Hasan Piker Wants to Win

So the theory of the podcast this week: I wanted to have on different perspectives inside the Democratic coalition on how Democrats won power and how they should now wield it. So Tuesday we had on Adam Jentleson from the Searchlight Institute, a more centrist perspective. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I think you should. Today from the left, Hasan Piker. Piker is a streamer. He’s on Twitch under @hasanabi. His election night livestream topped out at 200,000 people, but he also became something of a major character in the election, stumping with D.S.A. and leftist candidates. He was very, very both important and controversial in the Michigan Senate primary, where he was an ally of Abdul El-Sayed. Then the Republicans tried to make him into the bogeyman of the election. He was often talked about on Fox News more than the Republican Senate candidates were. Piker was one of the people targeted in a congressional resolution by Josh Gottheimer, a more moderate Democrat, and Mike Lawler, a moderate Republican, where they were condemning the rhetoric of various online personalities. He was mentioned by Benjamin Netanyahu during Netanyahu’s U.N. General Assembly address. “Mr. Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York.” “Now, it’s no wonder. You praise criminals convicted of supporting Hamas. You count as friends people like Hasan Piker, who said America deserved 9/11. America deserved 9/11. Some friends you have.” He was all over Republican advertising and, even in a very strange way, all over the jumbotron at Donald Trump’s big midterm rally. And Piker is a sort of interesting mix of radical and pragmatist — a self-avowed socialist, somebody who really is in many ways trying to get past capitalism, and then you talk to him or you listen to him and sometimes sounds just like a normal liberal. It is striking to me in this conversation how often what he is saying and what Adam Jentleson are saying are basically the same thing. The place where that ends and the place where Piker himself is most controversial is Israel, and some of the things he has said there, some of the things he has argued for there. So I want to talk to Piker about the election, about how the Democratic Party should act going forward and talk through both what he has said and the broader politics around Israel, which is one of the issues that I think has the most possibility of tearing this coalition apart. Piker joins me now. Hasan Piker, welcome to the show. Great to be here. So we’re a week and change, I guess actually just a week off of the midterms. Take me through your view of the victory. What did you learn from it. What do you think Democrats should learn from it. So me personally, I’ve engaged in political commentary for the last 13 years, but I was never as hands on with campaigns until this last cycle. And it actually started before the cycle. It started with Zohran Mamdani in his primary. He was in a crowded field and people had asked me to go and work with him. I remember you asking about abundance at a lunch counter somewhere. O.K, so you keep bringing up abundance mindset. What do you think about the abundance mindset. Well, you keep bringing it up. I did this, I did this to myself Yeah one of the greatest obstacles we face is the existing inefficiencies, inadequacies of the public sector. And if we want to get people to trust in the public sector, we have to deliver outcomes that they haven’t seen Yeah, I did, I did ask him about that. And he’s turned out to be quite the Bundist. As a matter of fact, we’re in a grand era of synthesis over here Yeah and well, I think that’s also the story of the victory that the Democrats had, but it was effective. If so, I want to talk about the forward motion here. The Democratic Party coming out of this election is a different Democratic Party. It has a much larger left wing. We’ve mentioned Abdul el-sayed, but Dare, Eliza, Chris Rabb, Claire Valdez. There’s a big DSA cohort coming into the House in particular. It’s also got a much larger moderate wing, got Adam Hamilton and Josh Turek and Scott Cullum in the Senate. The blue dogs have more than doubled in size, which is the moderate caucus in the House Yeah, that’s also fascinating because you have for Stagg, who’s considered a blue dog, you have the Bernie dogs. The people Bernie endorsed and the blue dogs endorsed. So that was like you said, it was a fascinating synthesis that we’re seeing. I mean, I think it’s not a secret that Bernie Sanders 2016 run, his insurgent run against Hillary Clinton ended with a defeat. But I think even if he lost that battle, I would go so far as to say he won the war. And what I mean by that is my friends like to call this vulgar Bernie. The vulgar Bernie of 2016 was so prominent in virtually every campaign, every single candidate, no matter what faction that they’re a part of attacked billionaires, attacked corporate corruption, attacked the Trump administration’s allegiance with big tech, attacked data centers, and even leaned into the fears that many people were feeling about AI in particular. And that’s all left populism. And it was fascinating to watch that unfold. It was very interesting hearing people like even a Roy Cooper in North Carolina say, tonight, guys, we told Washington loud and clear that North Carolinians will always matter more than the billionaires and the insiders. These corrupt billionaires are placing their interests over your interests. Like I’m going to fight for North Carolina instead of Washington, DC. Now, in some respects could say that’s always been there, right. In the Democratic party’s messaging. But I think it was a little different this time around where that hardline economic agenda focus and defining ourselves as a party nationally with local issues and moderation on certain things that are obviously important to the local interests like Talarico’s pivot on pivot away from renewable energy to focus on the oil and gas industries. Interests like those are understandable instances of moderation, but the overall focus was on the economy. Part of that was because of the devastating nature of the American economy accelerated through Trump’s corruption, the tariff Terraform and then also the quagmire. We found ourselves in Iran. But I think it was almost like something shifted after the 2024 defeat where Democrats realized, no, we have to put an economic agenda at the forefront of our campaigns. So it’s really interesting the way you put that, because I really like your term, I guess maybe said it’s your friend’s term, vulgar Bernie. So I don’t find the rhetoric to be that different. But here’s Obama 2011. Of course, the Republicans in Congress, they call this class warfare. What If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a plumber makes me a class warrior, a warrior for the working class, I will accept that. I will wear that charge as a badge of Honor. Pelosi 2011. When we became the majority, the first 100 hours we passed the minimum wage increase the first time in 11 years. So when they want to talk about class warfare, as Warren Buffett said, the other was class warfare and his class won. Gore called Bush’s tax cuts class warfare on behalf of billionaires. So I’m not sure that I think the rhetoric was so different. But the thing that I think was really different. I’m curious how this lands for you. Is Bernie particularly 2016? Bernie, I take a big part of his argument that the Democratic Party had abandoned its focus and prioritization of issues of class and economics for this kind of broad based post-material, it kind of eventually becomes what people call wokeness. Hillary Clinton runs against him on this. You breaking up the banks won’t end systemic racism or whatever the line was. That was the line. If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, and I will if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will. Would that end racism. No, no. Would that end sexism. No would that end discrimination against the LGBT community. Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight. And in the post-inflation Democratic Party, the Democratic Party that got beat in 2024 on inflation. The recognition that the way you turn back, the kind of geographic polarization of the country, the way maybe you can compete in more places, is you moderate on culture and you go hard on economics. That’s the old Bernie formula. More pro-gun in Vermont, right. He was an underperformer in Vermont. It didn’t strike me as so much like socialist versus liberal versus moderate, but economics first as a uniting threat of the party. I percent agree with that assessment. And I think that’s precisely what happened. And you’re right. The reason why you’re bringing up quotes from 2011, as opposed to the last decade, is because there was this big pivot, I think that was relatively recent. One of the most unique factors of this swing that we saw, especially in former Trump battlegrounds and very safe districts, was not just the Hispanic votes shifting. And it wasn’t just the youth vote shifting. We saw plenty of that was expected. That was predictable. I found it fascinating that rural voters were also shifting to the Democratic Party for the first time. It felt like a lot of maybe even non-college-educated whites living in rural areas were really impacted by the economy, and someone was seemingly addressing those concerns. And I think that’s what’s really important. This doesn’t mean we should betray marginalized identities and do what even Josh Turek did. And I don’t even know how effective that was ultimately to have an ad around transgender sports. Exactly As a kid in a wheelchair, I faced my share of bullying. It’s why I believe that no Iowan should face discrimination as a Paralympian. I also know it’s important to have rules. It’s why I oppose males competing in female sports, something that is already illegal in Iowa. I think any focus on this stuff is a losing battle because it’s a tiny minority. And one of the things that I consistently point to is the fact that I mean, one of the first executive actions that Trump took was banning all transgender athletes from NCAA competitions. And obviously, this didn’t improve anyone’s material conditions at all. And it was simply a distraction. And it wasn’t even that effective of a distraction, considering that I would routinely point to say to a lot of young men coming into my audience like, are you feeling better. Is your rent more Affordable or groceries cheaper now that Trump did this. And if not, why do you think he was doing this. Why do you think he was focusing so much on this particular issue. Something shifted in the last decade or so where Republicans started winning the culture war battles, and I don’t think we need to participate in those battles at all. And we need to call it out for exactly what it is, which is something that James Talarico did very effectively, where he kept saying like, these are unnecessary distractions. It’s not about left versus right, it’s up versus down. I think that is a very reliable and very truthful way of discussing politics. The other thing that worked for Talarico, you saw it worked for Adam Hamilton. A lot of people just think Democrats don’t like them, look down on them, don’t share their faith, don’t share their kind of not cultural positions, but cultural context. And one thing that it seemed to me Democrats did well in candidate selection this year was to run a lot of people who undermine the perception of what a Democrat is, right. A megachurch pastor in Kansas. A firefighter, right. And Pennsylvania, a Tejano crooner in South Texas, right. Talarico is a seminarian. Tureck a Paralympian. Mary Peltola with her kind of. What was it. Family fish. Faith yeah. Family fish. Faith yeah that we all talk about moderation as a question. Just of ideological positioning. But what people apprehend really quickly, it’s one reason you wear a suit now is what kind of person you seem like. Do you seem like they’re kind of person. And the Democratic Party kind of undermining the sense of who is a Democrat and whether or not they’re your people. Seems to me to have cracked open the door for people to be able to hear a lot of the other things that were being said Yeah, I agree with that to a certain degree. But I do think that the real story here is, at the end of the day, what Trump was doing, the chaos of Trump. I agree with that. And ultimately it was normally don’t have a president press a button that just explodes the gas prices. But Trump seemingly had that button and he just kept pressing it. And I think that was a major part of the reason. Have you seen the charts of his approval rating and the gas price Yeah, it has track basically. Exactly, exactly. And I think for what reason he was doing this was also important. I mean, their initial roll out of the Iran war was fascinating because they didn’t even try to manufacture any consent whatsoever. And as a matter of fact, on the first wave, they came out and were like, we’re doing this for Israel. And then they came, and then they went back and were like, no, actually, we’re doing this for ourselves. But that was a unique moment because Americans were already frustrated with American foreign policy constantly waging war endlessly. And this was already unpopular from the start, and it became the least popular war that America’s waged in a matter of months. This is historic stuff. So I think, of course, there were going to be punishments for the admin that was engaging in this action, after two years of chaos, two years of instability and outright corruption from the White House, the close associates of Trump and his immediate family members making billions of dollars in cryptocurrency schemes or the pay to play initiatives that were taking place in the White House, some of which we knew about and some of which I hope we will learn more about with these investigations that will unfold. So the Democratic Party that’s coming into power now remains an opposition party at the National level. Donald Trump still is the White House, even if they’ve got the House and the Senate. What do you think they should do. I’ve jokingly referred to this as. Files and trials belt the ass and hopefully a comprehensive legislative agenda that is defining what the Democratic Party is. Two of those seem a little catchier than the third. Yes, well, the third one is just for me. Let’s go in buckets Yeah let’s start with what was he called. Files so files and trials. Epstein files. I feel like that is a nod to the swing voters that were very frustrated about this. So I think that is a high profile incident that I know will cause many of the apolitical or many of the low propensity voters to pay close attention to exactly what’s going on. But more importantly, I think it’s the trials that are a necessity, investigations identifying what Kristi Noem did and exposing the network of pay to play initiatives that were taking place inside of the White House, because we’ve never seen outright corruption of this, perhaps ever in American history. I often joke and say, look, I’m Turkish. I grew up in Turkey. I know Erdogan is very corrupt and so is Vladimir Putin and Russia, for example. But at least they hide it. And Trump was so in our faces with his corruption and with his lack of interest in the overall economy. I mean, there are so many instances where he just said, I don’t care about inflation, I don’t care about the prices. And I mean, even with your former colleague Ross on the 60 Minutes interview where he was, he had his own Marie Antoinette moment where he was like, well, I made billions of dollars because I put money in the stock market. He’s like, why don’t you put your money in the stock market. There’s a Forbes story that said that your net worth maybe it’s changed with the stock market recently, but your net worth went up by $3 billion. Well, since you returned to. Are you ready. So here’s my net worth. Did not go up by $3 billion. You should have had stock. I should have you should have had stock. I should have had stock. And it’s like, well, it’s not exactly populist is it. He’s not exactly the man of the people. And I think we have to expose all of that. I think the Democrats need to work hard to make sure that people fully grasp the outright corruption that’s taking place inside of the White House. We need law and order. I’m a law and order Democrat. I believe in accountability. We need answers and we also need punishments. And I think this is something that people are demanding. So it’s funny talking to you because your reputation is as a hardcore socialist. This slightly sounds like a no kings rally here. So is this your theory of the next two years when you’re just dealing with an opposition party. How do you think about what path you’re trying to put the party the country on. Great question. So I yes, I’m a socialist, but I also believe in good governance. I believe in the power of institutions, which is very interesting for someone like myself to say this, even though I understand that many of those institutions have turned on socialists historically at times. But I think they need to exist. It’s the same concept behind policing. It’s not a secret that policing doesn’t work very well in this country. Now, this is probably the worst time to say that because crime is down even in the city in New York City, the murder rate is lower than ever before, but I think those are historic trends. Jessica tesch, socialist I’m not a Jessica tesch, socialist. I do disagree with the wonderful mayor on that issue. Having said that, having said that, I understand the necessity for policing as an institution. I’m not a police abolitionist. I want police policing as an institution to serve and protect and serve the people. And I also understand that we have to use these institutions against those who are corrupt, against those who are violating the law. And this administration clearly has. So in the interim, I am completely aligned with the anti-trump coalition, because that is an absolute must. That is a necessity for us to rebuild the social fabric to restore American civilization, American society. Because if we don’t do that and it’s complete chaos. And I worry about what kind of fascist accelerationist comes after Donald. Trump and then last but not least, I want the Democrats to design a definable. Tangible 2028 legislative agenda. So I think there are numerous areas that Democrats should lay a stake on. Just plant their flag and say, this is what we’re about. So I think right now, one of the biggest problems with the affordability crisis is health premiums are completely out of control as a consequence of the big beautiful bill. In order to pay for the corporate tax cuts, there is tremendous austerity coming for Medicaid that’s actually happening right now. They