I’ve Got No Problem With Communism - Hasan Piker

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Enroll today at hillsdale.edu slash trigger. That's hillsdale.edu slash trigger. Nice to be here, guys. Why the big side? Italy's Mussolini and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany were ruthless. uh fascist forms of governance my fear is that that is where capitalism inevitably leads there's too much instability there's too much chaos we need to restore order

Is there a country that's done socialism the way that you like? I would say China is probably the closest, I would say, to an example that we should follow. Like communism in America. I think that... Communism would be most likely an international thing. It'd be like the Star Trek universe. You think the Reform Party is a fascist? I think Reform Party as it stands currently is a nascent fascist. parliamentary group that hasn't reached its full potential yet. Relax, relax. This isn't an ad.

If you're not a fan of ads but love Trigonometry, join the thousands of Trigonometry members who get extended interviews, no ads, early access, and the ability to submit questions for upcoming guests. Sign up now at triggerpod.co.uk or click the link in the description of this episode. Sam Piker, welcome to Trigonometry. Nice to be here, guys. Why the big sigh? We will see. We'll see how this goes. I'm getting I'm getting cooked right now. Yeah. For those of you at home watching.

And this has got to be extra weird for you guys because you're British. And this is what the sun looks like normally. Yeah. No, it's nice to know. We are enjoying it. I'm sorry about the sun. This is not deliberate. We're not trying to cook you literally. But welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about you. Like you obviously got a massive Twitch channel. You're very successful streaming. Twitch is a gaming platform, but you talk on that.

and that's what people uh follow you for how how did you get there what's been your journey through life um i started my professional media career i guess uh as a nepotism recipient at my uncle's

26-person YouTube startup media network. I feel like calling it a media network is interesting because at that time, at that point, it was smaller than a mid-tier podcast. But I started there because... i just wanted to not live in new jersey i wanted to live in la and uh that's where the young turks headquarters were and i much like virtually all of my peers came out of college with

double major, great marks, and no job prospects whatsoever. So I was like, all right, I'll just start off my journey here. Uh, and it'll allow me to not be in, it'll allow me to be in LA where I want to be. Right. And, uh, slowly, but surely I worked my way, uh, through the ranks. They're offering a lot of free work.

uh just as a fill-in producer or filling guest host whenever you know someone didn't show up they were sick or something uh while i was actually doing the advertisement stuff on the back end i was basically the the singular advertisement operations person. Not only was I creating client lists, but doing cold calls, trying to get DR campaigns going for the Young Turks and like fill the inventory of the Young Turks with...

with some brand names that I think everyone is now familiar with, like Squarespace and things of that nature. That was a big client of mine initially. But I hated it. And I thought... you know i think i could do better if i were on an on-camera position and so but the problem was i was horrible on camera at first and i just kept going through it

My girlfriend at the time was like a model trying to become an actress. She was like, one of us has to actually work. And she was like, you should keep doing the advertising stuff to make money so that I can be.

uh you know a model an actress whatever and i was like uh okay and and even uh even a bunch of my friends were like maybe you should stop doing this on camera stuff you're not very good at it and i was like no i'm gonna keep going i'm gonna keep doing it because eventually i'll get better at it and i guess over the years i did get somewhat better at it but um while i was at the young turks i was doing all this stuff i i set up the show called the breakdown it was very successful because it

It aligned perfectly with the Facebook algorithm turning on the faucet. for video content this was when everyone was doing the pivot to video buzzfeed and all these other uh places there's uh there's a company called upworthy i don't know if you guys recall um way back in the day they were getting like you know tens of millions of views a week and my videos were getting like 30 million

views a week. I was contesting Tommy Loren's right-wing commentary at the time. And that was when I first made a name for myself, I guess, as a leftist political commentator. But... I wanted something more. I wanted something that I could call my own. I wanted a sense of community for myself. I didn't want to be under the umbrella of the Young Turks as much as I was. So...

I thought to myself, I play video games already when I'm not working. Might as well go to this platform called Twitch. It was a video gaming platform at the time, even though there was some commentary happening there as well. And I decided I'm just going to strap on a PlayStation camera onto my PlayStation 4 at the time and start live broadcasting while I play Fortnite. And I have a bunch of other...

friends who are journalists, activists, organizers, and whatnot that I play Fortnite with anyway. So we'll just talk about political issues while I do this. Now, there's a couple different reasons why I did that. Like I said, one, because I wanted to have something of my own, a media property of my own. The other reason was because I recognized that the gaming side of things, like the gaming culture side of that space was heavily dominated by right-wing commentary.

Whereas gamers were much more diverse in their opinion, myself included. And I wanted to present an alternative. I also wanted to... go against the grain because at the time this is we're talking like 2016 2017 at the peak of like woke sjw cartoonish depictions of what the left represented And there was some validity to the arguments that were being presented. Obviously, it was like the most maximalist, most ridiculous depiction of the left.

Some people would lean into that a little bit where they were like, no, we are like this. We are joy killers. We are woke skulls. And I was like, I don't think you have to be that. I think you can have fun and also still have progressive values. And I wanted to basically show that to a audience that had maybe never really encountered that. And I wanted to be in an environment that I was comfortable in.

There's a male who games. And that was a very male-focused gamer space, which was. And last but not least, I wanted to get better off the cuff. Because up until that moment, I had always scripted. my content i was i was writing it and then i would actually uh take the writing on my videos and turn it into uh a huffington post article so i would just like reformat my my scripts into an actual article and that was fine

but I wasn't very good off the cuff. So I thought to myself, if I can play a video game and talk about politics at the same time and be able to entertain people, maybe 30 at a time, maybe 300 at a time, if I'm lucky, then I can get a lot better.

at public speaking and speaking off the cuff. And as you guys might have figured out by now, I never shut the fuck up. So I guess it worked. I guess it worked. And you mentioned progressive values and that being something that's important to you. What are progressive values, would you say?

I think progressive values, for me at least, are founded around empathy, first and foremost, to try and uplift everyone's material conditions to the best of our ability. And focusing on... on protecting those who need protection and simultaneously advancing a cause of...

the way I think about it. It remains the cause of unlocking the potential of every single person, no matter where they are. Because right now, there are probably billions of brilliant people that never actually get the opportunity. to unlock their true potential because of where they're born. Like they might be born in Sudan in a village that is being overtaken by the RSF. They might be born in India to an impoverished neighborhood.

and are not going to have the access to education and therefore be able to truly revolutionize whatever sector they might be interested in revolutionizing. And I think that's... what I want to do. What do you think is the way to, because I think that's probably something the left and right actually agree on in my experience, you know, the center left, the center right, the kind of moderate, but.

I suppose the disagreement probably is about what you think is the way by which that happens. So the right might say, well, the answer to that is capitalism, right? I imagine you don't agree. So how do you think those things get those... people who don't currently have opportunity both in this country in other western countries but around the world what's the mechanism by which they get those opportunities i think creating a robust base of support like a like a minimum

a minimum social safety net for all is the way to do it. And there are many different ways of achieving that result. I don't think capitalism has been able to do that. What I mean by that is capitalism still revolves around the inherent contradiction of, at its most reductive way to put it, someone's got to clean the toilet. And in an effort to make sure that there is always going to be people that are wage laborers, there is this dynamic where we can't...

we can't advance humanity too much. This plays itself out in the international scale and unequal exchange, where if we were to allow a lot of the third world... to develop to a certain degree, then things would be far too costly. We wouldn't get the cheap materials and the cheap natural resources that we need to extract so that we can have an iPhone for the reasonable price of $500. I mean, even that's increasing now.

