Zac and Gavin are KK&F dream guests, and this week Kyle sat down with them to take a survey of the (latest example of) freakout surrounding Hasan Piker. Hasan’s repeatedly been made a lightning rod for controversy, taken to task both from the right and from the left for his unapologetic (and therefore inflammatory) commentary on American politics. Part of this story is what it tells us about the responses progressives supported by Hasan — in this case Abdul El-Sayed — give when Hasan’s detractors pressure them to disavow them. We tell that story within a wide-ranging episode on left-wing media brouhaha and, gearing up for the next two years of heightened insanity in American politics, the beginnings of Democratic primary conjecturing and who from the left will throw their hat in the ring. Watch below:

We’ve talked in recent episodes about Michigan’s Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed’s responses to constant, vitriolic attacks from the right. We see El-Sayed as a talented politician with real political instincts, pivoting on craven Islamophobic smears to cut to the heart of everything wrong with the bigotry and corruption of far-right politicians and their media apparatus. He’s so good at staying on message and on making his detractors look deranged and despicable that we’re reminded (on the opposite end of the political spectrum) of how Trump’s rise to power depended on a similar ability to take any press attention and use it to his benefit. So, when Hasan Piker came under fire for recent criticism of Zionism — as we point out, with the biggest and most powerful detractors being pro-Israel politicians — El-Sayed’s own haters came after him by association. Hasan campaigned with El-Sayed and used his massive platform to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the campaign. He’s long advocated for the issues that mean the most to El-Sayed: Medicare for All stands out here. We’re still waiting to see how much the attacks on El-Sayed as a proxy for Hasan will affect things, as well as how much the smears will harm Hasan’s platform.

In short, given what Hasan has been willing to place on the line for the causes progressive politicians have won elections for championing, as well as his incredible effectiveness in boosting those campaigns to a much wider audience, we’d have liked to see El-Sayed ignore the smears and back Hasan. That’s not what happened: El-Sayed made a public statement clarifying that Hasan did not speak for the campaign. And, of course, it still wasn’t enough for the MAGA ghouls! Rogers, the Republican opponent whose bigotry truly knows no bounds, took the opportunity to shift the goalposts by demanding an even more outright disavowal, and he wasn’t the only one. Realizing that placating the right wing only empowers it, we on the left have the opportunity in moments like these to decide when it’s time to call bullshit and back each other up; we can learn lessons to help with future decisions by looking at what we gain and what we lose from a more measured response.

That takes us to another episode highlight: our conversation about presidential prospects on the left, especially all the conversation surrounding a potential AOC run. She’s been an incredibly powerful voice for the left and a champion of other progressive candidates like El-Sayed; at the same time, she’s made strategic errors worth considering in an analysis of her electability. The recent comments denigrating “Woke 1” didn’t help, and for reasons we’d relate to the firestorm El-Sayed has recently faced. Watching her adopt the cornerstone of the right-wing playbook, singling out wokeness simultaneously as Democratic virtue signaling and as a stifling force in our culture, we have conflicting opinions about how much she’ll benefit from this move. We outline two main positions: One is to oppose the remarks on the grounds that the right (as they’re currently trying to do with El-Sayed) will attack you no matter what and also try to drag you for refusing to stand by your original position. And there were very good reasons for what you’d assume is included in Woke 1! The lynchings of Black Americans and massive public outcry and protest against the police’s state-sanctioned murder of its citizens are the absolute last thing anyone on the left should equivocate on. But we also discuss a case for seeing value in this denunciation of so-called Woke 1, which is that she’s specifically thinking about avoiding the most trivial and useless aspects of woke discourse (e.g. “abolish Thanksgiving”) and going for bread-and-butter issues. It’s a debate that’s swirling within the left right now, and we have a slice of it here for you on the show this week.

Thanks for tuning in. You can listen to this conversation as an audio episode tomorrow on major streaming platforms.