Fears of a Clown

By Seth Mandel

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

 

Let’s play “One of These Things Is Not Like the Others.”

 

This week began with influential progressive Hasan Piker blaming Jews for the violent anti-Semitism against them and threatening them that more was coming. Here are three statements by Democratic Party figures on Piker’s comments:

 

1.      “The malicious claim that American Jews are inviting violence against themselves is dangerous and antisemitic. There is zero justification for threats against the safety of our Jewish brothers and sisters at a moment of rising hate. We will fight the cancer of antisemitism with the fierce urgency of now.”

 

2.      “Hasan Piker’s talk of violence against American Jews, and directly naming a Michigan elected official, and future member of Congress, Jeremy Moss, is unacceptable. Full stop. Piker is a hack who thrives on hate, shock and awe because he lacks substance. It’s dangerous for everyone. We should all be calling out this disgusting rhetoric so it loses its grip on our politics once and for all. It has no place in Michigan, and no place in our country.”

 

3.      “Criticizing the policies and actions of the Israeli government is one thing. Blaming American Jews for the hatred, threats, and violence directed at them is something else entirely. It is dangerous, wrong, and antisemitic. No Jewish American should be held responsible for the actions of a foreign government, and there is never any justification for threatening the safety of Jewish communities. We must confront antisemitism wherever it appears, with resolve and zero tolerance.”

 

The outlier should be obvious: Only one of them mentions Hasan Piker by name. We can infer from this that the two others are afraid of Piker for one reason or another.

 

The only one of the three unafraid to invoke Piker’s name is Hillary Scholten, a Democratic congresswoman representing Michigan’s 3rd District.

 

And who are the two who cower in fear of a Chairman Mao-worshiping social-media influencer? The first is Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrats’ House leader and would-be speaker. The latter is Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

 

The national Democratic Party is led by jellyfish, though Scholten’s presence in the party means they are not entirely without vertebrates.

 

One defense of Jeffries here is that we all know who he’s talking about. And it’s true, Jeffries’ statement could have been weaker. But that’s a low bar to clear for someone who wants to be speaker of the House.

 

“Why not call him out by name in your statement, if you feel so passionately about this issue?” Wolf Blitzer asked Jeffries, who didn’t have much of an answer.

 

The main defense of Ken Martin is that nobody knows or cares who he is. The DNC has managed the rare feat of making itself irrelevant even in a blue-wave year, when it should be minting money. And yet, as with Jeffries, I’m not sure how much of a defense that really is.

 

All of Piker’s caveman anti-Semitism is being done for the benefit of Abdul El-Sayed, the angry Jew-baiting Democratic candidate for Senate in Baby Gap t-shirts who also fears Piker’s disapproval.

 

But nobody expects anything of El-Sayed. Jeffries, however, is responsible for the direction his party takes. So is Ken Martin, even if nobody knows that.

 

So we’ve determined whom the party’s powers-that-be are afraid of: a Twitch streamer. And we’ve determined what they are afraid of: mean tweets from Piker or his fans.

 

The question remains: What can be done to immunize them from the fear? Mostly, the answer has to do with a cynical cost-benefit analysis. Normally, you’d love to appeal to someone’s principles, but Jeffries has misplaced his and forgot to put an AirTag on them. What the wannabe speaker is left with is political incentive, and right now he doesn’t have the incentive to do what he should do, which is to tell El-Sayed to choose between Piker and the party.

 

Nor did the fact that Piker seemed to threaten another Democrat, Jeremy Moss, move Jeffries to act. What he wants—what he needs—is for the steady drumbeat of headache-inducing stories to make it impossible for him to allow this to go on.

 

“You have a finite amount of days in campaigns, and any day you’re not on your message and on the offensive, you’re losing,” Tre Easton, a Democratic Party think-tanker, told Politico Playbook this morning. Easton had El-Sayed in mind, but the point stands for Jeffries as well.

 

Here is where Democrats are at a bit of a structural disadvantage. Mainstream media do not hound left-wing anti-Semites. If anything, they massage their image with puff pieces. (CNN, which actually does challenge Democratic anti-Semites, is the exception.) It would take a wholesale turnabout for most of these media companies to give progressive shock jocks like Piker the scrutiny they deserve.

 

In the long term, Jeffries would be thankful for such help. Because unless someone forces the New York congressman’s hand, the Democrats will appear to be just as much Piker’s party as Jeffries’.