I personally think that if we were to do that, if we were to do that by stopping our endless and needless and cruel militarism in the global South. and allow these places to develop, extend an open hand to them, that we would allow society to flourish in ways that we previously have not foreseen. I guess...

Your point about cleaning toilets is interesting because something we've addressed a lot on this trip with guests right, left, center, et cetera, is the incredible wealth inequality and the speed at which the gap is... you know that's growing there's a big problem people on the right don't want to admit it and it's true but on the other hand someone is always going to have to clean the toilets right like we have a pretty big safety net in the uk

And what that's mainly done is trapped a lot of people in a place where they don't have to work and they therefore don't. And also you talk about important people from other countries to work for less. Kind of the consequence of that is it suppresses wages for the people in the country as well. So who would clean the toilets if we... So, great question. Let me address the wage depression aspect of this because this is the one area where...

Sometimes I hear Tucker Carlson talk about it and there's like some nuggets of truth in there because yes, importing labor into the country will always depress wages in the absence of good regulation. And good regulation in that format would be demanding wage parity and also not creating any other external factors that actually cause you to have a...

more servile labor force. What I mean by this is I want to use the example of H-1B visas. The reason why H-1B visa system exists on paper is because there are certain highly skilled positions. that as it stands, our American companies are unable to fulfill. They're not able to fill those roles with the domestic labor force, right? That's the on paper. In practice, of course, it creates a more pliable labor force that you're bringing in.

oftentimes from highly skilled countries that are still desperate, even if there is higher wages on average on the H-1B visa program, because if you lose your job, you get deported. Nobody wants to get deported. So they will do everything in their power to stay and work as hard as they physically possibly can. So this creates an environment where I think our bosses, our capital owners in America are like.

Why would I get an American worker who is in comparison to an Indian worker that's coming into the country that is desperate to keep this job? Why would I hire the American worker? I can pay the same fee to the Indian worker. or even a higher fee, as a matter of fact, to the Indian worker, because I know that he is going to work harder than the American labor force. So there is this competition. The way to solve that competition is through regulation. If...

The workers that were coming in from poorer countries were coming in with the knowledge that they are not going to be immediately deported, for example, and they have wage parity with the domestic labor force. This would actually make American companies think twice before hiring someone just as a replacement for the American worker because they wouldn't get any additional benefits as a boss.

They wouldn't get the additional benefit of like, I'm going to work you to the bone, right? Because I know if I fire, you're gone. You're gone out of the country and you want to be here. So that is a regulatory mechanism that we never implement in this country because our capital owners actually enjoy the two-tiered labor structure that we have here.

And come back to the who cleans the toilets, even when there's a social welfare system. I think that ultimately there's going to be people that fulfill these roles no matter what. And increasingly with automation and with AI. We're getting to a point where the route tasks are already being delegated to robots to begin with. So the way I see it is the person, there's always going to be someone that is tasked with this, tasked with either overseeing it.

if it's a robot doing it or directly doing it. But since it's an important factor in the commodity production, because someone has to engage in sanitation. I think it's much more valuable to ensure that they have a sense of autonomy and that those positions are hired and have enough.

they have enough replacement labor force so that they do less hours in general and still get a decent amount of pay and so that they can still feel human and have some sense of autonomy in the labor force where they can... do that job and still make an honest living and be able to feed their family and also have some free time on the side to do

to pursue whatever hobbies they want to pursue so the way to achieve that would be like what a really high minimum wage or like what what's the what's the way to get there like because i agree with the with the idea that people who are working every kind of job should have free time and make a good living

The question is, how do you do that? Because in a market economy, what you are paid is a function of what you produce, right? Well, I think in a market economy, what you are paid should be what you produce. I don't think that that's how it works in the market economy. I think in the market economy, your replaceability is what determines your wages, especially if you are replaceable by a non-domestic labor force, for example.

That depresses your wages even further on the domestic front for the citizen labor force. So I think you're right, though. In the market economy, your output should be the determining factor. That's actually... a socialist position ironically enough um not all socialists are against the market uh and uh I would say that the output is the most consequential factor in that regard. I agree. What that means, however, is that if the company is actually, for example, increasing its output.

and therefore generating more revenue overall, then everyone down to the most replaceable aspect of labor, which would be sanitation in this regard, should still get paid. a just wage, like fair compensation. Minimum wages is one way of doing it as a band-aid solution. I mean, but there are Nordic countries, for example, where there is no minimum wage because the minimum wage would ironically be a depressing factor.

on the overall average wages that people get. How have they achieved this, though? They've achieved this through sectoral bargaining. They've achieved this through robust unions and labor participation in these wage negotiations.

And that is the reason why they don't need to have a minimum wage. The minimum wage in and of itself is a big point of contention in the United States of America and a lot of other Western countries, only because our labor union participation in the United States is at less than 10% right now. which is unimaginably low. It's lower than countries that we have dominated like Chile, where we rewrote their constitution basically and wanted to...

unleash a wave of neoliberalism, sometimes in the hands of a dictator like Pinochet, even in that country, there's still 15% labor union participation. So it's still higher than the United States of America, which is crazy to me. If you've been following the immigration debate, you'll know how different the headlines can look depending on where you get your news. We use Ground News to help us step outside the echo chamber.

It shows you how the same story is framed differently across the political spectrum. So you can compare headlines and decide for yourself. Take the story about a massive immigration raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, USA. Follow along at ground.news slash trigonometry. Using Ground News, straight away we can quickly see that the story is being covered by outlets across the board. However, scrolling down the page...

Ground news allows me to easily compare the headlines. We can see CNN, which is firmly on the left, highlighted that nearly 500 workers were taken while Fox News on the right framed the raid as bold action.

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lets you compare headlines across the political spectrum and helps you identify what's being emphasized or ignored. If you care about getting to the truth by seeing things from all angles, ground news is essential. Go to... ground.news slash trigonometry and get 40% off their unlimited vantage plan. That's the plan we use. That link again is ground.news slash trigonometry. Hassan, I've got a lot of empathy for...

some of your positions, particularly when you talk about low skilled labor. So for context, my mother is a Venezuelan immigrant to the UK. When she was in the UK, she was a childminder. There was no minimum wage. My mum, roughly, I remember earning £2.20 an hour. There were no pension rights. So thankfully, I help my parents out. My dad helps my mom out. So she's not destitute. But that's what my mom's position would be if she didn't have me or my father. As somebody who is from Venezuela...

I worry when people mention socialism because I've seen what's happened to my country. How would you assuage the fears of people like me or people who come from a Cuban background?

who've seen the socialist dream as it were descend into authoritarianism um well first and foremost i would say that uh all countries to varying degrees engage in authoritarianism in general uh it's just something that it's it's a function of the government um it obviously has the capacity to get out of hand uh due to external factors in many instances like combating much more powerful forces that want to cause instability in your country. It's not a justification for it, but...

It is analysis in terms of like why these guys engage in the actions that they do in terms of suppression of all dissent. or even censorship and sometimes even jail time. And the example I always use is the United States of America, not only in the Cold War, but even preceding the Cold War during World War I and World War II.

actually had a practice of jailing all conscientious objectors, for example, who said, I don't want to fight in this war. They were like, all right, well, this is a world war. Sucks to suck. You're going to jail. One of the famous examples is Eugene Debs, a socialist who actually ran from prison. And I think achieved like 1.3 million votes at the time, which was probably the most electoral success socialists had ever achieved. He was a conscientious objector of World War I.

which was the international Marxist position at the time. There was some deviation there. So I see it in a similar vein when these countries also engage in authoritarian actions, suppressing dissent, censorship. or trying to manage this dynamic of trying to continue doing governance while at the same time they have to like make sure that they're avoiding American intervention or Western intervention in general.

