] storm online. And I just don't know why this is so controversial. Nonetheless, it was. For example, Adam Carlson writes, "Was this quote taken out of context?" Yes. Even with context, is this deeply out of touch with where most Americans stand? Yes. Actually, no, it's not. But Derek Thompson chimed in saying, "Yeah, I don't know or follow his work very closely, but America bad seems like the gist." Okay, that's a a reductionist take nonetheless. Joe Filipovic asks, "I truly don't mean to sound like a reactionary right-winger, but if you genuinely hate the United States and think it's the worst, most evil country on earth, but you are a wealthy person with a job you can do from anywhere, why would you live here?" She continues, "I don't mean that people who criticize the US should leave. I criticize the US. I also live abroad, but in some ways that has made me appreciate the US more. I think criticizing the American government is quite patriotic. I don't mean critics of America. I mean the people who claim to genuinely hate America who also have the resources to live elsewhere. Why stay? I don't know. Maybe because you want to stay and fight so you can make the country a better place for all of the people that live here that you know personally. But to be fair, I think that this still would have been a controversial take even if Axios hadn't taken him out of context. But notice how emotional all of these responses are. They refuse to grapple with the substance of Hassan's assertion because the thought that America statistically speaking commits more acts of terrorism than al-Qaeda is too much for these people to bear. So they try to brush that inconvenient fact aside. So I guess they can continue to live in ignorance and tell themselves that we're the best country in the world. But let me at least respond to Jill Filipovic who seems to be asking that question in good faith because, you know, even though I can't speak for everyone, um, I personally do hate America because I am [ __ ] outraged by the way that working people are treated in this country and I'm also appalled by all of the pain and suffering that we cause around the world. We are the most powerful empire in human history, yet we're using our immense wealth to inflict inconceivable levels of harm on other human beings. all so we can expand our wealth and our global reach. I hate that and that makes me hate America. It makes me feel ashamed to be an American. But it's not so easy to just pick up and leave. Even if I could, I wouldn't. I was born in America. It's the only place that I know. My family and friends all live here and I care about them. I want to make the country a better place for them, too. But I shouldn't have to leave. That's the main point. I should be able to criticize my country and try to make it a better place. I don't know why that's so [ __ ] controversial. It doesn't seem controversial to Jill to be there, but most people they take criticism and hatred of America personally when it's not personal. We just want to live in a country that isn't so [ __ ] up. Is that so difficult to grasp? Now, not to mention leaving wouldn't fundamentally change my perspective on the United States. Perhaps my own personal quality of life would improve, but I'd still be appalled at the global destruction being caused by my home. And here's the thing. I do hate America. Yes, but I actually want to love America. I would love to love America. We can be better, but we just choose not to be. Politicians haven't even tried to prove that there's any redeeming qualities about America. Like, we've had politicians say they want to change the country, but then they don't. So you can't not get disillusioned after a while. Yet we're expected to just like accept that America is the greatest country in the history of the world and never ever question it. But I think that's immature and I call [ __ ] on that. I am going to question it even if it's taboo. There's nothing inherently special about this random system of governance that I happen to be born into on a random continent on a random planet orbiting a random star in a random galaxy. us saying that we're the best country ever is like when we said that our mommy and daddy were the best parents ever when we were kids. See, I thought that, you know, that was the case, too, because I had no other parents to compare my parents to. And while I still net approve of my parents' parenting overall, thank you, mom and dad. I'll admit that they probably aren't the best parents in the world if I could quantitatively measure the quality of their parenting in some objective way. No dis to them, right? My point is that my default stance was naive and childish. I can recognize that now as an adult and as adults, we should be able to have a more mature and nuanced stance about our own country's issues without [ __ ] our pants and foaming at the [ __ ] mouth. And maybe I wouldn't hate America as much if we actually tried to live up what we claimed to be. If we just tried a little bit to live up to what we said we were, then I would feel a little bit better. But it's like we're getting worse. And a lot of us are proud that we're getting worse and shittier and we're acting shittier and treating human beings shittier. But if me saying I hate America offends you, then you have to understand that I am nothing more than a product of my environment. As Lindsay Balon put it, "Our entire adult lives have been defined by illegal wars, economic recessions, worsening inequality, private equity hollowing out everything. environmental destruction and no one is held accountable for anything. What other conclusion do you expect us to come to? Exactly. So, the reason why Hassan's comment was so offensive is because I think he struck a chord. He's forcing Americans to finally acknowledge an inconvenient truth that we're not the best country in the world. It doesn't mean we're the worst country in the world. I don't believe that. But based on everything we've done, the inescapable conclusion is that we are a bad country. We're the baddies, a force for evil overall in the world. It doesn't mean that we haven't done anything good in the world, but if America disappeared tomorrow, most of the people around the world would probably feel safer, and that should embarrass us all. We should take it as a challenge to actually be better instead of clutching our pearls. But Hassan isn't the first person to acknowledge this inconvenient truth about America. >> 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists? >> Who are the terrorists? 