Hasan Piker, the Democratic Party, and the Public Safety Question Its Leaders Won't Answer
I was watching another Dave Rubin reaction video on the Democratic Party, and it reminded me why I chose freedom and love of America over the plantation known as the Democratic Party.
Here is Hasan Piker, in his own words: "I want Chinese style communism to happen inside of the Democratic Party right now. Okay? I want to do cultural revolution."
"We're doing a struggle session. Chuck Schumer, get on the cuck stage."
"People can now throw their old tomatoes at Chuck Schumer."
"Explain to us your counterrevolutionary behavior right now, Chuck Schumer."
"I will throw you in prison. Okay? I want to put you physically behind a prison."
"Occupied people have a right, a legally recognized right, to resist militarily against their colonial occupants."
Here is Piker on America, speaking to Axios this month. Asked whether the United States has committed more terrorism than al-Qaeda: "Pound for pound as far as the number of deaths, yes." And: "We have caused tremendous terror all around the world."
Here is Piker on Mao Zedong, the man who ran the struggle sessions he wants to stage: "he's a great man of history."
Here is Piker on Hamas, as quoted in a bipartisan House resolution: "Hamas over Israel every single time."
In 2019, he said, "America deserved 9/11." He later apologized for the word "deserved." He kept the argument, calling the attacks "blowback" from American policy.
That is the man Democratic candidates brought onto their campaign trail this year.
I Know What a Prison Is
I spent six years as a correctional officer, sergeant, and lieutenant in the South Carolina Department of Corrections, and fourteen years as a deputy sheriff and court bailiff in St. Johns County, Florida. I have locked doors on people. I have stood in courtrooms while judges decided whether the state had earned the right to take a man's liberty. Every one of those decisions rested on a statute, a charge, evidence, and due process.
A struggle session rests on none of those things. It was Mao's instrument: drag an accused "class enemy" before a crowd, humiliate him, and extract a confession of disloyalty. During the Cultural Revolution, people were beaten and killed in them. Piker did not reach for that vocabulary by accident. He said "cultural revolution." He said "struggle session." He said "counterrevolutionary behavior." He named the Democratic leader of the United States Senate.
The clip is from a January 28, 2025 livestream. Piker has never walked it back. Twenty months later, he was on the campaign trail with Democratic nominees.
He Cannot Even Get the Charge Right
In that same staged confession, Piker puts these words in Schumer's mouth: Trump "has cut the healthcare of 72 million Americans."
It never happened. That week, an OMB funding-freeze memo was suspected of knocking Medicaid reimbursement portals offline in all 50 states, and OMB rescinded the memo on January 29, 2025, less than 48 hours after issuing it. In Piker's show trial, a day of portal outages became 72 million Americans stripped of health care.
That is how every struggle session works. First invent the crime. Then demand the confession.
"Resistance" Has Rules. Piker Leaves Them Out.
Piker told CNN that "the Palestinian resistance largely does have an internationally recognized right to resist." Asked by Axios whether political violence is ever justified, he said no, then immediately carved out an exception for armed resistance by occupied populations.
Here is what he leaves out. Article 1(4) of Additional Protocol I does extend that Protocol to conflicts against alien occupation. The same Protocol binds every fighter to the principle of distinction, and no state has entered a reservation to it. Under Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention, resistance fighters earn combatant status only by operating under responsible command, wearing a distinctive sign, carrying arms openly, and obeying the laws of war. The United States never ratified Protocol I.
No provision of international law makes civilians lawful targets. A man who says "Hamas over Israel every single time" and invokes a "legally recognized right" to fight knows exactly which half of the law he is quoting.
Rubin put the rule to the test. He told his audience his team "did a little edit," then set Piker's words against footage of northern Cyprus, which Turkey has occupied since 1974. The UN Security Council declared the northern breakaway state legally invalid in Resolution 541 (1983). Rubin's challenge: "I assume you want to be consistent about this." By Piker's own rule, Greek Cypriots hold a legal right to resist Turkish forces militarily. If the rule is real, it applies there. If it applies only where Piker's sympathies already lie, it is not law. It is a permission slip.
The Party's Answer
James Carville: "Hasan Piker is not a Democrat. I don't really care what he says."
"If you think Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were all so terrible, don't use our name."
"Call yourself the Communist Party. Don't matter to me. But don't use the word Democratic."
"I have no intention of ever being in the same political party with that guy."
Carville is shouting at the gate after the party left it open. The Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, campaigned with Piker through his primary. Here is how Democrats answered when asked about it.
El-Sayed: "[Just] because you appear with somebody, doesn't mean you agree with them on everything." Later, he called the effort to make his race about Piker "kind of laughable."
Rep. Summer Lee, after appearing at a rally Piker headlined: "If reporters have questions about Hasan Piker's statements, they should ask Hasan Piker."
Rep. Debbie Dingell, campaigning for El-Sayed: "I am done. So don't any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker."
And before any of this, Kamala Harris's former deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, laid out the party's media strategy: "We should have more Hasan Pikers."
