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Front Burner Transcript for November 13, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

SOUNDCLIP

DANA WHITE: I want to thank some people real quick. I want to thank the NELK Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin' With The Boys, and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan.

[crowd cheers]

[Music: Theme]

JAYME POISSON: Hey, everybody. Jayme here. So before the election, you might remember we talked on the show about the manosphere. This is essentially a corner of the internet dedicated almost exclusively to the interests and desires of young men. A home for male grievance and cultural angst related to everything from dating in the modern era to mental health and higher education. A place to articulate a kind of cultural dissatisfaction, which a lot of young men are feeling right now.

SOUNDCLIP

ANDREW TATE: You're gonna go to school, you're gonna get in debt, you're gonna get a job, you're gonna get a wife; divorce is coming. You're gonna lose the house eventually. Your job's shit. Inflation's outpacing your wages. You're gonna work, work, work. No one's gonna appreciate it. Now you're old and your life's over. That is the matrix for 99% of men.

JP: If you're a young man today, it's likely the case that the manosphere touches some piece of your life, whether it's fitness, video games, self-help, history, sports, comedy, gambling, or yes, politics. So that clip that we opened up with -- that's Dana White, CEO of the UFC, at Donald Trump's victory party last week, thanking a who's who of influencers and podcasters, all-stars in the manosphere, for contributing to the cultural momentum that helped get Trump elected. Tens of millions of young people are no longer relying on traditional media for their news, and instead, they're turning to streamers on sites like Twitch and Rumble, or influencers on TikTok and YouTube -- people whose voices they trust. And this marketplace is dominated almost exclusively by right-wing voices, some of whom centre politics in explicit ways [while] others sneak these ideas into otherwise unrelated content. Now, in this cultural tide, there really is only one exception: Hasan Piker.

SOUNDCLIP

HASAN PIKER: ...where you are in the world. I'm Hasan Piker, and this [indistinct] broadcast coming to you live from sunny Los Angeles, California. Folks, we're live and alive. And I hope all the boys, girls and enbies are having a fantastic one because today is a beautiful day. Today is a wonderful day... Today is the day. It's E-Day. It's D-Day. It's Election Day, folks.

JP: On election day, Hasan was the only non-conservative to feature as one of the ten most watched streamers, pulling in 7.5 million live viewers over the course of the night. That, for comparison, is the same number as CNN's election broadcast on television. Hasan has been talking for a long time about the radicalization of young men and the viewing habits of young people -- the fact that many have drifted rightwards and what that appeal is fundamentally about. Now that this world may have helped crown the next president of the United States, we wanted to talk to Hasan and try to demystify this cultural alliance between influencers and the conservative movement, and why the left seems to have no real answer for it.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Hasan, thank you so much for being here. It's such a pleasure to have you.

HASAN PIKER: Thank you for having me. This is exciting.

JP: Before and after election day, there's been a lot said about the world of streaming, about the so-called manosphere, about a cultural shift to the right in popular culture today, particularly among young men. I want to talk about all of that with you today. Before we get into it, though, I'm just curious, is there any part of you that was surprised at just how influential streamers and influencers ended up being in this election?

HASAN PIKER: No. And that's probably because I, myself, am a streamer. I think that 46% of Republicans and around 45% of Democrats get their news from social media. It's a, it's a pretty large number. And when you think about the landscape, that can be a cause for concern, or that can be something that is quite beneficial for maybe even the future of organizing and the future of activism in this country and maybe in the Western world.

JP: I caught your reaction to Dana White, head of the UFC, shouting out a bunch of your peers on stage.

SOUNDCLIP

[Piker reaction clip to Dana White and Donald Trump]

HASAN PIKER: Noooooooooo!

DANA WHITE: And thank you, America! Thank you. Have a good night.

HASAN PIKER: What is this country?! A-yo! What-- We are, we're done. We're done.

DONALD TRUMP: That guy is an amazing... He's really an amazing guy.

