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March 13, 2024 - Decoding the Gurus
01:55:04
Hasan Piker: A swashbuckling Bromance

Avast Ye Harties! Yar! This week be the inaugural episode of a New Streamer/Academic Guru season. Join us as we set sail with a bang and embark on an adventure with the famous and controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. Formerly of the Young Turks, Hasan has carved out a niche as a popular left-wing commentator. He is sometimes described as representing a new wave of political communicators who leverage social media and live streaming to reach new audiences, particularly disengaged younger viewers.But how does he fare in these Decoding waters?We take a look at his recent interview with Rashed Al-Haddad, a dashing Yemeni teenager (nicknamed Tim Houthi Chalamet), who recently found himself streaming video on an international transport ship hijacked by Houthi militants. But fear not! Hasan addresses this sensitive topic and the complex geopolitical issues involved with due diligence and care. Moreover, Rashed reports that all of the kidnapped crew are having a grand old time in Yemen! They are simply vibing with their captors, chewing khat, and have fully embraced the honourable Houthi perspective.The Houthis' official slogan, "God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam", and reports of severe human rights abuses in their territory, might still give one pause... but as Hasan explains—drawing on his deep political and psychological insights—the Houthis are just like the heroic Straw Hat pirates in the popular anime One Piece!So with that settled, we can focus on the more important questions like what videogames Rashed likes, if he has ever heard of Mr. Beast, whether he's eaten 'Western' food, what cartoons he watched growing up, and if there are KFCs in Yemen? Truly, this is a conversation for the ages, and Hasan is just the man for the job.So join us for this week's episode as we ponder whether combining influencer culture with political analysis was a wise move and if there are any possible contradictions or minor ideological skews in Hasan's content.Links- Hasan Interviews Viral 'Hot Yemeni TikTok Pirate' | Hasanabi Reacts- Atlantic article about the Houthis and the situation in Yemen- AP article on the crew of the hijacked 'Galaxy Leader' ship and their ability to contact their families- Amnesty article on Houthi sentencing of stoning and crucifixion for crimes of homosexuality- Human Rights Watch article on Houthi recruitment of child soldiers- Human Rights Watch article on the al-Ahli Hospital Explosion- Willy Mac 'drama' YouTuber collated episodes on Hasan (part 1 and part 2)

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Time Text
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they talk about.
I forgot to breathe there.
Okay, deep breath.
I'm Matthew Brown and with me is Chris Kavanagh.
G'day Chris, how are you?
Hello, hello, you big psychologist.
I am a professor of psychology.
When it comes to psychology, there is...
Very little I don't know.
You could write what I don't know on the back of a postage stamp.
It would be a very large one, but yes, that's probably true.
Yeah, I'm your prompt, Matt.
Whenever you get through the introduction and I feel you've missed something important, I just give you a little nudge in the right direction and off you speed along your track.
Yeah, I forgot to mention a dynamic duo and you and I in that context.
Have I done Batman and Robin?
Have I done Winnie the Pooh?
You've definitely done Winnie the Pooh.
That was like the last episode you're going to see now.
Batman and Robin, you must have done as well.
Come on.
That is the most obvious.
How about Goku and Vegeta?
That's a cut that you won't get.
I don't get that.
No.
Actually, topical, Matt.
Because we're looking at a Twitch streamer this week, somebody who likes anime.
And as we announced on the previous episode, we've got a new format.
So we're diving straight in to our decoding this week.
There's not that much intro waffle.
You've had it.
It's gone.
No, it'll be a targeted contextual waffle, if there is one.
I have a bit of contextual waffle to get us going with, Chris.
Oh, yeah.
You probably do too.
But before we get into the man himself, tell me a little bit more about Twitch streamers.
I don't really understand what streaming is, what Twitching is.
Yeah, okay.
But I know that you know a bit.
I do know a bit about it, probably substantially more than you.
Twitch is a channel where predominantly people...
Do live streams.
Live streams of themselves playing games.
And so they stream their screen and they interact with the chat as they're playing the game.
Now, it's not only that.
There are also political streamers, people who are mostly covering political topics, sometimes doing debates.
