International Solidarity Against Fascism

Looking for your next office. Discover WeWorks new real estate platform built for a smarter way to work, with forty five million square feet of office space in one hundred and twenty cities across thirty four countries. We've got you covered. For global coworking to custom office solutions, visit WeWork. com Hi, this is Podsave UK. I'm Nishima and I'm Coco Khan. The revolution will not be televised. It will be live streamed on Twitch instead. This week we're joined by Hasan Piker, strekeamer, influencer, left wing political commentator, and one of the latest additions to the United Kingdom's Not Welcome List. We'll be getting into it all with the man described by the New York Times as a progressive mind in a maga body who has been surrounded by no shortage of controversy recently . Now we've got a fantastic conversation with Hassan coming up momentarily that we actually recorded yesterday on Tuesday in a different studio because it was a different recording day. So I just wanted to contextualise that's why Coca and I'm not wearing the same clothes and we're in a completely different room. I just think that that's important to flag up. As we sit recording this section of the show on Wednesday, the tenth of June, unfortunately, there is a story that has dominating all of the front pages . There's a huge amount of anti migrant violence that unfolded on Tuesday night in Belfast. Hundreds of protesters, many with their faces covered, attacked police and burned vehicles across Northern Ireland after a video of a knife attack which left one person with serious neck and head wounds went viral. A Sudanese asylum seeker was charged with attempted murder on Tuesday evening in relation to the knife attack and is due to appear at Belfast Magistrates Court on Wednesday at the time of recording. It's really scary stuff. So a group of around one hundred masked people in East Belfast , kicked in doors and broke windows. In another part of the city, mask men attacked a house occupied by people from an ethnic minority background. Some claimed they were liberating the property, while nearby graffiti read local homes for local people. The family had to be rescued from their burning home by emergency services. Members of Belfast Sudanese community reported leaving work early and staying indoors amid fears about further violence . So similar to the case of Henry Noak, which we talked about last week, footage of this alleged knife attack was widely shared online by far right figures, including Stephen Yaxley Lennon , also known as Tommy Robinson, who posted calls for protests after and this is a direct quote yet another invader attack on our people . The speed is genuinely chilling because Tommy Robinson posts and then Elon Musk does the same. So Elon Musk shared one of Robinson's posts announcing protest locations as well as another post from the Far Right Party Restore Britain that read Do not make peace with evil, destroy it. Elon Musk also tweeted yesterday O restnlyore Britain can save Britain. It is the only way. On Wednesday morning, First Minister Michelle O'Neill said of the previous night's unrest the groups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice and outright thuggery. Paul Dockerty, an independent counselor from Belfast has been supporting a family who were put out of their home by a mob on Tuesday night. Dockerty said he knows people from Bombay Street in West Belfast who, and to quote, still bear the sc ars of being burned out of their houses in nineteen sixty nine. He said we know where this road leads. Listen, it's week of violence and intimidation following a horrendous act of violence in the first place . And the amount of sort of misinformation and disinformation that's circulating on social media, it is really, really important that you approach information that you receive on social media with a degree of skepticism. And that's the really concerning thing that's happening at the moment. There have to be some kind of consequences for dissemination mistruths and in some cases AI generated fake imagery. I mean , if you really care about sort of justice being done in this situation . The thing to do is let due process take its course . It is so alarming. And I don't know who burning a car helps in this specific instance, right? I really can't wrap my mind around who this helps. And you know, it's another week where bad actors are misdirecting anger for their own nefar ious purposes. So we should say at the time of recording the obviously the riots hadn't happened with Hassan, actually we talk a lot with him about the sort of legitimisation of this kind of violence by the far right . And Elon Musk , how come he's allowed to visit Britain? Yeah, yeah. I mean look at what he does. Look at what he says. He believes he is the king of the world and he's sending people out to harm each other essentially. I don't even know where to begin with dealing with that. And I'm so sad that when people who take what he says at face value forget that he's the world's richest man , forget that he is the apartheid Clyde, you know, and how we got his mind and forget his position to them . Yeah. And I mean, you know , Yaxley Lennon has sort of spent the week traing tovell Russia to meet Elon Musk's father in a hotel in Moscow on , you know , so I mean these are people we do need to ask serious questions about where the financing behind someone like Steven Lee Axley Lennon is actually coming from. And you know, I think I think there's a really, really important , very, very frightening tipping point here . The I think the Justice Minister in Northern Ireland , Naomi Long has sort of said something that I think is really significant and pretty important intervention. What disgusts and disturbs me is that there are those prior to yesterday who would have struggled to find Belfast on a map who are online, who are sharing incitement and encouragement for people and weaponizing the fear that people genuinely have about what happened to try and turn this into some kind of anti immigration issue or racist protest. These are people and she's right to observe that these are people have absolutely no interest in social cohesion. They have no interest in the welfare of people in Belfast. This is being stoked for political ends. I mean, I just profoundly disrespectful and disgusting. Yeah . So as I've said, we don't really get into that with Hassan because it was a sort of new story that escalated after we recorded with him. But I do think that some of the things that we touch on including Musket, including the sort of financing of someone like Yaxley Lennon, these are things that do come up in the conversation . In the meantime, we will obviously keep across as I imagine all of you will what's going on in Belfast and the kind of retaliatory riots that have that sort of initially sprung up and so far seemed to have died down quite quickly across the rest of the country . But it is alarming. It is very scary for a lot of us in this country and it is sort of stomach churning that it looks like we're in for a third summer of this. Like it really, really does look like we're in for, you know, a third consecutive year of migrant