Transcript: I’ve Got No Problem With Communism: Hasan Piker on TRIGGERnometry Podcast

While I was actually doing the advertisement stuff on the back end, I was basically the singular advertisement operations person. Not only was I creating client list, but doing cold calls, trying to get doctor campaigns going for The Young Turks and fill the inventory of The Young Turks with some brand names that I think everyone is now familiar with, like Squarespace and things of that nature. That was a big client of mine initially.

But I hated it and I thought, I think I could do better if I were on an on camera position. And so, but the problem was I was horrible on camera at first and I just kept going through it. My girlfriend at the time was a model trying to become an actress. She was like, one of us has to actually work. And she was like, you should keep doing the advertising stuff to make money so that I can be a model and actress, whatever. And I was like, okay.

And even a bunch of my friends were like, maybe you should stop doing this on camera stuff. You’re not very good at it. And I was like, no, I’m going to keep going. I’m going to keep doing it because eventually I’ll get better at it. And I guess over the years I did get somewhat better at it.

The Breakdown and Facebook Success

But while I was at The Young Turks, I was doing all this stuff. I set up the show called “The Breakdown.” It was very successful because it aligned perfectly with the Facebook algorithm, turning on the faucet for video content. This was when everyone was doing the pivot to video, BuzzFeed and all these other places. There’s a company called Upworthy. I don’t know if you guys recall, way back in the day, they were getting tens of millions of views a week and my videos were getting like 30 million views a week.

I was contesting Tomi Lahren’s right wing commentary at the time. And that was when I first made a name for myself, I guess as a leftist political commentator. But I wanted something more. I wanted something that I could call my own. I wanted a sense of community for myself. I didn’t want to be under the umbrella of The Young Turks as much as I was.

Transitioning to Twitch

So I thought to myself, I play video games already when I’m not working. Might as well go to this platform called Twitch. It was a video gaming platform at the time, even though there was some commentary happening there as well. And I decided I’m just going to strap on a PlayStation camera onto my PlayStation 4 at the time and start live broadcasting. And while I play Fortnite and I have a bunch of other friends who are journalists, activists, organizers and whatnot that I play Fortnite with anyway, so we’ll just talk about political issues while I do this.

Now, there’s a couple different reasons why I did that. Like I said, one, because I wanted to have something of my own, immediate property of my own. The other reason was because I recognized that the gaming side of things, the gaming culture side of that space, was heavily dominated by right wing commentary, whereas gamers were much more diverse in their opinion, myself included. And I wanted to present an alternative.

I also wanted to go against the grain because at the time, this is, we’re talking 2016, 2017, at the peak of woke SJW cartoonish depictions of what the left represented. And there was some validity to the arguments that are being presented. Obviously it was the most maximalist, most ridiculous depiction of the left. But some people would lean into that a little bit where they were like, no, we are like this. We are joy killers. We are woke scolds.

And I was like, I don’t think you have to be that. I think you can have fun and also still have progressive values. And I wanted to basically show that to an audience that had maybe never really encountered that. And I wanted to be in an environment that I was comfortable in as a male who games. And that was a very male focused gamer space, which was.

And last but not least, I wanted to get better off the cuff because up until that moment I had always scripted my content. I was writing it. And then I would actually take the writing on my videos and turn it into a Huffington Post article. So I would just reformat my scripts into an actual article. And that was fine. But I wasn’t very good off the cuff.

So I thought to myself, I can play video game and talk about politics at the same time and be able to entertain people maybe 30 at a time, maybe 300 at a time. If I’m lucky, then I can get a lot better at public speaking and speaking off the cuff. And as you guys might have figured out by now, I never shut the f* up. So I guess it worked. I guess it worked.

Defining Progressive Values

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And you mentioned progressive values and that being something that’s important to you. What are progressive values, would you say?

HASAN PIKER: I think progressive values, for me at least, are founded around empathy, first and foremost, to try and uplift everyone’s material conditions to the best of our ability to. And focusing on protecting those who need protection and simultaneously advancing a cause of the way, I think about it, advancing the cause of unlocking the potential of every single person, no matter where they are.

Because right now there are probably billions of brilliant people that never actually get the opportunity to unlock their true potential because of where they’re born. Am I born in Sudan, in a village that is being overtaken by the RSF? They might be born in India to an impoverished neighborhood and are not going to have the access to education and therefore be able to truly revolutionize whatever sector they might be interested in revolutionizing. And I think that’s what I want to do.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What do you think is the way to, because I think that’s probably something the left and right actually agree on, in my experience. The center left, the center right, the kind of moderate. But I suppose the disagreement probably is about what you think is the way by which that happens.

So the right might say, well, the answer to that is capitalism, right? I imagine you don’t agree. So how do you think, how do you think those things get those people who don’t currently have opportunity, both in this country, in other Western countries, but around the world? What’s the mechanism by which they get those opportunities?

Social Safety Nets and Global Development

HASAN PIKER: I think creating a robust base of support, a minimum social safety net for all, is the way to do it. And there are many different ways of achieving that result. I don’t think capitalism has been able to do that. What I mean by that is capitalism still revolves around the inherent contradiction of, at its most reductive way to put it, someone’s got to clean the toilet.

And in an effort to make sure that there is always going to be people that are wage laborers, there is this dynamic where we can’t advance humanity too much. This plays itself out in the international scale and unequal exchange where if we were to allow a lot of the third world to develop to a certain degree, then things would be far too costly. We wouldn’t get the cheap materials and the cheap natural resources that we need to extract so that we can have an iPhone for the reasonable price of $500 or, I mean, even that’s increasing now.

I personally think that if we were to do that, if we were to do that by stopping our endless and needless and cruel militarism in the global south and allow these places to develop, extend an open hand to them, that we would allow society to flourish in ways that we previously have not foreseen.

Wealth Inequality and Immigration

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I guess your point about cleaning toilets is interesting because something we’ve addressed a lot on this trip with guests, right, left, center, et cetera, is the incredible wealth inequality and the speed at which the gap is, that’s growing. There’s a big problem. People on the right don’t want to admit it, and it’s true.

But on the other hand, someone is always going to have to clean the toilets, right? We have a pretty big safety net in the UK and what that’s mainly done is trapped a lot of people in a place where they don’t have to work and they therefore don’t. And also you talk about, important people from other countries to work for less. The consequence of that is it suppresses wages for the people in the country as well. So who would clean the toilets if we…

HASAN PIKER: So great question. Let me address the wage depression aspect of this because this is the one area where sometimes I hear Tucker Carlson talk about it and there’s some nuggets of truth in there because, yes, importing labor into the country will always depress wages in the absence of good regulation.

And good regulation in that format would be demanding wage parity and also not creating any other external factors that actually cause you to have a more servile labor force. What I mean by this is I want to use the example of H1B visas. The reason why H1B visa system exists on paper is because there are certain highly skilled positions that as it stands, our American companies are unable to fulfill. They’re not able to fill those roles with the domestic labor force. Right. That’s the on paper.

In practice, of course, it creates a more pliable labor force that you’re bringing in oftentimes from highly skilled countries that are still desperate, even if there is higher wages on average on the H1B visa program. Because if you lose your job, you get deported. Nobody wants to get deported. So they will do everything in their power to stay and work as hard as they physically possibly can.

So this creates an environment where I think our bosses, our capital owners in America are like, why would I get an American worker who is in comparison to an Indian worker that’s coming into the country that is desperate to keep this job? Why would I hire the American worker? I can pay the same fee to the Indian worker, or even a higher fee, as a matter of fact, to the Indian worker because I know that he is going to work harder than the American labor force.