There are IRL streams where people go out in real life to some location with portable...
Filming equipment and interactive chat.
So there's all sorts of stuff going on there, but primarily that's what it is.
The gaming thing was the initial and kind of primary thing with Twitch, and it's still part of the culture there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So even some streamers who are predominantly gamers, I just want to check if I got this right, they may well sort of just talk about all kinds of stuff, political or...
Or otherwise, social commentary, whatever, while they're playing the game, maybe.
Is that right?
Yeah, it depends on the streamer.
Some of them stick to maybe anime or pop culture kind of things as well and steer away from politics.
Other ones are into politics.
In the case of Destiny, I think he originally was a game streamer of some description, for example, but he mostly now is associated with political...
But he still often plays games when he's talking to people or even in some cases debating them, though it depends on the person.
But yeah, so, you know, it would be rude if I were to start streaming a game in the background as I talk to you.
But that's actually not that odd in Twitch land.
And yeah, in some cases, kind of impressive that people can multitask in that way.
But, you know, I guess like driving the car.
Yeah, okay.
Alright, I got it.
So, did you want to talk about the man himself first, or is there something else you wanted to mention?
Uh, no, we can get into it.
America deserved 9-11, dude.
Fuck it.
I'm saying it.
Academics.
Can they make a comment about canceling culture?
Streamers.
Yeah, please explain this to me so I can tell you how fucking stupid you are.
Academics.
And when I'm talking about that anagogic in and out of the imaginal augmentation of our ontological depth perception, that's what I mean by imaginal faithfulness.
Enlightening stuff.
You'll provide some interesting lessons for us today.
Decoding the gurus, streamers, and academic season.
This is going to be really interesting.
So the person that we're covering this week is Hasan Piker, also known as Hasan Abi, a Turkish-American streamer.
I think the biggest or one of the biggest left-wing streamers on Twitch or pretty much any.
He was actually active in Destiny's audience.
I think at one point he used to collaborate with him or comment on his videos.
This is one thing that happens with streamers is sometimes people emerge from their audience and then become popular and start up their own show.
I think Vosh also, the horse lord that we talked about in the previous episode, he emerged, I believe, from Destiny's audience.
You know, there's so much lore.
These people have so many drama and backstories and all interpersonal stuff mixed in, but we don't need to focus on that.
Just to say that Hassan was active at one point in Destiny's community, but he was also a figure on the Young Turks, the kind of progressive online news channel.
And that is in part because his uncle, Cenk, Is one of the main dudes there.
So I think that played a significant role.
Yeah.
I know Cenk Uge from the Young Turks.
Yes.
Yes, he's running for president.
He's not going to win.
And the other thing probably when Hasan became well known to the broader public was he made some comments about like America deserving 9-11 when he was commenting about Dan Crenshaw.
This is so insane.
America deserved 9 /11, dude.
Fuck it.
I'm saying it.
We want to know what's happening.
Like, we fucking totally brought it on ourselves, dude.
Holy shit.
We did.
We fucking did.
And he ended up, like, sort of apologizing, but not really.
And like, yeah, but the Young Turks kind of, they apologized, but Hasan Piker didn't really that much.
And he has lots of other controversies.
And I will also say, Matt, he's quite the tanky.
No.
I think some of his fans or whatever will dispute that.
But I have a couple of clips that will illustrate why I think it's perfectly fine to say that.
And I've heard worse clips than the ones I'm going to play.
So very apologetic for Russia, China, Cuba, you know.
And maybe one last point to say is he basically outgrew the young Turks and set out on his own.
And now he...
He has his Twitch channel and he collaborates with other people, raises money for charities and whatnot because he has such a huge audience.
And he also is extremely successful.
He rakes in a huge amount of money such that he lives in a just under $3 million mansion in LA, I believe.
So he often gets accused of being a champion socialist.
Which I think is an entirely legitimate criticism.
And his response is, you know, that you don't have to be poor in order to advocate for socialism and all this kind of stuff.
I'm just saying, it's the normal arguments that you would anticipate from...
Somebody who is apparently advocating for the destruction of capitalism, but yet is benefiting mightily from capitalist systems.