As far as the fears that people have, assuaging the fears that people have in terms of what they've seen in their countries, whether it be Venezuela or Cuba, I think each country is different. Each successful and unsuccessful revolution is different. And I think it's important to understand the lessons and the failures, as well as some of the areas of success that these countries have been able to implement.

Avoid the failures and try to focus on the successes. And hopefully you'll be able to have a long standing and relatively happy form of governance. I mean, I take your point as to the conscientious objective, but you look at Venezuela, for example, and then the reason I'm using it is because that's the example I know best. Yeah. You know, you've got rigged elections. You've got politicians who go up against Maduro.

They're put in, they're either thrown in jail, as in the case of Leopoldo Lopez, solitary confinement for two years. Or you have, I think it's Corina Machado, who got nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. But she is currently in hiding in her own country because she knows the moment. Her whereabouts are known she's going to get thrown into jail, may not be seen again. Yeah. I'm not going to defend Maduro, but I would say that...

The logical through line, and it's important to understand the opposition's logical through line in this instance, is that these are forces that are very directly working with the United States of America. that have tried to facilitate coups, even had an unsuccessful one all the way back in 2002 with Chavez and numerous other instances openly talked about.

openly talked about implementing coups under the first Trump administration and is openly now waging war or at least threatening to wage war with Venezuela right now, encircling the entire. coastline of venezuela with some of the most sophisticated uh weaponry known to man in that regard i think they see it as as treason um i would go so far as say

in a similar scenario in the United States of America, I think, and this is not even a one-to-one dynamic because America is the most powerful nation on the planet, but China is getting up there, right? Let's see if China had ink. If in a hypothetical, if China had encircled the United States of America and let's say in this hypothetical, I'm like very clearly someone who is going to China and talking to.

uh the cpc and and uh and saying like we want chinese intervention in this country because i hate donald trump please um i think in that regard america would probably treat me in the exact same way, if not in a worse way, ironically enough. But would they throw you in jail for trying to run democratically? I don't think personally that they would. Oh, they absolutely would, I think. You think the American government would not throw me in jail if I was...

in a in a comparable scenario where china had encircled the united states of america and i was saying i want to run democratically i want to be uh i i and i'm demanding that china intervene i think they would do the same if not worse for sure because like i said uh it's all a matter of of the conditions on the ground with um with respect to eugene devs as i was talking about before

America felt threatened even at that time. You're talking about wartime. This is not a fair comparison, in my opinion, because wartime is wartime. It's about survival. the britain suspended elections during wartime right like america didn't actually they did they even during the civil war but but britain did america wasn't in war in the same way that britain was that's why is it in during the civil war yeah well yeah that's fair

But again, it's different. I guess you said something interesting because I was born in the Soviet Union, so we both have direct experience of socialism in various shapes and forms. You talked about, well, there's positives and there's negatives. Is there a country that's done socialism the way that you like? I would say that I am hypercritical of all forms of governance, including the American one. I think that's not...

a surprise to you guys, right? And in that same vein, I think there is critiques to apply to all forms of governance, even socialist ones. And as far as getting closer to... what i think is has been relatively successful because if if ultimately the point of government is to improve the material conditions of all people to the best of your ability it's not always going to be perfect but

When you are getting, I don't know, the poorest people, the poorest or the dispossessed masses out of a situation where they were servile, the landed gentry, or they were peasants. from an agrarian society or they were uh they were uh you know dominated by the landlords but then ultimately they were able to uh to come into modernity and become like a powerhouse an industrial powerhouse that is competitive with the largest superpower on the planet

I would say if that's the point of good governance, and I think you guys might agree with me on that, I would say China is probably the closest. And there are still plenty of failures within the Chinese system as well. Plenty of issues within the Chinese system as well.

but that's probably the closest i would say to an example that we should follow and and lessons that we should learn from this is something that i talk about quite a bit uh ironically enough we only utilize some of the most repressive elements of chinese governance here in the united states of america especially in the second trump administration and none of the good stuff we don't have any high-speed rail we don't have any even development

There is seemingly nothing to look forward to in America in terms of economic prosperity, in terms of overall health of society, in terms of scientific achievements.

I think a lot of younger people also feel the same way, where they feel like there's nothing to look forward to here. And I'll give you guys an example from the UK. I remember seeing this TikTok of this guy that goes around and is like asking. young British people, would they serve in the British military? And I am not even remotely nationalistic by any measure. I don't care about those sorts of things.

But I think it's important to understand, like, it's a good way to see the temperature of society. And a lot of the young British people were like, no, why would I fight for England? Why would I fight for the UK? when it seems like my government's not even fighting for me at all. See, the reason a lot of them will say that, though, is it's not so much about that we're not like China in terms of...

building high-speed rail, although that is a big issue in the UK. I agree with you. The main reason is they feel like they've been let down by mass immigration that's eroding the values of their country. And of course, you know, this is where I think...

people on the right are very blind uh to this issue that we already raised which is wealth inequality and opportunity i'm sure there are some people who feel that way of course but uh well think about this but even hold on let me just finish the point like stereotypically speaking Is it left of center people or right of center people that are going to go and fight for their country? Typically, it's going to be right of center people because of the mindset that they have.

I think when push comes to shove, everybody fights for their country because that's why you have to have a draft. In a war. But what we're talking about in this situation is will you go and serve in armed forces? That is going to be a more right-leaning perspective. And those people...

I, you know, we probably, fair to say, no, the UK probably well. Those people are concerned about the national identity of their country. It's like, why would I fight for a country that doesn't feel like my country? is the issue for them this is where the big point of division comes for someone like myself um you're venezuelan originally like you your family came from venezuela your family came from the ussr

You guys are the most British people I've ever encountered. I have a very British face. You're correct. Yeah, exactly. You're British to the bone. Yeah. And yet your families also came. from countries that were somewhat far away from England, right? And I'm Turkish. I grew up in Turkey. My whole family lives in Turkey still, with some exceptions.

I would say I'm pretty assimilated to American culture. I grew up being fascinated by American culture. I grew up consuming American pop culture, as do many people all around the world. And...

What I always find interesting is when people focus on the newcomers to say that this is actually destroying the social fabric or social cohesion, not realizing that there are... a ton of polls conducted on this stuff i can just speak for america especially uh where by the second generation assimilation is almost complete and by the third one it's like

virtually impossible to distinguish in terms of performance educational output uh and and job performance in general it's just like everyone becomes american that's not true in the uk though unfortunately so if you look at for example islamist radicalization second and third generation

Muslims are much more radical than first generation. So that's the issue that a lot of people in Britain are concerned about is not everyone's assimilating the way that the three of us have done. So here's the interesting point about that. um well two things i want to address first uh like i said people assimilate it's uh and they become a part of the the some people normal forces of society they become a part of the culture or they bring some aspect of their culture into

British culture, you know, they change the cuisine and people seemingly enjoy it, even if they also simultaneously go attend an EDL rally and then, you know, get a little quick curry afterwards or a little kebab on the side. But... Beyond that, the reason why people are angry is always going to be because the trains are not running on time. Because...

