cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/74519
A growing number of establishment Democrats are facing backlash from progressives for their escalating attacks on leftist streamer Hasan Piker, with critics accusing the party’s corporatist wing of obsessing over an online influencer while ignoring the economic and foreign policy grievances driving millions of voters away on the eve of the critical midterm elections.
The latest controversy erupted after Piker argued during an online broadcast that Jewish Americans’ public support for Israel could contribute to antisemitism. Piker’s comments drew swift condemnation from prominent Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY), who, without naming Piker, called them “dangerous and antisemitic.”
Other Democrats piled on, prompting rebuke from progressives, who accused the centrists of caring more about an online personality than winning back control of Congress in November.
Former progressive Michigan congressional candidate Kyle Blomquist called it an “absolute mass psychosis event.”
“Too many demotivated Democrats stayed home in 2016 and 2024. We can’t repeat past mistakes,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on social media.
Khanna implored Democrats to stop calling Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who is Jewish—an antisemite and “stop wasting time attacking Hasan Piker instead of [President Donald] pTrump’s robber-baron corruption.”
“Don’t put Israel hawks out of touch with our voters in charge of our Middle East policy,” he added. “It is time for a reckoning: Are we a party that represents corporate interests and super PACs, or will we represent the American people?”
According to Track AIPAC, pro-Israel Democrats have taken tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel lobby groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s United Democracy Project.
Khanna’s comments came a day after Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the leading Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced the appointment of Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) as ranking member of the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee. Moskowitz, who said earlier this year that he is “to the right” of Vice President JD Vance in his support of Trump’s illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran, is one of the strongest supporters of Israel in Congress.
This, at a time when three-quarters of Democratic voters oppose US aid to Israel—up from just 45% three years ago—and after the issue was a factor in former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
A majority of Democratic voters also believe that Israel’s US-backed war on Gaza is a genocide, a position also held by United Nations experts, around 20 countries that joined South Africa’s ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice, human rights groups, and scholars around the world—including in Israel.
Jasper Nathaniel, a US journalist known for his coverage of Israel’s illegal occupation, settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, posted on X: “The entire bipartisan political establishment has coalesced around a willful misreading of what Hasan Piker said in order to silence criticism of Israel. They’re doing the same thing to Mark Ruffalo in Hollywood. It’s all fucking gaslighting. Don’t give an inch.”
“What Hasan said is completely intuitive. Everyone knows that Israel’s genocide of Palestinians—and the Jewish institutions’ blanket support for it—has created more hostility towards Jews,” he added. “There is no good-faith argument against this.”
Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic asserted Wednesday that “centrists despise Hasan Piker more than they want to win.”
“It’s an extreme stretch to describe Piker’s remarks as an incitement of or justification for violence and bigotry against Jews,” he continued. “The basic point he’s making—that the tendency by pro-Israel voices to conflate Jewishness with lockstep support for Israel makes Jews less safe—has been made by a number of Jewish voices, including Ezra Klein at The New York Times, David Klion at The Nation, Norman Solomon at The Guardian, union organizer Molly Kraft, and Hannah Arendt nearly 80 years ago.”
The dispute has now ensnared Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who campaigned alongside Piker during his successful Democratic primary bid. El-Sayed has somewhat distanced himself from Piker’s comments, emphasizing that the campaign represents his own views and condemning antisemitism. It hasn’t placated establishment Democrats.
Some Democrats have implored their party to keep its eyes on the proverbial prize—winning back Congress—instead of engaging in senseless internecine battles.
“Billionaires are draining our resources to develop a technology they want to replace us, millions will lose Medicaid in the new year to pay for tax cuts for the rich, and we’re spending billions on genocidal wars the voters oppose,” said Melat Kiros, the progressive Democratic nominee for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District. “But sure, let’s keep talking about Hasan Piker.”
It’s not just Democratic Socialists of America-type progressives who get it. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) admonished reporters during a Wednesday campaign rally for El-Sayed at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
.@RepDebDingell (D-MI) says Hasan Piker is “not what November is about,” and that Republicans are trying to divide Democrats over it: “I’m still trying to figure out is it the reason he exercises and looks buff why he has so many followers?” pic.twitter.com/zZLTCHHbTy
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 26, 2026“Don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker,” she said angrily. “It’s not what November is about.”