JP: Take me through what you were thinking in that moment.

HASAN PIKER: In that moment, I thought we're cooked. We're absolutely cooked as a country. Because it's not necessarily that, you know, podcasts and independent media has played such a prominent role in outreach, but the types of podcasts and the types of people that Dana White was presenting as being-- playing a formative role. While I'm a fan of some of those podcasts -- well, I've actually appeared on some of those podcasts and I know some of them, or have at certain points in my life been even friends with some of these people, maybe had a falling out -- I still don't think that that is a very serious space for very serious political conversations to take place in.

JP: Let's get into that a little bit more then. Trump and his team clearly aggressively targeted Gen Z and young millennial men. Especially young white men, I think it's fair to say. He went on this podcast tour, talked about everything from cocaine use to combat sports. And what do you think that Team Trump successfully identified there about our cultural moment that the Democrats didn't?

HASAN PIKER: I think Donald Trump had a deck of cards that was stacked against him, because he was already president and a lot of the high-propensity voters had already made up their minds about Donald Trump. And we saw the results of that in the 2022 midterms, as a matter of fact, where the Republican Party was supposed to be very successful. I mean, you're talking about massive amounts of inflation that people were experiencing. And the Democratic Party was seen as the responsible party for that. And instead of people coming out and punishing the Biden administration in 2022 midterms, they actually ended up voting for the Democratic Party in many instances, surprising the Republican Party. And I think given that environment, a lot of people, I think, correctly understood that Donald Trump had to go to new veins to tap into from the base of support. And who better to tap into than young men who are obviously feeling uncertain about the future of this country and young men who have maybe felt increasingly more isolated and alienated in the post-COVID world. Young men that most likely saw COVID as their most formative experience. Uh, the lockdowns. And maybe found a sense of community and shared purpose in a lot of these online spaces as a consequence of that. These people were too young to remember the Trump administration, or at least were not that interested in politics, maybe, back then. And for them, I mean, for the Trump campaign, it was a perfect place to draw support from. It was a gamble because these guys are not historically likely to go out and vote.

JP: Right. The low-propensity voters.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah. They're low-propensity voters and they normally don't vote. But Trump was able to go meet them where they're at and speak to them directly, or even better than that, speak to someone that they might even have a parasocial relationship with, in a non-hostile, non-adversarial, quite positive manner.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: Did you ever hear of Trump Derangement Syndrome? He's got it. More than any--

NELK BOY 1: He's got it for sure.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, Kimmel has it, too. Kimmel has it, too.

NELK BOY 2: Kimmel threw shots at us for having you on the first time.

NELK BOY 1: He called us, he called us doofuses when we had...

SOUNDCLIP

ADIN ROSS: Hope you like watches, Rolexes.

DONALD TRUMP: Ah. Oh, that's a beautiful watch.

ADIN ROSS: Yeah.

DONALD TRUMP: Should I open it?

ADIN ROSS: You should open it. And then show the camera.

DONALD TRUMP: That's a great watch, actually.

SOUNDCLIP

THEO VON: I just appreciate you giving me your time today, [TRUMP: Thank you.] Donald Trump. Thank you so much.

DONALD TRUMP: It's an honour, and good luck with your situation.

THEO VON: Yes, sir.

DONALD TRUMP: You're going to do it. You beat it, right? [THEO: Oh, yeah.] Then you can beat it. Good luck with it.

THEO VON: Thank you, brother.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much.

HASAN PIKER: And I think that not only humanized him, but also it made him look personable. I've talked to a lot of the people that have actually interviewed him even. Like, Bradley Martyn is my friend. He is a part of the NELK Boys podcast. He has his own podcast as well. And I've known him for years. I've had him on my podcast, I've been on his podcast. So, you know, I reached out to him and I was like, Let's have a conversation about, like, why you supported Donald Trump. And a lot of the points that he, a lot of the points that he put forward revolved around how personable Donald Trump was. And there was definitely a lot of downplaying of the most severe consequences of Trump's deportation, mass deportation policies, for example. Like these-- like people, when they find you charismatic, I think, as a political figure, they give you a lot of leeway. They feel secure in voting for you and they think, Oh, the most damaging impacts that this guy is just saying, I don't believe it. But all the good stuff that he says, I do believe it. I do believe he's going to lower the price of eggs, lower the price of goods. And I think that's what a lot of these guys were running on: the idea that things have not gotten better, there's this feeling that things are not getting better, and that maybe we should destroy these institutions once again.