The the NHS is improperly managed due to underfunding. That's what I believe. I think it's a it's always an issue of underfunding where they're not getting the same services that they once used to.

And also things are becoming more and more costly. So in that anger, it's much easier for them to be guided by the right-wing forces to turn around and say, you're angry and you're right to be angry and the reason why you're angry the reason why all of these things are happening is because you're we are importing all of these random strangers into the country who don't speak your language who you aren't scared by

And that, I think, causes division and it causes friction that makes it harder for people to integrate. And that is part of the reason why I think, especially in a place like the UK. you see a little bit more of this resilience towards full-blown integration into society. I also think as well, Hassan, if we're being honest, it's also because we have had such huge amounts of immigration come into the country. The people understandably go, this pace of change is too much.

And you have to think, let's go back to 2016, which was the Brexit referendum. Now, Brexit was about many things, but really it was about people wanting immigration to be lowered. And that was nine or ten years ago. Immigration hasn't been lowered. In fact, it's been ratcheted up. So people, you know, people voted to lower immigration. And I'm, for instance, I voted remain.

People voted Brexit. I'm like, well, that's democracy. We get on. We're going to make the best of it. I do believe that when you ignore people's wishes at the ballot box and people explicitly vote for something and you ignore them for the best part of a decade. That does generate a lot of anger, and understandably so. Yeah, I think in that same time frame, if there was enough appetite by the government...

to address the financial harm that people were experiencing, the economic struggles that people were experiencing, there would still be a lot of people who say, I don't want a brown person. I don't want a black person around in my neighborhood.

but ultimately those numbers would be far smaller. And that's what I always go back to. I'm a leftist. I believe in economic improvements. And I believe that a lot of the reactionary forces... actually take advantage of that instability the economic volatility that exists in an effort to shift the attention away to people who have the same exact interests as uh you and i do because ultimately um

I don't believe that anyone is coming into the United States of America or the UK, as a matter of fact, because they want to bring about a Salafist-style Islamic caliphate in London. I know you won't agree with me on this. It's not about whether I agree. It's about whether the facts agree with you. I don't think that's the case. Hold on. Let me just give you some facts then. We have a terrorist attack on a monthly basis by an Islamist effectively. We just had two.

in the space of the last month as we're recording this. 33%, I think, of British Muslims want Sharia law in Britain, like, according to polls. More than half want to ban... I haven't seen these polls. Well, we can put them in for people to see. More than half want to ban homosexuality. Right. So when you say people aren't coming in to introduce an Islamist stuff, well, some of them want to, if they're in a position to do so, we have.

five MPs are effectively elected on a sectarian ticket, like as in we are Muslims, vote for us because you're a Muslim. Who would you say those MPs are? The five independent MPs. They're called the Gaza MPs or whatever way you want to call them. Are you talking about like Zahra Sultana? I don't know if she's one of them. I think one of them is called Adnan Hussein. There's five of them. We can look them up. We can put them in for people to see.

Right. So I think it should be said that the overwhelming majority of British Muslims don't want Sharia law. But if 33 percent of them do, you can see why a lot of people who don't want Sharia law might be concerned about that. Right. Sure.

i i don't i don't know what uh i haven't seen these polls and i also don't know what uh british muslims or the 33 that are saying they want sharia law like what they're talking about If you want smart, fearless commentary on the craziest things happening in media, politics and online culture, you'll love the Brad vs. Everyone podcast hosted by Brad Palumbo.

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The counter example always is, I mean, there's plenty of right-wing forces in the country that also want to ban homosexuality. Or trans people in general, right? No one wants to ban trans people in Britain, no. okay well that's not what i have seen so far but maybe i'm wrong on this what do you mean but um i mean i feel like there's a lot of uh this is a this is a point of contention for uh for for you guys as well but it's like

When you want to ban trans people altogether, when you want to remove access to medication for trans people to transition and conform their own gender identity. You don't start off by saying we want to altogether ban trans people. You start off by trying to find the most successful approach that the broadest majority of the masses would be in tune with, would be in agreement with.

and then you slowly but surely expand on it wouldn't that be like me saying wouldn't that be like me saying well you say you want socialism but actually you're a communist Because you just want to edge your way towards communism step by step. That seems like an unfair way of looking at it. No, my retort to that would be that while I don't call myself a communist, I don't have an issue with an end goal of communism. I don't think it's like a...

I just think that it's probably not likely to happen, a stateless, moneyless, borderless society. But moving towards that angle, I don't have any real... You'd like communism in America. I think that... communism would be most likely an international thing and be like the star trek universe and it feels especially at this point it feels far too utopian to achieve so while i think

that the concept in and of itself is not one that I disagree with. And I don't think you would either. Don't you think it would be nicer? I grew up in a communist country. I very strongly disagree with the concept of communism. The USSR was, as you know as well... uh trying to implement communism they never actually were able to successfully implement communism um how do you mean well it wasn't a a borderless moneyless classless uh society

That was never the goal of communism. It was never to be a borderless, moneyless society. No, that is what communism is. Well, that's not how the communists in Russia defined it. There was a big debate within communism quite early on. which was about, are we pursuing a global state of communism? Yes, France versus Stalin. I'm very familiar. Right, but for our audience, this might be worth explaining. Yeah. Some of them wanted to, they basically recognized the only way you might...

ever get to a communist society is if everyone in the world gets it. Otherwise, there will always be a capitalist system to which people would be keen to defect. Or this is the Stalin option that they ended up going for is you pursue communism within...

the realm of one country. And in order to do that, they took the wealth away from people who had it. They tried to distribute it to everybody else. They tried to create a state of equality, uplift the poor, as you were talking about. And actually, if you take those measures...

They were very successful at it. The only problem is they ended up putting millions of people in camps in order to do that, creating a tyrannical regime with a secret police that murdered people. And that... is the reason communism, in my opinion, doesn't work is because in order to achieve that goal of equality and basically you're making everybody equally poor as the end result, you actually have to use a lot of force, right?

So that was communism, what we had in the USSR. Well, the end goal was never successfully achieved in the USSR in terms of establishing what I'm talking about, though. And that's why I'm saying it's important to understand and recognize the failures. of this implementation uh in the aftermath of a socialist revolution and and uh choose not to repeat those mistakes so how would you do it differently well that's the reason why i pointed to china china

is run by the Communist Party of China. It builds itself as communist. China is not a communist country. Would you say China is a communist country? It's a mix. country it has some elements of communism but it's also got a lot of capitalism going on yeah so it's a it's a mixed market economy is what you're saying right um but so is the united states of america if you look at it from that perspective because

America also has some semblance of social safety nets. The UK also has some social safety nets, some state-run enterprises, especially pre-Margaret Thatcher, I would say, versus private enterprises as well. Venezuela at its peak, I think, had more privatization and more private enterprise in its economy than France did, as a matter of fact. I believe there was like a report.

at around 2012, maybe, where they were talking about how like Venezuela is not socialist. When these sorts of countries, and you're not wrong, it's a mixture of both, right? It exists. Social safety exists. Some... extrapolation initiatives exist. Like when you think about Norway, for example, the entirety of the extraction industry in Norway is actually nationalized from the forestry all the way down to the oil and gas industry.

But then there's also the private market as well, private enterprise as well. So as far as that goes, I wouldn't say that China is a communist and neither would you, but it's run by a communist party. And so far, they have seen a pretty successful, pretty robust level of growth and development overall. They have analyzed the failures of previous communist and socialist formations, and they have responded to it in their own way.