and immigrant communities being scared into not leaving their homes. We're in for a third consecutive summer of bad actors on the far right , you know , weaponizing all this stuff for their own ends . And I sort of I'm really pushing hard against accepting that as an inevitability . And I think it's incumbent on as many community leaders and political leaders right now in this moment to kind of push back against this kind of narrative. Honestly, my concern is that just on a kind of national level , yeah, this is the first time that Nigel Farage has sort of faced a threat from his right flank right. Nigel Farage's entire political career is being , you know, for most of it, really sort of actually outside of elected office, but being sat on the kind of right flank of the Conservative Party and essentially puppeteering the party from its right . And now with the kind of rise of restore Britain and the musk backing of someone like Rupert Lowe, the concern is that Farage is now being puppeted from his right . Right, exactly, because he was meant to be he was meant to be the guy who kept the loonies out that was what he was meant to be, right? He famously said, Oh we wouldn't let Tommy Robinson join the party. Yeah, but you've seen the change happening, you know, pure cold rain. What is that? That's the language of restore brick . So and also just the other day we saw Vader knocks talking about like, oh, we're going to get rid of what was it diversity from the economy? These things have a kind of knock on effect where it drags. So they're all dragging the Overton window is moving so far right now. This is my dark humor, but genuinely on the way here, I was like, well, maybe the World Cup will just make sure that people be too distracted to do some race rioting. I mean how sad is that? When I'm looking to FIFA to keep social cohesion more than our own government, I think things have gone terribly wrong. I wouldn't look to FIFA for any kind of moral leadership. I know I really, really wouldn't. You know , do you know what I take it back? Not FIFA, the boys the boys at the lions looking at the lions. Focus focus on them and you know, because I 'm pretty convinced if Janny Infantino could have given Is a World Cup he would have done if they'd hung on for a few more years . If they just hung in there for a few more years, he would infantino absolutely would have given him a world coat. Listen, we're now going to get we're now going to play you our interview with our San Pike. It was a fantastic conversation . Please enjoy. Pod save the UK is brought to you by Aura Frames. Aura Frames are a great gift for birthdays, anniversaries, a new home or just because you want to brighten the day of someone you love. We've all got that one photo or a few that we just love looking back on. Something that instantly takes you back to a moment in time. When you graduated from school, the birth of your first child, at that time, you had a really fantastic sandwich. 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Known as Hassan Abbey online, Hassan's Twitch is one of the platform's most subscrib ed with over three million followers, but unless you're terminally online, you may not have heard of him until recently when he and his uncle Chenk a, both due to appear at London's South by South West Festival were blocked from entering the country. The home office confirmed that it denied Hassan entry on the grounds that his presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good, but they haven't provided any more details than that. Last month eleven far right agitators were blocked from entering the country under the same grounds . They were expecting to attend the United Kingdom rally organised by Stephen Yaxley, Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson. At the time, Kirstam has said we're in a fight for the soul of this country and that he would block those coming into the UK who seek to incite hatred and violence. So Hassan isn't besties with the US government either having made, it onto the official White House website page for left wing lunacy. Yes, that's right, that is a real website page. And he entered that for lamenting that President Trump was still alive. Welcome to Podsafe the UK. That's quite a rap sheet, man. Yeah , and there's definitely still a lot that couldn't even make it into the cut with the introduction . A month ago , I also got word from Fox News that there was a subpoena that was coming. Whoa , that I have not received yet from the treasury because I went alongside Jeremy Corbyn and activists and advocates and politicians and journalists from all around the world , I went alongside them to Cuba to deliver humanitarian aid, which the federal government has now decided should be criminalized in some capacity. It's all up in the air, of course, because Fox News claimed I had received a subpoena. I had not . But that is the nature of American politics nowadays , where there's direct coordination between right wing agitators, right wing media , and all of our regulatory agencies that in the past were tasked with trying to figure out what level of involvement oligarchs had with Vladimir Putin or financial transactions that were taking place or more commonly whenever an American capital owner decides that there is market competition that they want to destroy. They would go to the treasury and say sanction this company. And now they are deploying that technique towards Twitch streamers that the government has considered to be that the government considers a bridge too far, you know, political dissidents that they do not want in the country. Can I just ask a subsidiary question off the back of that? Are Fox News now delivering subpoenas? Is that how thin the membrane is between the federal government. They almost their job under do . There are no one left to deliver superiors. Fuck is going off. Yeah, and it's really funny because they also obviously they like hound me wherever I go and when they do, they're like, oh, what do you think about the government investigating you? What about this being? And I'm like, I haven't received one. You guys know better than I do. Like you are saying I've received one. I have not. So listen, Hassan, so it's wonderful to meet you. I confess when you came on my screen, I did have a thought which was, oh, so he doesn't have eight heads after all. I mean, the villainization of you, I half expected that you do like lasers from your eyes, you contro l bats and the weather or something, but you are just a guy . Yeah, and let's leave let's remember my Hindu upbringing and leave eight heads off the demon list . Okay . Okay , I'm just saying you are just a normal man and it must be quite strange to be just a normal man and leading so much international news . So I guess let's start with that international news. You have had your ETA revoked. You said you genuinely didn't think this would happen . Yeah, I mean how did that decision reach you? Were you at the airport and they just said, don't get on this plane? No. Luckily, I wasn't. I was actually coming later , but my uncle, Jenk Uger, was flying out with this whole family. My family, my mom was supposed to fly out with me as well. And Jenk was at