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ONE CENTURY OF HASAN PIKER DISCOURSE
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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I am once again declaring a fatwa on criticism of Hasan.
Regardless of some valid criticisms of him that do exist, he is taking Hexbear talking points to the literal mainstream:
... And the slop troughs are going to overflow for the next several years because of it, especially because of his engagement with Democratic electoralism. In online spaces we ought to offer uncritical support so we can farm the reactionary and liberal rage.
In offline spaces, offer some support and soon enough your friends will be a bunch of hasanabi heads that you can recruit to your union/DSA/PSL/whatever chapter that you are organizing with outside of electoralism (because we are all active in our local orgs, right? Or are we just going to a book club and getting mad online?)
The Zionist/Imperial narrative is "Hasan bad" and thou shalt not lend that narrative an once of credence lest one be declared a LIB!
I generally hate streamers/YouTube etc. that being said, There are two cadres in my org who actively watch Hasan and cite him as part of the reason they got involved in communist organizing. Hence I don't buy the sheepdog narrative. I refuse to watch streamers though
and then says vote blue despite his endorsees never accepting his views, thus functionally it's nothing. all that money and attention ends up in same coffers.
do you think chomsky never said such things?*
*money fishing from epstein aside, he is at least had much clearer and educated rhetoric, and a wealth of knowledge, which we substitute for a guy yelling at tv.
Hasan Horseshoe Theory:
The right hates Hasan because he supports the Democrats. The centrists hate Hasan because he does not support the Democrats enough. The Left hates Hasan because he supports the Democrats.
Thus, the left must ask ourselves: "what do people think if we loudly go around saying 'Hasan sucks cause he supports Democrats!'"? Do you think people will be receptive to our views? Is that going to expand support fo the global socialist movement?
There may well be a time to actively denounce Hasan, however one must recognize the context of their rhetoric. A viable alternative must exist for that to practically generate an expansion of the political left. The alternatives (DSA, PSL, something else...) are still in an incubation phase, and denouncing he most prominent left-wing media figure in the imperial core does not build those movements at this time.
He could solve this and have the left like him by not supporting the democrats whatsoever
My view of hasan has changed recently. I was reading Stalin's foundations of lenninism in which Stalin defended the Bolsheviks participation in the 3rd bund as essential for 2 reasons.
And even more importantly
I've never actually been a viewer of hasan but if this is the plan he is following I must begrudgingly support him for it
I don't think it is strictly necessary to cite Lenin to support Hasan, but this is pretty close to what his approach is. Biggest difference is that he is just a very online guy, rather than a party (which does not yet exist in the US in a viable form).
I mean I could make a less effective argument without it sure, but why would I do that? & Yeah he is not a party but even so if he can make some amount of Americans realize bourgeoisie democracy is bullshit I don't really see why being an individual or a party matters?
Like, with the level of class consciousness and worker solidarity we have I will absolutely take every scrap of revolutionary potential I can get.
No yeah I think you and i are aligned just was trying to expand the discussion a little, but your post pretty much says it all
You can spin him to be whatever you like, he himself does, but I have never in well over a hundred hours of listening to him heard him explain his project this way. The way he explains his project is: You need to meet the masses "where they're at," which means participating no just in bourgeoise government but supporting and running candidates in bourgeoisie parties in order to try to use it as a platform for socialism (I view this as ridiculous) and to promote progressive policy so that Americans can understand that a society can be run in a more pro-social way and thereby be more functional rather than less, as they had been misled (I think this is fair enough).
You can say that Lenin was wrong or irrelevant, but to say he was in agreement with Hasan's strategy when he, like Marx, strongly opposed participating in bourgeois parties in favor of running socialist candidates under a socialist party, is incorrect.
Hasan has a little bit of a Waiting for Godot problem where he wants an electorally viable socialist party to already exist before he's willing to admit that voting for whatever kamalabot the dems put forward is counterproductive, when making such concessions is detrimental to the formation of an opposition party because it's literally the most fundamental point of the dem's anti-domestic-left strategy to maintain the duopoly by extracting those concessions.
I didn't say lenin was in agreement with Hasan, Lenin is especially not irrelevant. I also don't think it matters much of hasan is doing this, consciously, to prove that bourgeois democracy will never produce the needed results for the working class. All that matters is that people see the Dems failing them time and the again and slowly realize the bourgeois democracy will never help them because the next logical step after that is "howdo we get a democracy that represents us. The answer is a socialist revolution
There's a lot of value being in those local Dem spaces. I'm not talking national but the local county and state parties. They're not all ghouls and a lot of those Democrats are a nudge away from gaining class consciousness. A lot of good organizing ends up in that party because a lot of people do not know alternatives are even possible.
