Hasan Piker and the Hamasification of the Democrats

It’s been a while since I checked in on America’s favourite Hamasnik hottie, Hasan Piker. And in that time, it seems his status within the left flank of the Democratic Party has only risen.

In an interview this week with Pod Save America, host Jon Favreau quizzed Piker – who the Bronx Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres once described as ‘the poster child for the post-October 7 outbreak of anti-Semitism in America’ – on his statements about Hamas and Israel. Specifically, on Piker’s claim that Hamas is ‘a thousand times better’ than the Jewish State.

It was funny to watch. Favreau, a former speech writer for Barack Obama, graciously offered Piker an opportunity to backtrack. ‘So, my question is, when you say Hamas is a thousand times better, do you actually… mean that? Or, is that a rhetorical move? Or, like, a solidarity signal?’ He extended an olive branch to Hasan, who promptly rejected it. ‘All of the above’, he replied. ‘I do mean it.’ He went on: ‘I’m a lesser-evil voter, and therefore I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.’

There you have it, folks. This, I regret to inform you, is the current state of the American left. A group of people who genuinely believe that a democratic, liberal state is somehow worse than a terrorist one.

In case you are unaware, Piker represents the youthful face of the new, more zealous wing of the Democratic Party. I wrote about Hasan for spiked a year ago, warning that if Piker represents the ‘future of the Democrats, they are in bigger trouble than they know’. Well, a few Dems agree with me, judging from the letter penned by centrist think-tank Third Way, calling Piker ‘misogynistic’, ‘anti-Western’ and ‘anti-Semitic’.

That was mentioned by Favreau who, over the course of the interview, managed to elicit some even more insane comments from Piker than just his usual ‘Yay! Hamas!’ schtick (which, by the way, he peddles to an audience of millions on his livestreams).

He told Favreau, ‘There are people who are further to the left than me who will say elections, bourgeois elections, are unnecessary, and all you’re doing is taking away revolutionary potential and feeding it back into the Democratic Party. You’re a shepherd for the Democrats and therefore a reactionary, a social fascist even.’

Excuse me, sir? Are you low-key saying that there are forces in the American body politic that view elections as… unnecessary? Well, that’s unsettling! Quick, everybody look at those scary right-wingers over there!

He went on: ‘Zionism, at the end of the day, like I said, is an ethno-religious supremacist ideology that is exterminationist, and it’s in many respects no different than what we see in MAGA, right?’ Eh?

This is the same young man who infuriated millions when he shocked his dog for daring to move during a livestream, and who screamed obscenities at one of his viewers for daring to criticise his defence of the 7 October pogrom, saying: ‘YOU FUCKING IDIOT. MY GOAL IS SOLUTIONS.’ Final solutions, perhaps? He continued: ‘YOU FUCKING BAYING PIG. YOU FUCKING BLOOD-THIRSTY VIOLENT PIG DOG. SUCK MY DICK.’

He also said of the sexual violence committed by Hamas: ‘It doesn’t matter if rape happened on October 7. It doesn’t change the dynamic for me.’

Honestly, what is it with young lefties and their glib, shallow cruelty? Back in my day, lefties were mostly portly old men in charity-shop jumpers, plus a handful of firebrand young women in leather jackets and bookish but cute young fellas. This is a new breed entirely. They advocate for killing billionaires and Israelis like a bunch of blood-soaked fanatics, yet they also evince a spoiled world-weariness reminiscent of the rich-kid villains in 1980s teen movies. They show none of the starry-eyed idealistic fervour young lefties (myself included) had in the past. They are grotesque.

It’s disconcerting – to put it mildly – that views like this are now openly promoted on mainstream platforms like Pod Save America. Clearly, the left has an extremism problem.

Ultimately, Piker represents the triumph of the radical professors over the old blue-collar Democratic Party. This is a tragedy for the American working class, who in election after election have told Democrats that they have no truck with pie-in-the-sky, rich-kid communists and their destructive ideas.

More sensible Democrats are calling on their fellow party members to ‘draw a line in the sand’ and ‘shun’ Hasan Piker. But they are likely to lose this battle. That is not good for any American, left or right.

Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here.