So there is this competition. The way to solve that competition is through regulation. If the workers that were coming in from poorer countries were coming in with the knowledge that they are not going to be immediately deported, for example, and they have wage parity with a domestic labor force, this would actually make American companies think twice before hiring someone just as a replacement for the American worker because they wouldn’t get any additional benefits as a boss.

They wouldn’t get the additional benefit of, I’m going to work you to the bone, right? Because I know if I fire you, you’re gone, you’re gone out of the country and you want to be here. So that is a regulatory mechanism that we never implement in this country because we are, our capital owners, actually enjoy the two tiered labor structure that we have here.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Come back to the who cleans the toilets? Even when there’s a social welfare system.

Automation, Labor, and Fair Compensation

HASAN PIKER: I think that ultimately there’s going to be people that fulfill these roles no matter what. And increasingly with automation and with AI, we’re getting to a point where the rote tasks are already being delegated to robots to begin with.

So the way I see it is the person, there’s always going to be someone that is tasked with this, tasked with either overseeing it if it’s a robot doing it, or directly doing it. But since it’s an important factor in the commodity production because someone has to engage in sanitation, I think it’s much more valuable to ensure that they have a sense of autonomy and that those positions are hired and have enough replacement labor force so that they do less hours in general and still get a decent amount of pay.

So that they can still feel human and have some sense of autonomy in the labor force where they can do that job and still make an honest living and be able to feed their family and also have some free time on the side to pursue whatever hobbies they want to pursue.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So the way to achieve that would be like what, a really high minimum wage or like what? What’s the way to get there? I agree with the idea that people who are working every kind of job should have free time and make a good living. The question is, how do you do that? Because in a market economy, what you are paid is a function of what you produce, right?

Market Economics and Wage Determination

HASAN PIKER: Well, I think in a market economy, what you are paid should be what you produce. I don’t think that that’s how it works in the market economy. I think in the market economy, your replaceability is what determines your wages, especially if you are replaceable by a non-domestic labor force, for example, that depresses your wages even further on the domestic front for the citizen labor force.

So I think you’re right, though. In the market economy, your output should be the determining factor. That’s actually a socialist position. Ironically enough, not all socialists are against the market. And I would say that the output is the most consequential factor in that regard. I agree.

What that means, however, is that if the company is increasing its output and therefore generating more revenue overall, then everyone, down to the most replaceable aspect of labor, which would be sanitation in this regard, should still get paid a just wage, fair compensation.

Minimum wages is one way of doing it as a band-aid solution. I mean, but there are Nordic countries, for example, where there is no minimum wage because the minimum wage would ironically be a depressing factor on the overall average wages that people get.

How have they achieved this, though? They’ve achieved this through sectoral bargaining. They’ve achieved this through robust unions and labor participation in these wage negotiations. And that is the reason why they don’t need to have a minimum wage.

The minimum wage in and of itself is a big point of contention in the United States of America and a lot of other Western countries, only because our labor union participation in the United States is at less than 10% right now, which is unreal, unimaginably low. It’s lower than countries that we have dominated, like Chile, where we rewrote their constitution basically and wanted to unleash a wave of neoliberalism sometimes in the hands of a dictator like Pinochet. Even in that country, there’s still 15% labor union participation. So it’s still higher than the United States of America, which is crazy to me.

Socialism and Authoritarianism

FRANCIS FOSTER: Hasan, I’ve got a lot of empathy for some of your positions, particularly when you talk about low-skilled labor. So for context, my mother is a Venezuelan immigrant to the UK. When she was in the UK, she was a childminder. There was no minimum wage. My mom, roughly I remember earning two pounds twenty an hour. There were no pension rights.

So thankfully I help my parents out, my dad helps my mom out, so she’s not destitute. But that’s what my mom’s position would be if she didn’t have me or my father. As somebody who is from Venezuela, I worry when people mention socialism because I’ve seen what’s happened to my country. How would you assuage the fears of people like me or people who come from a Cuban background who’ve seen the socialist dream, as it were, descend into authoritarianism?

HASAN PIKER: Well, first and foremost I would say that all countries to varying degrees engage in authoritarianism in general. It’s just something that it’s a function of the government. It obviously has the capacity to get out of hand due to external factors in many instances, like combating much more powerful forces that want to cause instability in your country.

That’s not a justification for it, but it is analysis in terms of why these guys engage in the actions that they do in terms of suppression of all dissent or even censorship and sometimes even jail time.

And the example I always use is the United States of America, not only in the Cold War, but even preceding the Cold War, during World War I and World War II actually had a practice of jailing all conscientious objectors. For example, who said, “I don’t want to fight in this war.” They were like, “All right, well, this is a world, sucks to suck. You’re going to jail.”

One of the famous examples is Eugene Debs, a socialist who actually ran from prison and I think achieved 1.3 million votes at the time, which was probably the most electoral success socialists had ever achieved. He was a conscientious objector of World War I, which was the international Marxist position at the time. There was some deviation there.

So I see it in a similar vein when these countries also engage in authoritarian actions, suppressing dissent, censorship, or trying to manage this dynamic of trying to continue doing governance, while at the same time they have to make sure that they’re avoiding American intervention or Western intervention in general.

As far as the fears that people have, assuaging the fears that people have in terms of what they’ve seen in their countries, whether it be Venezuela or Cuba, I think each country is different. Each successful and unsuccessful revolution is different. And I think it’s important to understand the lessons and the failures as well as some of the areas of success that these countries have been able to implement. Avoid the failures and try to focus on the successes and hopefully you’ll be able to have a long-standing and relatively happy form of governance.

Venezuela’s Political Opposition

FRANCIS FOSTER: I mean, I take your point as to the conscientious objector, but you look at Venezuela, for example, and then the reason I’m using it is because that’s the example I know best. You’ve got rigged elections, you’ve got politicians who go up against Maduro. They’re put in, they’re either thrown in jail, as in the case of Leopoldo López, solitary confinement for two years, or you have, I think it’s Corina Machado who got nominated for Nobel Peace Prize, but she is currently in hiding in her own country because she knows the moment that her whereabouts are known, she’s going to get thrown into jail, may not be seen again.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, I’m not going to defend Maduro, but I would say that the logical through line, and it’s important to understand the opposition’s logical through line in this instance, is that these are forces that are very directly working with the United States of America that have tried to facilitate coups, even had an unsuccessful one all the way back in 2002 with Chávez and numerous other instances, openly talked about implementing coups under the first Trump administration and is openly now waging war or at least threatening to wage war with Venezuela right now.

Encircling the entire coastline of Venezuela with some of the most sophisticated weaponry known to man. In that regard, I think they see it as treason. I would go so far as say, in a similar scenario in the United States of America, I think, and this is not even a one-to-one dynamic because America is the most powerful nation on the planet, but China is getting up there, right?

Let’s see. If China had, if in a hypothetical, if China had encircled the United States of America. And let’s say in this hypothetical, I’m very clearly someone who is going to China and talking to the CPC and saying, “We want Chinese intervention in this country because I hate Donald Trump, please.” I think in that regard, America would probably treat me in the exact same way, if not in a worse way, ironically enough.

FRANCIS FOSTER: But would they throw you in jail for trying to run democratically? I don’t think personally that they would.

HASAN PIKER: Oh, they absolutely would. I think, you think the American government would not throw me in jail if I was in a comparable scenario where China had encircled the United States of America and I was saying I want to run democratically, I want to be, and I’m demanding that China intervene? I think they would do the same, if not worse. For sure, because it’s all a matter of the conditions on the ground.