We all should learn to get more comfortable being uncomfortable. Agitate at these Dem events.. Those spaces are where we meet the workers now, now the ideal form of them that hasn't materialized in several decades of non-electoral organizing.
Local dem spaces where I am are doing fundraisers for zionists and calling the cops on protesters
Sounds like a great reason to grab some comrades and disrupt that shit. I bet there are people even in that room that agree with you and just need "permission" to speak out
there's no modern day bolsheviks though so your analogy kind of falls apart. who is it that is "seeing being the curtain"? A streamer? A couple opportunist succ dems without any party line?
Very clearly not the point I'm making
Plenty of people can see behind the curtain. At least 50% of people don't vote at all, and a good majority don't because they don't think it matters in the slightest.
The issue at hand is organizing these disaffected people in a way that can make them affective. Hasan is so busy in his goal to move people left, but all these arguments are only good for pulling people who are already politically active, who are not a majority of the country.
Hasan isn't usually detrimental to the movements, but he is only radical in context that we are extremely fucked here in the West. It is an extremely bad sign when our most popular leading figure is a media critic.
"Says vote blue" is a very shallow description of the role he plays.
If you don't understand his role, I would encourage you to expand your analysis. Best way to do that is to listen in on a few streams instead of going off of clips and tweets.
If you can't figure out how to make him useful to your own propaganda, I think that's a skill issue. Hasan is an informer and educator doing the arduous task of re-education for you. As a better-educated socialist engaged in political practice in your community, you should be the political leader of those around you. Your voice should be louder than his to the people around you, but the good news is that if you post on Hexbear, you agree with Hasan 98.5% of the time.
"the purpose of the system is what it does" analysis of hasan leads to some very unfortunate conclusions. tell me, materially or rhetorically, results of hasan existence? as i see it, rhetorically it's: vote blue, spend money on bezos platforms, never engage third parties, embrace matt dussism. materially it's get expensive house, rub shoulders with dipshits.
i agree with conservative coworkers on 80% things as well, if i pose questions in the right way, so
The normalization of pro-Palestinian politics, the normalization of anti-imperialist and anti-war positions, the mainstreaming of socialist theory, the radicalization of millions of demoralized Gen Zers who might otherwise fall into right-wing traps
Whether you like it or not the face of American socialism is a buff handsome Turkish man who can and does articulate almost all our talking points to the mainstream
But all of that is supposed to be trumped because he interviews Illhan Omar and AOC? Lenin once wrote a whole book about why this kind of mal-prioritized thinking is counterproductive
Years ago now Hasan was the guy who pulled my now adult (then teenager) son towards communism and in the process of it all this radicalized me, his dad and the ripples of it keep going around in my family affecting all the libs. We have all moved further left than Hasan long ago, but he was one big influence in why I am now pursuing Marxist academic work and my son is reading Stalin.
For what it's worth my kid has told me that there was a time where he could have gone another way, some of the streamers he was watching before Hasan ended up in dark places. My son is very online and I am forever grateful for a voice like this in a sea of right wingers and the fact that this is what my kid ended up watching.
Hell fuckin yeah
i like or ambivalent that he is handsome, i just doubt he spreads socialist action theory fitting the moment or does anything differently from previous failures.
To defend Hasan, he played a large role in getting Zohran elected. Is Zohran a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist? No. But did Zohran personally get Trump to release multiple pro-Palestinian activists from prison? Yes. Those comrades would be in prison right now if it were not for Zohran and probably Hasan's endorsement of him. You you can't say he has has not done anything different than other similar fugures, that statement is materially false.
I really am curious to know what your example of "fitting the moment" is. In our techno-feudal modern age, all information streams are controlled by billionaires - your message will never reach the masses unless your words remain within the limits set by those billionaires. And considering the low level of class consciousness the average American has, do you believe "revolution now" is a good message that "fits the moment?" If America has a revolution now, it will inevitably turn into a fascist revolution.
Nobody in America is even protesting the Iran war now, despite the high gas prices and lack of propaganda effort from the Trump administration. Are these the people who would support, or possibly join, a socialist revolution? I think the best we can hope for in the USA, in the short-term, is an FDR like figure ushering in a New "New Deal" era, which historically did not make America a socialist state but did lead to many other countries in the global periphery launching left-wing projects - Mexico under Cardenas nationalizing Pemex for example. Would it not be a good idea to take the Eye of Sauron off of Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, etc. by electing a social democrat / democratic socialist who could enact a "Good Neighbor" 2.0 policy?