[music]

JP: So how did the left and how did the Democrats cede so much ground here to the right?

HASAN PIKER: It's, you know, it's very obvious that they have lost touch with what a lot of these people want. And the most significant problem for young men is not necessarily that they're just, like, watching right-wing podcasts and have become more and more right-wing. I mean, that certainly plays a role in this, it does. But I think the largest problem is that young men, much like every other demographic, has basically felt the same economic struggles, the economic pressures that have been around since 2016 that led to Donald Trump winning in the first place. And the Democratic Party did not really acknowledge that pain and then maybe even try to combat the Republican Party actively with a left-wing economic populist message that would go to where these people were and say, We see you, we hear you. This is a real problem, we're going to solve it.

JP: I just, I want to come back to this so-called 'manosphere' for a bit, because I take your point that the issue here isn't that they're watching all of these podcasts and streams, but they're upset with their material conditions. But at the same time, all of these podcasts and streams have been able to channel those grievances, those feelings, right? And just, how is it that this entire media ecosystem -- save for you, frankly -- has been essentially captured by the right wing?

HASAN PIKER: Algorithms play a big role in this, I think. And another part of this is that people do have some socially conservative opinions. I mean, we take for granted social conditioning, but yeah, if you're growing up in the United States of America, where you take certain things for granted, and you see them as truth and you see it as common sense, you're of course going to learn certain things. And if there is a, if there's an inability from the Democratic Party or even like any kind of left-wing progressive activism in reaching out to these people and understanding where they're coming from and then successfully presenting an alternative solution and trying to maybe even communicate with them, that these sorts of inherent hostilities towards marginalized people are not, you know... they're understandable that you might have these opinions, but they're not exactly correct. And trying to talk to people in a confident and convincing manner and maybe even try to build confidence amongst young men, yeah, it's going to be quite difficult to, to change the trajectory of a lot of people. So I guess my point is these people were organically right-wing. Joe Rogan is a great example of this.

JP: Do you think, though? Because everyone keeps talking about how the left needs their own Joe Rogan, but Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in the last...

HASAN PIKER: Exactly. No, that's what I was going to say. Joe Rogan in 2020 endorsed Bernie Sanders.

SOUNDCLIP

FEMALE SPEAKER: Who you gonna vote for in the primary?

JOE ROGAN: I think... I think I'll probably vote for Bernie. Him as a human being. When I was hanging out with him, and I--

FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I believe in him. I like him. I like him.

HASAN PIKER: Joe Rogan wasn't always the Joe Rogan that we know now. And I say this as someone who's been a fan of his, someone who's actually talked to him personally way back in the day, back in like 2016, when he used to be a fan of the Young Turks where I used to work there. And he wasn't always the Joe Rogan that we know now. And I think he became increasingly more right-wing post-COVID. And when he moved to Austin, Texas, and surrounded himself with a lot of these people that were right-wing... But he organically arrived there. My point is, he did not get paid to be right-wing. It wasn't like a media operation. It was simply him arriving at these conclusions on his own. And I think there are multiple different reasons as to why he got there. And as someone who's like followed him closely, I can point to a few, but I think COVID was definitely one of the big aspects. Another part of it was also that I think the left, overall, does have a messaging problem. I don't think, I don't think we make a very convincing case. Usually we're very quick to just, like, cast people aside. That certainly is going to make for shaky allegiances with a lot of people who are maybe even starting off on the journey of learning about, you know, left-wing values. And it's something that I don't do. I regularly and routinely will welcome people with different perspectives, and I try to convince them. And I will always, as long as they are respectful back to myself, I will always be as respectful as possible in having these conversations. And I think that...even if that happens, even if these conversations are happening at that level, the unfortunate reality is that the right-wing machine has a very good way of just kind of casting that aside and presenting the, quote unquote, "left" as this, this cartoonish, angry, 'wokescold' demeanor. So I think that that certainly plays a role in this. I think that makes marketing progressive ideas a lot harder, for sure. And for a lot of apolitical people, when they see that, they're convinced by it, and then they lean further and further into maybe some underlying reactionary perspectives that they might have had.

