The true battle is not left against right. It's between the unholy alliance of far-left and far-right against sane liberalism. I hope the Democrats and Ezra Kleins of the world learn this before it's too late.
I don't have much hope for an America that endlessly flips between two flavors of insanity.
MAGA may be Alt-Right; but they also currently both houses of Congress, SCOTUS, POTUS, and more than half of state governments. Fortunately, with the exception of regular FOX News viewers, most of the country seems fed up with their policies, and is ready to hand them a sound defeat this November. Whether it's a Hungarian-scale wipeout remains to be seen.
Piker may be slightly popular, but he doesn't seem--to my taste anyway--in any way mainstream Left. I'd never even heard of him, and I watch mostly Liberal YouTube clips for hours daily. I do like Ezra's podcasts, though. My guess is that right now, Mr. Klein is kicking himself after Piker made that horrifying Hamas remark.
Wikipedia sez Piker gained his popularity by attacking Trumpian/GOP stupidities. Like pretty much every other podcaster that's Left of Center. Maybe that's his bread-and-butter, and the pro-Communism and other nonsense is something new? Like he's trying to be pack leader in the let's bash Israel-gone-crazy category?
Piker being a Marxist Leninist and a campist is not new. He has admitted to wearing the mask of a Bernie Progressive in order to funnel progressives down the pipeline. He’s been making apologia for dictatorships like China, Russia (both the Soviet Union and Putin’s regime), several Islamic theocracies, and anyone else who’s seen as opposition to the West for years. Piker has been ideologically against the very existence of Israel for just as long and has been promoting Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran’s aggression against them since October 7th.
It’s hilarious how hard the Pod Save America doorknobs tried to launder Hasan in that interview. They tossed him softball after softball, and he still managed to sound deranged. It just made me wonder why they were even bothering. Are they so desperate to have a popular left-wing influencer that they can’t see how tying themselves to the anti-Western communist/islamist guy who hates the Democratic Party is not going to do the Democratic Party any favours?
I think Hasan believes in what he's saying and that's the issue - pSA might have assumed he'd want to moderate his positions but he has no intention of doing so. Who is the dishonest one here?
Hasan Piker is a middling nepo nibling of Cenk Uygur. He holds laughably, reactionary leftist views that are doomed to make Democrats lose even worse. He should be shipped to an obscure corner of the internet and left to rant in obscurity once his stream loses its sheen.
That largely comes with streamer territory though. You almost have to be an objectionable/shocking person to get the views that help sustain the lifestyle
I don't think it's an excuse - it just comes with the territory. People can still call him out on it of course. And he can respond as he chooses to. He isn't a CNN anchor
"It has used the Iran war as an opportunity to launch an invasion of Lebanon" is an interesting way to phrase "responded to a massive missile and drone attack launched by Hezbollah". Ezra talks about a rupture in reality on Israel, but he seems to be the one out of touch with reality on this particular point. I'd also note that the reason that Gaza is still occupied and all of those people are stuck in the remainder is because Hamas has thus far refused to disarm. According to the UN-backed ceasefire agreement, Israel will withdraw in tandem with Hamas's disarmament, but Hamas has refused to surrender their light arms.
You do realize that between the 2024 ceasefire and the "massive missile and drone attach launched by Hezbollah" there were approximately 10,000 strikes on Lebanon by the IDF?
It wasn't Lebanon who fired those missiles and drones. Quite the opposite, Lebanon banned Hezbollah from conducting military activities and demanded it disarm in response. Nor was Lebanon succeeding in holding to the terms of the agreement either, although that's primarily because Hezbollah is more powerful than the Lebanese state. Beyond all of that, the ceasefire was for a war that Hezbollah itself started. However, I will say that if Ezra had framed it as "using Hezbollah's assault as an opportunity", then I probably wouldn't have said anything. My complaint is in tying the invasion to the Iran war rather than the Hezbollah response to the war.
Defending Bibi is really what you want to do now? Eight billion people are now hurting financially because of this stupid war Bibi and Donald started for no other reason than to "...mow the grass." And you think there will *not* be a price to pay by both Israel and the Diaspora?