The overall purpose is still unfolding because the political situation in the US is currently turbulent and class issues are in the process of being mainstreamed.
He does third parties, though with a light touch (at this time). If PSL will invite him to collab, why should I cast him out?
Right, so put them on Hasan so he can do the work of bringing them ~18% of the way closer to you. Meet up with them in 6 months or something and you just need need to direct them into your org of preference.
Once again "vote blue" is an underdeveloped analysis. "Spend money on bexos platforms" is having a job, he doesn't have another source of income outside of Twitch subs. "Get expensive house" is not an argument about anything, nobody cares, socialism is not a poverty cult.
"Rub shoulders with dipshits" doesn't matter if they are powerful dipshits, political practice is a social game. If you aren't doing the same to at least a minor extent, I have a difficult time imagining that you are an effective political operator in your community.
the class issues are in the process of further subjugation (by share of worker gdp or union density further decline), amerikkkans are in the 1870s russia (going to the people, questionable empire, nihilism, undirected actions, security state spreading its wings), not even 1905 (although i think russia is all sorts of wrong, while some parallel of peasants paying their imposed liberation thingy might be comparable to rents, it's still entirely different class, weimar republic in 1920s is both alarmist and fits even worse, france under napoleon 3rd also kinda fits with some adjustments, yet same time period)
i won't put them on a millionaire streamer, please be serious. socialism is not poverty cult, but also socialism is love for the fellow human, not treatlerism. i like to think my coworker believe me more when i volunteer on week-ends and share some donation stuff i think fits their profile, be it free software or some global south issue or some pet shelter.
50 years of effective operators rubbing shoulders with powerful people, how did that work out for unions? going well i hope.
This attitude right here turns so many people off of our cause. I hope you don't talk to people like this IRL
tbh it feels like he occasionally says "vote blue" every now and again so libs will listen to him then spends 99% of the time convincing them of our political positions and directing them to people who will immediately tell them actually they shouldn't vote blue while explaining marxism in more depth. So I'd say it's a decent tradeoff ngl.
He gets a large contingent of listeners who support the bernie/AOC/zohran wing of the dem party and would refuse to listen to him if he condemned voting, moves them further left and then directs them to people who will explain why they shouldn't vote dem. imo he's probably a net-negative on the number of dem voters ngl.
Edit: also by being nominally pro voting for the Dems he gets access to a whole mainstream media sphere to talk directly to normie dems about his actual beliefs and is allowed to be far more openly critical of the democratic party on these platforms than he would be able to otherwise
Didn't he finally break and say he was voting PSL?
I think it's correct to feel that Hasan obviously isn't enough but I still think it's good he's bringing our talking points to the forefront. Of course I would rather have a real revolutionary but I hardly think having someone explaining our position to the masses is bad thing. No he's not Stalin or Lenin or even remotely close but he is at least saying mostly correct statements.
How will we ever gain mass support and create a mass movement if we are completely unwilling to talk to the populace of the nation?
see, he says all of this and way more that i agree with, but then he turns around and defends soc dems like zohran, bernie, platner and aoc to no end. i dont understand how can a "communist" believe that the usa can be reformed. idk overall i do think hes good for bringing new people in, but recently i feel like hes become more of a vote blue no matter who guy, once in a while he will say things like "zionists are rabid dogs" but nowadays mostly he just defends socdems like his life's on the line
"Vote blue no matter who" means exactly what it says.
His stance is "vote blue for these socdems (or socdem+'s) or I don't care either way". He literally got into the media cycles saying "I will not vote Gavin Newsom for president".
It is totally fine to have skepticism of his tactics, rhetoric, positions, or behavior, but "vote blue no matter who" demonstrably does not apply.
That said, it doesn't bother me because Hasan is a media figure, not a political leader. It is up to us as on the ground political operative to provide leadership in our orgs and communities and "play off" of his growing presence in the political sphere and steer people in a better direction, since his platform is larger than ours. I firmly believe that denouncing him in front of liberals or reactionaries does not suit this purposes in most cases, and constitutes an unforced error in rhetoric.
