Hasan Piker Is Being SMEARED

There's a lot on the plate of the Democratic Party right now. Donald Trump is shredding the US Constitution in front of the world, starting economy destroying forever wars, upturning the world order, and trying to use the Supreme Court to manipulate the important midterm elections in November. But have viewers at home considered that none of that is as important as talking about the opinions of a Twitch streamer? Well, that's exactly where we are. And it's this clip from commentator Hassan Paher, better known by his online moniker, Hanabi, that has been doing the rounds. It all started on Sunday when a short clip of Assam went viral on Twitter after being posted by this pro-Israel account claiming Assam was inviting quote bad things on American Jews due to their support for Israel. Here's the clip in its full context and unedited. Let's see if that framing is honest. As an anti-Zionist Jewish person whose temple is reformed and deeply Zionist, it's difficult to even approach trying to change their minds. No, I understand that. I I understand that my I mean look to the anti-ionist Jews in my community, you have a a very tough job ahead of you. Well, you have to go back to your communities and and try to get uh your your elderly relatives to understand that this connection between Israel and Zionism that is expressed over and over again through a lot of these Jewish institutions, okay, is teaching people the idea that Jews are monolithic. And this is a dangerous, it is a very because look, it's a very dangerous uh mode of propaganda. And you want to know why? Because people don't [ __ ] with Israel any longer. And if and if Jews in America keep putting uh this this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone's going to come around and take action. Not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews. Okay? We're teaching people the wrong lesson. At the end of the day, American Jews do not prioritize Israel, but they do prioritize anti-semitism. And that's precisely the reason why a lot of this propaganda that is facing uh the American Jewish side from a lot of these Jewish outlets, right, will tie the two all the time. And we hear that from outlets like ZBS as well, right? When the host asked Angie Nixon like, "Oh, well, don't you think we shouldn't stop giving weapons to Israel at a time when anti-semitism is exploding?" Where's the connective tissue between these two events? American Jews do care about anti-semitism. It's understandable to care about anti-semitism. They don't care about Israel. So, how do you tie the two? You say, "Well, Israel is the only thing standing in the way of of uh the next holocaust happening." That's how you do it. That's how you do it. So every single time you have prominent Zionist Jews come out and be like, "No, this is anti-Semitic." To oppose Israel is anti-semitic, you're teaching people that you're teaching people the trope of dual loyalty. That's what you're teaching people. After you teach them that, you can't turn around and say, "Oh, well, this is dual loyalty. This is anti-semitic cuz at a certain point people are not going to give a [ __ ] and we're already past that point. It's that simple. So Hassan was not advocating for that to happen. As is made clear when the clip is watched in full context. It's actually very similar in tone to this paragraph from an Ezra Klein article from earlier this year. Anti-ionism is rising as a response to what Israel is doing. It will simply not be possible to treat it as a marginal viewpoint that can be shamed or shunned into invisibility. Yes, anti-semitism often cloaks itself in anti-ionism. So don't do the anti-semmites work for them. If you keep telling people that if they oppose the Jewish state, then they must hate Jewish people, eventually they will believe you. Not that context, of course, would stop the pro-Zionist media from seizing the opportunity to use the out of context clip for their own ends. Now, here's CNN's Dana Bash. You may not have heard of left-wing streamer Hassan [ __ ] until this year when Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul Elsa began campaigning with him. Just a reminder, [ __ ] has excused sexual violence from Hamas terrorist. Now, the controversial relationship between the two entered new territory this week after [ __ ] said this. Well, [ __ ] made that comment that American Jews who support Israel are responsible for actions taking against taken against them. which is quite odd when she had previously said this when interviewing Benjamin Netanyahu. >> American Jews in Congress who support Israel and support what you just said um say that a lot of the actions by you and your government are making Jews in the United States unsafe. Congresswoman Haley Stevens, she's running for Senate in Michigan, said Benjamin Netanyahu has made us less safe. He has frankly put Jews in an uncomfortable position across the country. It's >> a bit weird then. Now, of course, this perceived crack in the liberal coalition has been widely exploited by the right-wing media such as Fox News, who have talked more about her son than they have talked about the Iran war. This includes 224 broadcasts about him just in the month of August alone. He is just a taste of their Habi derangement syndrome. part left streamer Hassan [ __ ] who has built a platform on anti-American, anti-Israel rhetoric and has amassed a massive, massive following in doing so. >> Well, [ __ ] is not a socialist. He's not a progressive. He's a communist. Hassan [ __ ] is the ultimate privileged Nepo baby. >> I mean, Hassan [ __ ] wears the costume of Mao Dong, who is the most murderous dictator of the 20th century. He blows the death tolls of Hitler and Stalin out of the water. >> He's just a terrible