timed it so that it would hit right after the midterm so they wouldn’t get penalized for it. So we have this major crisis that’s imminent. It’s going to make prices far worse, and it’s going to lead to many other rural hospitals shutting down. That’s another separate crisis in health in this country. And I think the only solution to solve this problem is single payer health. I believe in Medicare for all. Not only is it the most popular it’s ever been as a policy, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, it’s 66 percent I believe, but I think it’s the right policy initiative as well. Now, of course, Trump is going to veto it. I understand that, but I think it’s important to define the Democratic Party with tangible economic policies that people can identify with that people can associate with. Because I said this in 2024, this was one of Kamala’s biggest weaknesses, was that she was not definable. She was all over the place. She had some policy prescriptions. She had some very good ones that were critically panned by this institution a combating price gouging. I thought that was expertly communicated as well. She didn’t say it’s price controls. She said she’s going to go after price gouging and grocery stores. That was broadly popular, but there was no real health policy on the platform that at least was communicated on the campaign. And I think that was a major mistake as well, beyond just like subsidizing the existing marketplace. I think people are frustrated with that. If you’re not a subscriber to the New York Times’ we have some news for you. You can now explore the times for free without any paywalls at all, during your first month in the New York Times’ app. So I want to spend some time on health because I think health is where you see the Democratic Party shifting and a kind of synthesis emerging. But I would describe it differently than you did. So I want to see where we disagree on it. So one, I think for a while after the Affordable Care Act, the Democratic Party kind of had the view, not the Bernie wing of the party, but the main wing of the party of like we did health. It’s time to do climate. Time to do pre-K, time to do something else, maybe bolster Obamacare subsidies. But we already did health. Time to spend the political capital elsewhere. I think at this point, that’s not true any longer. One is that Trump has gutted Obamacare in a bunch of different directions, taken out the mandate, cut the subsidies. The insurance premiums in the individual markets are spiraling. The other is that I think in some ways, just some of the ideas behind Obamacare didn’t work as well as people hoped they will. Competitive private insurance markets didn’t end up being a thing people are really excited about. On the other hand, the abolish private insurance side of the party, this is more the Bernie side of the party where people like Medicare for all in theory. But you begin talking about taking away their insurance if they don’t like that. But I’ve been hearing AOC, I’ve been hearing el-sayed walk away from that. It’s more of a Medicare choice platform. So I think you’re going to end up with some kind of Medicare for more synthesis Yeah this is what is it called, the Medicare for America concept Democrats have pushed for. I am in opposition to that as a policy, because I see it as also deeply unpopular by the same exact entities that are going to say this is far too competitive with our product. Private insurance is not going to be in favor of a public option or an expansion of Medicare. So if we are going to have to face this inevitable resistance from moneyed interests, we might as well go all the way. The reason why we have skyrocketing premiums is because it’s entirely. This is an inelastic service. You need health or you die. And therefore, we have this unnecessary middleman that is great for the GDP. It’s great for the insurance executives. It’s great for this industry, but it’s actually horrible for the consumers. It’s not even great for the health facilities. It’s not even great for the doctors themselves. It’s just good as a money making vehicle for the insurance companies. And of course, that is precisely the reason why our health costs have skyrocketed. So I think that doing away with that and making it much cheaper overall, much more Affordable overall on every single American while still using the existing skeleton of those middlemen that exist in all these different markets. But basically packaging it under some kind of public private partnership is the appropriate way to go. Have you looked much of what happened when they did try to do single payer in Vermont. No, I am not familiar with what the single payer initiative was in Vermont, but I will say this. Well, let’s talk about it’s useful to chat about for a minute, because I think it gets to where maybe I think this is going to end up. So I tried to do this a couple of years ago, Bernie Sanders, obviously being Senator from Vermont. They had full Democratic trifecta control. It fell apart. And there are different reasons it fell apart. My colleague now at the times, then at Vox or Cliff, did a lot of great reporting on this. But one of the things that happens when you try to ingest the entire health care system into a single payer system, is all of these hidden costs right now become visible all at once to the electorate. In theory, the people you would think would want Medicare for all are employers that a huge amount of my health spend is covered by an employer. I don’t see it. That’s true for most Americans who are not in Medicare and Medicaid itself. And so you get everything that the employer is paying becomes a tax. And everything that is kind of hidden in tax deductions becomes a tax. And so the price tag doesn’t look less to people, even though it might be less on the National budget, because a lot of the costs right now are hidden. So you have that problem. And the other problem. And if you saw this, it was a poll by media group and Searchlight. So you had a kind of left and centrist poll. And people want Medicare for all. But then you’re like, do you want to. Do you want your private insurance taken away. They say no. Do you trust the government more than your private insurer. They say no. And so it has seemed to me that even if you want to get to single payer, you have to be in a kind of trust building period where you take it in pieces. When I had Abdul Sayeed on the show, he talked about, this is like climbing Mount Everest, right. You got to get to base camp and then a piece and then a piece. So first, I’m curious which part of that political analysis you disagree with. And if you don’t like what you see is what would be a progression towards what you want as opposed to biting it all at once Yeah, I don’t think that biting it all at once is something that is feasible or possible right now. But I think there’s value in advancing that as our legislative North Star. The reason why there is this distinction and people get frustrated when you or people are more negative about Medicare for all, when you tell them that they might lose their private health, is because there’s not a lot of confidence in good governance right now. And that has been I would say, the defining feature of the post-reagan neoliberal era. But I think there’s some real changes coming right now. But it requires great communicators to diligently talk to people, not treat them as stupid, but to explain to them the situation ahead. Because the reason why Medicare for all has become much more popular over the years is because health care premiums are unbelievably costly. People hate health. People hate their private insurance companies. They love their health providers. They love their doctors. They don’t want to lose their doctors, but they despise Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield, although that is their experience. That makes this harder, though, right. Because the cost is coming. I mean, there are some costs that sits in the private insurer, but the costs are coming from the providers first and foremost. And because the insurers lose when they fight the providers. They just don’t fight the providers. So they just pass along the cost Yeah and then take a cut on top of that. And then we spend a ton you do Medicare for all in a way that saves money. What you’re doing is price controls on providers. That is the mechanism of money saving. But I do want to do that Yeah, but then they’re going to fight you, right. That’s always been the hard part about health when the doctors come after you Yeah, because you’re cutting their salaries. Fully, fully aware of that. And I think that is an inevitability. It’s a necessity. But that’s also why the complementary policy to that is also free college education. Because I think I mean, look, I grew up in Turkey. We have a nationalized health care system, but then we also have private insurance. On top of that, we have private hospitals and public hospitals. And you can get free college education all the way to medical school. But in exchange for getting your doctorate, getting an M.D. then the government will send you to one of these different places where you have to do a residence and you don’t really have a say on where that residence is. After that can work in whichever facility you want to. And that, I think, is a much fairer system and much more efficient system, ironically enough, because at least you are