[music]

JP: What do you make of the tone and tenor of the election that we just had? You know, much has been said about how there was, like, the lecturing. You know, Barack Obama telling [HASAN: Oof.] black men, like, how could you think of voting for... you know, give your heads a shake kind of stuff.

SOUNDCLIP

BARACK OBAMA: You're thinking about sitting out or even supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you?

JP: What role do you think that played? And I say this because, you know, I can't help think about these influential guys in this kind of manosphere podcasting space -- Adin Ross, NELK Boys. Like, they're not overtly political, right? They make party content and prank videos and they listen to music. They're also kind of having a good time. I'm not even sure if they could name a sitting U.S. senator. Like, I'm not trying to say that in a pejorative kind of way, right. Adin Ross--

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, no, they're, they're not interested in politics at all. They're just--

JP: No. Adin Ross, like, struggled to define and even pronounce fascism.

SOUNDCLIP

ADIN ROSS: [typing on keyboard] What does a fassist [ph] mean?

[Ross hits enter key]

ADIN ROSS: Um, it means you are a far-right authorization on u-- on ultranisit-- [ph] ultrala-- ultranalatent [ph]. Oh my God!

JP: But people respond to them because I think they don't feel like they're being talked down to, right?

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, I think it's, it is kind of vibes-based, I think, in many respects. And yeah, people respond to that. It offers a permission structure to be right wing. I think that's what's most important here. Like, for a lot of young men, it shows you that, like, having these sorts of opinions that are edgy, that piss off the system, right -- especially if you're feeling vulnerable, insecure, very angry at the system for good reasons and maybe even some bad reasons -- like, your... it directly can translate to your immediate experiences, right? [JP: Yeah.] On the main stage, you're pissing off the Democrats who are seen as, like, the teachers and the principals of society. But in your immediate life, you're pissing off your teacher when you behave like this. You're pissing off your mom maybe when you behave like this, and adults in your life. And I think, I think it creates a sense of... it creates a sense of community in that regard, where a lot of people will just go, Oh, okay, I like this. I'm angering people and I'm doing it with my friends. And I think that definitely plays a role, especially for young men, who are understandably feeling vulnerable and scared and maybe insecure about their future.

JP: It's interesting because, like, progressivism used to be the cool and subversive thing, right? Like civil rights, antiwar organizing. But it's really flipped, like, in so many...in some ways.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, yes and no. I'll just say it like this. I think, I think that the type of progressivism that we've always considered to be cool was always outside of the boundaries of liberalism. It was always to the left of liberalism. The type of activism that we look at fondly throughout history has always been like the antiwar movement, right? Like, people who were always subversive and antisystem, right, anti-establishment, were always on the left. Outside of the boundaries, I would say, of even like normal politics. And yes, liberalism tries to commodify that, capture it, capture its essence, and basically soften its impact regularly. And that's why you saw Black Lives Matter, which was a somewhat radical movement that started under Barack Obama -- that liberals were not fond of, originally, under Barack Obama -- become this mainstay. This mainstreamification of Black Lives Matter occurred with mass protests happening all around the country, all around the world, as a matter of fact. And then you had corporations like Walmart throwing up the black fist and saying, Black Lives Matter. Like, that's not real politics. You're just, [JP: Yeah.] you're now simply using the emancipatory language and the veneer of radical progressive politics, while simultaneously you're maybe doing that either deliberately or inadvertently, to soften its impact. And that's why I laugh when people say like, Oh, conservatism is counterculture. It's not. You cannot be counterculture while you advocate for the same things that your dad is advocating for. You can't be counterculture when you're advocating for the same things that your grandfather is advocating for. It's not real. It's not a, it's not a real thing at all. And I think liberalism presenting itself as like progressive, inherently, is, I guess, part of the reason why everyone just looks at, everyone just looks at that and goes, like, See? Everything is liberal, everything is left, everything is progressive. And that, you know, we got to fight against that. So there is this, there's this way that conservative independent media can present itself as like, 'against the man.' I mean, there is no better representation of this dynamic than the fact that Fox News, which is the most popular mainstream news network in the United States of America, will regularly rail against mainstream networks. They'll say, Oh, mainstream news is so liberal, is so liberal. It's like, You're mainstream news! [Jayme laughs] Right?