guy, right? Like I don't know if there's an equivalent on the right for somebody like that. >> I've been doing a lot of Bible study with Harold and Greg and >> I think I'm pretty certain that this per guy >> not getting into heaven. >> I mean again it's interesting because of course I know Fox News aren't stupid. I know that they know that by broadcasting all of this Hassan Paher stuff they're going to create the discourse. they're going to be able to put this into discourse and ask people on the kind of liberal side of politics to respond say well if you don't say anything against Hassan Per then you must agree with him that communism is good you must agree with him that Israel is an apartheid state that is a genocidal state of course they should agree that Israel is an apart genocidal state but of course many of the democrats do not and therefore will jump they will jump at the opportunity to buy into the rights framing of an issue because they have no idea how to engage in agenda setting and we might see well That looks like the Democrats are addicted to allowing the right to set the agenda, as I said, and they've gone into full condemnation mode to try and force Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El Say to distance himself from her son. Representative Hillary Schultton in Michigan was the first Democratic politician out of the block to jump at the chance to make her opposition to her son public with this prepared statement she posted to Twitter on the 24th, claiming he had called for violence against American Jews and named congressional candidate Jeremy Moss on stream. Now, that reference to Jeremy Moss is not from the original clip that went viral last week. Here is Hassan referring to Moss later in that stream. >> Yeah. Jeremy Moss, the Democratic nominee for US House Michigan 11, says this is the person who took who won um Haley Stevens' seat, by the way, says Abdul is going to have to demonstrate some serious outreach to Oakland's Jewish community. I wonder what he has to do to gain the support of Oakland County's Jewish community. Yeah, he has to drop his critiques of Israel. That's what it is. Now, is Oakland County's Jewish community in unison making this demand of Abdul say? No, of course not. But if there isn't opposition from Jewish figures in this community that are loud about the the the um divergence between this representative and their own desires, then the media narrative will set in. even if they don't realize that this media narrative presents Jews as single-minded and singularly invested in the continuation of the Israeli apartheid. I don't know however I don't know how many different ways I can explain this. I don't know how people don't recognize how dangerous this predicament is, how dangerous this is for Jews. You're running around basically tying your entire identity to a country that inevitably will be seen as basically Jewish ISIS. And you're saying as Jews, this is all we care about. Other Democrats were quick to follow suit in their identicate condemnations. Here's the ones who have done so as of the 26th. So have Alisa Slotkin, Josh Gutimer, Jackie Rosen, Susie Lee, Hakee Jeff, Richie Torres, Cory Booker, Brad Schneider, Hillary Shelton, and Jake Okintosh. There's one commonality between these representatives that eagle-eyed tweeters didn't miss out on. However, this graphic from track APAC alleges that the vast majority of these elected officials have received a great deal of money from the Zionist lobby. Weird how they all decided in unison to weigh in on a deceptively edited clip of a Twitch streamer rather than focusing on beating the Republican party. Outside of copy and paste statements from elected representatives, some congressional candidates also weighed in, including this statement from Michael Lasher and candidate in New Jersey. defenders and some critics of Asan [ __ ] just don't get it. The issue isn't just that he lumps all Jews together and holds us all accountable for the supposed evils of Israel as that his non-stop drive to demonize the world's soul Jewish state along with those who support its survival crosses a line by miles between criticism and due hatred of the ancient variety. Also, Mr. Per, Zionism is fact bound up with Judaism. It is not false conflation. Yes, some Jews are anti-ionists, and yes, you have helped turn the zed word into a slur such that large numbers of Jews, particularly younger ones, disown it partly out of misunderstanding. But when Jews are attacked for supporting Israel, they are being attacked for a core part of their Jewish identity. It is due hatred. It is unacceptable and your rhetoric encourages it. Sparish your taxonomy of good Jews and bad Jews. Genuinely incredible. genuinely incredible for him to go by saying, "Oh, the problem with Hassan Per is that he just lumps all Jews together, which Hassan explicitly did not do in the clips. We have seen them in their full context." He was explicit in saying that Jewish people are not a monolith. Those are direct words that came out of Hassan's mouth. To then go on and say, "Actually, Jewish people are a monolith. Zionism in Israel are permanently indelibly inked upon to the Jewish faith despite only existing as an ideology for just over a century and was incredibly contested especially in the early 20th century with the opposing kind of do-it and bundist movements that were alongside Zionism as believing that Jewish people could be part of a diaspora. Right? There has always been levels of disagreement. Any Jewish person will tell you that there's always disagreements around the dinner table. And the idea that you can condemn somebody for treating Jewish people as a monolith when they are not to then go on and say that Jewish people should be a monolith and that they should be