With respect to Eugene Debs, as I was talking about before, America felt threatened even at that time.

Wartime Governance and Civil Liberties

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You were talking about wartime, though. This is not a fair comparison in my opinion because wartime is wartime. It’s about survival. Britain suspended elections during wartime, right?

HASAN PIKER: America didn’t actually, they did.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: During the Civil War, but Britain did. America wasn’t in war in the same way that Britain was.

HASAN PIKER: That’s why I say during the Civil War.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, well, yeah, that’s fair. But again, it’s different. I guess you said something interesting because, you know, I was born in the Soviet Union, so we both have direct experience of socialism in various shapes and forms. You talked about, well, there’s positives and there’s negatives. So is there a country that’s done socialism the way that you like?

Critiques of All Governance Systems

HASAN PIKER: I would say that I am hypercritical of all forms of governance, including the American one. I think that’s not a surprise to you guys, right? And in that same vein, I think there is critiques to apply to all forms of governance, even socialist ones.

China as a Model for Governance

HASAN PIKER: And as far as getting closer to what I think has been relatively successful, because if ultimately the point of government is to improve the material conditions of all people to the best of your ability, it’s not always going to be perfect. But when you are getting the poorest people, the poorest of the dispossessed masses out of a situation where they were servile, the land of gentry, or they were peasants from an agrarian society, or they were dominated by the landlords, but then ultimately they were able to come into modernity and become an industrial powerhouse that is competitive with largest superpower on the planet, I would say, if that’s the point of good governance, and I think you guys might agree with me on that, I would say China is probably the closest.

And there are still plenty of failures within the Chinese system as well. Plenty of issues within the Chinese system as well. But that’s probably the closest, I would say, to an example that we should follow and lessons that we should learn from.

This is something that I talk about quite a bit. Ironically enough, we only utilize some of the most repressive elements of Chinese governance here in the United States of America, especially in the second Trump administration, and none of the good stuff. We don’t have any high speed rail, we don’t have any even development. There is seemingly nothing to look forward to in America in terms of economic prosperity, in terms of overall health of society, in terms of scientific achievements.

And I think a lot of younger people also feel the same way where they feel like there’s nothing to look forward to here. And I’ll give you guys an example from the UK. I remember seeing this TikTok of this guy that goes around and is asking young British people would they serve in the British military? And I am not even remotely nationalistic by any measure. I don’t care about those sorts of things. But I think it’s important to understand, it’s a good way to see the temperature of society. And a lot of the young British people were like, “No, why would I fight for England? Why would I fight for the UK when it seems like my government’s not even fighting for me at all?”

Immigration and National Identity

KONSTANTIN KISIN: See, the reason a lot of them will say that though, is it’s not so much about that. We’re not like China in terms of building high speed rail, although that is a big issue in the UK. I agree with you. The main reason is they feel like they’ve been let down by mass immigration that’s eroding the values of their country. And of course, this is where I think people on the right are very blind to this issue that we already raised, which is wealth inequality and opportunity.

HASAN PIKER: I’m sure there are some people who feel that way, of course.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, think about this, Hasan. Let me just finish the point. Stereotypically speaking, is that left of center people or right of center people that are going to go and fight for their country? Typically it’s going to be right of center people because of the mindset that they have, right?

HASAN PIKER: I think when push comes to shove, everybody fights for the country because that’s why you have to have a draft in a war.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But what we’re talking about in this situation is will you go and serve in armed forces? That is going to be a more right leaning perspective. And those people, we probably, fair to say, know the UK pretty well. Those people are concerned about the national identity of their country. It’s like, “Why would I fight for a country that it doesn’t feel like my country?” is the issue for them.

Assimilation and Cultural Integration

HASAN PIKER: This is where the big point of division comes for someone like myself. You’re Venezuelan originally. Your family came from Venezuela, your family came from the USSR. You guys are the most British people I’ve ever encountered.

FRANCIS FOSTER: British face, correct?

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, exactly. You’re British to the bone.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

HASAN PIKER: And yet your families also came from countries that were somewhat far away from England, right? And I’m Turkish. I grew up in Turkey. My whole family lives in Turkey still, with some exceptions. And I would say I’m pretty assimilated to American culture. I grew up being fascinated by American culture. I grew up consuming American pop culture, as do many people all around the world.

And what I always find interesting is when people focus on the newcomers to say that this is actually destroying the social fabric or social cohesion. Not realizing that there are a ton of polls conducted on this stuff. I can just speak for America especially, where by the second generation assimilation is almost complete and by the third one it’s virtually impossible to distinguish in terms of performance, educational output and job performance in general. It’s just like everyone becomes American.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s not true in the UK though, unfortunately. So if you look at, for example, Islamist radicalization, second and third generation Muslims are much more radical than first generation.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So we’re not, that’s the issue that a lot of people in Britain are concerned about is not everyone’s assimilating the way that the three of us have done.

Economic Factors and Social Division

HASAN PIKER: So here’s the interesting point about that. Well, two things I want to address. First, like I said, people assimilate. And they become a part of the normal forces of society, they become a part of the culture or they bring some aspect of their culture into British culture. You know, they change the cuisine and people seemingly enjoy it, even if they also simultaneously go attend an EDL rally and then get a little quick curry afterwards or a little kebab on the side.

But beyond that, the reason why people are angry is always going to be because the trains are not running on time, because the NHS is improperly managed due to underfunding. That’s what I believe. I think it’s an issue of underfunding where they’re not getting the same services that they once used to. And also things are becoming more and more costly.

So in that anger, it’s much easier for them to be guided by a right wing, guided by the right wing forces to turn around and say, “You’re angry and you’re right to be angry. And the reason why you’re angry, the reason why all of these things are happening, is because we are importing all of these random strangers into the country who don’t speak your language, who you aren’t scared by.” And that, I think, causes division and it causes friction that makes it harder for people to integrate. And that is part of the reason why, I think, especially in place like the UK, you see a little bit more of this resilience towards full blown integration into society.

FRANCIS FOSTER: I also think as well, Hasan, if we’re being honest, it’s also because we have had such huge amounts of immigration come into the country. The people understandably go, “This pace of change is too much.” And you have to think, let’s go back to 2016, which was the Brexit referendum. Now, Brexit was about many things, but really it was about people wanting immigration to be lowered. And that was now on 10 years ago.

Immigration hasn’t been lowered, in fact, it’s been ratcheted up. So people voted to lower immigration. And I’m, for instance, I voted Remain, people voted Brexit, I’m like, well, that’s democracy. We get on, we’re going to make the best of it. I do believe that when you ignore people’s wishes at the ballot box and people explicitly vote for something and you ignore them for the best part of a decade, that does generate a lot of anger and understandably so.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, I think in that same time frame, if there was enough appetite by the government to address the financial harm that people were experiencing, the economic struggles that people were experiencing, there would still be a lot of people who say, “I don’t want a brown person, I don’t want black person around in my neighborhood.” But ultimately those numbers would be far smaller.

And that’s what I always go back to. I’m a leftist. I believe in economic improvements. And I believe that a lot of the reactionary forces actually take advantage of that instability, the economic volatility that exists in an effort to shift the attention away to people who have the same exact interests as you and I do. Because ultimately I don’t believe that anyone is coming into the United States of America or the UK as a matter of fact, because they want to bring about a Salafist style Islamic caliphate in London. I know you won’t agree with me on this.

Islam and British Society

KONSTANTIN KISIN: It’s not about whether I agree, it’s about whether the facts agree with you.

HASAN PIKER: I don’t think that’s the case.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Hold on.