JP: Yeah.

[music]

JP: You know, another thing on the culture front I wanted to ask you about was celebrity endorsements, right. Conservatives have complained for years about how they couldn't break into culture. Hollywood, the music industry, the American pop culture machine, seem to be conspiring against them in some way, right. They were unable to get a real foothold with the youth. But that does not seem to have helped them this time around. You know, I've read someone describe this phenomenon as 'Conservatives own digital media. Liberals own Hollywood. Hollywood is irrelevant.' And I just, I just want to give you one example. What comes to mind, for me, you know, the Democrats have historically rolled out a red carpet of great American stars at every election. This time around, they got will.i.am to re-record that 2008 Obama song.

SOUNDCLIP

["Yes We Can" (Obama Song) by will.i.am]

BLENDED VOICES: [singing] It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed the trail toward freedom. Yes, we can. Yes, we can...

JP: Remember when "Yes We Can," [HASAN: No.] which was a big cultural touchstone back in 2008--

HASAN PIKER: I didn't even see the will.i.am song, to be honest.

JP: Oh, you're... I mean, you missed nothing. He re-recorded it this time around, and it was like, "Yes, she can," right. Same, same thing. Same song.

SOUNDCLIP

["Yes She Can" by will.i.am]

will.i.am: [singing] We can be better than we ever been. We're about to have a woman president. Haters gonna say that we can't, but the word American says that 'I can.' And we say, Yes, she can...

JP: And it fell completely flat. You are super online and you hadn't even seen it, right?

HASAN PIKER: Yeah.

JP: So what does all that say to you? Do you think that the Democrats have to rethink their relationship to Hollywood and celebrity?

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, I think there is a deep and personal relationship that you have with your favourite podcaster that you will never have with your favourite musician, I think. And I say this from my own personal experience. Like, people see me every day as exactly who I am. I speak for eight hours--

JP: For eight hours!

HASAN PIKER: Eight hours, every single day.

JP: As an aside, I truly do not know how you do that.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah. And I have a back-and-forth conversation with people. I'm speaking to an entire stadium full of people. I'm speaking to 40,000 people every single day; live, concurrent, active people that are chatting and I'm responding to them. And there is a level of trust that they have in someone like myself or a level of trust that they have in someone like Joe Rogan, as a matter of fact, that you cannot replicate with a Taylor Swift even. Music is obviously very touching and has the capacity to change your emotions or, or maybe bring out certain nascent feelings that you might have had, right? And that can create stans and stan culture. But ultimately, I think the way people see it, Hollywood comes across as somewhat out of touch. There is no direct line of communication. We see these people as deities almost. We see them as like perfect figures. And in many respects, they are perfect figures. Like, the way they present themselves is perfect. So I think that there is, like, a level of separation. And because people are more-- now more used to just, like, having immediate feedback from their favourite content creators and whatnot, like, there is a way that they can make a much more convincing argument. And it's not necessarily just that, like, the endorsements work, like the Joe Rogan endorsements work. Because obviously, in 2020, Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders. That didn't do anything, right. Like, [JP: Mm-hmm.] it's more so that it can work-- it can only work if everyone is aligned. If independent media is aligned, if people who are organically conservative are personally going out to bat and promoting a person, and then there is a media ecosystem that actually cross-pollinates so perfectly all the way up to Fox News, and there's a direct line of communication between the media ecosystem and the party. The liberals do not have this. They run away from their base. Whereas the Republicans are afraid of their base and actively give their base what they want, even if it actually ends up undermining them. There's a political cost for Rowe v. Wade, right? And yet they still do it. They do it because they say, You are our base, the white evangelical Protestants. We love you, we want you to come out, we want you to turn out, and we're going to do everything we can to offer you things, even if it's deeply unpopular. And we'll deal with the repercussions after the fact. Right? Democrats don't do that.