somehow entirely indentably linked to a genocidal ethnationalist apartheid expansionist state is again it's doing the job of anti-semites for them as Ezra Klein and as Han have already pointed out. Now perhaps the most deranged of public statements came from representative Josh Gottheimr from New Jerseys fifth. >> Hassan [ __ ] is an anti-semite. He it is what it is and I don't think he would even claim otherwise. He tries to slice the words up at the end of the day. That's what he is. Nobody should be anywhere near this guy. No one should campaign with him. No one should repost him. And and frankly, anyone who is quiet right now is complicit. Everyone should come out against this guy. And we should vote to condemn him when we get back to Congress. Again, Mike Lawler and I have a resolution. I'm I'm hoping that Republican leaders should bring it to the floor so we can stand up to him and to people like Candace Owens who are spewing hate across the board. Yep, you heard that right. Goimer is teaming up with Republican Mike Lawler to try and get a floor vote on the house of the most powerful government in human history to condemn a Twitch streamer. Hassan was unequivocal, however, in responding to his critics, commenting on the coordinator's public statements on Twitter. Apac boss call was made. They are unanimous in their hatred of me and I welcome their hatred. If you're a defender of Israel's genocide, of its occupation, of its child killing spree, then your booze mean nothing to me. Representative Debbie Dingle from Michigan 6th seem to be the only one asking the real questions. At least >> I am done. So don't any reporter ask me again about Hassan [ __ ] It's not what November is about. Republicans are trying to make it. They're trying to divide us and we got to stop letting them try to divide us. I don't agree with Hassan [ __ ] and a lot of stuff. And I really don't agree with them on some of the woman things he said. And I'm still trying to figure out is it the reason he exercises and looks buff is why he has so many followers. We should be so lucky. Now, what's so bananas about the neurotic response to this particular episode is that the data suggests the Democratic Party is totally at odds with their voters on Pike himself. Only half of Democrats even know who he is. And amongst those who do, he's overwhelmingly popular with less than a third of respondents thinking his views are antithetical to the party, compared to over half were supportive. That's before we even get to the gaping chasm in opinion between Democratic voters and Democratic politicians over the issue of Israel, with an overwhelming majority supporting arms embargos and aid restrictions to Israel. That's on top of the majority of Democratic voters also believing Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Dalia, do the Democrats just hate their own voters? >> I mean, I'll tell you what I don't hate. The fact that I just got to watch loads of clips of Hassan Pike. Normally, when I'm here, I'm having to watch clips of K Star. So, I'm very glad that we've had that upgrade. Um, >> you and Debbie Dingle in perfect alignment on this one. >> Yeah. I mean, we could all agree he's hot. Like, that is a just a cross party like line. >> I hope son doesn't watch this on stream now. I mean, maybe we do hope. Sorry. Anyway, let me just get back to the analysis, which is why you actually have me here. Um, do the Democrats hate their voters? Uh, in short, uh, yes. you know, I mean, you would think that a party that is supposed to represent the kind of leftish, you know, left of center uh politics in in in the US would be sort of very keen to align themselves with by far the most popular uh streamer, left-wing streamer in the country. You know, a man that streams for eight hours a day, which is unbelievable. uh and regularly get sort of tens of thousands of people watching his stream at any one time. You know, you would think that especially a party that has spoken so much about the importance of of a broad church uh would be very keen to at least find some common ground to try and tap into the clear kind of coalition of potential voters that are organizing around Hassan [ __ ] um and around sort of the kinds of politics that he that he represents. I mean, Camela Harris was very proud to tell everyone that she had received, you know, the endorsement of Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney and how important it was to have a a a broad church of voices in the in the New Democratic party. It's it shows it betrays a very deep level of contempt that you would be more willing to pally up with essentially a war criminal uh from the Republicans than someone who represents the broad you know a significant chunk clearly of your broad base. Um but I think we we have to understand why this is the case. The reason this is the case is because when you have a broken political system, a political system that is not fundamentally democratic, that is completely captured by vested interests, the role of the main establishment parties is not to reflect the politics of the people, it's to make the politics of the people. And one way in which you do that is you create a very very narrow range of political ideas that people can be exposed to and political ideas that are you can legitimately hold. And for the Democrat side that means really really narrowing the boundary of what can be considered an acceptable left or center-left politics. And that inevitably involves neutralizing or delegitimizing anyone who falls outside of that. Now, what I find very interesting um is that on the right, on the Republican side, they have actually been much more able to absorb their version of this. You know, I I saw in one of those clips them saying there's no equivalent of