the airport and they st stopoppedped him him. They from getting on the plane with his whole family. They were like, You don't have a visa, you can't get on this plane. And so he tweeted it out and he let me know that his visa had been revoked. That led us to look my team to look and see if my ETA was revoked. We found out it was . I mean it's a strange list of people , these kind of far right agitators that were supposed to come for a United Kingdom rally , Valentina G omez who is described here as being an anti Islam influencer or Kanye West, who was recently blocked from headlining wireless. I mean that's not that's going to be a list you weren't planning on. I mean, in fairness, left wing lunacy, fine. That might be a list you're expecting to be on the White House's website, but this is not a list you expect to be part of, right? Yeah, no, absolutely. I think like there are deliberate agitators , deliberate far right agitators that traffic in bigotry . And ironically enough, many of these institutions , even like center left institutions are now center right institutions like the Labor Government would consider my worldview to be far too woke , right? Like they would have an issue with my commentary not because or at least in the past, not because my worldview is morally repugnant because it's hateful , but because it's too woke and it's like electorally insufficient, right? It's not you're not going to be able to win elections if you're this woke . That's usually what I hear from the Democratic Party as a matter of fact, here in the United States of America, and certainly like the worldview that I represent would be considered far left . So it was shocking to it was shocking to see the laborvern Gmento cons ider me to be a dangerous dissident and my presence to be not conducive to the public good in the UK when the Tory government didn't seem toed think so they had no issues allowing me to enter the country and do whatever I wanted because if you are in any way shape or form reasonable, you would recognize that, you know, I have hyperbolic moments but ultimately I am someone who has spent a lifetime combating bigotry, combating far right extremism, combating misinformation on the internet . So it's it's remarkable to try and bracket myself off and Cenk as well and Cank is nowhere near, I would say, as radical as I am in terms of his world. We mean he's a basic social democrat, right? It's like he's a social democrat who is very upset with Israel , which is, I think , the most popular position you can have in American politics right now, and yet that was enough for the British government to decide that we were we were agitators, that we were dangerous . And the only reason why I say this is because it's not like Shavana Mahmoud came out and said, This is why we made this decision, right? They never do. But at least with in the instance of Kyoest or far right Polish minister or Valentina Gomez, there's so much information out there that you can point to that that whether people agree with it or not, they kind of under stand exactly where this band's coming from. In my circumstance or in Jenkin's circumstance, there wasn't so much information out there that you could point to. So they tried to do the same thing , like a choice clips , most of which revolved around my commentary . Nothing for Jank, by the way, again, which is I keep going back to that because like this was almost like a package deal and and I feel really terrible about what happened to him and his family not being able to go to the UK because I feel like he got caught in the crossfires a little bit because the there were Israel advocacy groups in the UK leading up to my potential travel to the UK, making a big fuss. There were some articles that were written. There was a labor MP that was demanding that the home office revo myked visa . And it was all the same stuff. This guy's dangerous. He said America deserved nine eleven in twenty nineteen . Even though he apologized for the language that he'd used at the time and he was simply talking about the concept of the blowback. It doesn't matter . And even though he has traveled to the UK ten plus times since twenty nineteen, we've decided now is the moment to pounce on this decision. It was very deliberate. It was very obvious. then And they were claiming that I was anti Semitic , which is again doubly ironic considering last time I went to the UK , I went to the Oxford Union to deliver a thirty minute speech on the dangers of anti Semitism and how we must combat it . Yeah. So all of this stuff was ridiculous, but I think the real issue that they had was with my commentary around the Palestinian resist ance , something that I had quote unquote doubled down on Pod Save America as a matter of fact as well . This became a big point of contention. The ADL has been making a lot of fuss here about my statement saying like Hamas a thousand times better than Israel or I'm a harm reduction voter and I would vote for Hamas over Israel. This is the meat of the argument from their perspective. Of course, it has nothing to do with anti Semitism and everything to do with whether or not you know occupied people have an internationally protected right to resist against their occupation militarily , not necessar ily endorsing the methods overall but just the principle militant resistance . And when I bring that up in a less than academic and sanitized context , people get very frustrated and I saw a version of this with LBC with Lewis Goodall, who I had a conversation with only a couple days ago. He had actually criticized Shabatomahmoud, right? He's I assum ed he was some, you know , center left liberal type, right? And the conversation started off about the dangers of the labor government restricting people's travel over silliness over differences in opinion . And it kind of ended with Lewis endorsing Shabanam ud's decision because he just also was very frustrated with the things that I was saying instead of actually having a conversation around it. So he's going through his Twitter for heat . And he repeatedly was saying, I still don't support the decision to ock Hassan from coming to the United Kingdom. So he still's to borrow a phrase, he's still doubling down on that as a sort of principle , but definitely the conversation went in a few different directions that I think it seems like you weren't anticipating. Most people who are anti Israel at this point understand the Israel's committed genocide have never actually taken the next step to think about like eighty years of occupation forced the hands the occupied people to resist militarily against such cruelty, such brutality. But I think conversations like this are healthy and productive because when they do hear someone say that, it kind of flips a switch in their minds where they go, wait a minute, actually that does kind of make sense. Of course people are going to resist. Like what, do you mean? What would you do? And it's not exactly a unique it's not exactly a unique perspective either as I brought up to Lewis. In our conversation, I was like, the heads of Shinbet have said this, right? Like former Israeli prime ministers have been like, if I was on the other side of that