He is making probably $1 to $1.5 million a year from membership revenue advertising and sponsor collaborations from his thing.
Yeah, that's one thing that is a little bit like...
Actually, nobody will like this comparison, but it is true that...
His pivot towards advertising in the streams is almost as jarring as Alex Jones' pivot, you know, when he's ranting about something and then he's like, oh, and bone broth, you know, or emergency supplies.
He'll immediately pivot.
And in the same way, Hasan will often throw to ads in a sharp pivot as well.
Hasana's a fitness rumor now?
No, but I've talked about fitting this dick in your mom's pussy all the goddamn time, so why are you surprised?
Especially when I'm fitting this fucking top-of-the-hour ad break, also directly after fitting this dick in your mom, okay?
And if you no longer want to avoid me fitting this dick in your mom, well, you can't.
You know, you can't do that.
I'm your dad now.
I'm not the stepfather, but the father that stepped up.
But if you do want to avoid the ads at the top of the hour, all you need to do is subscribe for $5 or for free with a Twitch Prime or by getting gifted a sub.
So, yeah, you know, people don't like this point, but I have to say that there are a number of anti-capitalist streamers who, to my eyes, look remarkably...
Capitalists.
Like, they're much more capitalists than I would be comfortable with in making content.
So, yeah.
And I'm not anti-capitalist.
So, yeah.
Anyway, it's all context.
All context.
All context.
So, let's get into...
I've got a couple of clips that are not from the content that we're going to cover.
We'll introduce that in a minute.
But I think these are providing relevant context.
And we've done this before.
Like, when we've covered Joe Rogan, we played some old clips.
And here's some from Hassan that I think are worth mentioning.
So this is his take on the Ukraine war.
Before it broke out, this is him talking about that.
And this is a collated clip, but I think you'll get the gist of it.
We did it successfully.
We stopped Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.
Or maybe that was never gonna fucking happen!
Like I said, it was never gonna fucking happen!
You guys are literally QAnon.
I'm sorry, West Elm Caleb, you are literally a liberal QAnon, Andy, okay?
You are doing the exact same copium that motherfucking QAnon people do, okay?
Lib-anon.
Lib-anon.
All the way, dude.
Blue-anon.
It's wild.
They literally were just like, dude, dude, they are going to, they're going to seize the treasure trove of data at the heart of Kiev, and actually, like, right now, my sources are telling me Vladimir Putin has literally got a sniper rifle trained on every, uh, every, like, Ukrainian leader, and,
uh, he's waiting for the execution codes, like, and then you kept saying that for months, and now that it's not happening, and I kept saying, that's not gonna happen.
That's not gonna happen.
What did everybody say?
what the did everybody say when i kept saying that's not gonna happen you're crazy they kept saying you're in the pocket of vladimir putin you're so wrong it's definitely gonna happen it's happening already you really are the leves rush limbaugh but i was right i was 100 right like
i got liberals schizo posting on the timeline about an
Ah, yeah.
That didn't age well, I guess.
Yeah, that was pre-invision victory lap taking.
Yeah, got to be careful with the timing of those victory laps.
Yeah, so I guess a couple of things stand out.
One is he's definitely, let's call him a tanky.
Let's just work with that.
He's the kind of tanky that definitely has it in for the mainstream liberals, the kind of people that think Biden is okay.
Liberals.
Yeah.
And I guess the second thing is he's very combative, I guess.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Well, he's certainly very confident.
And this is part of streamer culture.
Again, it depends on the person.
Some of them are not so belligerent with their chat, but some of them are.
And the way he's interacting here, and there's some other clips, it really, really reminded me of clips I'd heard of Stefan Molyneux interacting.
With his listeners where he would kind of berate them during call-ins, you know, for saying something that he disagreed with and often in very, very disparaging terms.
And it sounds exactly the same.
And there's just a little bit more of that clip.
Just actual fucking land war in Ukraine.
All of this stuff.
And I was 100% right.
And now, liberals who literally said, no, Russia is gonna do this.
Russia is gonna do this.
Russia is the bloodthirsty psychos at the fucking door.
What happened, dude?
Now they're gonna turn around and say, oh, it's because of NATO.