HASAN PIKER: I think…

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Let me just give you some facts then. If we have a terrorist attack on a monthly basis by an Islamist, effectively, we just had two in the space of the last month. As we’re recording this, 33%, I think, of British Muslims want Sharia law in Britain. According to polls, more than half want to ban homosexuality. We can put them in for people to see.

So when you say people aren’t coming in to introduce an Islamist, well, some of them want to if they’re in a position to do so. We have five MPs who are effectively elected on a sectarian ticket. As in we are Muslims, vote for us because you’re a Muslim.

HASAN PIKER: Who would you say those MPs are?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: The five independent MPs, they’re called the Gaza MPs or whatever way you want to call them.

HASAN PIKER: Are you talking about Zara Sultana?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I don’t know if she’s one of them. I think one of them is called Adnan Hussein. There’s five of them. You can look them up, we can put them in for people to see. So I think it should be said that the overwhelming majority of British Muslims don’t want Sharia law. But if 33% of them do, you can see why a lot of people who don’t want Sharia law might be concerned about that.

HASAN PIKER: Right, sure. I don’t know what, I haven’t seen these polls and I also don’t know what British Muslims or the 33% that are saying they want Sharia law, what they’re talking about.

Comparing Social Conservatism

HASAN PIKER: The counter example always is, I mean, there’s plenty of right wing forces in the country that also want to ban homosexuality. Or trans people in general, right?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: No one wants to ban trans people in Berlin. No.

HASAN PIKER: Okay, well that’s not what I have seen so far, but maybe I’m wrong on this.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What do you mean?

HASAN PIKER: But I mean, I feel like there’s a lot of, this is a point of contention for you guys as well. But it’s like when you want to ban trans people altogether, when you want to remove access to medication for trans people to transition and conform their own gender identity, you don’t start off by saying we want to altogether ban trans people. You start off by trying to find the most successful approach that the broadest majority of the masses would be in tune with, would be in agreement with. And then you slowly but surely expand on it.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Wouldn’t that be saying, wouldn’t that be like me saying, well, you say you want socialism, but actually you’re a communist because you just want to edge your way towards communism step by step.

HASAN PIKER: I mean, that seems like an unfair way of looking. No, my retort to that would be that while I don’t call myself a communist, I don’t have an issue with an end goal of communism. I don’t think it’s a, I just think that it’s probably not likely to happen. A stateless, moneyless, borderless society. But moving towards that end goal, I…

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I don’t have any real communism in America.

Communism and International Systems

HASAN PIKER: I think that communism would be most likely an international thing. It’d be like the Star Trek universe. And it feels, especially at this point, it feels far too utopian to achieve. So while I think that the concept in and of itself is not one that I disagree with, and I don’t think you would either. Don’t you think it would be nicer?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I grew up in a communist country. I strongly disagree with the concept of communism.

HASAN PIKER: The USSR was, as you know, as well, trying to implement communism. They never actually were able to successfully implement communism.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: How do you mean?

HASAN PIKER: Well, it wasn’t a borderless, moneyless, classless society. Right.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Communism. It was never to be a borderless, moneyless society.

HASAN PIKER: No, that is what communism is.

The Soviet Implementation of Communism

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, that’s not how the communists in Russia defined it. Well, there was a big debate within communism quite early on, which was about, are we pursuing a global state of communism versus Stalin?

HASAN PIKER: I’m very familiar.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right. But for our audience, this might be worth explaining. Yeah, some of them wanted to. They basically recognize the only way you might ever get to a communist society is if everyone in the world gets it. Otherwise there will always be a capitalist system to which people would be keen to defect. Or this is the Stalin option that they ended up going for is you pursue communism within the realm of one country.

And in order to do that, they took the wealth away from people who had it, they tried to distribute it to everybody else. They tried to create a state of equality, uplift the poor, as you were talking about. And actually, if you take those measures alone, they were very successful at it.

The only problem is they ended up putting, you know, millions of people in camps in order to do that, creating a tyrannical regime with a secret police that murdered people. And that is the reason communism, in my opinion, doesn’t work, is because in order to achieve that goal of equality, and basically you’re making everybody equally poor as the end result, you actually have to use a lot of force. Right. So that was communism, what we had in the USSR.

HASAN PIKER: Well, that the end goal was never successfully achieved in the USSR in terms of establishing what I’m talking about, though. And that’s why I’m saying it’s important to understand and recognize the failures of this implementation in the aftermath of a socialist revolution and choose not to repeat those mistakes.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So how would you do it differently?

China’s Mixed Economy Model

HASAN PIKER: Well, that’s the reason why I pointed to China. China is run by the Communist Party of China. It builds itself as communist. China is not a communist country. Would you say China is a communist country?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: It’s a mixed country. It has some elements of communism, but it’s also got a lot of capitalism going on.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, so it’s a mixed market economy is what you’re saying, right? But so is the United States of America if you look at it from that perspective. Because America also has some semblance of social safety nets. The UK also has some social safety nets, some state run enterprises, you know, especially pre Margaret Thatcher, I would say, versus private enterprises as well.

Venezuela at its peak I think had more privatization and more private enterprise in its economy than France did. As a matter of fact, I believe there was a report at around 2012 maybe where they were talking about how Venezuela is not socialist is when these sorts of countries, and you’re not wrong, it’s a mixture of both. Right? It exists, social safety nets exists, some extrapolation initiatives exist.

When you think about Norway for example, the entirety of the extraction industry in Norway is actually nationalized from the forestry all the way down to the oil and gas industry. But then there’s also the private market as well, private enterprise as well. So as far as that goes, I wouldn’t say that China is a communist and neither would you, but it’s run by a communist party and so far they have seen a pretty successful, pretty robust level of growth and development overall. So they have analyzed the failures of previous communist and socialist formations and they have responded to it in their own way.

Centralized Power and Corruption

FRANCIS FOSTER: The challenge is, Hasan, when you centralize power and you give exactly practically all the power to the government, what happens with that is you’re far more likely to have corruption, you’re far more likely to have abuse of power. And inevitably what happens is that the government can’t do everything. There are things that are far better done by private practice than done by state control.

HASAN PIKER: So if you agree with that, would you also agree that there are things that are far better done in the hands of the government or at least with heavy market regulation and intervention?

FRANCIS FOSTER: I completely agree.

Healthcare as a Case Study

HASAN PIKER: I think healthcare is a great example of this where it’s an inelastic demand good and service, right? If you don’t have healthcare, you die. So you will pay whatever price you have to pay for healthcare. And therefore I think the American system that is the most maximalist, most capitalist, most free enterprise system has been an abject failure in terms of delivering good results.

And what I mean by that is healthcare as a whole is supposed to improve people’s living standards and also make sure that everyone is getting the best quality care possible. Right? And in the United States of America we don’t have that. We do have nicer hospitals that resemble hotels as opposed. To be honest with you, it’d be…

FRANCIS FOSTER: Difficult not to have a nicer hospital than the UK, mate.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, no, but that’s. But I understand that. I’m from Turkey. I’ve seen the Turkish public hospitals. But I would rather have. I would rather try to focus on the diminished quality of service and try to improve that in a socialized system than to altogether limit healthcare at the point of being able to pay for it in the way that we have in the United States of America.

And I think this is a major issue with America in general, is that we are so invested in improving our GDP, we’re so invested in leaning into the forces of capital, that in this sector and in many others, corruption still thrives. We have it in the form of corporate consolidation here in the United States of America because in the absence of any sort of government intervention, trust busting, and heavy regulatory intervention, all corporations end up trying to seize one another and become a force, a monopolistic force, and if not an oligopoly. Right.