JP: You've said that there being more of you -- you being like a progressive streamer, podcaster -- wouldn't actually help the Democrats. And just elaborate for me on why you think...

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, if the Democratic Party at the top and the mainstream outlets that are actively priming the base of the Democratic Party into taking on certain positions are not going to respond to a million me's, right, then it doesn't, it doesn't change that dynamic at all. Because people can still hear them and see them and go, Okay, well, I like you, Hasan, but I don't like what she's saying. I like you, Hasan, but I don't like what the Democratic Party is saying. So my point is, this needs to be a broad shift within, it needs to happen within the Democratic Party originally. You cannot message your way out of this problem. You cannot podcast your way out of this problem. I'm only one person, but even if there was 100 of me out there, and many of them were not like me and were actually actively defending the Democratic Party, I don't even know if they would see the same level of success. I guess the example I used throughout this entire campaign was this, right. There was a lot of issues that I had with Kamala Harris's campaign. It was a truncated campaign. She did not separate yourself from Joe Biden. Joe Biden certainly played a major role in the way that she was perceived, for sure. But having said that, she had 100 days, and she should have immediately separated herself from Biden on many issues, right? Maybe even rest on the laurels, some of the electoral-- I mean, some of the legislative successes, and then say, We still have to do so much more. It's not enough, we're going to do so much more. Right? And they didn't do that. And instead, they came out with $50,000 in tax cuts for start-ups.

JP: Right, for small businesses or-- Right.

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, for small businesses. This is the start-up economy, this is the opportunity economy, is what Kamala Harris--

JP: Yeah, and people are like, I don't, I'm not a small business owner. I don't have $400 to cover a medical bill.

HASAN PIKER: Yes. [JP: Yes.] And that was so needlessly frustrating. And I kept seeing that over and over again. And they were like, No, no, no, this is a good, this is a good solution for a lot of people. And it was classic, means-tested ideas that were focus-grouped ahead of time. And it was needlessly hyper-specific and hyper-targeted to each individual group that they thought they could potentially captivate. Right? That's bad campaigning. That has never worked, it is a horrible idea, and you're not actually winning anybody over in that regard. And you're softening your message for no reason. You're moderating your message for no reason. And I kept repeating this position over and over again throughout the campaign. I was like, if the top-down message is bad, you cannot outflank that, right? You can have the best door-knocking operation. You can have the largest war coffer, right? With a billion dollars that you fundraised early on from the initial success of responding to public pressure that caused a lot of small donations to flow in. Because people were like, Ooh, wait, this is different. I like this. This is exciting. It's no longer Joe Biden, they responded to what we were demanding. And then all of that, apparently, according to new reporting shows, kind of got cut down pretty aggressively after the DNC, where they were like, No, no, no, we're the centrist right-wing party. You misunderstood us. If the things that you're putting forward as your solutions to economic problems is bad and it's not responding to people's actual desires, it's not responding to people's actual hurt, then you can spend $30 million, $40 million in ad spend and it's not going to move the needle. And it wasn't moving the needle at the time. I kept repeating this. I kept showing the polls. I was like, Look, Kamala Harris is spending $30 million in TV ads in Pennsylvania, and she is not moving even in a positive direction remotely in places like Pennsylvania. This to me says that there is a crisis in messaging, and they thought that they could just, like, outspend the Republicans and be fine with it, and it didn't work.