The challenge is, Hassan, when you centralize power and you give exactly practically all the power to the government, what happens with that is you're far more likely to have corruption. You're far more likely to have abuse of power. And inevitably, what happens is that the government can't do everything. There are things that are far better done by private practice than done by state control.

I agree with that. Would you also agree that there are things that are far better done in the hands of the government, or at least with heavy market regulation and intervention? I completely agree. Because healthcare, I think, is a great example of this. It's an inelastic demand, good and service, right? If you don't have healthcare, you die. So you will pay whatever price you have to pay for healthcare.

And therefore, I think the American system that is the most maximalist, most capitalist, most like free enterprise system has been an abject failure in terms of delivering good results. And what I mean by that is healthcare as a whole. is supposed to improve people's living standards and also make sure that everyone is getting the best quality care possible, right? And in the United States of America, we don't have that. We do have...

nicer hospitals that resemble hotels as opposed to like... I'll be honest with you, it'd be difficult not to have a nicer hospital than the UK, mate. Yeah, no, but I understand that. I'm from Turkey, I've seen the Turkish public hospitals, but I would rather have... I would rather try to focus on the diminished quality of service and try to improve that in a socialized system than to altogether limit healthcare at the point of being able to pay for it.

in the way that we have in the united states of america and i think this is a a major issue with america in general is that we are so invested in improving our gdp we're so invested in in and leaning into the forces of capital that in this sector and in many others, corruption still thrives.

We have it in the form of corporate consolidation here in the United States of America, because in the absence of any sort of government intervention, trust busting and heavy regulatory intervention, all corporations end up.

trying to seize one another and become a force, a monopolistic force, and if not, an oligopoly, right? And many sectors have seen this. And when you become an oligopoly... you can diminish the quality of service that you're offering slowly but surely because there's no market competition that exists any longer so um i guess the way i look at it is in terms of corruption you're right um there is a tendency

If the government is all powerful, even though the governments are always all powerful, there is a tendency in more centralized governance that if someone wants to be a ruthless autocrat, they can do so. And and the people.

don't always have the capacity to rise up against that but i would say that in the united states of america for example we also experience a similar dynamic we just don't see it in the same way because it's not the most direct form of authoritarianism, where a lot of people think, well, as long as I can eat a Big Mac, you know, as long as I can watch.

as long as I can consume porn and, you know, gamble on the unregulated cryptocurrency market or gamble my modest income away, what remains after I give the rest to my landlord. then things are probably fine. And I think we dull our sensibilities in that regard. And I think it's a different form. It's a different mechanism of control that makes you think that you are actually an active participant in this.

I mean, I think that's quite a stretch, Hasan, with all respect, because the difference between, I mean, you talk about, we talked about some societies that have attempted to pursue communism, China, the Soviet Union, Venezuela, etc., right?

The difference between those countries is not that they can't eat a Big Mac. The difference is that if they criticize the government, in Russia today even, but of course in the Soviet Union previously, you're going to get killed, right? In America, that's not what happens, right?

In America, you don't get... We don't know yet. We don't know where we're going to go yet. I mean, Hassan, to be fair, you're a very successful... I agree with you. You in China or in the Soviet Union would be killed if you were critical of that regime. I would definitely be jailed. You'd definitely be jailed.

So that's the difference between these countries and America. It's not a Big Mac, it's freedom. No, so I love that you brought that up because I agree with that. I'm from Turkey, a country that has never had the First Amendment or freedom of speech. And ironically enough, the current regime, the person in charge of the current regime, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was jailed in the past for a poem that he wrote for incitement, right? He read a poem about Altitude.

i believe if i'm not mistaken and he was jailed and and now he's one of the most ruthless uh jailers of of the press in the country right now So I come from that background. I can't go back to Turkey, for example, for these reasons. I've written about Turkey extensively. And, you know, let's just say the administration is not super fond of me and my perspective. Having said that.

That is the reason why I want the First Amendment to remain in the United States of America, even though, as I brought up earlier, there have been instances throughout American history. where the First Amendment has been actively violated or threatened, there are still contemporary examples of violations of the First Amendment.

One example I will use is the anti-boycott divestment and sanctions laws that exist in the United States of America. Famously was Bernie Sanders and Dianne Feinstein, rest in peace, who actively called it out to prominent Jewish politicians in the country.

These are laws directly written by AIPAC that dictate that if you want to become a school teacher in the state of Texas, for example, you have to sign a loyalty pledge to ensure that you never protest against the state of Israel. It's ridiculous, right?

And it's a direct violation of the First Amendment. So there is encroachment towards the First Amendment. Well, that will always happen because people will always contest it. But the point I'm making to you is when you compare China and the Soviet Union and Venezuela to America, you are... That is not an accurate comparison. It's not an accurate comparison. But if you recall earlier, I just said, I'm worried.

that we here in the United States of America are now moving in that direction in terms of social repression. in terms of political repression. And this is something that I very much fear. And I think the entry point to this is usually around Israel and what people decry as anti-Semitism. that's not where it's going to end if you look at the trump administration's uh uh active uh the the active initiative the administration is taking uh yesterday my friend kat abugzali who used to be

a reporter who is now running in Illinois for Congress, was indicted. She was indicted because she participated in the protest against ICE outside of an ICE facility. And there are videos of her. getting slammed to the ground in the concrete with this militarized, masked federal police force, right? Not only they beat her up, which was already ridiculous to begin with, but then they also chose to indict her.

There are examples of students writing for their student newspaper and getting kidnapped and thrown into an immigrant detention facility.

Whether it be Mahmoud Khalil, who still has an ongoing legal case for being a student activist, a student protester. and having a green card while doing it. We have the same thing in our country in different ways. I hear you. Sorry, the reason I'm interrupting you is we've moved sideways from the topic. So remember where we started this conversation, right? So just to address your point. Repression didn't start in China.

by everybody being like, all right, it's over, we're throwing you in jail. It builds up to it, is what I mean. And it's entirely dependent on the starting point. Because if you were looking at China, if you're looking at the Chinese Civil War, post-World War II...

30 million Chinese people have been slaughtered ruthlessly by the Japanese imperialists. That's a very different material. That's a very different set of material circumstances for... uh the end of that civil war and to develop governance similar i'm just trying to bring you back to the central argument with central discussion we're having francis made the point that when the government is in a position to be authoritarian where

it seems to inevitably end up in every communist country in the history of the world, right? That is a situation which inevitably then leads to levels of repression of the kind that you will not see in America for 100 years. I take, hold on, I take your point about...

individual protesters or individual people who've made statements about a highly controversial issue today. We have the same thing in our country where people are being sent to prison for tweets that they've done, right? Left and right. We've got Palestine Action on the left. We've got...

right-wing people criticizing immigration. So I agree with you. The direction of travel in the West in terms of freedom of expression is not good. And I've made that point in my book and elsewhere. But that is not the same as the point we're trying to make, which is... The system of government you are open to, based on our discussion today at least, inevitably leads to authoritarianism, which inevitably leads to repression on a scale that a Western country won't imagine.

That's the reason that a lot of people are very worried about people like you who say they're open to communism. We all know smartphones are essential, but they've also become the ultimate surveillance machines. That's why we were so interested when former Trigonometry guest Eric Prince created the UpPhone. This isn't just another handset. The UpPhone runs on unplugged OS, free from big tech ecosystems.