no longer saddled with debt it right out of the gates. And of course, this would be a seismic shift in the way that we currently operate. But there are initiatives paid for by benefactors and places like NYU and many other colleges right now where people are trying to pay for medical school specifically. So I think there is definitely a need that people recognize that exists here. Let me ask you about how you apply vulgar urbanism to places where you can have more conflict within priorities that Democrats hold at the same time. So right now there’s a permitting reform bill making it easier to build both clean and dirty energy. Moving through Congress’s bipartisan bill. You have Democrats who negotiated it, Republicans who negotiated it. I don’t want to go super deep into the details of a super complicated bill, but the challenge it is posing to Democrats right now is I think the studies show it’s on net kind of modestly good for climate. But let’s even say we didn’t right. Let’s just use a kind of stylized version of the bill. If you make it easier to build dirty energy and Republicans win again in 2029 and they kind subsidize it, whatever, you could get a big buildout of dirty energy. On the other hand, it does reduce energy costs and people are mad as shit about energy costs. And when the Democratic Party ends up facing this set of questions. What if you can make things cheaper. But maybe it means you get more natural gas plants. Maybe you can make things cheaper, but maybe it means it’s easier for corporations to produce. How do you think about those kinds of tradeoffs? I mean, my attitude on this stuff is that we need to demand more in exchange for the subsidies that we offer to these companies to begin with. I think that was a huge issue with the Biden administration I remember when the first oil shock happened after Russia invaded Ukraine. Biden went back to the oil and gas Giants and basically begged them to increase supply. And the petroleum industry came out and said, no, we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders. We’re not going to increase supply and maybe ease prices. I find that completely unacceptable, especially considering the sheer amount of subsidies we offer these companies. And I think the way I would go about it is, or rather, the populist way of going about it is like there are areas where we could potentially make demands of the oil and gas industry to at times even increase supply if necessary and lower prices overall. But it’s not the current order of business. The current way that we go about it is through incentives. But it sounds even in the example you’re choosing here. It sounds to me like you’re saying prioritize affordability over emissions reductions. I think that there are ways of doing this. Yes I think again, this goes back to how much control we have over private enterprise, how much control we have over the oil and gas industry. And currently we have none, in my opinion. I mean, look, the example I use is, again going back to Norway. So on the one hand, they make a lot of money off of oil and gas. But also on the other hand, some of the profits go back to building out an electric, an electrical grid that focuses on photovoltaics and wind energy and renewable energy overall. And I think that is something we can do here in America as well. How do you think about questions where you’re dealing with a conflict between consumer prices and in production here. So maybe an easy example of this is it would become cheaper to buy an electric vehicle if we allowed Chinese EVs into the country without ruinous tariffs on them. On the other hand, it could be really, really bad for the American auto industry and the jobs devastated it supports. So how do you think about a trade off like that. I am fully in favor of protecting domestic manufacturing. Look, I’m a socialist. I am in favor of trade protectionism. So I believe that there are some tariffs that are necessary, especially considering that we don’t really have a lot of domestic manufacturing that remains here anyway. So I don’t mind shutting off Chinese electric vehicles from entering the American market. However, I think what we should be doing is focusing on investment in R&D to ensure that we have competitive electric vehicles, a fleet of electric vehicles that we create as well, that we could potentially sell to the rest of the world rather than engage in what Donald Trump is doing to eradicate some of the trade surpluses that we’ve seen with other countries. And then, I guess forcing them to purchase our f-150 pickup trucks that are not exactly compliant with the needs that other markets have. So I think a lot of places where the Democratic Party is rowing in the same direction. And then there are debates about political strategy and how far to go and trade offs. I want to go to the issue where I think it’s going to be hardest for the Democratic coalition, because not everybody believes things in the same direction, which is Israel, particularly the issue of whether Israel can and should exist as a Jewish state and whether that can coexist with freedom and self-determination for Palestinians. So let me try it this way. Tell me how you understand the different positions here inside the Democratic camp. And then after you do that, where you place yourself Yeah I mean, I’m an anti-zionist and that obviously means that I want Israel to no longer exist as an apartheid state. As an occupation. And I hope that the most just and equitable solution is one that every party involved in this conflict can agree on. That could be a single, solitary, secular state where everyone has equal rights and representation. It could potentially be a binational commitment or a two state solution, even though that seems less likely as a consequence of the occupation in the West Bank and how there’s no contiguous Palestinian statehood any longer, and the settlement project is almost rendered that impossible. The Democratic Party, or at least the base support the voters themselves, are not in disagreement so much as the politicians are on the issue of Israel. There’s definitely a divergence between where the base is versus where the party is. And I think there’s a couple different factors at play here. Obviously one is the corrosive influence. I want to hear the factions first. I want you to describe what you understand the various opinions to be. I mean, you have the die hard ideologues like the ultra Zionists or the Zionists that are legitimately invested in this ideological project. I would put Biden in that camp. He seemingly for one reason or another. And this is very interesting because he’s Irish Catholic, and that’s probably one of the last demographics you would expect to be. So, so invested in the Israeli project. But he is in the ultra Zionist camp, in my opinion. And there are a lot of people who are worried about their reelection, let’s say, and are worried about at least up until this cycle, we’re worried about AIPAC and numerous other Israeli lobby front organizations dumping boatloads of money into their races and potentially unseating them. And then you have people and this is a growing coalition within the party. Many of the candidates that I backed that are in favor of delivering accountability to Israel for its crimes of genocide and demanding an arms embargo on Israel, or I guess there’s other versions of this where people want to apply the Leahy laws evenly to Israel, although there are limitations on those restrictions. And yeah, I would say that I am closest to that camp. The camp that wants accountability for what Israel has done, the camp that wants to pressure Israel because we have profound. But that camp isn’t primarily anti-zionist. No, or at least not all of it is anti-zionist. Like Brad Lander, for example, is a self-described liberal Zionist, and I would put him in that camp as well. I want to get to this is where you’ve become most electrically controversial. And so I want to play a clip of I think, where some of this has become tricky. As you’re talking to Rashida Tlaib at last year’s DSA convention. Zionism is an exterminationist ideology built around ethno ethno religious supremacist values. So when people say like, oh, well, I’m a liberal Zionist, I want there to be a Jewish. So many I want there. I’m a liberal Zionist. I want there to be a Jewish ethno state. I’m like, O.K, what do you mean. It’s like saying you’re like a liberal Nazi. You want an Aryan majority. Ethnostate like, what are you talking about. There’s people there. So a minute ago, you were saying you’re in the camp with Brad Lander, who’s a liberal Zionist, incoming Congressman from Brooklyn. You’re also kind of here saying liberal Zionist here like liberal Nazis. Put that together for me. All right. So great question. Zionism by my estimation, and I think this is becoming a more popular position overall is a racist ideology. It differs the way that people see it depending on their social conditioning differs. But its impact ultimately is undeniably a racist one. It’s an exterminationist ideology because it’s led to the extermination is an exterminationist. So with Brad Lander, the reason why I say he’s a part of this coalition is because I find him to be a fascinating figure, because on the one hand, he says he’s a liberal Zionist. But also on the other hand, he hand, he recognizes the apartheid. He recognizes the occupation and seeks out the end of