border, I'd be fighting against us too. I mean, look, it's a it's provocative statement. It's intentionally provocative , but I don't think it's an immoral statement at all. And I don't think it's an incorrect assessment at all. It's actually precisely because it's not it's not wrong or indefensible that people have a hard time dealing with this sentiment. If you court enough people , if you force them to live in a hermetically sealed area, there's an open air prison where you're literally dictating what they can and can't eat, that was before October seventh, right? Like that existence is always going to create some kind of resistance for me to have this conversation as a white passing guy in the Western world with a decent amount of mainstream prominence is a very frustr ating reality for limitations that Zionist groups have been able to set on what is permissible discourse for a very long time. Moving away from Gaza at the moment , you know , your brand, your Fire brand, as the language people always use about you, a fire brand is not just when you're talking about Israel Palestinian, it's also when you're talking about the Democrats in America, you have a style, you have a approach. And the thing I want to hear from you is like why it's so important that you continue to have that style despite everyone saying, No, no, no, tone down , watch what you're saying. Why is it so important? I mean, it's not even necessarily something that I ham up. It's just who I am too. You know? So it's just people are people are constantly like, No, no, no, you don't understand. You have to be more boring when you talk about this stuff. It's like why you can just like avoid you can just avoid hearing about it. Is that what it is? Like I don't know it's just who I am. I've never I've never hammed it up or anything . It's just sometimes I get very passionate and very angry . I operate in a very interactive medium. That's part of the reason why when I'm doing podcasts like this one or British media hits, I probably come across very different than when I'm live broadcasting to an arena, a stadium full of people who anonymously can come back at me and say some of the most heinous things you've ever heard and then I respond to them in real time in this like super passionate back and forth , you know, that's that's definitely going to be a little bit different, right? How consciously you of adjusting those personas. L whenike you go between a conversation like this or a conversation like the one you had with LBC or addressing the Oxford Union versus are you making adjustments in real time or are you trying to present as consistent a version of yourself as possible across these different ? I'm trying to be as consistent as possible but I'm also matching the energy of people that I'm talking to. If someone if some if you guys out of out of nowhere decided to behave like an anonymous internet troll and you were like, well, don't you think Israel is the most moral nation on the planet? I would probably slowly but surely work through the process and depending on how much you wear me down, I would probably react at some point, right? Yeah. It's definitely a lot easier not to lose my cool in a setting like this as opposed to like anonymous internet trolls, of course. Oh God, I can imagine. I think it's probably worth just all of us taking a second to examine whether the UK government has backed themselves into a corner with the specifics of why you've been not been permitted into the country. So again, let's return to this phrase not cond ucive to the public good. Now , in September when Elon Musk addressed the United Kingdom March , he spoke via video link and said, You either fight back or you die . And it was a specific criticism of uncontrolled migr . But based on things that are not conducive to the public good we can't let Musk into the country. I mean I hope that doesn't sound too simplistic , but if we're now he ase is designed to incite a civil war . You know, Nigel Farage last week called for pure cold rage on the streets of the United Kingdom in response to a terrible murder that's happened here . That terrible murder has also been seized upon by, amongst others, JD Vance in America. Now, I would argue that Vance's comments and Musk's comments are not conducive to the public good. I mean, I know the answer to this, but are those people going to be banned from entering the United States? I don't . I don't think I don't think you're going to stop. You know, it's I'm also not as much as a like random rabble rouser as maybe some people perceive me to be either, especially at this point in my in my career in American politics, you know, I work with politicians, right? I work with candidates . A lot of the candidates I work with are currently winning where there's like this massive insurgency run that's taking shape in American in the American Democratic Party's midterms right now . There are influential politicians that I also consistently am in contact with with , right ? All the way from New York Mayor Zoram Mudani to Bernie Sanders and AOC Rashida Talib hanomar, Rokana , right ? So these are these are people that I guess now also are in question. I mean, they don't use hyperbolic language. They have to be very careful. They're not commentators . And especially when you're on the left, you have to be exceptionally careful with your language. If you're on the right, you can say whatever you want as you've also demonstrated. Also, you quite close to home for us. You've been on Pod Save America quite a few times. Is John Lovet about to be sanctioned by the UK government ? Yeah, that would be that would be really funny because I was talking to it. I was talking to John Favreau when I when I talked to Hamas thing and that and the reality of the matter is a lot of people in the audience were like, you know what? I never had thought about it like that. This actually makes sense, which is exactly the point, right? And that's precisely what I think a lot Zionist advocacy groups fear. They don't want people to think about it. They're completely losing the argument when it comes to Israel's approvals . But as long as they can maintain this idea that like, yeah, sure, they're really violent and maybe they're a little overboard , but they're doing it because they're fighting against these like barbaric hordes that deserve to be put down. If they if they just stick to that, then they won't lose the entire conversation, I guess. After the break, we'll be talking to Hassan about the future of UK politics and solid arity on the left. As they say, when America sneezes, we all get sick. So this week, our friends at Podsave America were joined by football fan and British American Roger Bennett to talk about the US hosted World Cup. Plus, John John and Tommy discuss the latest in Iran and the US News ecosystem and the NBA finals. Tune in to Podsave America for no bullshit conversations about US politics on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. Pod save the UK is brought to you by BT. We talk a lot on this show about the big things shaping Britain. The economy, public services, business, technology, for so much of what keeps the country moving is the infrastructure we