The AIPAC set seems completely oblivious to this new Bibi-Trump war as MASSIVE overreach. That will hurt not only Israel, but the entire Diaspora. Support J-Street; the only adult in the room.
8 billion people are hurting because Iran's government decided that they would rather shut down the global economy than lose power. That was a choice. And yes, I will criticize what I see as inaccuracies. Note that I said nothing about any of the other statements Ezra made vis-a-vis Israel.
And aside from all that, there's the simple tribal logic. As a White Christian who doesn't hate himself, I’m not voting for Communism and Jihad. The party who wants my vote should avoid association with these things. And BTW, my tribe is the majority here.
Amen. As Christians, I think we shouldn't be bound by purely tribal concerns, but it’s frustrating when people just assume we're okay with people who openly plan to stick us all on gulags. We have a right to oppose Communism out of self-interest.
All this just confirms what was a growing suspicion on my part: Ezra Klein is an idiot. Yes, he is onto some good things, such as amplification of YIMBY beyond housing. But his recommendations for Democratic strategy range from poor to disastrous.
I don't think that's entirely fair to Klein. I'm not his biggest fan or anything, but he was one of the first bona fide progressives to question Biden's mental health openly. He did it months before the disastrous debate performance.
No, he isn't an idiot. His writing (and speaking on his podcast) is ponderous, but he does better interviews than 90% of writers, and he usually considers lot of view points in his discussions.
And in that sense he’s as basic of a progressive as it gets. All their ideas fail, their slogans are elections poison and their favorite policies got us Trump, twice.
The worst part is that Hasan hates the Democratic Party. He rails against them harder than Republicans. He sees most to the Democratic Party as the “pressure release valve” that prevents class consciousness from rising and allows the evils of capitalism to survive. So it’s no wonder why he both sides them so much. He only intends to use the Democratic Party as a vehicle to fulfill his Marxist-Leninist vision. He has admitted to playing the Bernie Progressive to lure people on the left into his camp and radicalize them with his true believes once they begin consuming his content on his platform and interact with his community. He is a parasite in every sense of the word who would at best make the party less popular and create an America as dark as the post-liberals on the right.
I like Ezra Klein but this was an irresponsible take by him. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t know much about Piker before writing this, but in that case he shouldn’t have written that opinion piece at all. The Democratic Party is being gaslit into thinking Piker represents a far stronger faction of the left than actually exists and it’s important that we resist it.
Yea, the idea that Democrats should emulate how Republicans have treated their extremes lately seems awful to me. Ezra Klein should be ashamed of himself.
As an older (66yr) independent who gets all information by reading I didn’t even know who this was. I’ve tested myself (I did a related experiment for a 10th grade science project) and I can read with comprehension the transcript of a podcast with moderate information content 6x faster than listening to it. For a low information content podcast it approaches 20x. I understand the appeal of real people and voices as we move into more AI generated content, but it’s a huge step backwards for human knowledge. I suspect that’s a contributing factor to the “shock jock” appeal to some people: if you are boring the pre-frontal cortex stimulating the amygdala generates attention. A relevant data point on knowledge transfer is provided by the Feynman lectures, which had relatively little measurable impact on the students who witnessed them, but the transcripts form a core part of any physical scientists learning. (That said, Weinberg’s writing skill makes his books much higher density in knowledge transfer than the Feynman lectures). In person is great for entertainment value, seeing King Lear is better than reading it, but for information/knowledge transfer reading is measurably superior.
Agreed, as writing always involves coherently organizing one's thoughts to successfully and effectively communicate information or argument. I am not at all a fan of podcasts, I'm almost always, like you, impatient with a slow pace. Additionally, podcast conversations are full of emotional noise which I find distracting and annoying.
Finding common ground with people like Piker is not thoughtful inclusion. It is a delusional action that can only lead to self damage. Ezra is smart and well intentioned but we cannot legitimize people like Piker and lay with him without catching his fleas!