apartheid and the occupation. He recognizes the genocide and wants accountability. The areas of disagreement between myself and Brad Lander is when for example, I love that he went out to the West Bank and wanted to do protective presence during the olive harvest. We’re in the West Bank this week. As part of that protect the harvest effort, we’re helping Palestinian farmers harvest olives rather than be ethnically cleansed from their land. I think that’s great. That’s wonderful. And more politicians should do that, especially politicians who are self-described as liberal Zionists should do that as well. But then during that experience he gets detained. I think that was more so the Israeli government trying to save that group so that the settlers didn’t attack them. And it became much worse and much bloodier affair. But then someone attacks a checkpoint in the West Bank, and there are occupying forces occupying force soldiers at this checkpoint. And I believe they got killed. Brad Lander came out and said, rest in peace to the IDF soldiers that were at this checkpoint. Now, my expectation isn’t for Brad to come out and be get wrecked to those people. But my expectation and I think the expectation of many people on the anti-zionist side, is to approach the issue with the understanding that it is illegal for those soldiers to be there. The entire franchise is illegal. The settlement project is completely illegal under international law. What you’re describing here, I’m not arguing with this part, but what you’re describing here, I understand there’s a difference between being an anti-zionist and a liberal Zionist. When you described what Brad Lander believes. You’re just describing what liberal Zionists today believe. It’s an occupation. It’s an apartheid. I wouldn’t say all liberals. I’m not saying all. I agree with that. The genocidal dimension is the part where people part. But a couple of times I have called liberal Zionists akin to Nazis. That’s a very specific thing. Sometimes I’ll hear you defend the argument by saying, well, Zionism in all of its versions is a ethno nationalist. And I’m just saying I don’t like ethno nationalism Yeah what made the Nazis the Nazis was gas chambers. Like, just like straight, right liberal Zionists who believe there’s an apartheid scenario happening in the West Bank who believes that Gaza was a genocide, or at least war crimes. I don’t really understand the defense of calling them akin to Nazis. Now it’s hyperbolic, but the reason why I’m not so precious about the utilization of the term is because of its historic significance. The entire principle behind Holocaust studies is to understand how society could move in a direction where people could turn a blind eye to such devastation to such systematized forms of violence, this machine of death and destruction. It’s utility is in learning about it so that we don’t repeat those mistakes. And right now, obviously it’s not to the same degree as the Holocaust, but right now, we are watching a genocide unfold. So I don’t mind using this kind of incendiary language with the hopes that people understand exactly how devastating the situation has become. I think I’m actually take the sufficient response against it to try and stop it. Well, I think there’s agreement here on how bad the situation actually is Yeah, but I guess I’m actually more confused about your position inside this conversation that I was coming in because when you said at the beginning, look, you don’t really care so long as you have just and equitable outcome, whether it’s one state, two state, binational Confederacy. There’s all these different ideas out there. I mean, a two state solution is like the liberal Zionist solution. I just don’t think it’s sincere. Well, you don’t think it’s sincere. You don’t think it’s likely. Those are different. Well, both I think that people that say they want a two state don’t actually map it out. What does this look like. What do we do about these 750,000 Jewish settlers that live in occupied East Jerusalem and also the West Bank, and they don’t actually talk about how to get there or what those two states look like. And that’s the point of frustration. So I feel like it’s just a way to simply say, no, I want a two people who want a one state map it out. Some people do. I mean, I certainly have. And to a one state also goes through a potential binational commitment as well. And then continue to build from that. But what you’re describing here, and I mean, this is a place that I sit-in a lot, is the impossibility from where we sit right now of imagining any solution, passing and holding again, given what the situation looks like at the moment, you’re not going to move to a one state tomorrow. Nobody’s got a pathway to do that, not to a two state, not to a Confederacy. You’re doubting the sincerity of people who believe in something that they don’t quite know how to get to. But in the way, I would say believe in something, you don’t quite know how to get to. I don’t think you got a plan for how in Israel right now, they can’t even imagine how it would integrate arab-israeli parties into a governing coalition when they’re not even going to get coalitional like full coalition membership. How that becomes a peaceable, multi-ethnic, one state secularized from the river to the sea. You do recognize the setback here is not the fact that these arab-israeli parties are Palestinian citizens of Israel have some part of this political coalition that already exists, but it’s actually the societal attitudes. Yes, I do. So that is the unchecked racism that exists in Israeli society that’s gotten worse over the last couple of decades, racism and fear Yeah I think the thing that you often under racism is fear. It’s both right. It’s sometimes fear. And I think fear drives a lot of it. The question is, do you find that fear to be justifiable or not. I personally don’t think that fear is justifiable, even in spite of the horrific actions that took place on October seven. I don’t think that the place Israeli society has gotten itself into is justifiable morally or from a security perspective. I think in the long run, all of this is completely ruinous. And I think that Israel being forced to confront the question of even within Israeli society as it is currently composed, can you actually have a pluralistic, multi-ethnic governing coalition is showing things that probably Israelis would have preferred the world not see. So my despair over this is very deep. And how we get from where we are now to something I consider even modestly better on a path. But if the position here is to believe in a two state solution because you want to see Jewish self-determination, Palestinian self-determination is akin to being a modern day Nazi like, then you’ve got that coalition cannot hold together. No, I agree. I said, if the underlying argument revolves around dehumanizing Palestinians or in any way, shape, or form, justifying as a consequence of security concerns, for example, or the demographic concerns that Israeli society has broadly as it builds out a Jewish ethno state. Jewish majority state, because that is the underlying problem. That’s why when Zohran says, oh, I believe that Israel should exist as pluralistic liberal democracy where everyone has equal rights and representation and people go, wait a minute. But you didn’t say it’s a Jewish state. It has to be a Jewish state in character when there are Indigenous inhabitants there that are not Jewish. That is the real problem. And I think the reality of the matter is, and I understand why the deployment of Nazi as a terminology is so powerful. Because we’re talking about a Jewish state engaging in fascist actions. Well, not just fascist. I can’t tell if you just used a provocative thing, but you don’t want to climb down from it, actually talking to you. Well, it is. It is fascist. I do believe that. No, no, no, but Nazis were more than fascist. The reason we don’t just call them fascist is they were the Nazis. I understand. I don’t think you think liberal Zionists are actually the same thing. Because every time I push you, you don’t quite seem to think that there are absolutely, in my opinion, people who self-identify as liberal Zionists that have turned a blind eye to the atrocities or outright celebrated them and demanded more of it in Israeli society and in American society as well. But not all of them. Well, no, of course, not all of them. There’s varying degrees here. But you do sometimes describe people here in really, really sweeping and to them really offensive ways. I mean, one that came to me non-politically just through Jewish people as when you described Abdul el-sayed canvassers in a Jewish district as akin to people arguing for miscegenation in a KKK neighborhood. And maybe it’s worth just playing that clip, trying to convince people that our side is the right candidate. This has got to be the wildest door knocking operation of all time, trying to get perhaps the most Zionist district in the country. Well, not the most, but one the more Zionist wealthy districts in the country to vote for a Muslim anti-zionist. Brave soldiers, all of them. Thank God. They don’t probably own any guns. This is the equivalent. Straight up. Look, I don’t think this is insensitive to say this is the equivalent going to that. Like Klan, KKK, neighborhood to stump for a Black candidate who’s running expressly on pro miscegenation campaign