It's because of NATO that they stopped.
Yeah, you really, you've got it, dude.
What do you call Crimea?
I call it a part of Russian territory, bitch.
That's what I call Crimea.
I call it Crimea River.
A Russian river.
Russia's historic access into the Black Sea Crimea that's like historically fucking ethnically all Russian.
That is totally fine with the annexation according to western fucking sources.
Right, so he's never heard of the Crimean Tatars then, I suppose.
Feeling bad about the Crimean annexation does not change the reality of the Crimean annexation being a completely justifiable f***ing act by the Russian government, okay?
So that's it.
That's fine.
And Hitler invaded countries based on Germanic ties at first?
Yeah, dude.
Talk to me when he's f***ing throwing Ukrainians in a f***ing What are you talking about?
Talk to me when he's throwing Ukrainians at a concentration camp, okay?
Hitler wasn't f***ing bad because he decided to invade Austria.
He was bad because he was f***ing killing Jews, okay?
That was the problem.
He wasn't like, oh yeah, we're going to f***ing annex territory with like Germanic people in it.
That wasn't the main problem with Hitler.
Well, yeah, Matt.
Crime river.
That's what he says about it.
So yes, after Russia invades, he did.
A little bit acknowledged that he was wrong, right?
Because the reality is staring him in the face that he spoke so confidently and, you know, so aggressively berating anybody that was suggesting it was likely.
So of course he had to walk it back when it actually happened.
I was wrong.
I assumed that we could actually have diplomatic f***ing talks.
I'm wrong.
I was wrong.
I did not even think that Russia would take over eastern territories.
And I was wrong.
I think that if they actually, if the reports are true, because there's been a lot of information that has been wrong, completely f***ing Wrong.
And there's still a lot of information that the Western State Department is pumping out by way of mainstream media about like Russia is going to go and overtake Kiev and they're going to go into Ukraine.
But yes, this is earlier today, Vladimir Putin said that a couple of days ago, the lower parliament in Russia recognized, voted to recognize Eastern Ukrainian territories that have some, not majority, but some Russian people living in it to be independent.
This is a part of Russia's strategy in expanding into areas that it believes that as a historical
But he didn't walk it back in the sense of acknowledging that he had been incredibly arrogant and insulting of people and that he had actually completely misinterpreted things, right?
It was more just that, yeah, I didn't anticipate that things would go like this and that kind of thing.
Oh my lord, dude.
I've been anti-fucking Russia invading Ukraine since day one.
I don't know why the fuck you dumbasses think that I'm like pro-Russia invading Ukraine.
I'm vindicating your points of view, you fucking dumb little babies, okay?
It would be easier if you just say outright that Putin is bad.
You know me.
I famously have not.
I famously have not fucking ever said Vladimir Putin is bad.
People have been actually calling you a Russian imperialist.
It's been very weird.
Yeah, I don't know.
I wonder where they got that fucking point of view from.
And they'll say it's because of me.
It's because of like what I've said so far.
But it's literally because these fucking douchebags that make videos saying I'm a Russian imperialist or whatever the fuck and clip chimp shit that of course don't show My take about, like, fucking how I feel about how I feel about Putin escalating tensions.
So he will argue that, you know, he admitted that he made a mistake, but it's a very, very tame acknowledgement of error.
And you can hear in that that, you know, even before the war, he had basically completely accepted the Russian justification for annexing Crimea from Ukraine, right?
Yeah.
A re-annexation.
They annexed it the first time, or the last time, before 1800.
Yeah, it actually is a part of Russia anyways.
And in regards to NATO, Matt, which you heard him mention there, and it was actually, it's interesting to hear though, because he was saying, you know, people are going to credit the lack of an invasion to NATO, but NATO shouldn't get the credit.
And of course, that's now completely flipped, where he would be saying that...
Actually, the invasion is in response to NATO aggression.
And it's kind of a proxy war between Russia and the encouraging forces of NATO.
Yeah, but it's just funny how that's switched, because there he was going to say the NATO ability to deter attacks.
That doesn't explain it at all.
It would be Russian reluctance to attack a neighbor, or whatever the case might be.