barely even notice. Exactly. The system's quietly working in the background, keeping homes connected, businesses running, and services operating, they only really get attention when they stop working, which is why companies like BT matter. For one hundred and eighty years, BT has built a legacy of engineering excellence, helping power the connections that modern Britain depends on. BT's network is in many ways the silent engine of the UK building and maintaining the resilient infrastructure that keeps communities connected and the country moving forward. And security is a big part of that. BT helps protect homes and businesses by shielding the UK from around four million cyber threats every day, providing a vital layer of defense that most of us never even see. It's that combination of reliability, resilience, and specialist expertise that's made BT the most trusted network, supporting more homes and businesses than any other BT behind Brilliant Things Search YBT to find out more In the UK you had meetings scheduled. So there was this appearance at South by Southwest where you're going to be interviewed by Asharka . There were meetings scheduled with Janis Barrafakis, Zach Palansk i, Jeremy Corbyn nothing with the Labor Government or the PLP . No , no, not even a little bit. Look, I'm 's the interesting thing. I mean, I think the Labor Party in the UK and the Democratic Party, like the centrist establishment, Democratic Party sister spirits They are currently swept away by neoliberalism and desperately trying to find a way out of the political crisis that they're facing by the growth of the far right in our respective countries . And their solution to that has been devastating. Their solution to that has been to lean into the culture war narratives and tried to present themselves as the more moderate version, the lighter version of the fascist far right . The Democrats are doing this openly or at least some are doing this openly in the United States. They did this and failed against Donald Trum p in twenty twenty four, something that I was very critical of . And I think the Labor Government is doing the exact same thing in the UK Nigel not Nigel for I sorry, Kir Starmer coming out and saying we're becoming a nation is the mother of all Freud . Well, I was about to say him coming out and saying we're becoming a nation of strangers . I mean, is that Nigel Farage? Did you just crib that from Nigel Farage's speech? I mean, that's ridiculous. He is trafficking in unbelievably dangerous white nativist anti migrant sentiment with the hopes that he can soothe the masses because God forbid , God forbid they they make any significant changes that pertain to the economic struggles that the British working class is experiencing , right? There's only one way out of that . If you if you cannot , if you cannot go against capitalism and owners of capital and their interests, if your goal is constant austerity and constant privatization to take away what was previously owned by the government and to starve it and then to justify its privatization so that profiteers can come in and ruin the system even further while still, you know, generating tremendous profits off of it and and that creates a lot of volatility . Then you can only take that angst and that anger and manipulate it in the direction of marginalized people, vulnerable people to make it seem like it's actually the migrants and the transgender people that are responsible for why your social services are not working , why your trains are no longer running on time, or why the NHS is underfunded. It's not the migrants that are underfunding the NHS, it's actually the migrants that are working in the National Health care Service, right? I mean, it's totally ridiculous. So when I hear you speak there, because I've heard you say in interviews that your aim is to pull the Democrat Party to the left . But where I'm listening to you now . I feel like maybe your mission wouldn't be the same with labour. Maybe your feeling about labor is that they're done. That's move on. If you're left and progressive , find another party, you know, like Nish pointed out , you didn't have any meetings with the Labour Party, but Mr. Corbyn, obviously, your party and the Greens , what do you think is that, should we just abandon the Labour Party now? So from my perspective , I have no loyalty to parties. I have a loyalty to political goals. I have political goals . I have a loyalty to the working class no matter where they are , not you, know , not restricted by national boundaries or ethnicity or religion I that's what I care about. I care about advancing the material conditions of the international working class . And if the Labor Party is no longer a viable option to do that, to advance that political project, then I have no problems working with someone else who will do it, right? And as a matter of fact, Zach Polenski has taken advantage of this political vacuum, this political crisis, and I'm glad he was there to do so because I think in the absence of a green party , British politics would be so much worse currently because there would be no alternative to the right wing labor government and the increasingly more popular far right growth in both reform and restore Britain So yeah, I will work with anyone and everyone as long as they are sincerely advancing the interests of the working class . In the American system, obviously, there is this duopopoly. There is the two party route, unfortunately. We don't have a parliamentary system . We don't have a multi party system at all , but the Democratic Party is actually very weak . So and the Democratic Party is more a brand than it is a real political organization, right? They're basically just a holdover for corporate interests in the interests of foreign lobbies for the most part. They're they're a vehicle to take the demands of international corporations and profit seekers and deliver those demands directly to the party politicians . And for the longest time , Democrats have gladly done that. But in an effort to also win votes whenever they actually run in elections, they also have to present themselves as like this ostensibly leftist movement, this leftist party with no real interest in advancing those goals . So for that reason , I see what I'm doing as holding the party to account. There's got to be a reason why these insurgency campaigns are actually , you know, out fundraising some of these old institutionalists with small dollar donations and actually winning these races against all odds, against the party system, against the party machine in many of these circumstances like Chris Robin in Philadelphia, right? Or Adam Hamai in New Jersey, Anna Lilia Meha also in New Jersey Zara Mumdanni in New York and hopefully the rest of the New York City DSA slate . see We what happ'ensll in the midterms . The reason why these people are actually winning within the party system is because they are genuinely fighting the things that Democrats said they care about for the longest time that they actually, once they're in power, show no interest in advancing . So your kind of specific political role you see as being sort of energizing and drawing focus to specific candidates . But