or something like to abolish anti-miscegenation laws. I think it’s crazy to describe an entire neighborhood of Jewish people whose positions you actually don’t know as akin to KKK members. I think among other things, I think, offensive to many Jewish people about this is just the describing a district where you actually don’t know what the people think. You don’t know what their relationship to Israel is like. That’s where sometimes you’ll talk very much about policing this boundary between what people think about Israel, which is I think, up for political contestation and just Judaism. And among the things that I thought were a problem about that was like the demolition of that boundary Yeah this was Jews for Abdul Canvas. That was going to homes with Democrats for Mike Rogers signs outside of it. And from my estimation, I don’t think that. I mean, we also found out that there were plenty of people who did not find it unconscionable to vote for a Muslim anti-zionist. So that wasn’t the case at all. And I have talked extensively about how much this false conflation and loyalty to Israel is exaggerated in the news and ironically enough, how dangerous that is in terms of creating and fomenting more anti-Semitism. But this is very specifically about people who are like, outwardly and expressly antagonistic to any criticism of Israel. And yeah, at the end of the day, I think it is coming from a racist place. Look, I live in a very I live in a very pro-Israel neighborhood. And the things that I’ve heard from my neighbors that I’ve known for decades at this point about who I am him from their eyes. Now, because of what they’ve seen, what they’ve heard is genuinely alarming and is outright racist. But you don’t think some of what they think about you comes not from the fact that you’re anti-zionist, but because maybe you describe them as KKK members or Nazis. I think that there is no difference between a KKK member and what I’m describing in my personal experience and what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard and what my anti-zionist Jewish friends have talked about in terms of their own conversations. I’ll give you one example. I go to a dog park. My dog and this other lady’s dogs play all the time. One day my I’m at the park again and my assistant is walking my dog. I’m playing basketball. She comes up to her and says, how can you work for that man. She says, what. She goes, I know who you work for. How can you work for that man. This woman I’ve met many times had long conversations. She says he wants Muslims to rape you and every other. All of our daughters. There is this tremendous amount of Islamophobia that has grown in the last two years or so. One of the funniest parts about this is as a socialist, it’s almost like a Jewish tradition. Like all of my favorite thinkers are radicals, the revolutionaries, they’re all Jewish. And not only that, but all of my closest friends are Jewish. I live in a very Jewish neighborhood. So like, it’s kind of sad to see the attitude shift from people who are otherwise very progressive people that I’ve known for years. And, I mean, it sucks. O.K, there is racism. There is Islamophobia. I’m not. But that feels like an interesting shift in the topic there. Because what you’re talking about here are people who have not said to you or not said to your assistant that they believe Muslims are here to rape all their daughters. But I think probably a lot of those Democrats for Mike Rogers homes to even narrow it to that more limited group rather than the whole neighborhood of Jewish people. Do you think a Democrat for Mike Rogers, that is a lifelong Democrat, is obviously making the calculation that the odious forms of white supremacy that they’re seeing from the Republican Party is still nowhere near as consequential. I think what they are for an Arab Muslim. No, I don’t think, well, I’m not going to say I know what’s in their heart, because I also don’t think you know what’s in their heart. I don’t but if you hold this in a slightly more generous space or I think a more straightforward space, the way you described it as they don’t want to vote for a Muslim anti-zionist. And I would assume that it’s probably the anti-zionism part is pretty important there. And what a lot of the Jewish people I know who hold politics that look more like that. Belief is that the Jews in Israel are endangered, and that if it loses American support, if Israel loses American support, that there will be mass slaughter there at some point. And it may not be about what anybody else is doing or believes. It is a much more security oriented view that was vastly worsened after October seven. And you may not agree with that. I’m not asking you to agree with it, but suggesting that they all believe that what’s going on is want to rape their daughters is, I think, the point jumping to something they haven’t said the point. Well, first of all, the reason why I brought that up is it’s anecdotal, but the reason why I brought that up is because it’s coming from somewhere, and it’s obviously very clearly a tide shift that I’ve personally experienced, that many people that I know have also reflected on. But what I was going to say is the concept of security. There’s never been a point throughout history where atrocities have unfolded, where those who are responsible for those atrocities have not made the security argument. Of course, there are security concerns. I mean, the Nazis made a false security concern argument as well. They didn’t say, oh, we’re going to go out and kill Jews because we were evil. They said, Jewish people are evil, that they’re the organized Jewry is in control of the banks, but also the labor unions. They’re doing socialism. They’re disrupting the German folk and their good nature. We don’t have to believe the security concerns. And my argument is, I don’t believe in the security concerns that justify the continued support to Israel and its current belligerent form. I don’t agree with that because I think the occupying force still controls the pacing and the intensity of the violence, both the violence that it subjects the occupied people to but also the violence that is born out of the retaliation to the form of apartheid, which is a system of violence. One thing that I wonder how you respond to it is you’ve often said you find Hamas to be 1,000 times better than the Israeli government. Putting aside the question of comparison, there used to be a strong, even majoritarian peace movement in Israel. Now, maybe you wouldn’t go as far as you would want it to go, but it did want two states. It did have politicians. Israeli politics was not nearly as far to the right as it is today, and much more seemed possible then. And it was a very long period of suicide bombings that destroyed that movement. And that was an incredible accelerant to Benjamin Netanyahu and his politics. Is explicitly what he ran on again and again and again. Likud strong on Hamas. That was the campaign slogan. And so I understand your critique of the security argument, and I’m not saying you got to buy it, but the view of Israeli Jews, when I talk to them, what they say to me is easy for you sitting in your Podcast Studio hanging out with Hasan Piker, which they’re probably not going to love. The most dangerous man. Easy for you to say Yeah why don’t you just figure out a political settlement. But we’re here. And it was my nephew who died in a bombing of a discotheque. And I had been out there in the streets protesting for a two state solution for years at that point. And that there is agency on the other side. And what we simply don’t believe is that if we let up on the repression. The occupation that we will be safe Yeah Hasan Piker might believe we’re going to be safe, but I don’t believe we’re going to be safe. So the appropriate way to go about this is to understand how the Palestinian resistance is tactics has shifted over the years. Obviously, I think it’s completely unacceptable to engage in violent actions against any group of civilians. International law does not allow that. That’s obviously illegal. That is what we would largely consider to be terrorism. Even though it’s a vague definition. But the October seven was terrorism to you. There are absolutely there were war crimes that took place. I mean, it was horrifying. I’ve never condoned October seven. Having said that, I understand the ways in which October seven unfolded almost became an inevitability, really. And this is not that controversial of a perspective. It’s one that Gideon Levy has also talked about. It’s conversations columnist Yeah. And it’s the Haaretz editorial board’s opinion immediately after October seven. It was one conversation that I had with an Israeli Minister of the Knesset. That was Warning about this happening. The reformer heads of the Shin Bet that talked about the squeezing of the Palestinian existence in the West Bank, was making it an inevitability that the Palestinian resistance from Gaza was inevitably going to do something because they were getting written out of the equation in its entirety. Abraham Accords obviously accelerated this process as well. Why am I talking about all this. Well, because Palestinian resistance, the age old adage is a bit of a cliche is that the First Intifada was fought with stones and then the second was fought with bus bombings. So how did that evolution take place. Baruch Goldstein and the massacre that took