When I was a kid in the 90s and everyone was talking about the "shock-jocks" like Mancow and Opie and Anthony, I thought well surely we'll grow out of this at some point.
Now it seems like every influencer or online pundit is basically running some version of that same playbook. *Sigh*.
I commented in July 2025 (on Claire Berlinski's Cosmopolitan Globalists) that Fuentes and Piker are the future of American politics. I mentioned Piker here back in April of that year... I have asked myself, is there anyone in their twenties in online politics who stands for liberal centrism? The best I could propose is Drew Pavlou, but he's Australian (like me), not American.
Piker certainly sours me on those who give him a platform. Just hateful speech and anti-American ideas masquerading as entertainment. I don't believe this is what "working class" Dems support.
This is quite frankly a colossal waste of column inches. We know that Hasan Piker is a fool and no better than the average Fox news opinionators on the right. I wonder if Noah just couldn't come up with something better such as why Gina Raimondo is the stealth Dem candidate for 2028!!👍
Read Klein's column -- Noah even provided a link to it for you!
Klein is not trying to normalize Piker, he perhaps foolishly used critics of Piker as an example of people confusing criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. And Klein's column was more about how Democrats need to learn to communicate with people who don't hold 100% DSA conforming views than anything about Piker or Israel.
The true battle is not left against right. It's between the unholy alliance of far-left and far-right against sane liberalism. I hope the Democrats and Ezra Kleins of the world learn this before it's too late.
I don't have much hope for an America that endlessly flips between two flavors of insanity.
MAGA may be Alt-Right; but they also currently both houses of Congress, SCOTUS, POTUS, and more than half of state governments. Fortunately, with the exception of regular FOX News viewers, most of the country seems fed up with their policies, and is ready to hand them a sound defeat this November. Whether it's a Hungarian-scale wipeout remains to be seen.
Piker may be slightly popular, but he doesn't seem--to my taste anyway--in any way mainstream Left. I'd never even heard of him, and I watch mostly Liberal YouTube clips for hours daily. I do like Ezra's podcasts, though. My guess is that right now, Mr. Klein is kicking himself after Piker made that horrifying Hamas remark.
Wikipedia sez Piker gained his popularity by attacking Trumpian/GOP stupidities. Like pretty much every other podcaster that's Left of Center. Maybe that's his bread-and-butter, and the pro-Communism and other nonsense is something new? Like he's trying to be pack leader in the let's bash Israel-gone-crazy category?
Piker being a Marxist Leninist and a campist is not new. He has admitted to wearing the mask of a Bernie Progressive in order to funnel progressives down the pipeline. He’s been making apologia for dictatorships like China, Russia (both the Soviet Union and Putin’s regime), several Islamic theocracies, and anyone else who’s seen as opposition to the West for years. Piker has been ideologically against the very existence of Israel for just as long and has been promoting Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran’s aggression against them since October 7th.
The true battle is between people who know who Hasan Piker is and have opinions, and normal people who have no idea what this is about.
Sadly, the former group (including both those who hate him and love him) punch way above their numerical and intellectual weight.
I think Substack politics-consumers would benefit from being more in touch with normies, and normies absolutely give zero shits about this argument.
It’s hilarious how hard the Pod Save America doorknobs tried to launder Hasan in that interview. They tossed him softball after softball, and he still managed to sound deranged. It just made me wonder why they were even bothering. Are they so desperate to have a popular left-wing influencer that they can’t see how tying themselves to the anti-Western communist/islamist guy who hates the Democratic Party is not going to do the Democratic Party any favours?
So many people think that you can rationalize with crazy people if you just talk to them the right way or give them attention.
I think Hasan believes in what he's saying and that's the issue - pSA might have assumed he'd want to moderate his positions but he has no intention of doing so. Who is the dishonest one here?
Hasan Piker is a middling nepo nibling of Cenk Uygur. He holds laughably, reactionary leftist views that are doomed to make Democrats lose even worse. He should be shipped to an obscure corner of the internet and left to rant in obscurity once his stream loses its sheen.
Also Piker is simply an asshole.