[music]

JP: Where do you think that this moment leaves the future of the Democratic Party? Because there's clearly this massive rift, right? There's people like you, even Bernie is now coming out saying that the party's abandoned working-class people. But, you know, Nancy Pelosi was on the New York Times, their interview podcast on the weekend, and completely shut that down, right? And sort of--

HASAN PIKER: [chuckles] Shocking.

JP: Yeah. So like, where are they? Where is the future of the Democratic Party right now, you think?

HASAN PIKER: Well, judging by the way that they're operating, the future of the Democratic Party does not look too great. It looks quite dire. As a matter of fact, I think everything that I've seen from all the consultants that, you know, got hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout this process and spent millions and millions on celebrities doing concerts -- which I was shocked by the way. I can't believe celebrities actually take money from political campaigns instead of just, like, doing it for free.

JP: I know!

HASAN PIKER: That was insane.

JP: This is a new piece of information I learned today that Oprah got like a million dollars to-- [cross-talk]

HASAN PIKER: It's like, you don't need it, Oprah! [JP: Yeah.] You don't need it!

JP: That's... shocking. Anyways, I'm sorry, please-- [cross-talk]

HASAN PIKER: What are you doing? You're a multi-billionaire, you really need that million extra dollars? That's crazy. Anyway. [laughs] Yeah, these guys are real mercenaries. I mean, holy moly. Anyway, the point is, the entirety of liberal institutions, like mainstream media for the most part, only host people that basically failed time and time again. People that worked on the Clinton campaign. And people that worked on the Kamala Harris campaign go on television and defend that their unsuccessful campaign was actually successful, and it was either A, the voters were too stupid to get it, they were too sexist and too racist to understand it, or, or that, that actually didn't fail, and it was actually something else, something that they never did. Like, it was, they focused too much on identity politics and trans people, and they focused too much on, you know, woke. They focused, they focused too little on protecting Israel -- that was a thing I heard. I was like, this is like, this is crazy, you know? Your opinion on Gaza aside, it is objectively untrue that the Kamala Harris campaign did not sufficiently defend Israel. She, as a matter of fact, probably lost key constituencies because of the way she messaged around that issue. I mean, what more can you do in that situation, right? And it's wild that these guys are allowed to cover their asses after this spectacular failure, and in the process, try to prime the base into believing that and into the next electoral defeat that they're going to face where they simply have only one solution: tack more to the right. And that's how we ratchet more and more to the right as a country. When you prime your base into believing that, Oh, we lost because we did not go right-wing enough, over and over again, then they're going to go, Okay, well, I guess we are right-wing. I guess we should be right-wing. I guess we should vote for right-wing policies. And that is what is so frustrating. And you never see that from the Republican Party.

JP: But I do want to ask you about this, because we've been talking a lot today about how this election was about people's, you know, material well-being, how they don't have $400 to cover a bill.

HASAN PIKER: It's every election, by the way. Not just this one. Every election is [JP: Yeah.] about that.

JP: But very much this one, right, because people are hurting. [HASAN: Yeah.] But also, by the numbers, white unemployment is at around 3%, Black unemployment is at 6%. The gap between white and Black homeownership rates is greater than it was during Jim Crow. Fifty-seven per cent of white people still voted for Trump, though, while 85% of Black people voted against him. I understand that there's, you know, lots of factors, like the war in Gaza and immigration, which would sway the vote for certain groups. But generally, you know, did this election, was it also about demographics, identity politics, ultimately race in some ways, as well?