Hassan Pikah on the Republican side, which is in unbelievable. >> Nick Fent is anybody. >> I mean, hello. And not only that, but Trump has been very uh savvy in how he engages with this kind of podcast politics. Um the Democrats have not been able to do that. And that's because the kinds of politics that falls outside of the bounds of the Democrat party are a genuine threat to those vested interests. You know, when we look at the um organizations that are behind a lot of these smear campaigns against Hassan [ __ ] and you know, anyone associated with him, a lot of it is coming from this organization called Third Way, which is basically corporate executives, Wall Street executives, and incredibly wealthy private donors. those people are not going to are investing in the Democratic Party because they see it as a vehicle to neutralize left politics in the US, especially as inequality grows and you know radical politics on both sides kind of grows as a response as a as as a kind of as a response to that. And the Democrat party has been really effective at neutralizing left politics in in the US for a very long time because alongside the kind of you know liberal media which is a phrase I use very cautiously it has had quite a lot of control over what ideas people are exposed to and what's happened as a result of YouTube and the rise of content creators and stuff is that flow that control over the flow of information and ideas has been dramatically undermined. mind, you know, people are exposed now to a lot broader range of ideas. Some of those ideas, Alan Nick Fuentes, are terrible. Um, a lot of those ideas are are really positive and are really kind of um critically thought out. And so what we are seeing here is not necessarily strategic failure from the Democratic party because, you know, you could look at this and say, well, why wouldn't you try and capture some of this base and reflect the where your base is going? What we're seeing is the purpose of the Democratic Party as it is right now in action, which is to limit people's political imagination and create and neutralize um any kind of left politics that threatens the material interests of power in the in the United States. >> I just can't get over the fact that they're introducing a bill to Congress to condemn Hassan Per. I just can't get over the fact that there's going to be a Twitch streamer condemnation bill in the House of Representatives potentially if it gets given a floor vote by Mike Johnson, which is crazy to me. But I think there's two things about the story that stand out. First of all, I think that there's a collective delusion amongst the Democratic party establishment that if they just wait, eventually MAGA will crumble and the Republican party will go back to being like it was under Bob Dole, under George Bush senior, like the Reagan >> that had no casualties. >> Exactly. when in fact on basically every single kind of political viewpoint these people have shifted further to the right or they've just completely collapsed like the free trade era is over in terms of republican politics. They're not going back to like the pro- NAFTA reaganite era politics and they're not going back to like liberal interventionism that even though the neocons are still there for you know more imperial reasons as we're seeing like the donor doctrine and stuff but the MAGA cult is like 30% of the electorate like that's not going away. People who are supportive of MAGA continue keep winning primaries right that is the Republican party post tea party it's not going back to the way it was and they think by continuing to capitulate that they will be able to win over those moderate Republicans and that's just not happening. it isn't happening at all and that's a collective delusion on top of the fact that they have a huge support for Israel. The second thing that's interesting about this is that just like in the UK um when Morgan Mweeny was designing the electoral position of the Labour party in the run up to the 2024 election, the idea was we're only going to take positions by triangulating the median voters position, right? Which doesn't exist by the way. >> This actually came from a strategy by a Democratic party member called a guy called David Shaw and he described it as popularism. not populism. Popularism are just doing what is politically popular in opinion polling. And that applies to trans people in sports. It applies to defund the police. It applies to foreign policy and loads of different other things. But when it comes to Israel, bro breaks down completely just as it did in the UK. As soon as you Lakshmier and Matt Eacius look at the opinion polling in Israel, rather than go let's move to where the voters are, they go the voters are wrong. How dare you oppose genocide? you're wrong for thinking that we should be trying to move money away from the apathid ethnostate in the Middle East. That's an important geopolitical asset for the United States. I'm like, well, if I was a US voter, I wouldn't want my geopolitical asset tied to child slaughter. Like, that shouldn't be difficult for these strategists to understand it. But they've got their mind so tied up in this American unipolar world that they lived in in the 80s and 90s that is dead. It's totally dead and is dying a quick death at the hands of Donald Trump. They don't realize they were living in a different world. We're living in a globally connected, we're living in a far more ideologically disperate world and they can't just hammer the same points again and again and expect the status quo to stay the same. People are moving away from them on explicit moral grounds and they can't cope with the fact that they are the ones who look immoral in the situation. So they're trying to force the square peg of the support