place were 29 Palestinians that were praying inside of a mosque, were ruthlessly slaughtered by this american-israeli was when the Palestinian resistance saw a turning point, a point of no return. It’s an act of desperation from their perspective, but they recognize that there was no other solution. I think it was wrong. I don’t just think that it’s morally wrong, which I do, but I also think that it was tactically wrong as well. And there were a lot of conversations at the time amongst the resistance about whether they should pursue this or would this hardened Israeli position, and it’s very clear that it hardened the Israeli position against Palestinian statehood. So having said all of that, it’s important to understand how this evolution took place, because the entire resistance is not born out of antagonism towards Judaism, but antagonism towards the occupation. There’s a reason why even Hamas itself, which is a fundamentalist group. And I probably wouldn’t do so well living under Hamas governance. And there’s plenty of problems in their civil governance, which, again, many of which are still borne out of the occupation. Having said that, the attitude is that they are expressly animated by Jew hatred. That’s not the case. If Israel was a Christian nationalist ethnostate, then the violence and the attitude would look like it’s anti-Christian. It is a national emancipatory front. That’s all they care about is the end to the occupation. And I think this is a real issue in the way that we’ve discussed it in Western media. And it’s obviously beneficial to dehumanize the entire Palestinian population and to say that the resistance is not in any way, shape, or form invested in something that is just if we are to consider the end of the occupation to be just. So I think that’s an answer with more both understanding and context than the everybody who lives in that neighborhood is akin to a KKK member, which I recognize. There’s your short clips and your long clips, but in this clip, in a part we didn’t play, you’re like, I know this is going to get clipped out of context. And it’s like, well, you’re inviting it. The reason to the point you’re making here. Substantively, though, the reason I actually don’t get into a lot of debates about Zionism is I find the word itself outdated. There just is this state called the state of Israel. It exists. States do not give up their territorial integrity or their future willingly. And this state has factions in it that are highly racist and supremacist. It also has a lot of people in it who genuinely care about security, and who had a friend die, or a child die, or a nephew die in October 7, or in a bus bombing. And they’re genuinely scared. And one of the hard things from the position that I know better. I’m less I go to the West Bank when I go there, but I don’t. My understanding of Palestinian politics is not as strong as my understanding of Israeli politics. But unless if you just dismiss the security question as well, every occupier believes they are doing this on behalf of security. There’s legitimacy to that. But there’s also the political reality. No, there’s also the physical reality of your friend was butchered Yeah Or blown up or you were at the funeral and saying to that person, security is an abstraction. It’s not an abstraction to them, just oppression is not an abstraction to the Palestinians. Well, it’s not just oppression. Because we’ve talked a lot about Israeli security concerns, but what is always not discussed in this conversation is how can Palestinians live alongside those who have slaughtered their families. They have no security Yeah and that’s my point. Always is. The reason why I draw back to historical parallels is because with the exception of maybe the Haitian Revolution, there has never been an instance where the newly freed population has actually engaged in the act of righteous vengeance. As a matter of fact, if we go back to the Reconstruction period, the violence often comes from those who want to restore the racial pecking order. The clan. The formation of the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction period was where a lot of that violence was coming. This is tricky, though, because this is the decolonisation perspective which has legitimacy to it. But the other perspective on this, and you hear it much more from Israelis, and it in some ways fits better. The demographics where you have roughly seven million people on each side is a lot of decolonisation examples. You have a very, very, very tiny governing majority minority and a gigantic Indigenous majority. That’s South Africa, right. That’s a lot of the examples you’re talking about here. You don’t what you have are seven million people and you have many, many, many, many, many examples, including in that region of disruptive political transitions leading to absolutely devastating civil wars. And another, the Civil War perspective. I mean, you can look right over there in Syria where hundreds of thousands died. So the idea that sometimes people say like, oh, just look at South Africa. Well, this doesn’t actually look like South Africa. I mean, this to me is why it’s very hard. I always not joke. I always say that my ideology on this is better. I believe in things that make it better. And you take one step at a time to you like Chinese politics metaphors. So you cross the river by feeling the stones underneath your feet. As opposed to being hard on a two state solution or one state solution, or a land for all or any of the other ideas, because you’re going to have to find your way to something that you’ve got to build confidence, step by step, by step by step, just saying to people, hey, in most decolonization instances, I mean, the Israelis don’t believe what they are colonizers. There was colonization in that period. Colonizer believes that though, right. But they also have their own connection to the land, and they’re not leaving to go somewhere else. They’re not moving back to Britain like that is. I do understand that if Palestinians are capable of coexisting and cohabitating these spaces with those who were previously responsible for pogroms and their demise and the destruction of their land, the ecocide that has taken place, the destruction of their futures. Then I think Israelis can do that too. However, in order for this to happen, there needs to be outside partners that incentivize and sometimes push in that direction. And that’s where we come in as American taxpayers and as even Zionists living in America that have a connection or have family members that live in Israel, that don’t want to live in Israel, but think this is a good way to show support to Israel, we should do everything in our power to not only restrain Israel in the interim, but to offer some kind of restitution so that we could potentially build a real civilization there that is pluralistic, a pluralistic democracy that offers equal rights and representation to everyone. What do you think. What would you be happy to see happen. The actual actions taken, given, the different parts of the Democratic Party that exist, will have to be brought into the same fold on this Yeah shut off all aid, all arms transfers and the memorandum of understanding immediately, and apply maximum pressure to the Israeli government and make demands of the Israeli government to slowly but surely one retreat from Gaza in its entirety and to create a process of trying to address what happened, a system of accountability, a truth and reconciliation committee, inevitably, and to move away from the current occupying structure that exists to one that is hopefully more just and equitable for. And what is the pressure you want to see America sanctions I want. Well, the threat of sanctions alone, I think, would be enough for Israel to react exactly how America would want it to. This is precisely the reason why, under the Biden administration, we had so much power, and now there’s more and more coverage coming out about exactly how we avoided using the pressure points that we had and the profound amount of influence that we have over Israel. Many people in America think now that Israel runs this country, that and it is obviously anti-Semitic tropes galore. The further you go into that argument, the more people talk about organized Jewry and whatnot. I have the exact opposite perspective that we are the top dog and that Israel is an imperial satellite. And it’s been quite beneficial for American interests, the interests of American empire for a very long time. And this resource rich region. And as a consequence of that, Israel has obviously been able to make certain domestic changes and domestic demands at the legislative agenda that we’ve never seen from any other foreign ally or foreign adversary. I’m of course, referencing anti-bds laws in 38 different states, the former primacy of AIPAC in American politics and just the lobby and its numerous functions in advocacy groups that exist in American society. This has a unique relationship. Israel and America have a very special, very unique relationship because of Israel’s utility to the American agenda in this region. But that means we still hold all the cards. We can tell Israel to restrain itself. And I think we must tell Israel to restrain itself to save the lives and livelihoods of the remaining Palestinians, but also to save Israel from itself. One of the things that strikes me about the way you