655 Iraqis. I'm saying you have to look from the we invaded >> who are you calling terrorists? >> I'm saying that if you were in Iraq and another country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us? >> Are we killing their citizens or are they their people also killing >> invading a sovereign nation and occupying a country against the UN? >> It's crazy to see that clip because Rosie O'Donnell said something that was very politically incorrect at the time. And even though what she was saying wasn't that complicated, it didn't even compute with Elizabeth Hasselbeck. It's like Rosie was speaking a different language. Elizabeth couldn't put herself in the shoes of a country on the receiving end of US imperialism because like most Americans, she was brainwashed to think that we're the good guys and everything that we do is automatically good no matter what because our intentions are pure. It is such a childish way to look at the world. And it's embarrassing for Americans to think that America can do no wrong, even if you were clueless about the things that they're doing abroad, because we can see firsthand how poorly they treat their own citizens. So why would you not think that they would also be terrible abroad? A country that lets 114,000 Americans die every single year due to a basic lack of healthcare is not the best country in the world. I'm sorry to break it to you. A country that supplies genocidal apartid states like Israel bombs to commit a genocide, that is not a good country. And it's such an obvious conclusion that even Donald [ __ ] Trump of all people acknowledged it once. >> Putin's a killer. A lot of killers. We got a lot of killers. Why you think our country is so innocent? You think our country is so innocent? >> I don't know of any government leaders that are killers in America. >> Well, take a look at what we've done, too. >> It's ironic that he of all people would say something like that because he's one of the most prolific killers in US history. Now, by the time his term is over, he'll put Henry Kissinger to shame if he hasn't already. But I don't know if the people bashing Hassan for what he said would accuse Trump of being proterism for saying something very similar to Hassan, even though Trump is a literal terrorist himself, because our media has conditioned us to think that state sanctioned terrorism is just and legitimate, whereas terrorism from non-state actors is unjust and illegitimate. But there's really no material difference. And that's something that people have to understand. Okay? You're not going to feel better about a bomb being dropped on your head if a government gave itself the legal authority to do it because the outcome is still the same. You die, right? But to go back to the Axios interview, if you'll recall, Hassan didn't even bring up al-Qaeda on his own valition. It was the interviewer who chose to invoke al-Qaeda. And there's a reason for that. On September 1st, Ken Clippenstein argued that the freakout over Hassan was motivated by one thing and one thing only. Quote, "It's a defcon onelevel war against Michigan Senate candidate Abdul Elsed, a party establishment frantically hitting the panic button to reestablish its control. But since Elsed is the nominee for Senate, a chamber the party also wants to control, it has to go after him indirectly through proxies like Piker." And for evidence of this, you need to look no further than the Axios article about the Hassan interview itself, where they write extensively about how Abdul Elsa's Republican opponent has tied him to Hassan [ __ ] because he campaigned with him. And they also asked them about Hassan Piker's comments on al-Qaeda before the interview was even out. And this is why we don't trust the media because the goal wasn't to have a nuanced and constructive conversation with Assan [ __ ] after months of obsessive media coverage about him. The goal was to farm outrage off of him, specifically to tea up attacks against Abdul Elsa, a Muslim candidate that the Republican party wants you to believe is a terrorist sympathizer. They're not unwitting tools of the Republican fascists. They are willing participants in the campaign to take down Abdul Elsad. That's what the media is doing. And the reason why they're doing this to Abdul Alsad is because he's someone that actually does pose a threat to the establishment in certain ways. And this goes beyond this one campaign, too. Assan is a proxy for the DSA and the left more broadly. So, if they can delegitimize him, they can delegitimize all of us by extension, which is necessary right now, seeing as how we're the ones supplanting the political establishment by offering voters a viable alternative to neoliberalism and fascism. But it's not just Axios, because Hassan [ __ ] was also interviewed by MS Now, and it was like they were purposely trying to misunderstand every single point he was trying to make. Israel's a thousand times worse than Hamas. Um, this is intentionally provocative, but it's also not. >> Do you believe that? But no, but like do you actually believe that? No, for sure. >> Go ahead. >> Because Well, here's the thing. Is Hamas a religious fundamentalist operation that have uh engaged in violent actions? Of course they have. Absolutely. But that violence is directly born out of and even that repression is