HASAN PIKER: Well, that's a really interesting point. I think that there is a generational divide that we are experiencing with the Black vote in general. And it's almost the reverse, I guess, of every other demographic that you expect to vote in-- for the more progressive person, right, on the ticket. Whether it's the... I mean, usually it's just the liberals, right? For the Black vote, the younger you get, the more likely Black voters are to not vote at all, right. And it's not the same for Black women, but it certainly, this is certainly an issue for the Democratic Party, so much so that they actually decided to scold Black men, despite the fact that they still were very firmly committed to the Democratic Party. And that, I think, comes from the civil rights movement. If you're a Black person in America -- and this is an assessment that I've made after talking to many Black academics, many Black journalists who, who not only study this stuff, but also directly talk to Black voters in general -- the further you are removed from the last time the Democratic Party actually expended political capital for you, the less likely you are to show loyalty to the Democratic Party. So the older you get, the more likely you are to vote for the Democrats within the Black community. The younger you get, the less likely you are to vote at all and maybe even are more likely to vote Republican. And obviously, racism and sexism is always going to play a role in every election -- not just American elections, but across the board in every election, in every country. Now, if your assessment is that people are just irredeemable and they're just racist and sexist and they're never going to vote for a Black woman, then you're basically throwing up the white flag and saying, White men all the way, we only can have a white man run. And I don't agree with that. And the example I always use is this: Claudia Sheinbaum of Moreno.

JP: Yeah. I don't know if you said Mexico, but you're talking about Mexico, just for people listening.

HASAN PIKER: Oh, sorry. Yes, I-- You're right. Thank you. Yes, I'm talking about Mexico. Claudia Sheinbaum of Morena in Mexico won and delivered a spectacular defeat to the right in Mexico, as a Jewish woman in a country that has a massive problem with femicides. So it's not like Mexico itself was, you know, more woke than America, I guess, in that sense. And yet they voted for her. And the reason why they did that is because AMLO expanded the welfare policies of Mexico, and AMLO increased wages for a lot of people. And regardless of the many different difficulties and many different issues that Mexico still very much faces in terms of violence, in terms of cartels and all this stuff, people still were like, I remember that and I like that, and I will never forget that and I will always reward you for it. Turns out when you give people something, anything that immediately improves their material realities, they respond very positively to that. And I think that's what the Democratic Party has to do immediately. And they have to keep doing that over and over again to restore confidence that they have not only in the Democratic Party, but in the institutions, in the government itself, because this is... We're, we're staring down something very scary right now, I think, in the United States of America, and in a lot of Western nations, as a matter of fact, where this fascist movement is growing globally. You have the AfD in Germany. You have the Reform Party now in the U.K., and they are more popular right now than the Labour government is. And tepid neoliberalism and tacking to the centre policies are not making up for the harm that people are experiencing. And in that anger and resentment that they feel towards the institutions, they find themselves in the throes of right-wing politics. They find themselves responding to people that say, You're angry and you're right to be angry, and here's who you should be angry at. You are right to be angry and you should be angry at the liberals because all they care about is gay people. You should be angry at the liberals, all they care about is immigrants that are coming in and they're stealing your jobs. And they're also stealing your welfare and they're stealing your homes. We've gotta mass deport them. People are going to be like, Okay, well, at least this guy acknowledges that I'm angry. And he says he's going to lower the prices. I don't know how he's going to do that by deporting 20 million people, but, you know, maybe I'll take a shot in the dark.

JP: Right. And I'll just say, you know, our Conservative party here -- definitely not the same as the AfD in Germany. And our Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, while he's been compared to Trump, I will say, I think that that's a very lazy comparison. Although, he has done a very good job at tapping into that anger. And similarly, young people and all sorts of groups are driving, are driving towards him in droves and away from our Liberal Party. So, you know, people here are going to hear a lot of echoes in this conversation. Hasan, I want to thank you so much for your time today. It was a pleasure to have you here and I hope you'll consider coming back. It was great.

HASAN PIKER: Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right. That's all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

Hasan Piker on how Trump seized online culture - Transcript

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