put this is that you actually do see a lot of coalitional room on this issue. I mean, you’ve come out saying you want to see Chris Van Hollen be the Senate Majority Leader rather than Chuck Schumer. Holland has been very strong on this issue, but is very much a two state solution guy. Well I’m pragmatic. You have rhetoric that on the one hand is very strong. And honestly, I find fairly offensive on the liberal Zionism Nazi question. But you want to see politicians who are going to push for accountability and push for pressure to move the conflict in a more just direction towards some kind of solution that we don’t yet know its shape. Like, is that me basically getting your position right Yeah I mean, I have a goal that I want to achieve, but any step in the right direction that preserves life is appropriate and good. And I’m in favor of it. That’s my position on everything. That’s why I say I’m a very pragmatic person overall like I have. I’m a socialist, but I want modest, nominal social democracy in America in the interim. Where would you want to go in whatever the opposite of the interim is in the long term. The long term for Israel or. No, no, for America. No I’m for America pushing us off of Israel Yeah I think we need a stronger state in general, that is far more representative of the interests of the masses. I am not worried about a centrally planned economy in the way that many are. I think that even in order to compete with China, we have to adopt some of the Chinese forms of managing the economy. I think having a stricter controls over the flows of capital could possibly be a good thing. I mean, this is super idealistic and very far in the future, but I think that making sure that we have a more performance focused form of governance is also not a bad idea either. More responsiveness is something that I feel like is lacking from our current theoretical Democratic project. If we say we want to eradicate poverty in the Appalachian region and we send our we send our party representatives to that region. They have to accomplish that task. So one of the things I find interesting about this moment, we’re here in New York. Zohran Mamdani, of course, is Mayor in Los Angeles, and Nithya Raman has just won the mayoralty there, running on a builder. Socialism is the way I would describe sewer socialism Yeah, sewer socialism. But specifically building. I mean, her early ads, a lot of her campaign was about how much more she was going to build. There’s a bit of abundance in this, but I wouldn’t just call it that. I am seeing this highly technocratic, highly pragmatic, highly managerial approach in very left wing governance of various big cities across America. I mean, this is working out differently in different places. It’s also about showing your work, showing your work, being caught trying Yeah and I do find this to be a pretty interesting movement right now because we can talk ideology all day, but if people don’t trust the government and don’t believe it will help them, then they’re not going to let it take over their health care. They’re not going to let it take over capital flows or whatever you might want to do. So I’m curious to hear your reflections on that, this technocratic bent in modern socialist municipal governance. I think it’s great. You nailed it. I mean, this is a real problem. The lack of confidence that people have in governance is borne out of the government not really helping people, or rather, when it is helping people, it’s doing it in very invisible ways. The regulatory agencies that are tirelessly working, I think it was Adam Conner, was a series that was executive produced by Obama. The was it the G word. Oh yeah, I love that. I love that show because I think it’s very important to understand exactly how the government works in ways that we don’t fathom at all or take for granted. We only recognize that the government is supposed to be there when it fails. When we have recalls, for example, because the FDA is falling apart. That is a real problem. And I think we have to re-instill confidence in good governance. And socialists are doing that. They’re more responsive to the needs that people have, and they are seeking out solutions and also showing every step of the way, every step of the process. And creating a level of confidence in municipal governance, at least, what changes in their own approach to coalition building or policy making or whatever it might be governing. Is this forcing. I mean, you’re much more inside this world than I am. So when people are discussing what is being learnt here, what was done poorly in the past and what is being done well now, when you hear people talking about what they should learn, not just from the way Mamdani communicates, which is what the rest of the Democratic Party wants to learn from him, but the way he actually governs. What are the actual lessons of principles. If he’s a Harvard Business study, a Harvard Business School case study for socialists, what is being ran up in that study. I mean, I think on the election side, when he was campaigning, the five definable policies was perfect. It’s exactly what I’ve demanded Democrats do for the longest time. And I was so happy that he was able to accomplish that and win. And then when it came down to governance, he very quickly had to I guess, make certain decisions to build a broad coalition in order to ensure at least some of that agenda was accomplished. Very, very pluralistic Yeah universal child care being the immediate, tangible change that people wanted, people voted for that ended up boosting his profile as well. And it ended up delivering a little bit more confidence in the political process. Not just good governance, but also the political process as well, because I think there’s a sense of apathy that we breed in. Although he’s not passed universal child care. He hasn’t, but he started there piloting. Yes the implementation of it. But he’s also again marketing it very effectively. So people are very excited about it as well. But you’re right, it is a pilot program and it’s supposed to expand. And a part of that is obviously creating a funding vehicle for it. So on that front that’s been quite difficult to accomplish. But broadly speaking, I think it’s a executive role is an exceptionally difficult one for socialists. It’s the one area where you can make immediate impact and associate this broad movement with deliveries. However, it’s also an area where you have to build these coalitions and therefore compromise quite a bit. Jess Scottish remains the police chief. For example. The SG is still not disbanded. I am sure the SG is the Strategic Response Group. Is this counter-terrorism, this counter-terrorism group inside of the NYPD. They were most notably involved with the Columbia student protests, and there’s a lot of surveillance that they engage in. And this is something that Zohran said he would seek to disband as well, because I do think that our police force is unbelievably militarized, and I think that is a real problem. But everything that he does that everything that he does well in New York has positive, reverberating reverberations for the rest of the Democratic Party and certainly the Democratic socialist movement. I think that is a good place to end. Always our final question what are three books you’d recommend to the audience? Yeah. “Mao: The Man Who Built China” by Philip Short. Dense 800 plus pages. But I think it does a very good job of explaining his development, his history without veering into state propaganda or anything like that. But it also doesn’t automatically demonize him. He just looks at him as a historical force. And I think it’s a fascinating book. Another one that’s even more controversial than that, and that one’s not really controversial, is and I thought about whether AI should recommend this or not, but I recently reread it. “Blackshirts and Reds” by Michael Parenti. He is somewhat of a controversial figure. He recently passed away. I think it’s good for the New York Times’ readership to try to develop a different understanding of countries and systems that are so foreign, so alien to us. And can you describe what makes up a controversial for people not familiar with it what it’s about? It talks about how fascism and capitalism serve the same masters and that it has what I would say is a more sympathetic approach to the USSR, to Communist forms of governance. But I think it’s good for those who are intellectually curious to read something like this and then perhaps try to comprehend what some of the positives were within this otherwise dystopian form of governance that we have a very different understanding of. And the last book is also somewhat controversial because I haven’t finished reading it, but I think it’s very timely. Book is “American Socialist: A Life and Legacy of Eugene Debs.” I feel like it’s a really timely book that just recently came out about the OG American socialist, someone who was a profoundly impactful in Bernie’s personal ideological journey as well. I think it’s timely because of the American socialist resurgence that we’re currently going through right now. And back then, I mean, they had far more political representation than we do now, even though the Democratic Socialists of America has, I believe, become the largest socialist party or organization in the history of this country. Now, Hasan Piker, thank you very much. Thank you for having me.