But now, that is completely gone.
The whole justification for the attack is Orion NATO.
So, yeah.
You can't give people credit for deterring that, but you have to blame NATO if it happens.
Yeah, I know.
Wildly inconsistent.
So, I mean, you know, politics and tankies and whatnot aside, I mean, this is a common red flag when it comes to conspiratorial thinking, which is that great willingness to completely reimagine a narrative to suit whatever data comes along.
Kind of in line with your original fundamental premise.
Yeah, and if you think we're drawing too much from this specific clip talking about the situation in Ukraine before the invasion, here's a little bit of him talking about NATO in general and his views of that.
I'm a bit of a truther, like Yanis Varoufakis, that the European Union could be reformed inevitably to not churn out neoliberal capitalism, but instead, I guess...
Some semblance of socialism.
But no, NATO is not a thing.
It's like reforming the police.
No, that's not happening.
That doesn't mean that there isn't a necessity.
NATO is a little bit different than the police as well.
Because there's indeed some semblance of law and order.
NATO, on the other hand, no.
It is one use and one use only.
You can't reform it.
Guys, guys, guys.
Just don't Google Western German involvement in NATO if you want to understand what I have to say.
Or Google, I don't know, Operation Gladio or something.
Yeah, reforming NATO is like reforming the Third Reich, which is a good take, actually, because lo and behold, a lot of the Third Reich guys may have made their way into NATO.
Just saying.
NATO, Nazi Arming and Training Organization.
Yeah, I guess what we did with NATO was we reformed the Nazis and turned them into, like, Nazi Plus.
So, actually, Matt, when you think about it, NATO are worse than the Nazis.
The Nazis Plus, right?
All the Nazi scientists, they just ended up in the U.S. or working with the Allies.
So, in a way, aren't NATO just...
A modern incarnation of the Nazis.
As through the political analysis.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Great analysis.
Basically, the Third Reich.
That's NATO.
What was he alluding to when he said that, you know, you could reform the police, but you can't reform NATO because it's got one purpose?
And I assume it's a nefarious purpose, but what does he think the one purpose of NATO is?
As a progressive leftist person, he's kind of abolished the police.
In support of that position, or the corollary of, actually, I mean, just reform it in certain ways.
But with Niedel, I believe he's saying it's a tool of neoliberal imperialism designed to spread rest and hegemony across the globe.
So its only function is to economically and militarily dominate others.
Yeah, that's it.
You cannot reform it, Matt, because it is just the modern incarnation of the Third Reich.
Yep, yep.
Okay, so we can call him a tanky, I think.
That's okay.
Yeah, I think so.
Again, people might say, well, hold on, but that doesn't mean that he's going to give communist regimes an easy ride.
Maybe specifically on Russia, he just thinks their invasion is justified.
Here's him talking about China.
I don't think that...
I do not think that China is fascist.
I think that they are authoritarian.
I don't think China is closer to fascism than America.
Go ahead.
Tibet was literally a f***ing feudal slave mandate like autonomous zone.
China did them a favor.
That was one...
I mean, in America, when I say something like this, people get very upset.
You know, we talk about the Dalai Lama saying, suck my tongue or whatever, but, like, that's not far from the norm in fucking normal Tibetan existence before the Communist Party came in and took over.
China unilaterally took over Tibet, wealthed their culture.
They basically are trying to, you know, homogenize the culture.
If your culture...
They're trying to squel the religion and the identity.
The part of feudal warlords and slavery abolishing that, yes, I do think that that is good.
No, China did them a favor.
I think that, yes, I will be on the record to say that while the Chinese...
That's him talking with Ethan, somebody that he used to do a podcast with, which ended not that long after this discussion, I believe.
So there you can hear Hassan arguing that China was essentially engaged in anti-imperial, anti-feudal efforts to liberate the Tibetan people from the oppressive traditional structures.
He says the same things about Taiwan.
I probably don't want to know his opinions about the Uyghurs in Western China.
Sorry, Uyghurs.
Yeah, to be honest, I'm not sure how he squares that, but I'd imagine that he has some specific justification for it or that it's been exaggerated by Western media or whatever the case might be.