Even in this thread you can see reports of how hasanabi heads are ripe for becoming effective comrades in the western left wing movement. I agree with you that he plays around with Democratic party electoral politics more than I would like, but also that is what gives him.his platform, and it is comedy gold as more people have a meltdown over his takes (since most of them align with hexbear). Same goes for Mamdani, sieze the moment and guide people farther along!
i mean hey, i did say i agree with most of what he says. i became a communist because i started watching him in like 2022 and i am grateful for that. but overtime he has toned down his "radical rhetoric". saying that he would not for gavin is great but half the libs also dont like gavin so idk. i mean if youre supporting platner after all the info thats been leaked about him, youre basically vote blue no matter who in my eyes. also does he promote any further left streamers or video creators on his streams? i havent seen it when i watched him. instead of watching him its better to sit and read news from the intercept or dropsite or counterpunch or any other socialist/communist outlet
Fair enough! o7
We're not going to vote our way into a revolution and I'm very confident that he knows that. He sees his place as pushing the narrative that leads people to dig deeper and shift the overton window, and I'd argue that he's very successful at doing this. He's just one of the many pressure points we need to apply to the system, we have a different role.
overton window is not a real thing, and is a fundamentally idealist framing of the world and politics
there is a liberal understanding of the world and history, and the marxist one. There is very little overlap. You can't "drag a liberal left" slowly like a gradient until they are a communist, at a certain point they must make a qualitative leap into a fundamentally different ideology. There is a point of confusion and radicalization where the radicalizing Liberal has "radliberal" confused beliefs, but this is not a real or legitimate position that has any coherency. It's just a moment of confusion as their old understanding breaks down and they have to build up the new one. There is no Liberal-Marxist synthesis ideology that has any coherency whatsoever, they're all philosophical abominations.
Claiming that people like Hasan are "pipelines to the left" fundamentally misunderstands how radicalization works. There is no straight line from Liberal to Marxist, you have to shift to another model entirely not move along an axis within a single unified "political compass" or "political gradient". Hasan can only take people as far left as he is, which is radliberal. He can only bring them into the confusion that he is mired in himself. He's stuck in that in-between incoherent stage, which is why he often gets "gotcha'd" in arguments or comes to the right conclusions for the wrong reasons (or the wrong conclusions entirely, like that we should support Ukraine). It's also why a lot of people on the left don't like him, he continues to make a lot of radliberal arguments and incoherent points.
Well it's probably my personal experience coloring it, but that's essentially how I became radicalized. To that end, I don't think we can say there's a blanket way in which all radicalization happens. And he also introduces audiences to further left figures than him. I'm just not on board with the idea that he's harmful to revolutionary work. But I will say I'm not the most focused theorist, I watch him to keep up on bleeding edge news with someone who calls out bullshit in real time.
Sure, but whenever someone in his chat criticizes him from the left he instantly dismisses them often by saying "hit the communism button right now". Im just saying praising hasan and hasan being the most left person anywhere is bad. Imo you cant be a reformist and a communist/radical at the same time, hes more of a socdem himself with often correct takes on foreign policy. I just switched to watching yugopnik instead
He's a streamer, he makes money from saying inflammatory things. Communist viewpoints happen to be inflammatory in a capitalist country. He'll turn around and support sucdems because his class interests align with them now that he's got all that money from saying things he probably has no real conviction for.
I should make a filter for popular streamers, I'm sick of reading about him tbqh. Just because people feel good eating their lunch while they stare at him doesn't make him some kind of revolutionary
Let's not do campism for a fucking streamer. He should be criticized insofar as he is incorrect, and how communists talk to each other is different from how they should prioritize what may be a salient line of discussion with the public. No amount of knee-jerk contrarianism to the Zionist press makes internally banning criticism of literally anyone make sense.
Edit: and even in terms of public messaging, the idea that criticizing Hasan at all is impermissible is completely ridiculous.
This is my less-ironic stance, and the core point of my post
True, good thing I'm not actually a immam or anyone with actual authority (it would be be unpopular across the board)
"This is my motte, my bailey is just ironic"
Also see my edit. Sorry for not being clear enough there.
As Hasan would say, "say it with your fucking chest" instead of hiding behind the specious idea that it's okay to take ridiculous attitudes because you aren't able to command people to follow you. Are you arguing for it or aren't you?
Reminder that Hexbear is one of the most irony drenched communities on the internet, so coming at someone with a firm "be less ironic!" comes off a bit weird. My communication style is adjusted to my audience. I find it unfortunate that you're going on the offensive when I am clarifying a point of agreement between us.