directly born out of the conditions brought about by the occupation that's been going on for 80 plus years. And not only that, but I think it's a good entry point into the conversation for many Americans who also understand that what Israel has done is unconscionable. The genocide is unacceptable. Many of them are also now coming to the recognition that there has also been an ongoing occupation and apartheid. And the the reason why I the reason why I make this intentionally provocative statement is to challenge the the previous implicit biases that many Americans have that are sympathetic to the Palestinian plight but not exactly understanding of why Palestinians uh fight back or even aware of the internationally recognized right to resist that the Palestinian resistance has. >> I know we don't want to get into like a 20-minute conversation about Israel and Gaza. We have more questions we want to ask, but I just want to go back to Eugene's point that he said like, do you really believe that? And you said yes. So, do you understand that by saying that that there are a lot of people that hear you say that and say one, okay, I think he's being provocative, but two, oh my god, he's endorsing violence. Mhm. >> I think endorsing violence is uh no different when people say that they, you know, that Israel has a right to defend itself, that Israel is uh is a the most moral country in the Middle East, that it's a it's a democracy. It's an apartheid. It's no different than the way that people argued. >> Can I just go back? But that's not my I don't want like I'm not talking about Netanyahu and the state of Israel. I guess my question is do you it sounds to me like you are endorsing violence for um because you think it's justified on this particular issue and somebody would that's how I heard it I know that's how other people have heard it and so do you understand that that's how people hear it and is that what you are endorsing >> so this again goes back to the same uh this goes back to the same dynamic right structural violence and state violence is often times made to be invisible so when Israel is a state is operating its normal state functions and sometimes it can uh it can come across as excessive, right? It's not seen as violent. It's no different than when people when when uh when people protest against police violence and police brutality, >> the brutality of the police is systemic violence and therefore it's it's normalized. It's made to be invisible. Uh whereas when people protest against the police, that is all of a sudden chaotic. that's all of a sudden violent. It's never violent when the police actually uh uh release tear gas on protesters. It's violence if the protesters use leaf blowers to blow that tear gas. >> I'm going to let Eugene move on, but I just want to note it it it sounds like the example that you just gave that the people who are protesting the police are Hamas and I just would reject that as somebody who has protested the police before. But we could move on. >> Amazing. Thank you, Simone. What a charitable and good faith interpretation of everything that he just said. People protesting police are in fact Hamas. That's exactly his point. Like this is what the [ __ ] I mean. They're not interested in having a good faith conversation about complex political concepts. They are deliberately trying to dumb down and mischaracterize every single thing that he says to ferment outrage. Even though the point he's making is logically sound. She also said, you know, it sounds like you're endorsing violence by saying that Israel is worse than Hamas. Now, maybe she was just playing devil's advocate there. I don't know. But the point that he's making is that if you believe violence is bad, then objectively speaking, you should be more mad at Israel than Hamas, given that Israel has committed more violence than Hamas. That's the point. It's about violence and the effect violence has on human beings. Israel has committed the equivalent of at least 30 October Sabbaths in Gaza. So by every objective metric, Israel is the greater terrorist in the situation. So why do we collectively view Hamas as the terrorist? Israel's terrorism is no more legitimate than Hamas's terrorism just because they have the legal authority in their minds to do so. Actually, what they're doing is against international law. But you know, we buy their justification because they're a state and state sanctioned violence is permissible, but non-state sanctioned violence is not. What's the difference? It just it's so frustrating. But Hassan was asked if he actually believed that Israel was worse than Hamas. As if that's so absurd because again, if you measure violence in terms of the cost of human life, it's not even [ __ ] debatable. How would you debate that? But see, those waters are just too controversial to wait into on mainstream media. They don't want to do it. So, the best thing you could do is clutch your pearls and move on. But this is why Americans are so [ __ ] stupid. I need them to understand this because pundits won't even entertain counterarguments to conventional wisdom. And this is why we just like gobble whatever propaganda that's fed to us like [ __ ] slob. Like it's like we're [ __ ] pigs and we just go to mainstream media and let them implant thoughts in our heads and we never think. We're never even given the option to think about whether or not the things that we've been told are true or not. It's just it's so [ __ ] frust frustrating to me. And if you think that he's wrong, then make the case. Provide some counterarguments, offer some data, some statistics, some empirical evidence to validate your perspective. But they don't do that. They won't do that. One, because he's right and they know it. But two, because they can't do it because that goes beyond the parameters of acceptable discourse in the United States of America as determined by oligarchs and the establishment. though, you know, when