El-Sayed did eventually put out a statement on August 24, after Piker's comments about Michigan congressional candidate Jeremy Moss: "I stand against any rhetoric that puts the community at risk." It came after the primary was won. The audience was worth having while it was needed. The questions became a distraction once it was not.
The Numbers
CNN's Harry Enten on Schumer's standing with his own voters: "Democrats hate Chuck Schumer."
"There is no historical precedent for this."
Schumer's net favorability among Democrats has fallen from +53 in 2020 to -5 today, the lowest for a Democratic Senate leader since at least 1985, according to the Marquette Law School poll Enten cited.
The same September Marquette survey shows Democrats leading the generic congressional ballot 54% to 41% among likely voters. It also shows the public rating Republicans better on national defense, crime, and immigration and border security.
Read those two findings together. Democrats may win seats on the economy. The country does not trust them with public safety. And the party's answer to a surrogate who stages Maoist show trials of its own Senate leader is "don't ask me again."
Why This Is a Public Safety Problem
A political party is not a fan club. It recruits the people who write criminal law, run the Justice Department, oversee Homeland Security, and appoint the officials who run prisons. What a party tolerates on the campaign trail, it carries into government.
The structure explains the pattern. Primaries reward whoever mobilizes the most motivated voters, and a streamer with millions of daily viewers is a mobilization machine. Candidates need his audience, so they come to his stream and answer his questions. He pays no price when his words blow up on them. They do. That is principal-agent failure in plain sight: the candidate is supposed to answer to voters, but in the primary he answers to the influencer.
At the street level, where officers, jailers, and caseworkers turn policy into practice, the lesson is worse. A political culture that treats "put you physically behind a prison" as a laugh line teaches the next generation of public servants that custody is a weapon for settling political scores. I spent twenty years inside that system. That lesson is poison.
The threat environment is already severe. In 2025, the Capitol Police Threat Assessment Section investigated 14,938 concerning statements, behaviors, and communications directed at members of Congress, their families, staff, and the Capitol Complex, up from 9,474 in 2024. Into that environment, a Democratic surrogate broadcasts calls to put a sitting Senate leader on a stage for public denunciation.
What the Party Must Do
The First Amendment protects Piker. Under Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), government may punish advocacy only when it is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and likely to produce it. I do not want the FBI chasing streamers for their politics. Any power built to silence a radical on the left will be turned on a conservative on the right.
But the First Amendment does not give Piker a candidate's stage, a party's money, or an official campaign role. Those are choices. The party owns them. Carville's option is to declare Piker a non-Democrat and change nothing. That costs nothing and stops nothing.
My option costs something. Before the 2028 primary filing deadlines, every Democratic nominee in a competitive race and every state and national party committee should publish written standards for surrogates: no official events, party resources, or campaign roles for anyone who calls for imprisoning political opponents, stages "struggle sessions," or excuses attacks on civilians. Campaigns should disclose paid or in-kind relationships with streamers and influencers the same way they disclose other campaign spending. That disclosure requirement is my proposal, not current law. Republicans should hold themselves to the same standard for figures on their side who promote political violence.
Voters can measure the result without a single poll:
Timing. Did the candidate publish the standard before the endorsement, or after the controversy?
Cost. Did the candidate keep the standard when it meant losing an audience of millions?
Answers. When the surrogate crossed the line, did the candidate answer the question, or tell reporters to stop asking?
Why I Left
A plantation does not require the people on it to agree with one another. It requires only that they stay. That is the bargain the Democratic Party has struck with Hasan Piker: keep his audience, disown the man, and count on nobody leaving. I left. More voters should ask why they haven't.
Carville said of Piker, "I don't really care what he says." That is the party's message to its own voters too. The only difference is the ending. Piker is told to leave. Voters are told to stay. That is not a coalition. That is a plantation.
Sources:
Axios: Piker on America and al-Qaeda
Axios: Piker wants to campaign for AOC in 2028
Deseret News: Axios interview with Hasan Piker
Aftermath: text of the House resolution
Fox News: Piker on CNN, right to resist
Factually: Piker's 9/11 walkback explained
Tennessee Star: origin of the struggle-session clip
CNBC: OMB rescinds funding freeze memo
OHCHR: Additional Protocol I text
ICRC Customary IHL Rule 1: Distinction
The Hill: Carville says Piker "not a Democrat"
Fox News: El-Sayed defends appearing with Piker
The Hill: El-Sayed on Piker controversy
Fox News: Summer Lee and El-Sayed rally
Forbes: What Hasan Piker said and why it's controversial
Fox News: Harris aide calls for "more Hasan Pikers"
El-Sayed campaign statement on Piker's comments regarding Jeremy Moss
Yahoo/transcript: Enten on Schumer
Marquette Law School Poll, September 16, 2026 national release
WEAU: Marquette national survey findings
USCP: Threat Assessment Cases for 2025
One accuracy note for your review: I wrote that Piker "has never walked it back" regarding the struggle-session clip. I found no retraction in any source, but "never" is an absolute I cannot fully verify. If you want zero exposure there, change it to "Piker has not walked it back."