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Check it out at unplugged.com slash trigonometry and use our code trigonometry for $20 off a protective case with the ARP phone. Here, I'll try to put a nice button on it, okay? The reason why the United States of America and countries that are under the security apparatus, the global security umbrella of the United States of America have had.

much more success with liberal democracy, as opposed to all these other countries that are not under the immediate security umbrella, is because it's been the domineering force around the globe. especially after the end of the Cold War, but even during the Cold War, it was a dominant force on the planet. When you are the dominant force, you get to have these freedoms. Your people get to have these freedoms. Your people get to say whatever they want.

because they're not a threat, right? I would be more of a threat in the respective nation that I'm in if they don't have that same level of security. And that is the reason why I'm very fearful, because as America's power on the global stage is waning, we are going to see more direct authoritarianism coming from Western nations as liberalism decays.

as it did in the 20s and the 30s and what came after that was a wave of fascism now fascism at that time was seen as a revolutionary thing it was seen as a new thing in many instances fascists were actually fashioning themselves as though they were like a different kind of socialist even though they were mostly killing socialists and had their beef with socialists and then they were able to uh to align with liberals eventually

and become the domineering authoritarian forces. And I think you guys wouldn't disagree with me that Italy's Mussolini and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany were ruthless fascist forms of governance. where there was unimaginable repression. My fear is that that is where capitalism inevitably leads. Why? If left unaddressed, because capitalism is always going to deteriorate.

It's slowly going to improve material conditions as opposed to feudalism. It's a far better system, for sure. It's far better than monarchies, right? I agree. But there will come a point where it outlives its usefulness. And those who own the capital, the owners of capital will have to make a decision. There's too much instability. There's too much chaos. We need to restore order. And if they can't do that through liberal democracy, at least historically.

especially when there is a counterbalance revolutionary socialism out there that they are genuinely fearful of. Work stoppage is happening all around and the flows of capital being disrupted and profit margins are threatened. They end up finding fascism to be that domineering force that restores the law and order so that people are still working in the factories.

And any kind of dissent is directly and indirectly suppressed. And I fear that that is where we're moving in the United States of America as America's global superpower status is threatened by the rise of China. So your thesis is that as a country, if a different country was dominant, it was a global hegemon, they would have more freedom for their citizens. So you think the Chinese Communist Party would allow criticism of them?

if they were the dominant country in the way i think with respect to where they were in terms of like i mean the most maximalist position is the cultural revolution right like if you look at the cultural revolution versus where china is now in terms of descent um

It's in comparison to the United States of America. Yes, there's still heavy control over that sort of stuff. There's a lot of surveillance. Having said that, it has become far more tolerant as material conditions have improved. And that's my main thesis is that countries...

regardless of their individual forms of governance, as long as they are advancing the material needs of the broadest subset of the masses and become like a domineering force on their own and have full sovereignty and full autonomy. they will inevitably become more tolerant to this kind of freedom because this is the most successful way, I think, of making sure that the masses feel satisfied.

civil liberties is the most successful way that I think neoliberalism has become a hegemonic power beyond the endless militarism and whatnot. I think that that is the reason why people feel. uh the way that they do in the united states of america in spite of all of the alarm bells that are ringing about how uh you know economic devastation is imminent seemingly or there's so much poverty and so much instability and people still go well at least i got

some freedoms, right? As opposed to not having those freedoms elsewhere. So that's my main thesis, is that if they improve material conditions, they have to inevitably allow more. civil liberties, more social liberties. So it's interesting what you've been saying about America and that, you know, it's losing its power on the global stage that is then reflected in more and more, more and more, shall we say?

imbalanced chaos in the actual society itself. And we've kind of seen that in a way with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, with Luigi Mangione. I found some of your comments really interesting about Luigi, and I'd love to talk to you about them. So you said, and correct me if I'm wrong, push back on me if I'm wrong, that you think that he's innocent and unfairly maligned. How did you come to that position, if I'm correct?

well i mean that's a meme for the most part okay but what does that mean it's a meme um the we're like the notion that someone is innocent until proven guilty or that he wasn't there it's like a common uh a common thing that people do on TikTok and elsewhere as well. But you don't think he's innocent. Well, I don't know. I don't know if he's the one that actually did or not. We'll see once the once the court case finalizes.

Sorry, I may not understand what meme means in this context. I guess what I'm asking is when you say he's unfairly maligned, do you believe that or not? That's what I'm asking. Well, as far as unfairly maligned, it depends on where the quote is coming from, because I could be talking about like being perp walked or getting hit with a terrorism charge, which was actually taken off recently.

because the New York courts also found that it was overextended to this case. I think there was a lot of panic around his actions, allegedly. And... That is probably what I was talking about, if you were talking about that. But as far as like, oh, Luigi's innocent, it's just like a thing that people say. As far as innocent is... Why do they say it? I think...

That is actually the more interesting conversation. Okay. The reason that, and I had a conversation with Ross Douthat about this on the New York Times, where he brought this up on numerous occasions. I think that people are... experiencing tremendous anger and discontent. And one of the most visible aspects of that, one of the visible aspects of

a system of healthcare that should not be privatized or should at the very least, even if it's privatized, work to make sure that every single person is getting the adequate care that they need. Otherwise they die.

has created this environment of tremendous anger. It has almost virtually universalized the pain. Every single American knows at least one immediate or distant relative that has suffered through chemotherapy as they... have to hunt down their insurance provider to make sure that the thing that they were paying for, for years and years, the premiums, the costly premiums that they were paying into, actually end up helping them cover the cost of this.

uh life saving uh quality care that they desperately need to survive and and i think uh a lot of americans have so much discontent for that experience that they have seen personally that Their immediate reaction once before they even found out who had done the shooting, but their immediate reaction to to who the victim was, was met with a response that.

shocked me, as well as I think many other people. What I mean by that is Americans are very draconian. They're very black and white. It's like, you do a crime, you get punished. And a lot worse than you would get punished elsewhere, right?

We talk about, you know, Norway is much more understanding and much more rehabilitative in their prison structure because they're pussies. We throw you in jail and we torture you. You have the death penalty. Yeah, we have the death penalty. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So. and america's broadly like american culture is broadly very uh receptive to that we're we're fairly rugged in our approach to crime and punishment and in spite of that because of of how much harm

the private healthcare sector has done to so many different people in this country. I think they saw it as like, okay, well, this guy is now the faceless placeholder for the person. for the for the system that actually uh you know killed my grandparents you know like that's the way they saw it i get the anger which i don't think is healthy for the record okay

Well, this is what I'm getting to is like, I understand anger. And by the way, you know, I don't want to wade into the debate about American health care. I don't know a lot about it. I understand there's some really bad situations for people. People should also know that in the UK.

There's also lots of people who are dying without care because they're waiting for an operation for a year and a half or they're waiting two months for a scan. But let's let's not get into that. No, but the NHS is you're right. The NHS has had significant austerity measures implemented to it.

The budget keeps growing every year, but it doesn't matter. Let's not get into it. What I'm saying is I understand people's anger. What I don't understand is why that would make Luigi Mangione, who allegedly... killed this guy innocent? Because that's where we started, right? Why do people say he's innocent? The way people see it, and I'm not subscribing to this notion, but the way that I think people see it is, are you familiar with the concept of social murder?

no engels wrote about this he said that like the systematized death and destruction of the masses is oftentimes hidden it's oftentimes invisible um i think private health care is a great example of this where it's To the recipient, to the victim, or the victim's families, they see that as murder, right? They see that as an unnecessary death that took place. And they feel that pain all the same, in the same way that Brian Thompson's family, I'm sure.

uh was was and still is mourning the death of Brian Thompson there are millions of Americans out there that have uh individuals in their lives that they loved loved ones immediate loved ones distant relatives that they've seen suffer in their last in their final moments as they you know go through the process of trying to figure out the paperwork in a system that is designed to let's be real

take as much money as possible from you in the form of premiums, and then create a profit incentive by refusing to pay for the healthcare. Hassan, I get all that, and I empathize with that pain that those people feel.