And many sectors have seen this. And when you become an oligopoly, you can diminish the quality of service that you’re offering slowly but surely because there’s no market competition that exists any longer.

Different Forms of Control

So I guess the way I look at it is in terms of corruption, you’re right. There is a tendency if the government is all powerful, even though the governments are always all powerful, there is a tendency in more centralized governance that if someone wants to be a ruthless autocrat, they can do so. And the people don’t always have the capacity to rise up against that.

But I would say that in the United States of America, for example, we also experience a similar dynamic. We just don’t see it in the same way because it’s not the most direct form of authoritarianism where a lot of people think, well, as long as I can eat a Big Mac, you know, as long as I can watch TV, as long as I can consume porn and gamble on the unregulated cryptocurrency market or gamble my modest income away, what remains after I give the rest to my landlord, then, you know, things are probably fine.

And I think we dull our sensibilities in that regard. And I think it’s a different form, it’s a different mechanism of control that makes you think that you are actually an active participant.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, I mean, I think that’s quite a stretch, Hasan, with all respect, because the difference between. I mean, you talk about. We talked about some societies that have attempted to pursue communism. China, the Soviet Union, Venezuela, etc. Right. The difference between those countries is not that they can’t eat a Big Mac. The difference is that if they criticize the government in Russia today, even. But of course, in the Soviet Union previously, you’re going to get killed. Right. In America. That’s not what happens. Right. In America, you don’t get…

HASAN PIKER: We don’t know yet. We don’t know where we’re going to go.

FRANCIS FOSTER: I mean, Hasan, to be fair, you’ve got. You are very successful.

HASAN PIKER: I agree with you.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You, in China or in the Soviet Union would be killed if you were critical of that regime.

HASAN PIKER: Definitely. I would definitely be jailed.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You’d definitely be jailed. So that’s the difference between these countries. In America, it’s not a Big Mac, it’s freedom.

Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment

HASAN PIKER: No. So I love that you brought that up because I agree with that. I’m from Turkey, a country that has never had the First Amendment or freedom of speech. And ironically enough, the current regime, the person in charge of the current regime was jailed in the past for a poem that he wrote for incitement. Right. He read a poem about altitude, I believe, if I’m not mistaken. And he was jailed. And now he’s one of the most ruthless jailers of the press in the country now.

So I come from that background. I can’t go back to Turkey, for example, for these reasons. I’ve written about Turkey extensively and let’s just say the administration is not super fond of me, in my perspective.

Having said that, that is the reason why I want the First Amendment to remain in the United States of America. Even though, as I brought up earlier, there have been instances throughout American history where the First Amendment has been actively violated or threatened, there are still contemporary examples of violations of the First Amendment.

One example I will use is the anti boycott, divestment and sanctions laws that exist in the United States of America. Famously was Bernie Sanders and Dianne Feinstein, rest in peace, who actively called it out, two prominent Jewish politicians in the country. These are laws directly written by AIPAC that dictate that if you want to become a schoolteacher in the state of Texas, for example, you have to sign a loyalty pledge to ensure that you never protest against the state of Israel. It’s ridiculous, right? And it’s a direct violation of the First Amendment. So there are encroachment. There is encroachment towards the First Amendment.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That will always happen because people will always contest it. But the point I’m making to you is when you compare China in the Soviet Union and Venezuela to America, you are not. That is not an accurate comparison.

Concerns About Political Repression

HASAN PIKER: It’s not an accurate comparison. But if you recall earlier, I just said, I’m worried that we here in the United States of America are now moving in that direction in terms of social repression, in terms of political repression. And this is something that I very much fear. And I think the entry point to this is usually around Israel and what people decry as anti-Semitism. But that’s not where it’s going to end.

If you look at the Trump administration’s active. The active initiatives the administration is taking. Yesterday, my friend Kat Abu Ghuzali, who used to be a reporter who’s now running in Illinois for Congress, was indicted. She was indicted because she participated in the protest against ICE outside of an ICE facility. And there are videos of her getting slammed to the ground in the concrete with this militarized, massed federal police force, right?

Not only they beat her up, which was already ridiculous to begin with, but then they also chose to indict her. There are examples of students writing for their student newspaper and getting kidnapped and thrown into an immigrant detention facility, whether it be Mahmoud Khalil, who still has an ongoing legal case for being a student activist, a student protester, and having a green card while doing it.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: We have the same thing in our country in different ways. I hear you. So the reason I’m interrupting you is we’ve moved sideways from the topic. So remember where we started this conversation, right? So just to address your point, repression.

HASAN PIKER: Didn’t start in China by everybody being like, all right, it’s over. We’re throwing you in jail. It builds up to it, is what I mean.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And it’s…

HASAN PIKER: And it’s entirely dependent on the starting point. Because if you were looking at China, if you’re looking at the Chinese civil war, post World War II, 30 million Chinese people have been slaughtered ruthlessly by the Japanese imperialists. That’s a very different material. That’s a very different set of material circumstances for the end of that civil war and to develop governance similar to…

The Inevitability of Authoritarianism

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Trying to bring you back to the central argument, central discussion we’re having. Francis made the point that when the government is in a position to be authoritarian, where it seems to inevitably end up in every communist country in the history of the world, right? That is a situation which inevitably then leads to levels of repression of the kind that you will not see in America for 100 years.

I take your point about individual protesters or individual people who’ve made statements about a highly controversial issue. Today, we have the same thing in our country where people are being sent to prison for tweets that they’ve done, right, left and right. We’ve got Palestine action on the left, we’ve got right wing people criticizing immigration.

So I agree with you. The direction of travel in the west in terms of freedom of expression is not good. And I’ve made that point in my book and elsewhere. But that is not the same as the point we’re trying to make, which is the system of government you are open to, based on our discussion today, at least, inevitably leads to authoritarianism, which inevitably leads to repression on a scale that a western country won’t imagine.

Isn’t that the reason that a lot of people are very worried about people like you who say they’re open to communism?

American Hegemony and Liberal Democracy

HASAN PIKER: Here, I’ll try to put a nice button on it. Okay. The reason why the United States of America and countries that are under the security apparatus, the global security umbrella of the United States of America have had much more success with liberal democracy, as opposed to all these other countries that are not under the immediate security umbrella, is because it’s been the domineering force around the globe, especially after the end of the Cold War.

But even during the Cold War, it was a dominant force on the planet. When you are the dominant force, you get to have these freedoms, your people get to have these freedoms, your people get to say whatever they want because they’re not a threat. Right.

I would be more of a threat in the respective nation that I’m in if they don’t have that same level of security. And that is the reason why I’m very fearful, because as America’s power on the global stage is waning, we are going to see more direct authoritarianism coming from Western nations as liberalism decays, as it did in the 20s and the 30s.

And what came after that was a wave of fascism. Now, fascism at that time was seen as a revolutionary thing. It was seen as a new thing. In many instances, fascists were actually fashioning themselves as though they were like a different kind of socialist, even though they were mostly killing socialists and had their beef with socialists.

And then they were able to align with liberals eventually and become the domineering authoritarian forces. And I think you guys wouldn’t disagree with me that Italy’s Mussolini and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany were ruthless fascist forms of governance where there was unimaginable repression.

My fear is that that is where capitalism inevitably leads, if left unaddressed. Because capitalism is always going to deteriorate. It’s solely going to improve material conditions as opposed to feudalism. It’s a far better system, for sure. It’s far better than monarchies. Right, I agree.

But there will come a point where it outlives its usefulness. And those who own the capital, the owners of capital, will have to make a decision. There’s too much instability. There’s too much chaos. We need to restore order.