you can't really say anything, the best thing you could do is wag your finger and tone police him for saying something so [ __ ] extreme. But Assan goes on to challenge them even more by asking them to really wrestle with the actual differences between Hamas and other armed resistance groups throughout history. And even though they're never going to admit that he's right, I think that hopefully the viewers will see that the point he's making is reasonable. >> What is the exceptional nature here? Um if we do not have if we do not make the same distinction uh about the ANC that also was uh engaging in arms struggle against apartheid South Africa. What is the exception that we make for not just Hamas but the Palestinian militant resistance in general? And that is the the that is the issue at the heart of the matter. People want perfect victims. Whether they'd be black people engaging in the civil rights struggle historically, whether it be the uh forces against the apartheid in South Africa, whether it be the liberation struggle in Algeria, the expectation from uh the white moderate or the expectation from people who uh enjoy the order that exists in civilized society is that people are not supposed to fight back and try to even match the intensity or the violence of the occupation. or the police brutality that are defend I bring this uh argument forward because I want people to start thinking what would they do in that situation what would they do if they lived in the world's largest open air prison that's hermetically sealed that is a nuclear armed state that is backed by the most powerful entity on the planet >> and we all know the answer to that question. Republicans were literally calling temporary COVID safety measures totalitarianism. And if you think that having to wear a mask during a global pandemic is tyranny, imagine how pissed off you'd be if another country came in and decided to put a country on top of your country which already existed and they forcibly evicted you from your home at gunpoint. Imagine the orders of magnitude that that level of tyranny is compared to a public mask mandate during a pandemic. Imagine if this outside invader also controlled your freedom of movement. You couldn't exit or enter the country without their say and they also controlled your electricity and your food supply and your water. Do you think that Americans would just be like, "Oh, well, this is fine. At best, we'll protest peacefully." Americans would not accept that Americans would do the exact same thing as every other group of occupied people throughout human history and they would [ __ ] fight back. They think that a violent response in that situation would be justified seeing as how the violence was initially inflicted on them. It wouldn't matter to these Americans in this hypothetical situation that the occupier claims to have the legal authority to do the things that they're doing. All that would matter is that they drive out the invaders by all means necessary so you can have your freedom back. And Americans in this hypothetical wouldn't think that their armed resistance was terrorism. They think that it was the invaders who were the true terrorists. I mean, the American Revolution was violent, but because it was us that was doing the violence, that violence was justified. So, it's important that we acknowledge our own hypocrisy, because that's how we become better people and make the world a better place. A lack of empathy is part of the reason why exploitation is so rampant because nobody wants to empathize with oppressed people and see it from their perspective. But unfortunately, you know, the political establishment is learning the hard way that an increasing number of people, they are developing a more nuanced view of the world. A lot of us realize that we don't have to be so one-dimensional. The world isn't black and white. We don't have to think in binary terms. We have access to the internet and we can go online and verify that people in other countries are in fact just like us. It's why this idea that all Palestinians are terrorists or that Israel is justified in doing a genocide isn't landing. Because the media can no longer hide the humanity of the victims of colonialism and imperialism from us. It's why the public turned against the Vietnam War. Because once they saw on television for the first time what we were doing to those poor people, the idea that they were the boogeyman, it fell apart like that. people could see that these poor Vietnamese people bled red just like us and what we were doing was inexcusable. We were actually the monsters. And like it or not, a lot of people in my generation grew up with a more universalist view of the world. We don't see Iraqis or Palestinians or Iranians as the bad guys. We see them as fellow human beings who have as much of a right to self-determination in life as we do. And I think that that's why Hassan's comments are really hitting a nerve because deep down Americans know this is true. It's just really hard to confront that truth because it's a paradigm shift. It invalidates everything that we were told about America our entire lives. And while the media can weaponize Assange's comments to a degree, I don't really think that you can put the cat back in the bag when it comes to our perception of American imperialism more broadly. Even though it's hard to acknowledge that we're the ones who are the bad guys, once you come to that undeniable conclusion, there's really no going back. I am never going to be able to unsee the crimes against humanity being committed in Iraq and Iran and Palestine and Lebanon and Cuba and elsewhere. Things that my government has been complicit with either directly or indirectly. Nothing that anybody tells me can justify the pain and suffering that our country has caused abroad. So if the political establishment wants us to change our opinion about America, then they need to change their actions first.