of Israel into the round hole of where the American public is at. Right? It's not just Democrats. Lots of Republicans are moving away sometimes for more conspiratorial reasons or anti-semitic reasons, but they are moving away too. And crucially, independents are moving away from Israel as well. It's not a popular position. It is a Democratic Party establishment position that they cannot let go of either because they're bought out by the Zionist lobby or because they genuinely can't see what they've done wrong. >> And also because the geo the structural geopolitical interests of Israel are deeply aligned with the geopolitical structural interests of the United States. It's like they have shared material interests and until they can find another vehicle through which they can confidently exercise that power, they are not going to dissociate from Israel because for them it's not a moral question. It's not a political question. It's a question of maintaining a structure of colonial power in the Middle East. you know that that that is you know and foreign policy in a sense has always uh has always been the kind of carved out exception of you know this idea of politics by consent. I mean this kind of thing doesn't really exist anyway but foreign policy has always been the thing where the the state has had to kind of completely ignore what is actually popular amongst the people because it reflects a much deeper set of interests and I think that I do think that we are starting to see a a shift and I think that the democratic establishment just doesn't know how to deal with that shift because when I talk about you know the control of information and the control of the flow of ideas that you can't see a clearer version of how social media and the rise of alternative media has disrupted that flow than in the case of Israel. you know, there was a very tight, well-funded narrative and story around, you know, what Israel is, what Palestine is, what what it means to to kind of, you know, oppose or defend Israel and the existence of, you know, largely journalists and and people within Gaza being able to finally get their voices heard by the public. that dis like dis like it it dissolved within what felt like what in political timelines felt like minutes and that's a really really threatening thing and like I said you know it's not this utopian thing where it's like social media is the great you know democratizer of information absolutely not but this is one of those examples where it actually kind of worked and this question of what precedent does that set for politics as usual for our understanding of what the role of political parties is which again is not to reflect but is to shape um the the kind of the political spectrum. That is quite an existential question not just for establishment politicians but also the entire network of like lobbyists and think tanks and you know professional political understander that exist all the ecosystem of politics makers that exist all around kind of politics as usual. It's disintegrating and in many ways it's falling into in really scary ways but it's not un it's not even you know in some ways is actually creating a much more critical you know population. >> Exactly. We see it in the fact that we saw changing ownership because of like the opposition to Zionism becoming mainstream. Like we saw CBS getting taken over and changing their editorial position. You saw the changing ownership of Tik Toks. There was this conspiracy theory that pro Palestine sentiment was because the CCP were infiltrating the kids through the Tik Toks, right? And those things have changed ownership now. Has the pro Palestine sentiment abated? It hasn't. In fact, it's got even stronger. It shows that actually the lid cannot be put back on the bottle when it comes unsee. >> Yeah. Exactly. You don't you don't unsee children being slaughtered. You don't unsee people with drips in their arms burning to death under the reign of Israeli hellfire. You don't unsee that. And the problem of course is that Democrats would rather lose than give up Israel. They would rather lose in Texas because Talico opposes uh the Israeli aid program. They would rather lose in Michigan because Abel say has been photographed next to somebody who's critical is Israel. They want Troy Jackson to lose in Maine because he supports an arms embargo as well. They would rather lose all these races and allow Trump to just continue to destroy American democracy because they're not opposing him. They're not spending time attacking him, blowing up the world economy, and essentially trying to potentially even make the dollar lose its reserve currency status. Huge economic problems are coming for regular Americans and the broader American state if Trump continues. And they're not attacking him. They're attacking Hassan Per because again, they don't care about beating the Republicans. They care about maintaining ideological positions of their own voter base, regardless of where those positions are right now. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Well, thank you very much for joining me tonight, D. It's been an absolute pleasure. >> Thanks for having me. It is sweltering in this in this studio. So, I'm really excited to get some fresh air. >> I know we say it very very frequently, but it's extremely extremely hot. Specifically today cuz with it raining outside, it's created this kind of cloud that's kept all the air in. >> Yeah. Like sorry if there was any like flashes of delirium in some of my responses because I'm like sweating out of every port on camera. I've been like this. Anyway, and thank you everyone at home for joining us as well. Come back tomorrow night for another live stream from 6 p.m. For now, you've been watching Novara Media. Good night.