So, yeah, I think those are illustrative.
And the last two clips, Matt, specifically relate to the conflict in Gaza.
Which he has been covering, and which you might anticipate from his particular political background, that he will be extremely sympathetic to the Palestinians and hostile towards Israel, right?
That makes sense.
Ideologically, and also the various ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza would justify having a lot of sympathy for Palestinians.
Even in general, you are sympathetic to people suffering from militarily more powerful countries, right?
In conflicts.
So you may or may not remember there was a hospital, the Al-Ali Arab Hospital, which was bombed or there was an explosion and there was some confusion about where the bomb came from,
right?
It was initially reported that Israel, it was an Israel rocket, but subsequent reporting indicated that...
Actually, the evidence did not seem to support that, and it seemed more likely to be a misfired rocket from Islamic Jihad.
That's where a lot of the independent analysis came down to that.
And also, the original reporting was also very clear, in most cases, that it is not yet able to be established, what the source is, even when it was reported.
And Hassan Piker...
Like many streamers, reacts in real time often, you know, on their stream to seeing videos or clips or headlines just responding.
And here is him responding to somebody urging caution around the attributing the source of that attack.
IDF didn't bomb the hospital.
Change title.
IDF didn't bomb the hospital.
Yes, it did.
You piece of Yes, it absolutely did.
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
You genocidal scumbag.
You have no fucking dignity.
You do not have an ounce of dignity inside of your soul.
But it doesn't matter.
Terrible that the people died, but I encourage you to look into where Hamas was firing.
You fuck!
Fucking piece of shit, you garbage, monstrous scumbag.
You garbage, monstrous scumbag.
You said IDF didn't bomb the hospital, and then you said it did, but Hamas was firing rockets from it in the same two-minute time frame.
So why did you fucking lie at first?
Huh?
Why did you fucking lie?
How can you live with yourself, you genocidal piece of shit?
How?
Why did you do that?
Why did you say IDF didn't bomb the hospital and then immediately retaliated to, well, I guess they did, but because Hamas was firing rockets.
Yeah, that's him responding to his chat again, you know, somebody saying something that he didn't like.
Yeah, you get a good sense of his style of engaging with criticism or interacting with people that he disagrees with.
Yeah, or just somebody who suggests...
Different point of view about something.
Yeah, it's very...
The emotional effect is heightened.
It's very strong.
The version I find was censored.
They removed it.
So he didn't say effing.
He was just, you know...
As we've heard in the old clips, he doesn't mind cursing.
And he didn't actually stop there, Matt.
Like, you might have thought, that's enough of that.
But no.
They did not.
Oh, back to they did not?
Really?
No, I didn't.
They did not.
You just said it!
I'm losing my mind!
Oh, you're saying IDF didn't bomb it because Hamas was firing rockets from right next to the hospital.
And it actually misfired and fell into the hospital.
Oh, okay.
I thought that he was...
Oh, okay.
Never mind.
Yeah, you're still a piece of shit genocide denier.
100%.
But no, it is not a f***ing misfire!
And guess why?
It's not a f***ing misfire.
He goes on.
They analyze.
To show the video and say, look, it doesn't look like, you know, the kind of munitions explosion that you would expect.
And like, of course, he has no fucking idea about that.
But also, you heard that he misunderstood what the person was saying.
But he still launched into this invective.
And then somebody else corrected him in the chat.
And then he moves to say, okay, well, fine.
You weren't saying that, but you're still a terrible genocide denier.
And he will do this very often.
You know, you're racist.
You're a Nazi.
If you...
Disagree.
And usually it will be on his audience.
So, you know, he might have a six-hour stream or a five-hour stream or whatever.
And there are just, sometimes, things like this that happens.
And it is kind of like disciplining the audience, you know?
Like, showing what happens if you go against the line that he considers legitimate.
He's going to embarrass you and tear you down in front of everyone on the stream.
I presume that people who are demurring, they're listening to the stream, right?
They're probably not haters.
They're people that are generally fans of his, I suppose.
Yeah, I think there's a little bit.
I'm sure you sometimes get people who are contrarians or disagree with your analysis or whatnot.