And if they can’t do that through liberal democracy, at least historically, especially when there is a counterbalance revolutionary socialism out there, that they are genuinely fearful of work stoppages happening all around and the flows of capital being disrupted and profit margins are threatened, they end up finding fascism to be that domineering force that restores the law and order so that people are still working in the factories and any kind of dissent is directly and indirectly suppressed.

And I fear that that is where we’re moving in the United States of America, as America’s global superpower status is threatened by the rise of China.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So your thesis is that if a different country was dominant, the global hegemon, they would have more freedom for their citizens? Yeah. So you think the Chinese Communist Party would allow criticism of them if they were the dominant country in the world?

HASAN PIKER: I think with respect to where they were in terms of, I mean, the most maximalist position is the Cultural Revolution. Right. If you look at the Cultural Revolution versus where China is now in terms of dissent, in comparison to the United States of America, yes, there’s still heavy control over that sort of stuff. There’s a lot of surveillance.

Having said that, it has become far more tolerant as material conditions have improved. And that’s my main thesis, is that countries, regardless of their individual forms of governance, as long as they are advancing the material needs of the broadest subset of the masses, and become a domineering force on their own and have full sovereignty and full autonomy, they will inevitably become more tolerant to this kind of freedom because this is the most successful way, I think, of making sure that the masses feel satisfied.

Civil liberties is the most successful way that I think neoliberalism has become a hegemonic power beyond the endless militarism and whatnot. I think that that is the reason why people feel the way that they do in the United States of America, in spite of all of the alarm bells that are ringing about how economic devastation is imminent, seemingly, or there’s so much poverty and so much instability and people still go, “Well, at least I got some freedoms right, as opposed to not having those freedoms elsewhere.”

So that’s my main thesis, is that if they improve material conditions, they have to inevitably allow more civil liberties, more social liberties.

The Luigi Mangione Case

FRANCIS FOSTER: So it’s interesting what you’ve been saying about America and that it’s losing its power on the global stage. That is then reflected in more and more, shall we say, imbalanced chaos in the actual society itself. And we’ve kind of seen that in a way with the assassination of Charlie Kirk with Luigi Mangione.

I found some of your comments really interesting about Luigi, and I’d love to talk to you about them. So you said, and correct me if I’m wrong, push back if I’m wrong, that you think that he’s innocent and unfairly maligned. How did you come to that position? If I’m correct?

HASAN PIKER: I mean, that’s a meme for the most part.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What does it mean? It’s a meme.

HASAN PIKER: The notion that someone is innocent until proven guilty or that he wasn’t there. It’s a common thing that people do on TikTok and elsewhere as well.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But you don’t think he’s innocent?

HASAN PIKER: Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s the one that actually did it or not. We’ll see once the court case finalizes.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But is he, sorry, I may not understand what meme means in this context. I guess what I’m asking is when you say he’s unfairly maligned, do you believe that or not? That’s what I’m asking.

HASAN PIKER: Well, as far as unfairly maligned, it depends on where the quote is coming from. Because I could be talking about being perp walked or getting hit with a terrorism charge, which was actually taken off recently because the New York courts also found that it was overextended to this case.

I think there was a lot of panic around his actions, allegedly. And that is probably what I was talking about if you were talking about that. But as far as, “Oh, Luigi’s innocent,” it’s just a thing people say. As far as innocent is, why do they say it? I think that is actually the more interesting conversation.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Okay.

Healthcare Anger and Social Murder

HASAN PIKER: The reason that I, now I had a conversation with Ross Douthat about this on the New York Times where he brought this up on numerous occasions. I think that people are experiencing tremendous anger and discontent. And one of the most visible aspects of that, one of the visible aspects of a system of healthcare that should not be privatized or should at the very least, even if it’s privatized, work to make sure that every single person is getting the adequate care that they need, otherwise they die, has created this environment of tremendous anger.

It has almost virtually universalized the pain. Every single American knows at least one immediate or distant relative that has suffered through chemotherapy as they have to hunt down their insurance provider to make sure that the thing that they were paying for for years and years, the premiums, the costly premiums that they were paying into, actually end up helping them cover the cost of this life saving quality care that they desperately need to survive.

And I think a lot of Americans have so much discontent for that experience that they have seen personally that their immediate reaction once before they even found out who had done the shooting. But their immediate reaction to who the victim was was met with a response that shocked me as well as I think many other people.

What I mean by this, America’s very draconian. They’re very black and white. It’s like you do a crime, you get punished and a lot worse than you would get punished elsewhere. Right. We talk about how Norway is much more understanding and much more rehabilitative in their prison structure because they’re pussies. We throw you in jail and we torture you.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You have the death penalty.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, we have the death penalty all the time.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah.

HASAN PIKER: And America’s broadly, American culture is broadly very receptive to that. We’re fairly rugged in our approach to crime and punishment. And in spite of that, because of how much harm the private healthcare sector has done to so many different people in this country, I think they saw it as, “Okay, well, this guy is the now the faceless placeholder for the person, for the system that actually killed my grandparents.” That’s the way they saw it.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I sure, I get the anger.

HASAN PIKER: Which I don’t think is healthy, for the record.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Okay, well, this is what I’m getting to. I understand anger. And by the way, I don’t want to wade into the debate about American healthcare. I don’t know a lot about it. I understand there’s some really bad situations for people. People should also know that in the UK, there’s lots of people who are dying without care because they’re waiting for an operation for a year and a half or they’re waiting two months for a scan. But let’s not get into that.

HASAN PIKER: No, but the NHS is, you’re right. The NHS has had significant austerity measures implemented to it.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: The NHS budget keeps growing every year, but it doesn’t matter because the population is growing. Let’s not get into it. What I’m saying is I understand people’s anger. What I don’t understand is why that would make Luigi Mangione, who allegedly killed this guy, innocent. Why? Because that’s where we started, right? Why do people say he’s innocent?

HASAN PIKER: The way people see it, and I’m not subscribing to this notion, but the way that I think people see it is, are you familiar with the concept of social murder?

FRANCIS FOSTER: No.

HASAN PIKER: Engels wrote about this. He said that the systematized death and destruction of the masses is oftentimes hidden, it’s oftentimes invisible. I think private healthcare is a great example of this, where to the recipient, to the victim or the victim’s families, they see that as murder. Right?

They see that as an unnecessary death that took place. And they feel that pain all the same. In the same way that Brian Thompson’s family, I’m sure, was and still is mourning the death of Brian Thompson. There are millions of Americans out there that have individuals in their lives that they loved, loved ones, immediate loved ones, distant relatives that they’ve seen suffer in their last, in their final moments as they go through the process of trying to figure out the paperwork in a system that is designed to, let’s be real, take as much money as possible from you in the form of premiums and then create a profit incentive by refusing to pay for the healthcare.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Hasan, I get all that and I empathize with that pain that those people feel. But what I’m getting at is you said he’s innocent. Then you said it’s a meme. You say it’s just a thing that people say. What I’m trying to understand is the…

HASAN PIKER: Reason why people say that is because…

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I think that doesn’t make him innocent. Right. If he shot a man who runs a healthcare company, healthcare insurance company.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And they are angry with healthcare in America, that doesn’t make him innocent.

HASAN PIKER: Right, it doesn’t.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So isn’t you and them saying that just flat out wrong?

HASAN PIKER: Well, my reason for saying it is because you’re innocent until proven guilty. But as far as what everyone else is saying, or if I’m to analyze it, which I do as a part of my job, what I’m trying to explain to you guys is that from their perspective, it’s revenge. And this is a very unhealthy feeling to have. This is why I talked about with Ross Dal, that the concept of adventurism, this is something that traditional Marxists actually are very critical of.