what you're saying in terms of the electoral map of America is in reality there is no real way to challenge that sort of duopoly because of the structures in place. But in the UK , you think our electrical mathematics might be more conducive towards third party influence. For the time being, that is, of course, I mean in America , that's just how it is. So Isaiah take advantage of the weakness in the Democratic Party instead . We talk about it a lot on this show, but Nigel Froz probably is the single most influential politician of our lifetimes , but without actually having held public office really for a very limited period of that time. And one of the offices he held was as an MEP, a member of the European Parliament, where he sort of did Farc call because he was ideologically opposed to the existence of the European Parliament. It was a strange thing that we did there. Yeah, he took the paycheck yeah . But is there that do you think that someone like Zach Polanski and the Green Party , is there a way that they could create a kind of parallel effect on the Labour Party? Or is it more actually about seeing the Green Party building an infrastructure that allows it to be a genuine contender to run the country. One of the things that I've identified is that they have a decentralized structure, which I assume is like somewhat problematic and will probably lead to issues down the line. The other problem is that they're also not like an openly socialist party, even though that transition is taking place right now. So I will admit that I'm a little biased towards the greens because of the grains performance that I usually see all around the Western world. I often see them as unserious, right? And this was the first time where I was actually paying attention . I think a lot of people in this country have that issue. You know, we've sort of talked to Zach Plansky on this show about that. Yeah, I think it's different now. I think Zach is doing a pretty good job of and has done a pretty good job of like revamping the green brand and the party itself . Having said that, however, I don't know what the limit ations are towards the limitations are to becoming a dominant party in the same way that like reform has completely overtaken the British right I hope it can happen , and I think it can't be worse than the labor government because the labor government with all of its institutional prowess has squandered wondered decades of goodwill that they were able to generate off of being the closest to real labor politics, real working class politics in the United Kingdom. Last week on the show, the political journalist Zoe Crowther described Starmer as dead man walking. And so every policy announcement that comes out of the Labour Party at the moment is kind of being taken with a blood pressure endangering portion of Seoul. But one of the things they've announced this week is a ban on what they've deemed harmful forms of social media for the under sixties and it was the start of London Tech Week and Starmore sort of threatening that the government will legislate if tech companies don't stop children using phones to take in exchange naked images of themselves. Now, regardless of whether Starmer what Starmer's political future is , what do you think about these kind of loosely proposed the different variations of these bans, there's one that's come into effect in Australia. This is one of a series that has been proposed in the UK . My feeling and I mean this is only a semi comedic thing, but my feeling is if you're going to ban under sixteen's you have to also ban over fifty ' s because like those are the lads that have done the real damn , you know, those are the those are the fellas that have done the real the real hard line damage. But just what do you what do you feel instinctively about social media bans and restrictions from the government? I worry about it because I think that whenever the government takes initiatives such as this one , they obviously use it as a way to open the door to a much broader form of repression and much more stringent mechanisms of control over what kind of speech is perm issible or who's allowed to say whatever they want on the internet . So there is a very real fear there. It never stops. And of course, like the conversation always starts with like the most understandable position , they're not going to come in and be like, oh, if you're saying something that we don't like, you shouldn't be on the internet and your ID needs to be associated with everything that you say and do on the internet, right ? So on the one hand , I understand need to try and protect the youth It's an honest goal, but I don't think that's the actual goal of any of these governments. I think they want to engage in mass surveillance. I definitely hear what you're saying, but I am in favor of some maybe the issue here is banning, but like I am in favor of a regulatory framework for social media companies because I think they have been allowed to operate as publishers without any of the legal responsib ility that publishing organizations are subjected to. They're publishing organizations for profit, but they're , you know, they're tech companies and they're sort of essentially software operators for regulatory purposes. I feel like there has to be a way to close that gap because I definitely know what you mean about the about the sort of surveillance capitalist side of this, but there is I do think there is a regulatory framework that needs to be put in place. Oh yeah. There's so many different both corporate and societal frameworks that these companies seem completely impervious to. Yeah, no, I think I think chopping them down to bits is the appropriate measure in this circumstance . But I do I do worry about mass surveillance initiatives because I live in America. I mean, we live in a surveillance state already , and our government is actively spying on us. And they are directly contracting this spyware out to companies like Palantir . And like when Doge came into power, for example, when Elon Musk came in, some of the things that he did initially were obviously gutting the regulatory agencies that were prosecut ing him and his businesses . But there was a lot of private information that reached unsavory hands almost instantly . And that is a terrifying pro spect and that is what I worry about first and foremost. I don't know what the perfect solution is. I just don't have a lot of faith in the British government nor the American government to do the right thing or have the honest intention of like making the internet as safe a place as possible for the youth as they claim they're trying to do. I think they're simply doing that to get everyone on a registry so they can better monitor their actions and maybe even punish them for the things they say and do online in a way that they couldn't in the past because there was some level of anonymity and some level of protection . Well, certainly, at the very least, even if that's not what they're setting out to do, it's quite easy for it to become the thing that happens, isn't it? Yeah, that's the concern . Look, you are one of the most powerful left wing political communicators of our generation. I think