That largely comes with streamer territory though. You almost have to be an objectionable/shocking person to get the views that help sustain the lifestyle
Meh. That's a cheap excuse IMHO.
I don't think it's an excuse - it just comes with the territory. People can still call him out on it of course. And he can respond as he chooses to. He isn't a CNN anchor
"It has used the Iran war as an opportunity to launch an invasion of Lebanon" is an interesting way to phrase "responded to a massive missile and drone attack launched by Hezbollah". Ezra talks about a rupture in reality on Israel, but he seems to be the one out of touch with reality on this particular point. I'd also note that the reason that Gaza is still occupied and all of those people are stuck in the remainder is because Hamas has thus far refused to disarm. According to the UN-backed ceasefire agreement, Israel will withdraw in tandem with Hamas's disarmament, but Hamas has refused to surrender their light arms.
You do realize that between the 2024 ceasefire and the "massive missile and drone attach launched by Hezbollah" there were approximately 10,000 strikes on Lebanon by the IDF?
It wasn't Lebanon who fired those missiles and drones. Quite the opposite, Lebanon banned Hezbollah from conducting military activities and demanded it disarm in response. Nor was Lebanon succeeding in holding to the terms of the agreement either, although that's primarily because Hezbollah is more powerful than the Lebanese state. Beyond all of that, the ceasefire was for a war that Hezbollah itself started. However, I will say that if Ezra had framed it as "using Hezbollah's assault as an opportunity", then I probably wouldn't have said anything. My complaint is in tying the invasion to the Iran war rather than the Hezbollah response to the war.
Defending Bibi is really what you want to do now? Eight billion people are now hurting financially because of this stupid war Bibi and Donald started for no other reason than to "...mow the grass." And you think there will *not* be a price to pay by both Israel and the Diaspora?
The AIPAC set seems completely oblivious to this new Bibi-Trump war as MASSIVE overreach. That will hurt not only Israel, but the entire Diaspora. Support J-Street; the only adult in the room.
8 billion people are hurting because Iran's government decided that they would rather shut down the global economy than lose power. That was a choice. And yes, I will criticize what I see as inaccuracies. Note that I said nothing about any of the other statements Ezra made vis-a-vis Israel.
It was the IDF that fired those missiles and drones. You seem to have read it as Hezbollah?
If we stop fighting, and then I punch you 10,000 times before you punch back, who started the current fight?
And aside from all that, there's the simple tribal logic. As a White Christian who doesn't hate himself, I’m not voting for Communism and Jihad. The party who wants my vote should avoid association with these things. And BTW, my tribe is the majority here.
Amen. As Christians, I think we shouldn't be bound by purely tribal concerns, but it’s frustrating when people just assume we're okay with people who openly plan to stick us all on gulags. We have a right to oppose Communism out of self-interest.
Good thing the average Democrat, unlike the fringe lefty extremist/Fox News boogeyman, is not in favor of either Communism or jihad!
You're probably right. But until this silent majority demonstrates its power in a primary, Hasan Piker will be the face of the Democrats.
What tribe? No one thinks like you. Try being an individual, not a brainwashed members of a group.
There's probably a lot of people like me. They're just becoming Republicans.
All this just confirms what was a growing suspicion on my part: Ezra Klein is an idiot. Yes, he is onto some good things, such as amplification of YIMBY beyond housing. But his recommendations for Democratic strategy range from poor to disastrous.
I don't think he's an idiot at all but humorless, self-serious, and lacking judgment are reasonable choices.
I don't think that's entirely fair to Klein. I'm not his biggest fan or anything, but he was one of the first bona fide progressives to question Biden's mental health openly. He did it months before the disastrous debate performance.
Good point.
No, he isn't an idiot. His writing (and speaking on his podcast) is ponderous, but he does better interviews than 90% of writers, and he usually considers lot of view points in his discussions.
And in that sense he’s as basic of a progressive as it gets. All their ideas fail, their slogans are elections poison and their favorite policies got us Trump, twice.