Adventurism does not lead to any sort of serious changes, any sort of serious revolutionary changes especially. And all it does is create an environment of instability. I think that the perfect solution to ensure that this never happens, to ensure that there is no level of discontent that bubbles up to this degree, that would require a mechanism of enforcement by the government to enact stability, of course, which would also be just as violent, if not even more brutal to a larger percentage of the population.

To ensure that there isn’t another Luigi Mangione style situation is good legislation, is fixing these systemic problems. Luigi Mangione is the breaking point. Luigi Mangione is the perfect demonstration of the system failing people. And I think that Luigi Mangione and the response to him has been one of the clearest examples that I have seen in a country like the United States of America where people are normally supposed to be horrified by cold blooded murder in the middle of the day.

Their response being much more receptive to the action shows me that there is so much pain in people’s immediate experiences that they recognize this instability. They don’t have a vehicle to communicate it. They don’t have a vehicle to communicate this discontent. And they’re simply moving into the least productive way to do politics, which is revenge, violent revenge.

I think that is something that we have to solve immediately because it can’t go on. You can’t have more people just randomly gunning people in the streets. That’s not what a civilized society is supposed to work towards. That’s instability, that’s chaos. I don’t want that.

The Charlie Kirk Assassination

FRANCIS FOSTER: So one of the things that I found shocking with the assassination of Charlie Kirk is obviously the incident itself, but it’s also the reaction and the rhetoric that went around it, the people on the left who were celebrating it, which to me is, and to most right thinking people is absolutely abhorrent and also the reaction on the left and there were some people, particularly large influencers whose what they said was unforgivable. Where did you stand on it and what were your opinions on the whole incident?

HASAN PIKER: I mean I was shocked. It was horrifying, but mainly horrifying because it’s impossible for me not to have a personal stake in this because I was about to debate Charlie in two weeks. Two weeks prior to his assassination or two weeks after his assassination, we were supposed to be debating at Dartmouth College. And this was a person that I had basically developed a political career in competition with, if that makes sense.

I was on the left side, he was on the right side. We debated plenty of times. We debated at Politicon. We were very familiar with one another. And seeing that the number one fear that every person that does what I do become reality in real time was shocking. It was devastating.

As far as my opinions on it, I mean, I had the misfortune of seeing it in real time happen as I was trying to figure out what had taken place. And we were one of the first media outlets that actually broke the story. And my first thought was that this is going to lead to even more violence, even more violence in the form of revenge, decentralized violence, and also that this is going to lead to state repression as well, in an effort to stamp out any kind of political discontent or any kind of political dissent, which hasn’t fully come to fruition yet, thankfully.

But the administration certainly tried to use this as an opportunity to build new guidelines around surveillance and build new surveillance targets in general. The Trump administration has this. They released a memorandum, national security memorandum, that declared the intelligence communities to shift their priorities and attention of surveillance to Antifa, which they had previously declared a domestic terrorist organization, which is not a designation that exists in the United States of America because it is at direct odds with the First Amendment.

This is the reason why the KKK is not considered a domestic terror organization. This is the reason why the Proud Boys and the Atomwaffen, which is a neo-Nazi formation that tries to recruit from the military. None of these guys are. None of these organizations, even if you would normally consider them domestic terror organizations, are actually considered that. So it was a severe violation of the First Amendment.

And then the follow up to the surveillance targets and the surveillance priorities made me even more fearful about where this administration was going, where they declared any sort of anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-American sentiment to be an indication of someone being an extremist, violent terrorist potentially. But then on top of that, there was even more vague things that they brought up.

I think it was being critical of the American moral family unit or something like that. Basically it was just what the Republicans consider what the entirety of the liberal and all the way to extreme leftists or whatever think about the Republicans, was now up for grabs in terms of priority targets for the surveillance apparatus.

And as I said, we don’t know where this is going to go for the time being. It is directly at odds with the First Amendment. But there have been some instances where people have been indicted. Kat Abu Ghazali, as I said, who’s running for office, is one of the first high profile politicians that have been targeted in this way. And I worry that once free speech goes away and once due process goes away in this country, we are full tilt fascist.

Rhetoric and Political Violence

FRANCIS FOSTER: But I think that’s a very valid point. My concern is as well, and it’s the rhetoric that is getting ratcheted up on both sides, both on the right, but both on the left. So for instance, I’ll give you an example. In my own country, we have Zara Sultana, who’s a very prominent left wing Labour politician. She said the words, “We need to fight the fascists in parliament.” In that we need to fight them in the ballot box and we need to fight them in the streets. Now the problem is, if you ask most people what fascism is, I don’t think they would be able to give you a clearer, coherent explanation or an analysis of the political ideology.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, let’s be honest, by fascist she means people like Reform who are not fascists. They are a center right party. They’re not fascist.

HASAN PIKER: So I don’t know if I would agree with that.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But the point, hold on a second. You think the Reform Party is…

HASAN PIKER: I think Reform Party as it stands currently is a nascent fascist parliamentary group that hasn’t reached its full potential yet.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Could you define the same way that I… fascism in this instance, in the…

HASAN PIKER: In the same way that I would say the modern Republican party is or was throughout most of its history a liberal party. A far right, but liberal party nonetheless. And it is becoming an illiberal or post-liberal party that is moving in the direction of fascism.

Fascism is, what’s the best definition for it? Palingenetic ultranationalism. An in-group, out-group dynamic that is constantly seeking to destroy the out-group and dominate the out-group, even if the out-group is actually a part of civilized society and surrounding itself with this mythologized understanding of this national or ethnic or religious mythology of the higher group.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But it would also include authoritarianism, the end of one party state, all of…

HASAN PIKER: Not always, but yeah, usually. Usually, yes.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So by which of those standards would you say Reform is a fascist or neo… I can’t remember how you said a nascent fascist party.

HASAN PIKER: Well, the reason why I said is because, I mean Mussolini’s fascist party was not a party that… I mean Mussolini’s fascist party was an active fascist party within the parliament before it became the centralized form of governance.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But they said we are fascists.

HASAN PIKER: But that was because the word fascism was just being invented at that point and therefore it was still packaged as a revolutionary new illiberal way. They didn’t come into power. We now live in a post-World War II universe where you can’t say that you’re fascist.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You think that if Nigel Farage, which is currently there leading the polls, you think that if he is elected eventually he will suspend democracy, he will start pogroms against Muslims using the state. He will have a one party state. You think that’s what this is heading?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Bearing in mind that the chairman of Reform Party, Zia Yusuf is a Muslim.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah. Still doesn’t matter. I mean there were Jews. That’s why you think there were Jews that worked within the Nazi government command structure as well. It’s just there are always going to be people that come from this. They come from the background of the targeted out-group in general.

And it doesn’t even end with Muslims is what I mean. It’s going to, it always has to, it always has to excise what it considers aberrations. And there is always, with Nazi Germany, for example, the next stage, if they hadn’t failed so dramatically in its endless militarism, would have most likely been to create the Übermensch structure. Start going after people who were maybe brown haired and didn’t have blue eyes. There’s an endless expansion of that sort.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And you think that’s what reform will do? They’ll suspend democracy. They’ll start at one point.

HASAN PIKER: This is super in the future if they actually get to that point. But I don’t think that it is far-fetched to assume that, yes, reform through a process of initially reforms. I could totally see them getting to that position. Yes.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What’s your basis for saying that?