But what I'm getting at is you said he's innocent. Then you said it's a meme. You say it's just a thing that people say. What I'm trying to understand is... The reason why people say that is because I think... Their anger doesn't make him innocent, right? No, of course not. If he shot a man... who runs a healthcare insurance company, and they are angry with healthcare in America, that doesn't make him innocent, right? It doesn't. So isn't you and them saying that just flat out wrong?

well my reason for saying it is because you're innocent until proven guilty but as far as what everyone else is saying or if i'm to analyze it which i do as a part of my job what i'm trying to explain to you guys is that from their perspective, it's revenge. And this is a very, very unhealthy feeling to have. This is why I talked about with Ross Dow that the concept of adventurism. This is something that traditional Marxists...

actually are very critical of. Adventurism does not lead to any sort of... serious changes, any sort of serious revolutionary changes, especially. And yet and all it does is create an environment of instability. I think that the perfect solution to ensure that this never happens.

to ensure that there's no level of discontent that bubbles up to this degree, that would require a mechanism of enforcement by the government to enact stability, of course, which would also be just as... violent, if not even more brutal to a larger percentage of the population to ensure that there isn't another, you know, Luigi Mangione style situation is good legislation.

is fixing these systemic problems. Luigi Mangione is the breaking point. Luigi Mangione is the perfect demonstration of the system failing people. And I think that Luigi Mangione and the response to him... has been one of the clearest examples that I have seen in a country like the United States of America, where people are normally supposed to be horrified by cold-blooded murder in the middle of the day.

Their response being much more receptive to the action shows me that there is so much pain in people's immediate experiences that they... They recognize this instability. They don't have a vehicle to communicate it. They don't have a vehicle to communicate this discontent. And they're simply moving into the least productive way to do politics, which is revenge.

violent revenge i think that um that that is something that we have to solve immediately because it can't go on you can't have more people just like randomly gunning people in the streets. That's not what a civilized society is supposed to work towards. That's instability. That's chaos. I don't want that. Let me introduce you to the people I work with to protect my family against financial instability, inflation, and turmoil.

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The people on the left who were celebrating it, which to me is, and to most right-thinking people, is absolutely abhorrent. And also the reaction on the left, and there were some people, particularly large influencers, who's... What they said was unforgivable. Where did you stand on it? And what were your opinions on the whole incident? I mean, I was shocked. It was horrifying. But...

Mainly horrifying because it's impossible for me not to have a personal stake in this because I was about to debate Charlie in two weeks, like two weeks prior to his assassination. or two weeks after his assassination, we were supposed to be debating at Dartmouth College. And this was a person that I had basically developed a political career.

uh in competition with if that makes sense like i was on the left side he was on the right side we debated plenty of times we debated a politicon we were very familiar with one another and and uh seeing that the the the number one fear that every person that does what I do become reality in real time was shocking. It was devastating. As far as my opinions on it, I mean, I have...

I had the misfortune of seeing it in real time happen as I was like trying to figure out what had taken place. And we were one of the first media outlets that actually broke the story. And.

And my first thought was that this is going to lead to even more violence, even more violence in the form of revenge, decentralized violence, and also... that this is going to lead to state repression as well in an effort to stamp out any kind of political discontent or any kind of political dissent, which hasn't fully come to fruition yet, thankfully. But the administration certainly tried to use this as an opportunity to build new guidelines around.

surveillance and build new surveillance targets in general. The Trump administration has this, they released a memorandum, national security memorandum that declared. the intelligence communities to shift their priorities and attention of surveillance to Antifa, which they had previously declared a domestic terrorist organization.

which is not a designation that exists in the United States of America because it is at direct odds with the First Amendment. This is the reason why the KKK is not considered a domestic terror organization. This is the reason why the Proud Boys and the...

and atomwaffen which is like a neo-nazi formation that tries to recruit from the military none of these guys are are none of these organizations even if you would normally consider them domestic terror organizations are actually considered that so it was um It was a severe violation of the First Amendment. And then the follow-up to the surveillance targets and the surveillance priorities.

made me even more fearful about where this administration was going, where they declared any sort of anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-American sentiment to be an indication of someone being an extreme... an extremist violent terrorist potentially but then on top of that there was even more vague things that they brought up like i think it was like

American being critical of the American moral family unit or something like that. Basically, it was just the what the Republicans consider what the entirety of the liberal and all the way to, you know.

extreme leftists or whatever think about the Republicans was now up for grabs in terms of priority targets for the surveillance apparatus. And like I said, we don't know where this is going to go. for the time being. It is directly at odds with the First Amendment, but there have been some instances where people have been indicted. Kat Aboukzali, like I said, who's running for office, is like one of the first high-profile...

politicians that have been targeted in this way. And I worry that once free speech goes away and once due process goes away in this country, we are full tilt. fascist. I think that's a very valid point. My concern is as well, and it's the rhetoric that is getting ratcheted up on both sides.

Both on the right, but both on the left. So, for instance, I'll give you an example. In my own country, we have Zara Sultana, who's a very prominent left-wing politician. She said the words, we need to fight the fascists in parliament. I'm like, okay. We need to fight them in the ballot box, and we need to fight them in the streets. Now, the problem is, if you ask most people what fascism is, I don't think they would be able to give you a clear or coherent explanation or an analysis of...

Well, let's be honest. By fascist, she means people like Reform who are not fascists. They are a centre-right party. They're not fascists. So... I don't know if I would agree with that. Right. But the point... Hold on a second. You think the Reform Party is fascist? I think the Reform Party, as it stands currently, is a nascent fascist parliamentary group that hasn't reached its full potential yet. Could you define fascist?

fascism in this instance. In the same way that I would say the modern Republican Party is, or was, throughout most of its history, a liberal party. A far-right, but liberal party nonetheless. and it is becoming an illiberal or post-liberal party that is moving in the direction of fascism. Fascism is, what's the best definition for it? Paleogenetic ultranationalism.

uh a a in-group out-group dynamic that is constantly seeking to uh destroy the out-group and dominate the out-group even if the out-group is actually a part of the civilized society and surrounding itself with this mythologized understanding of this national or ethnic or religious mythology of the higher group. But it would also include...

Authoritarianism, the end of one-party state, like all of these. Not always, but yeah, usually. Usually, yes. So by which of those standards would you say reform is a fascist or neo... I can't remember how you said it, nascent. fascist party well the reason why i say that is because i mean mussolini's fascist party was not a party that uh that that i mean mussolini's fascist party was an active

fascist party within the parliament before it became the centralized form of governance. But they said we are fascist. But that was because the word fascism was just being invented at that point. And therefore it was still.

packaged as like a revolutionary new illiberal way okay they didn't come into they didn't come into power we we now live in the post-world war ii universe where like you can't say that you're so you think that if nigel farage which is currently there leading the polls you think that if he is elected Eventually, he will suspend democracy. He will start pogroms against Muslims using the state. He will, you know, have a one party state. You think that's where this is heading?