that's fair to say that . And people talk a lot about in the UK about how labour doesn't tell a very good story or the left more broadly. But one thing I'm that of ten wondering about is like , so look, you know, today in this interview, you have pulled no punches and some people will say, well, actually , we have to take everyone with us and maybe we shouldn't say these things because we need to take everybody with us and we need to not engage in your friend, your enemy sort of language. On the other hand, though, how do you move forward if you don't tell the truth? How do you move forward if you don't say how it is? What do you think about that question about what is the story we need to tell and can we tell it without essentially rubbing people the wrong way or potentially turning people away? , have some fairly simple to understand principles . We must always seek truth from facts and we must always say the truth. There's never been an instance where political changes come without ruffling some feathers, right ? I think people have the opportunity to understand that message even if it's against their class interest and recognize that is charting a much better, much more egalitarian path forward. I mean, I myself I'm in very successful financial situation at this point. You know, I'm endlessly for tunate and I recognize that , but I still understand that in order for all of us to unlock our potential , that we have to change the system's design. The reality of the matter is I think capitalism has outlived its usefulness , right? And when I say this kind of stuff, there's a lot of antagonism towards this idea because I think people have been propagandized into believing that this is a scary idea . And the irony, of course, is that the overwhelming majority of the masses are working class and they aren't benefiting from this system's design. And yet they've been taught that they actually are. I just mean like common citizens, you know , someone who is a MAGA person but is just an ordinary person . Like how do we communicate with them? Is there a tonal difference? Should there be a tonal difference? Oh, absolutely. I think Michael Brooks , who unfortunately passed away, a good friend of mine , he used to always say , be kind to people, be ruthless to systems and I abide by that mantra as well . When I'm talking to an average person , regardless of their political perspectives, I try to be endlessly charitable in those conversations when I'm trying to explain to them the situation and who's actually dominating their lives until they show me that they're a hatemonger or a fascist or whatever , I'm always going to be open minded. I'm always going to try to convince them, I'm always going to try to change their minds. This is something that I stress all the time. People come into my chat, be like, you're a Muslim terrorist and I hope you kill yourself or I hope someone kills you. I'll be like, look, man, I just want you to have healthcare. It's true. I don't care. I don't care that this person feels this level of anger and hatred towards me, that they think I'm a real danger that that must be forcibly excised from American from, you know, the American national boundaries, I still want that person to have a better life. I want that person to be able to have a roof over his heads. I want that person to be able to to have a better life and a better future for their children , right? That's my ultimate goal. I don't care . And the same goes for every single person. It's like I'm not in the business of vengeance. I'm not in the business of violence. That conversation and the most charitable interpretation is one that is very difficult to oppose . So most people in the opposition that either have a class interest or serve the interest of the super wealthy have to bastardize what I'm saying and, you know, take choice quotes to make it seem like , you know, what I'm trying to advance here is danger ous, unstable too destructive . I mean, it is destructive. It's destructive to the interests of profit. It's destructive to those who currently benefit from the way things are going, but it's not destructive in the sense that they would, you know, receive any sort of physical punishment or harm . It's destructive to the interests of profits at the end of the day. Sorry, just because you mentioned some of the abuse that you get on your feed. And I did hear an interview where you talked about how obviously you have a Muslim name, I have a Muslim name as well. I'm, you know, brown and a woman, so I'm not going to be going on Twitch. Anytime soon. Thank you for your work. Much appreciated. But you reflected that if your name was like Hank and you were from somewhere else, would you get half the stick that you get? How does Islamophobia shape your everyday politics . I mean, it's the same standard that athletes are held to, right? When they're performing well , they're they're cherished figures that are advancing the nation . And when they're performing poorly , they are outsiders , they are consistently reminded that they're not true British nationals , right? And the same goes for someone like myself. Look, I was born in the United States of America. I've lived here since I was eighteen, almost half my life at this point , right ? And obviously, if I didn't care about the United States, if I didn't care about this country, I would just leave. I'd go live somewhere else, right? But I want to fix it. And I want to fix it because I know that America has tremendous promise, tremendous potential . But unfortunately , my citizenship and my existence is seen as conditional . And the number one argument that is advanced against me, sometimes by the likes of Randy Fine, you know, sitting U. S. Congresspersons , is that I must be denaturalized and deported because I'm not a real American citizen. I'm a fake American citizen. And that's a really interesting concept because everyone is a fake American citizen at the end of the day. None of them , like everyone came here at a certain point unless, you're liter ally indigenous, unless you're Native American, you just came here. Your family came here at some point, right? And this dynamic, I think, is best represented with AOC. AOC's Puerto Rican, right? Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Puerto Rican. Her family has been American citizens for far longer than Trump's family has. And yet no one would ever call Trump's allegiance to America into question. No one would ever consider Donald Trump to only be a, you know, third generation American, right ? And when you're when you're a white guy and you're right wing, you're the most American. It doesn't matter if you came here, you know, last week . Some of the most redeemable aspects America are the fact that we are an unbelievably diverse country. It's one of the best qualities of America , you know? And same goes for other liberal historically progressive values that have been advanced in Western society like due process or free expression and the protection of free expression We initially before we were talking to you, Hassan, we were also having a conversation just reflecting on some of our work in our career. And again, that thing that is often said to us, you know, if you say anything critical is like, you don't like it. Go home then. We're always like, but we love Britain so much. This is why we're critical of it. We know that it can be better. Yeah, and also whenever I see, you know, when I watch Donald Trump's American Carnage inauguration in twenty seventeen, or whenever I see Nigel Farage describe Britain in twenty twenty six, I think, man, you got to move. Yeah . It sounds like you really fucking hate this place. It sounds like you hate these people because they're all the rhetoric circles around the same thing. Overrun with immigrants, overrun with crime, the poor people are scrounging off the state. The women want their stupid rights, the gays and lesbians and the transgender people all moaning the whole time. You're like, I think you hate most people in these cars. I must recommend that you move as quickly as possible. Also, as all children of immigrants know, we show love through criticism That's how we show love . Yeah, it's it's really funny you're bringing up a great point that I forgot to mention earlier, Steven Yaxley Lennon, Tommy Robinson, he hates this country and he is so hateful about the United Kingdom actually is . And yet his criticisms are never seen as unbritish . His criticisms are seen as the most British, but it's the exact opposite. It's the exact opposite of what the United Kingdom is supposed to be. So yeah, if you don't like it, leave . The last question, we've got to let you go , but we so appreciate the time you've taken to talk to us. The last question I want to ask is kind of, I guess, pertinent to this whole conversation, which is how important is international cooperation in the progressive space? Because I mean, when you look at the appalling events of the last few weeks in this country, you know, a murder that's being seized on for political ends, that then activates a whole network of international far right influencers , journalists, and politicians . And I have this feeling that we've not spent enough time trying to cultivate those networks to counteract that kind of thing. Well, I mean, for a start, in defense of us, we don't have the money so we do that. And you know, we are sort of known for in fighting. That's a thing that we're known for . Unfortunately. No, you're absolutely right. Unfortunately this is something that I care about quite a bit. This is something that I have worked to cultivate international solidarity amongst progressive organizations, against amongst socialist organizations communist movements as well against the growth of fascism because fascism is an international movement. It's not an internationalist movement, but it is an international movement. And that's perhaps best evidenced by new fascist coalition that is taking shape all around the world. And it's one that's very interesting. I bring this up all the time . It's Maga . Like all of the far right elements, the nationalist elements, supposedly nationalist elements everywhere around the world have decided to identify with MAGA and sometimes directly identify with MAGA. Sometimes they wear Trump hats and make America great again hats and it's like, aren't you supposed to be a nationalist for your country? It's so confusing to me. I mean, I brought this up in numerous other interviews as well. Charlie Kirk before he was assassinated was traveling to South Korea, was traveling to Japan . These are vassal states for American Empire. Let's be real, but their far right movements in these countries had also identified their movement as one being in solidarity with the make America Great Again Movement. There was no investment in national sovereignty whatsoever , and that they were willing compradors of American Empire. And I see this international coalition forming and I know that we have to fight back against it as also an international movement that cares about solidarity across borders and does away with national interests and focuses on the interests of a united working class . I know you're not going to mince your words here is the UK a vassal state of America. Oh yes, I mean, come on. Of course. Of course . I mean, there is no question . Your eyebrows there is no blasted a hole in the ceiling of whatever room you were in there, has that? I really thought I genuinely thought he was going to pause here. We've seen it. I mean, we've seen it. There's no there's no other way to interpret what's going on. I think middle powers under the banner of the European Union are totally vassalized and and there are instances given Trump's bravado and Trump's vulgar use of language. There are plenty of instances where even European leadership feels that they have been portrayed as vassals. Middle powers have a lot of power only when they are united , right? I mean, there's one middle power that has been fairly strong in opposing the Maga wave, and that is Iran, ironically enough . They have been able to they've been able to stop the MAGA expansion and and its initiatives in the in the Middle East. I don't think it should get to that point, obviously , but I do think that Europe should maintain its or regain its sovereignty and its dignity. And the only way that they can do that is if they are a United force that leverages its relationships with other countries, other powerful countries against the United States of America that has long taken advantage of the European Union. Well , listen, I'd never heard the word vassalized before. I'm going to take that with me vassalized. I mean, it is fascinating. I mean, you know, we have to let you go, but one thing about Europe , it has a very strong left history and I think actually I always think in Britain we would do better to look at Spain, look at France, look at Portugal, maybe less so looking at the states for inspiration. Having said that, though, clearly some of our best communicators coming out the states at the moment. So thank you to one of them Hasan Pika. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah, thanks for John. Thank you for having me. That's it. Thank you so much for listening to Punzo the UK. Please do keep listening. Also, if the idea of seeing me do stand up is appealing to you, you can watch my stand up special on YouTube for free right now. And if the idea of seeing me do stand up in real life is appealing to you, you can go and get tickets for my upcoming tour, Angry Humour from a really nice guy at nichecoma. co. uk two D and three D niche opportunities Yes, two D and three D two D and three D. Well four D . I will be spitting on audience members. Isn't it like forty X movies? I thought the fourth dimension was space and time. It's like there's this thing where you can watch movies in forty X. If you watch Twister in forty X, eight the wind blows on you. If you watch avatar, you get splashed with water. That sounds just water rubbish. Is it all water based? It's sort of water and shaking What 's shaking? Rubbish. All right, okay. Well, anyway, Pods over the UK is an intelligent squared production for crooked media. Thanks to senior producer, Esmiash, digital producer, Chelsea Nong Pinksa and assistant producer Merita Carla. Our theme music is by Vasilis Photopolis. The executive producer B Duncan can K two.