The vast majority of Republicans and political conservatives breathed a sigh of relief when President Donald Trump finally and conclusively read former Fox News host Tucker Carlson out of his MAGA movement last week. In addition to platforming and coddling a wide array of extremist Jew-haters and Israel-bashers on his podcast, Carlson has spent the last year assailing the president’s foreign-policy decisions, in particular his strong stand against Iran.
Last month, Trump said Carlson had “lost his way.” But the podcaster’s comments on April 7, when he advocated that U.S. officials refuse to obey Trump’s orders in the conflict with Iran, were the last straw. After that, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to excoriate Carlson, along with fellow podcasters Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly and Alex Jones, for their opposition to the war against the Islamist regime. In typical Trumpian hyperbolic prose, sprinkled with capital letters, he said they were “TV NUT JOBS with “low IQs” who would say anything to generate clicks, and that they had no place in his party or the MAGA movement.
Deplore Trump’s unpresidential and sometimes vulgar discourse if you like, but in this case, he was only telling the truth when he denounced them as demagogic charlatans whose policy position on the war amounts to acquiescence of, if not support for, an Iranian nuclear weapon. His denunciation may have been long overdue after tolerating and even encouraging Carlson by allowing him to visit the White House and be part of his Mar-a-Lago inner circle. But at last, he drew a thick red line between his administration and a group of crackpot conspiracy-mongers who are, among other things, spreading hatred for Jews—or in Kelly’s case, defending those who do so.
The path to popularity on the left
The question now is why Democrats, who have long bashed Trump for what they claim is encouragement of extremism, can’t do the same for their own version of Tucker Carlson: podcaster Hasan Piker.
Piker is a Turkish immigrant and the nephew of Cenk Uygur. His uncle is a well-known progressive talking head and Israel-hater who hosts “The Young Turks” show, where Piker got his start. But it was on the Twitch livestreaming platform where he became rich and popular, though he comes from family money.
In recent years, the 34-year-old has become something of an internet phenomenon. GQ magazine called him in a glossy fawning profile “the hottest left-wing commentator online.” Other liberal outlets, such as The New York Times, Rolling Stone, TIME, New York Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic and PBS have platformed him or accorded him similarly flattering coverage.
Part of his appeal is that, as PBS put it, he’s considered a “himbo.” By that, they are referencing not merely his good looks, much-admired workout regimen and charisma, but a deliberate attempt to put a socialist spin on what liberals might otherwise refer to as “toxic masculinity.” He’s not merely brash, misogynist and homophobic. Millions are apparently charmed by his unapologetic political extremism, which is mostly focused on the sort of antisemitism that has become fashionable on the political left.
Hating America and Israel
A Marxist who first made a splash on a streaming program with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), he routinely vents his hatred for the United States as a uniquely malevolent force in the world. At an event where he was a featured speaker at Yale University, he recently lamented the fall of the Soviet Union because he said that the totalitarian state acted as a check on American influence. He also supports the Chinese Communist Party and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
But most of his venom is reserved for Israel and the Jews. As the Anti-Defamation League has noted, he is a proud and unapologetic antisemite, as well as someone who “has a long record of commending and excusing terrorism.” On top of that, “he routinely uses his platform to spread anti-Jewish tropes, amplify propaganda from designated terrorist groups, and promote toxic anti-Zionism.”
Just this week, he went on the popular liberal “Pod Save America” podcast and declared that the terrorists of Hamas who perpetrated the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust in their orgy of murder, rape, torture and kidnapping on Oct. 7, 2023, are “one thousand times better than Israel.”
With such views, you might think that Democratic politicians, who are always talking about how Trump has legitimized the far right (even though such extremists hate the president specifically because he is a supporter of Israel), wouldn’t want to go near him. You’d be wrong about that. Among the recent guests on his show have been Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.); billionaire California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer; Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson; and former Obama administration adviser and occasional New York Times contributor Ben Rhodes.
He created a test case for Democratic tolerance of extremism by recently doing campaign appearances with Abdul El-Sayed, a rabid Israel-hater who is running for the Democratic nomination to hold a Michigan U.S. Senate seat.
The center-left group Third Way, led by veteran Democratic congressional staffer Jonathan Cowan, protested that this was wrong and that members of his party should shun a hatemonger like Piker. For his trouble, he was blasted as a hypocritical advocate of cancel culture by most liberal outlets.
And that is the really troubling thing about Piker’s rise to popularity.
Progressives did their best to stifle debate about the toxic neo-Marxist ideologies that have become the new orthodoxy on the left. Those who dissented from critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism have been hounded out of liberal strongholds in the academy and the arts, denouncing traditional ideas about free speech as merely a way to excuse bad thoughts like racism. But rather than seeking to squelch Piker’s brand of leftism as both illiberal and bad politics, they are embracing him as the path to winning the youth vote.