Bearing in mind that the chairman of Reform Party, Zia Yusuf, is a Muslim. Yeah, still, doesn't matter. I mean, there was Jews that worked within the Nazi government command structure as well. It's just like, there are always going to be people that... come from this, they come from the background of the targeted out group in general. And it doesn't even end with Muslims is what I mean. It's going to, it always has to excise.

what it considers aberrations. And there is always, like with Nazi Germany, for example, the next stage, if they hadn't failed so dramatically in its endless militarism, would have most likely been... to create the Ubermensch structure, like the start going after people who were maybe brown haired and didn't have blue eyes. Like it was.

There's an endless expansion of that sort. And you think that's what reform will do? They'll suspend democracy. They'll start a one-party state. I mean, this is super, super in the future if they actually get to that point. But I don't think that it is far-fetched to assume that, yes, reform through a process of... uh initially reforms uh i could totally see them getting to that uh getting to that position yes it's entirely dependent on how

how material conditions unwind. If it gets to a point where there's tremendous economic stability, then instead of solving those issues in the same way that the American movement, the Trump movement, is not solving these issues. they will continue to be a force of political repression. But what's your evidence? This is the thing I don't understand. The evidence is the historical patterns that I'm looking at. The historical patterns of...

why fascism has been implemented in the past. And now, like I said, we live in a post-fascist world. We live in a nuclear world. The dynamic is different, okay? So fascism will not come... as a third way, as an outsider any longer. I think instead you will see far-right elements within liberal society, within the parliamentary structure, move in that direction.

but my worry with this is and this is why i'm not trying to like debate bro you or anything i'm genuinely engaging with what you're saying i hope you feel that right yeah the issue i have in the context of the discussion we're having with about charlie kirk is you've got a situation where People, you are calling reform fascists. I know some people in reform, they're not fascists. They don't believe in a one-party state. They don't want to end democracy, right? We've had Nigel Farage on our show.

It's very clear where he's an old-school Thatcherite kind of guy, right? But you're saying he's a fascist. And my worry is... I think he will get there. Okay, you're saying he will get to fashion. Fair. If material conditions get to a point... I got it.

where people there's mass instability in an effort it's a nice and fascist party that in the right context will become fascist i get it right in the same not as similar to but here's my afd uh the nationalists in france reform is very different from the afd but it doesn't matter My point is this. If I thought the fascists were coming, I would feel it's my duty to participate in armed resistance against that. And my worry is part of where the political violence is coming from.

is people like you who are using this term, in my opinion, far too loosely and projecting historical analogies onto people that you're not that familiar with, actually. And then you're really putting a target on their back. And my worry is... The reason Charlie Kirk was killed is there were far too many people calling him a fascist, which he wasn't, right? And that's my concern with all of this irresponsible language, which I think it is. So...

What's interesting about the utilization of language here is the fact that you can't really point to a single Democratic Party politician that has... celebrated Charlie Kirk's death. But you can actually, in many instances, point to Republican politicians that have...

made a mockery of the Democratic legislators. And we've had people make that point on the show. You don't need to make it because we've had it. But you're on the left and I'm asking you about the left wing approach. The reason why I'm saying that is because like...

There are always going to be people on the right and on the left that engage in this kind of commentary as a reflection of how much discontent that they experience. But ultimately... I'm saying you're one of them. You are calling reform fascist. No, no, no, no. That's, that's a totally, first of all, my analysis on the way, like calling someone a fascist, if they're exhibiting fascist, historic fascist tendencies is perfectly valid.

The consideration that this actually is like turning up the temperature as opposed to like directly calling for violence against a nascent fascist party as opposed to trying to deal with it. through the existing means within the democratic structure is is ridiculous there's no comparison here fascist movements when they initially uh when they were initially forming albeit in a much more violent time

engaged in street protests and there were counter-protests against it. Like, I am in favor of always exhausting all available options within the confines of liberal democracy. And I think what the problem is, is that a lot of people... point to the endpoint of fascism and what they know is the endpoint of fascism and say, well, they have to be dealt with militarily. And the time for that is now. I'm saying the time for that is not here. And I hope that it never gets there.

so that we can successfully resist against growing fascist movements that are born out of initially distractions or red herrings that put the crosshairs on some of the more vulnerable populations. and try to deal with it within the confines, within the existing confines of liberal democracy, and then try to get our politicians to address some of these material problems so that we don't have to exhibit.

the instability and even potentially a fascist form of governance that comes out of that instability that then at that point will be resisted against militarily through sabotage or through direct acts of war. The issue that I have with your argument, Hassan, is this, is you're saying they're exhibiting sort of, you know, on the way to fascism. You can make that argument about Keir Starmer and go, we're on the way to communism.

But you laugh, but there are people on the right who say that. Do you feel like they're also putting a crosshair on Keir Starmer when they say that? We don't have the same issues with communism, but I think if you describe people as communists in this country, I think you are putting the crosshairs on people. I really do, because there are people... I mean, I get called a terrorist every day. I know, I think that's disgusting. That's putting...

crosshairs on you. And I absolutely vehemently would say that is unacceptable. But my point is, when you use that language of fascism or communist, these are labels that have a very, very real emotional trigger to people. Understandably so. And what you have in this country is, unfortunately, there is a decent swathe of the population who have severe mental illnesses, plus access to guns.

And what inevitably happens is it leads to a Charlie Kirk situation or it leads to somebody on the left like you, you know, God forbid happening. Oh, I get a lot of death threats. Don't worry. No, but I do worry because it's. It's a sign that a society is in crisis. I agree. And I think that it's our responsibility, both people on this side, both people on your side, that we ratchet it down, Hassan. I think that if we're talking about increasing the tension...

People in positions of power have a lot more responsibility than random citizens that are... in many instances, reacting to that. In all due respect, we're not random citizens. We've both successful. We've both got huge platforms. No, no, no. I was just talking about the broader left that you were talking about that said, oh, they're celebrating Charlie Kirk or whatever. But...

Beyond that, in terms of applying analysis to the actions of any person, Charlie Kirk or Nick Fuentes or whoever, and say that these are... These are people who are implementing a lot of bigoted tendencies, a lot of racist opinions and moving the American political direction towards. fascist governance. I don't think that...

saying that you shouldn't be able to say that because you're invoking violent sentiment against your political opposition is crazy. I don't mind if people call me a communist. I don't mind if they call me a terrorist. It's not true. And it certainly makes a lot of people very angry and they want to talk to me.

all the time about how they want to kill me and come into my house and murder me and my family. But it is unfortunately a part of the political discourse. I wish it didn't exist. But having said that, I. I am never going to stop myself from making accurate assessments and warning people that at this stage. We are at the precipice of something far more dangerous, especially in Western liberal democracy, as liberalism is genuinely failing. And that collapse is most likely going to bring about.

a lot of fascist governance that will try to restore order in the most militant ways, and it will resemble historic fascist patterns. Hassan, look. Firstly, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for entering into the spirit of debate in the way it's intended. Really appreciate it. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? I mean, we did talk.

quite a bit about the collapse of liberalism around the globe. I guess in this instance, and I can't speak to all the other conversations that you guys have had. we didn't get to talk about Israel too much. And that's something that I wanted to talk about, which has also exhibited historical patterns of fascism in and of itself in a vein that is not dissimilar to what we're seeing in Western liberal democracies as well.

All right. I wish we had more time. Maybe next time we can pick up some other topic. All right. Appreciate your time. Thanks, man. All right. Thanks for having me. It's never too early for Lowe's Black Friday deals. Snag some of our biggest savings of the season right now, like 25% off select pre-lit artificial Christmas trees.

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