By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
The other day Jon Favreau of Pod Save America interviewed Hasan Piker, the it boy of the radical Marxist
pro-Hamas left.
Favreau threw Hasan a kind of lifeline. He asked:
“So my question is, when you say Hamas is a thousand
times better, do you actually mean that? Or is that a rhetorical move or like a
solidarity signal?”
Piker responded: “Like what, I mean, it’s all of the
above. I do mean it. I think it’s a rhetorical move because it frustrates a lot
of people. I’ve also said I’m a harm reduction voter. I’m a lesser evil voter. And
therefore I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.”
The good news for Piker is that he’d never have to vote
for Hamas more than once, because once they get elected, they never hold
another election and happily torture and murder any Gazan who objects to their
rule.
I’m not going to dwell on Piker’s lengthy and deceitful
nonsense justifying his support for Hamas. I can tolerate a lot of criticism of
Israel that I disagree with. But there is simply no defensible case for Hamas,
and once you start trying to make one, I know who you are.
A lot of Democrats and progressives are eager to get some of that sweet, sweet,
right-wing edgelord social media influencer energy they envy. As a result they like to pretend—to others and/or
themselves—that Piker is a much more serious person, raising serious issues and
bringing serious rizz to the left (Did I use rizz correctly? Answer: I don’t
care). I honestly have seen no evidence for this, but then again, I mostly just
see really stupid and evil things he says posted to social media. Like when he
recently told an audience at Yale that the fall of the Soviet Union was one of
the worst catastrophes of the 20th century. Or the
various clips where he abuses
his
dog. (Say what you will about Tucker Carlson, he does love his dogs.)
Now, if you want to argue he’s not as horrible a person
as Nick Fuentes or as crazy as Candace Owens, that’s fine. I mean, it’s fine if
you want to argue that with somebody who cares about such arguments. I don’t,
because this is not how I judge people. As I often say, if you want to argue
that Stalin was worse than Hitler, or vice versa, there are good arguments on
both sides of that. But just because you’re “better” than Hitler, that doesn’t
make you good. Some serial killers murder lots of people, some only kill a few.
But once you qualify as a serial killer, you qualify as a bad person. The rest
is just point-scoring. Piker is not a murderer, and neither are Owens and
Fuentes. But they’re all horrible people, and making the other side’s horrible
people the standard for whether or not you welcome (allegedly) slightly less
horrible people into your “big tent” is not an indicator of moral or political
sophistication. It’s a sign of your own moral rot.
I have written many times about the fundamental
corruption of J.D. Vance’s or the Heritage Foundation’s double standard when it
comes to building a big tent on the right. They don’t want “purity tests” when
it comes to Nazi cosplayers, but they’re perfectly comfortable expelling
anti-Trump, “RINO,” or “neocon” conservatives. In other words, they’ve got a
purity test, it’s just that their definition of purity includes Tucker Carlson
and apologists for Nick Fuentes, but not those with a different—higher—standard.
The Bulwark had a good piece on the centrist Democratic group Third Way’s
efforts to expel Piker from their own big tent efforts. Usamah Andrabi, a
spokesperson for Justice Democrats, a hard left outfit, told the Bulwark’s
reporter that, “The tent already includes [Piker],” adding “I think the
question is actually whether our tent should continue to be big enough for a
very vocal minority of corporatists and right-wing hawks who are still trying
to keep this party under the grips of corporate interests and war-hawk lobbies
like AIPAC.”
Points for honesty.
Which brings me to Rep. Ilhan Omar, who also got very
friendly treatment from Pod Save America. I happened to catch a segment
on Morning Joe a couple hours ago in which they played clips from the
interview. Tommy Vietor asked Omar what she thinks about the various MAGA types
breaking with Trump over the Iran war. “How do you think Democrats respond? …
Do we work with these disaffected MAGA voices? … Do we build a bigger tent to
try to win in November?”
Omar answered, “I think as Americans, it is really
important for us to work together for the preservation of everything that is
good in our country.” She added: “And I believe the thing that has been very
fascinating, especially about Marjorie and Candace, is that they are not just
coming out … saying this action is wrong. They’re saying, ‘I am done with
you.’”
Vietor chimes in, marveling how they’re making a moral
statement about Trump: “This guy is bad. Not like, this policy is bad.”
The weird thing about the conversation on Morning Joe was
how nobody bothered to address Omar’s embrace of Candace Owens, who is not
merely opposed to the Iran war, not merely anti-Israel, but is a full-blown
Jew-hating whack job. Instead, they all talked about the maturity and
seriousness of Democrats giving Greene the benefit of the doubt.
Look, I think the strange new respect for Marjorie Taylor
Greene from the mainstream media and the Democrats is pathetic and ridiculous.
But at least Greene has made some effort to condemn antisemitism and offer
something that looks like introspection. But for most of that crowd, the
dynamic has to do with Trump obsession. Indeed, that’s part of Omar’s argument.
If you can accept that Trump is bad, we can overlook our other disagreements.
It’s a sign of how much the Democrats don’t really know what they stand for
except that they stand against Trump. Their “big tent” has one giant pole at
the center, and it’s Trump hatred.
In a two-party system, particularly one as broken as
ours, opposing the president of another party is always going to be an
invitation to talk. The GOP welcomed lots of people disaffected by Carter,
Clinton, and Obama. Democrats gobbled up people who hated Nixon and George W.
Bush.
But that’s not Omar’s project (nor Piker’s). Omar
despises Israel, which is why she includes Candace Owens as someone the
Democrats should put their arms around. Politics is always about forming
coalitions, and forming coalitions is always a line-drawing project. What are
you willing to tolerate on your team and what is unacceptable?
If Omar has ever said that the Democrats should try to
embrace Mitt Romney or Jeff Flake or any number of conventional conservative
critics of Trump, I don’t remember it. After all, they said Trump was a bad guy
when it took real courage and came at a real price. I can search my email for a
note from Omar saying, “Let’s talk.” But I don’t think I’ll find it.
The “disaffected MAGA voices” Omar finds compelling
aren’t disaffected because of Trump’s character, which has not changed in a
decade. They’re not disaffected because he made the GOP a pro-choice party,
racked up over $7 trillion in debt, or pardoned the January 6 mob. These people
are disaffected because they don’t like Israel and float antisemitic theories
about it. And that’s why Omar thinks they’re suddenly worth embracing.
(You can say I’m being unfair to some of these
disaffected voices because they espouse some broader argument about foreign
policy and imperialism or something. But none of these suddenly disaffected
doves had any problems with the Venezuela operation or Trump’s Greenland
threats. They, like Omar, have bought into the conspiracy theory that the
“Zionists” control our government. And if you can meet Omar and the Piker crowd
on that point, the tent flap opens.)
We hear a lot about “horseshoe theory” these days, and I
won’t rehash all of that. But when it comes to the very online bases of both
parties, hatred of Israel is a jump ball, and both sides are competing for
market share.
No comments:
Post a Comment