Part of the left’s defense of Piker is rooted in an attempt to redefine antisemitism so as to exclude those who support a genocidal war against the Jewish state. Anti-Zionism is nothing more than a denial of Jewish rights and peoplehood, as well as an attempt to strip Jews of an essential element of their identity. But the political left is now committed to the belief that you can oppose the existence of the one Jewish state on the planet—and cheer for the mass murder of half of the world’s Jewish population that lives there—without being labeled an antisemite.
This is nonsense on stilts and a dangerous effort to legitimize hatred. The unfortunate fact is that it seems to be working with respect to a growing proportion of young people and others whose primary sources of information are their TikTok feeds and streamers like Piker. And it’s the foundation of all the arguments made in the mainstream liberal media’s various glowing content featuring Piker.
Indeed, it’s impossible to understand how the Democratic Party has turned on Israel in recent years without looking at how influencers like Piker and his vast following have scared officeholders who previously claimed to be staunch supporters of Israel. The vote this week in the U.S. Senate, in which 40 of 47 Democrats voted for resolutions banning arms sales to Israel in the midst of the existential war it is fighting against Iran and its terrorist auxiliaries, demonstrates this. It is no exaggeration to say that this would have been impossible without their party’s base living in a cultural milieu in which liberals were ready to declare a vile hater like Piker to be someone who deserved a hearing, if not applause.
Useful idiots
Most discouraging is the way those who claim to be opponents of what they consider to be Trump’s supposed terrible influence on American political culture and discourse are among the loudest in proclaiming that Piker must be accorded a prominent place in the Democratic coalition. It’s not just liberals like The New York Times’ Ezra Klein making this claim (the initial headline on his article was “Hasan Piker Is Not the Enemy,” which was subsequently changed to the less inflammatory “This Is Why There’s No Liberal Joe Rogan”).
The Bulwark was founded by former conservative and pro-Israel advocate William Kristol as a bastion of “Never Trump” opinion in which “true conservatism” would be preserved. But it has been making the same indefensible assertion about the need to include Piker in the Democratic tent, as well as opposing Cowan’s efforts to keep him out of it. Writers Laren Eagen and Tim Miller are opposed to Democrats treating Piker as beyond the pale. Miller was explicit in saying that Piker’s despicable views about Israel and Jews represent normative Democratic opinion now and should not be considered as disqualifying, while Eagen insists that making the podcaster’s antisemitism a “litmus test” is wrong.
It was left to onetime star conservative pundit Mona Charen, who, like Kristol, was a champion of the effort to stop Iran, but these days considers the most pro-Israel president in history to be a far greater threat, to pump the brakes on Piker. Charen agrees with her new friends on the left that Trump’s war on the Islamist regime is terrible; she has also abandoned virtually every other position she once stood for because she detests the president. Still, she worries that if Democrats gain votes by pandering to antisemites, it won’t be worth it.
She’s right about that. But the fact that this is a minority opinion even at The Bulwark is telling.
It makes it clear that it was she and Kristol who have sold their political souls—and not those conservatives who understand that, whatever their qualms about Trump, he has done more to defend American national interests, as well as Israel and the Jews, than more polite Republicans ever did.
With respect to the forces seeking to destroy Israel, Kristol and Charen are now examples of the same morally compromised figures that she once described as “useful idiots.” That was the title of her excellent 2003 book denouncing political liberals who allowed themselves to be exploited by the same Marxist and Islamists forces with which her new allies are now linked. That work now stands as an ironic memorial to how far she and her fellow victims of Trump derangement syndrome have fallen.
More dangerous than Tucker
The point is just that at the moment Trump was kicking Carlson out of the GOP tent, most liberals and Democrats are making clear that Piker has a place in theirs. His hate and extremism are clearly very much within the Overton Window of acceptable discourse on the left.
That Carlson and other antisemitic podcasters still present a danger to the GOP and conservatism should not be denied. The refusal of Vice President JD Vance, who is still considered the frontrunner to succeed Trump, to disavow Carlson—and his antisemitism and Israel-bashing—remains a dangerous portent of what may happen once the president leaves the scene.
But it is becoming apparent that Piker is an even bigger problem for Democrats than Carlson, Owens and the rest of the far-right podcaster crew are for the Republicans. He is far from being isolated or out of touch with what most Democrats believe, at least as far as Israel is concerned. That’s not the case with Carlson with respect to opinion on the right or within the MAGA movement that still supports Trump as well as the Jewish state. As the chorus of praise Piker is getting from the liberal media demonstrates, his extremism is now normative among liberals.
Ultimately, that may come back to haunt the Democrats. But it is worse news for those who understand that mainstreaming leftist hate is bad for America and dangerous for Jews.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