HASAN PIKER: It’s entirely dependent on how material conditions unwind. If it gets to a point where there’s tremendous economic stability, then instead of solving those issues in the same way that the American movement, the Trump movement, is not solving these issues, they will continue to be a force of political repression.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But what’s your evidence for this? Is the thing I don’t understand.

HASAN PIKER: The evidence is the historical patterns that I’m looking at, the historical patterns of why fascism has been implemented in the past. And now, like I said, we live in a post-fascist world. We live in a nuclear world. The dynamic is different.

So fascism will not come as a third way, as an outsider any longer. I think instead you will see far-right elements within liberal society, within the parliamentary structure, move in that direction.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But my worry with this is, and this is why I’m not trying to debate bro you or anything. I’m genuinely engaging with what you’re saying. I hope you feel that, right?

HASAN PIKER: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: The issue I have in the context of the discussion we’re having about Charlie Kirk is you’ve got a situation where people—you are calling Reform fascists. I know some people in Reform. They’re not fascists. They don’t believe in the one-party state. They don’t want to end democracy.

We’ve had Nigel Farage on our show. It’s very clear where he sees an old school Thatcherite kind of guy.

HASAN PIKER: Right.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But you’re saying he’s a fascist. And my worry is—I think he will get there. You’re saying he will get to fascism. Fair?

HASAN PIKER: If material conditions get to a point—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I got it.

HASAN PIKER: Where people, there’s mass instability in an effort—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: It’s a nascent fascist party that in the right context will become fascist. I get it, right?

HASAN PIKER: In the same, not dissimilar to—but here’s my point. AfD, the nationalists in France.

The Danger of Irresponsible Language

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Reform is very different from the AfD, but it doesn’t matter. My point is this: if I thought the fascists were coming, I would feel it’s my duty to participate in armed resistance against that.

And my worry is part of where the political violence is coming from is people like you who are using this term, in my opinion, far too loosely and projecting historical analogies onto people that you’re not that familiar with, actually. And then you’re really putting a target on their back.

And my worry is the reason Charlie Kirk was killed is there were far too many people calling him a fascist, which he wasn’t. And that’s my concern with all of this irresponsible language, which I think it is.

HASAN PIKER: So what’s interesting about the utilization of language here is the fact that you can’t really point to a single Democratic Party politician that has celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death. But you can actually in many instances point to Republican politicians that have made a mockery—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Absolutely. And I think people make that point on the show. You don’t need to make it because we’ve had—but you’re on the left. I’m asking you about the left.

HASAN PIKER: The reason why I’m saying that is because there are always going to be people on the right and on the left that engage in this kind of commentary as a reflection of how much discontent that they experience. But ultimately, if we’re not—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You’re one of them. You are calling Reform fascist.

Exhausting Democratic Options First

HASAN PIKER: No, no, no, no. That’s totally—first of all, my analysis on the way, calling someone a fascist if they’re exhibiting fascist, historic fascist tendencies, is perfectly valid.

The consideration that this actually is turning up the temperature as opposed to directly calling for violence against a nascent fascist party, as opposed to trying to deal with it through the existing means within the democratic structure, is ridiculous. There’s no comparison here.

Fascist movements, when they initially—when they were initially forming, albeit in a much more violent time, engaged in street protests, and there were counter-protests against it. I am in favor of always exhausting all available options within the confines of liberal democracy.

And I think what the problem is is that a lot of people point to the endpoint of fascism and what they know is the endpoint of fascism and say, “Well, they have to be dealt with militarily, and the time for that is now.” I’m saying the time for that is not here. And I hope that it never gets there so that we can successfully resist against growing fascist movements that are born out of initially distractions or red herrings that put the crosshairs on some of the more vulnerable populations and try to deal with it within the confines, within the existing confines of liberal democracy.

And then try to get our politicians to address some of these material problems so that we don’t have to exhibit the instability and even potentially a fascist form of governance that comes out of that instability that then at that point will be resisted against militarily through sabotage or through direct acts of war.

The Power of Labels

FRANCIS FOSTER: The issue that I have with your argument, Hasan, is this: you’re saying they’re exhibiting—so, you know, on the way to fascism, you can make that argument about Keir Starmer and go, “We’re on the way to communism.” But you laugh. But there are people on the right who say that.

HASAN PIKER: Do you feel like they’re also—

FRANCIS FOSTER: But that’s not my—

HASAN PIKER: They’re putting a crosshair on Keir Starmer.

FRANCIS FOSTER: When they say that, yeah, we don’t have the same issues with communism. But I think if you describe people as communists in this country, I think you are putting the crosshairs on people. I really do, because there are people—

HASAN PIKER: I mean, I get called a terrorist every day, and I think that’s disgusting.

FRANCIS FOSTER: That’s putting crosshairs on you. And I absolutely, vehemently would say that is unacceptable. But my point is, when you use that language of fascism or communists, these are labels that have a very, very real emotional trigger to people. Understandably so.

And what you have in this country is, unfortunately, there is a decent swathe of the population who have severe mental illnesses, plus access to guns. And what inevitably happens is it leads to a Charlie Kirk situation or it leads to somebody on the left, God forbid, happening.

HASAN PIKER: Oh, I get a lot of death threats. Don’t worry.

FRANCIS FOSTER: No, but I do worry because it’s a sign that a society’s in crisis.

HASAN PIKER: And I think I agree.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And I think that it’s our responsibility, both people on this side, both people on your side, that we ratchet it down.

HASAN PIKER: I think that if we’re talking about increasing the tension, people in positions of power have a lot more responsibility than random citizens that are, in many instances, reacting to that.

FRANCIS FOSTER: In all due respect, we’re not random citizens. We’ve both successful. We’ve both got huge—

Responsibility and Political Discourse

HASAN PIKER: But no, no, no. I was just talking about the broader left that you were talking about, that said, “Oh, they’re celebrating Charlie Kirk” or whatever.

But beyond that, in terms of applying analysis to the actions of any person, Charlie Kirk or Nick Fuentes or whoever, and say that these are people who are implementing a lot of bigoted tendencies, a lot of racist opinions, and moving the American political direction towards fascist governance—I don’t think that saying that you shouldn’t be able to say that because you’re invoking violent sentiment against your political opposition is crazy.

I don’t mind if people call me a communist. I don’t mind if they call me a terrorist. It’s not true, and it certainly makes a lot of people very angry. And they want to talk to me all the time about how they want to kill me and come to my house and murder me and my family.

But it is, unfortunately, a part of the political discourse. I wish it didn’t exist. But having said that, I am never going to stop myself from making accurate assessments and warning people that at this stage, we are at the precipice of something far more dangerous, especially in Western liberal democracy, as liberalism is genuinely failing.

And that collapse is most likely going to bring about a lot of fascist governance that will try to restore order in the most militant ways, and it will resemble historic fascist patterns.

Closing Thoughts

FRANCIS FOSTER: Hasan, look, firstly, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for entering into the spirit of debate in the way it’s intended. Really appreciate it. Final question is always the same: what’s the one thing we’re not talking about that we really should be?

HASAN PIKER: I mean we did talk quite a bit about the collapse of liberalism around the globe, I guess in this instance. And I can’t speak to all the other conversations that you guys have had.

We didn’t get to talk about Israel too much and that’s something that I wanted to talk about which has also exhibited historical patterns of fascism in and of itself in a vein that is not dissimilar to what we’re seeing in Western liberal democracies as well.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: All right, well, that’s more time. Maybe next time we can pick up some other topics.

HASAN PIKER: All right.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Appreciate your time. Thanks, man. Thank you.

HASAN PIKER: Thanks for having me.

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