The worst part is that Hasan hates the Democratic Party. He rails against them harder than Republicans. He sees most to the Democratic Party as the “pressure release valve” that prevents class consciousness from rising and allows the evils of capitalism to survive. So it’s no wonder why he both sides them so much. He only intends to use the Democratic Party as a vehicle to fulfill his Marxist-Leninist vision. He has admitted to playing the Bernie Progressive to lure people on the left into his camp and radicalize them with his true believes once they begin consuming his content on his platform and interact with his community. He is a parasite in every sense of the word who would at best make the party less popular and create an America as dark as the post-liberals on the right.
I like Ezra Klein but this was an irresponsible take by him. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t know much about Piker before writing this, but in that case he shouldn’t have written that opinion piece at all. The Democratic Party is being gaslit into thinking Piker represents a far stronger faction of the left than actually exists and it’s important that we resist it.
Yea, the idea that Democrats should emulate how Republicans have treated their extremes lately seems awful to me. Ezra Klein should be ashamed of himself.
As an older (66yr) independent who gets all information by reading I didn’t even know who this was. I’ve tested myself (I did a related experiment for a 10th grade science project) and I can read with comprehension the transcript of a podcast with moderate information content 6x faster than listening to it. For a low information content podcast it approaches 20x. I understand the appeal of real people and voices as we move into more AI generated content, but it’s a huge step backwards for human knowledge. I suspect that’s a contributing factor to the “shock jock” appeal to some people: if you are boring the pre-frontal cortex stimulating the amygdala generates attention. A relevant data point on knowledge transfer is provided by the Feynman lectures, which had relatively little measurable impact on the students who witnessed them, but the transcripts form a core part of any physical scientists learning. (That said, Weinberg’s writing skill makes his books much higher density in knowledge transfer than the Feynman lectures). In person is great for entertainment value, seeing King Lear is better than reading it, but for information/knowledge transfer reading is measurably superior.
Agreed
But you can listen to a podcast in the car, or while working in the garden
Agreed, as writing always involves coherently organizing one's thoughts to successfully and effectively communicate information or argument. I am not at all a fan of podcasts, I'm almost always, like you, impatient with a slow pace. Additionally, podcast conversations are full of emotional noise which I find distracting and annoying.
Finding common ground with people like Piker is not thoughtful inclusion. It is a delusional action that can only lead to self damage. Ezra is smart and well intentioned but we cannot legitimize people like Piker and lay with him without catching his fleas!
Thanks for writing this piece, Noah! I agree completely with you.
When I was a kid in the 90s and everyone was talking about the "shock-jocks" like Mancow and Opie and Anthony, I thought well surely we'll grow out of this at some point.
Now it seems like every influencer or online pundit is basically running some version of that same playbook. *Sigh*.
I commented in July 2025 (on Claire Berlinski's Cosmopolitan Globalists) that Fuentes and Piker are the future of American politics. I mentioned Piker here back in April of that year... I have asked myself, is there anyone in their twenties in online politics who stands for liberal centrism? The best I could propose is Drew Pavlou, but he's Australian (like me), not American.
Liberal centrism doesn’t really sell well with the twenties crowd, especially the ones living at home with their parents (I wonder why)
Jerusalem Demsas?
Piker certainly sours me on those who give him a platform. Just hateful speech and anti-American ideas masquerading as entertainment. I don't believe this is what "working class" Dems support.
This is quite frankly a colossal waste of column inches. We know that Hasan Piker is a fool and no better than the average Fox news opinionators on the right. I wonder if Noah just couldn't come up with something better such as why Gina Raimondo is the stealth Dem candidate for 2028!!👍
The issue is not that Piker is a fool, since he himself makes that obvious, it’s that Klein is a fool for trying to normalize Piker’s stupid opinions.
Read Klein's column -- Noah even provided a link to it for you!
Klein is not trying to normalize Piker, he perhaps foolishly used critics of Piker as an example of people confusing criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. And Klein's column was more about how Democrats need to learn to communicate with people who don't hold 100% DSA conforming views than anything about Piker or Israel.