“Republicans are… trying to divide us,” she continued. “And we’ve got to stop letting them try to divide us.”
Weighing in on corporate Democrats’ attacks on Piker from across the Atlantic, British writer and activist Owen Jones said Wednesday that “the Democratic establishment know they’ve lost their base. These smears are driven by panic.”
“The bottom line about what’s happening here is this: The American people have turned against Israel in revulsion at the genocide and want to stop facilitating its crimes. That opposition is overwhelming among the Democratic rank-and-file,” he continued.
“But the Democratic Party establishment remains invested in the alliance with Israel—and they fear being swept aside by pro-Palestinian left-wing candidates in upcoming primaries,” Jones asserted, adding that centrists “would prefer to lose to the Republicans than win with the left. They would prefer to keep facilitating Israel’s genocide and heinous crimes rather than win.”
“That’s what we are dealing with here,” he added. “And if it means destroying US democracy to defend Israel—that’s a price they’re willing to pay.”
Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sanders, expressed a similar sentiment on social media.
“You’ve never seen corporate Democrats fighting as hard and as on message against Trump as they are against Hasan right now,” he said. “It’s insane.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
You are begging the question because you are assuming that when they said “genuinely equal rights” they only meant that such rights would nominally be written into the law, with no concern for all of these other factors which would be necessary for their rights to be genuinely equal. You are taking as an assumption that they meant something other than they actually said, and that what they meant was basically that symbolic declarations are enough. At least since I first replied, you have not demonstrated that that is what they meant.
Which is why I said ‘imo’ because I don’t see any right now matter how well enforced solving the contradiction of the settler question because both the economic system depends on depletion of land and culture depends on separating people from the land they live on. That problem of settler colonialism can’t be solved by equal rights, like how now matter how much you try you can’t have queer rights under capitalism because it requires gender binary to exist, no matter how good faith someone is, these are inherent contradiction of these systems.
But did they ever say we just write in a law “all ethnicities and religions are equal btw” and don’t address land seizures or anything else? This is an assumption that many times in a row you are just making about what “genuine equal rights” means, assuming it means “nominal equal rights” instead of considering the possibility that it includes these things. It’s question begging.
Then it’s difference of foundational belief, I don’t think you can have anything approaching that kind of justice in a capitalist economy let alone in a reformed settler state, not in the European system of state craft that exists right now at least. Then it’s no use arguing over.
When did I ever suggest the continuation of capitalism?
I checked back over the comments before I said anything to make sure, and the argument is very clearly that, as you say, a racist settler colony cannot have equal rights, so change that makes it have equal rights would necessarily entail not making it a racist settler colony. I have no problem with saying both the basic law and the relations of production must be overturned, and that the Knesset and IDF and so on must be put in re-education camps, sometimes for the rest of their lives or only to be deported after a few years in detention, that land must be redistributed, etc. Not only do I have no problem with agreeing to these things being necessary for equal rights, and in fact I insist on them.
Do you see the argument? That equal rights is fundamentally incompatible with Israel as it exists, and so changing that quality effectively requires destroying the zionist political entity, and whether we call what replaces it “Israel” or not is immaterial.
It’s not my favorite thing, and I don’t know how much Zohran believes it, but something vaguely along those lines is clearly the purpose of Zohran saying it, because he can’t be contradicted easily by liberal zionists on this point because it makes them look bad to argue for their belief, that of unequal rights. In effect, the message is “death to Israel” but phrased in a rhetorically advantageous way if one is trying to diffuse lib zionist smears.
To be clear, I don’t like Zohran and I think people wildly overestimate how leftist he is, but, lying or not, this is (roughly) the intended message of that little slogan. Perhaps he is lying and doesn’t give a shit, I think that’s likely enough, but I think it’s what he is trying to convey.
It’s alright, I do think it matters what it is called because America can’t be America if it isn’t white supremacist. But anyway, glad we could clear things up,it was nice talking to you.