But the vast majority of people are going to be fans of his in some degree.
Like if you're sitting on someone's stream for hours, you typically have to have at least some interest in them.
So, yeah.
Regard for them.
Yeah. I don't think I would be sitting on his stream for two hours and then raising butt points with him.
No, no.
And so that was surrounding context, Matt, right?
That's the intro.
I'm sure now you're really looking forward to the material that we're going to cover.
I did listen to the material.
A lot of it, I think I may have tuned out at some points, Chris, but you're going to...
Reorient us to some of the key points.
Yes, I am.
So what happened was an interview that Hassan conducted around a month ago with a Hufi, or at least a figure who had appeared in video and images from ships that had been boarded by Hufi rebels off the coast of Yemen,
right?
There was a particularly photogenic young Hufi, or a young person appearing with the Hufis, whatever way you want to take it, who gained the nickname Hot Hufi, right?
Because he was noted to look like Timothee Chalamet, the actor from Dune.
So the title of the video we watched was "Hasan Interviews Viral Hot Yemeni TikTok Pirate".
Okay.
I've seen the photos.
He's very good looking.
So is Timothy Chambalay.
Yeah, yeah.
The young guy is handsome, is a Yemeni guy.
And so the interview that he conducted on his stream is done via a translator.
So you have Hassan pose the question, the translator put it to the hot hoofy, and then the response comes, right?
So it's a kind of simultaneous translation interview.
And here's Hassan framing it.
And it will give you a kind of sense about the way that he frames, you know, the questions throughout the interview.
Okay, Rashid, how old are you?
Where are you from originally in Yemen?
He's 19 and he's from Ibn Governit.
Okay, nice, nice, nice.
Okay, so what happened?
How is he taking everything?
How is he taking in everything so far?
as you see in the news articles.
He says he's fine and everything is normal and the most important thing is that they start with Palestine.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you got to hear the translator, the young rebel responding, and Hassan's kind of style of questions.
You'll see this come up a lot.
But yeah, so maybe for people who don't have the context, Matt, Houthis, why were they in the news?
And who are they?
What's the deal?
What's going on?
Okay, I may not have all the facts in the front of my mind, but in a nutshell, yeah, the Houthis have been fighting a civil war.
In Yemen, trying to oust the Yemeni government that is aligned with Saudi Arabia.
I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that the Houthis are, well, the Shias, and they are aligned with Iran.
But since the Israel-Gaza conflict, they have upped their...
Activities in the Gulf in particular, targeting shipping, just international shipping that is going through there.
I think firing missiles at ships, also hijacking some ships, or at least attempting to.
And what am I missing?
Is that the gist of it?
Yeah, that's the general gist.
I think it is relatively complicated over in Yemen, the civil conflict there.
But although they're aligned with Iran, and they get support from them.
They are actually from a minority sect, the Zaidi sect.
And within that sect, like the name suggests, their founder is a guy called Hussein al-Hufi.
And it's currently his brother, Mohammed al-Hufi, who is the leader.
So the Hufi movement is very much focused on that guy's interpretation of the Zaidi sect of Shia.
And it has various parallels, but it's in other ways idiosyncratic and a bit of a personality cult, you could say.
And it has also ambitions for statehood, which I think amongst mainstream Shia would be considered heretical.
In any case, there's a civil conflict going on there.
The Hufis control a lot of northern Yemen, and it looks likely that they might be able to take control, if not entirely through some power sharing
It's a complex situation, but one thing that isn't that complex is that their motto is God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam.
They are a group that has a lot of factions and kind of pinning down the specific ideology is difficult because Even though there is a clear leadership and whatever, there are different regional power centers and that kind of thing.
So you will find things like them in certain places that they control, implementing extremely repressive social or legal policies, stoning people for homosexuality or banning women from doing various activities.
They've been accused of...
Not just accused, I believe, credibly documented of using child soldiers and of engaging in slavery.
So these are not the good guys in any normal calculus, but it is more complicated than they're just, you know, in Yemen, there are a lot of different kind of factions vying for power,
and the sovereign government, which is the internationally recognized one, Is, as you said, generally regarded as largely being a proxy for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, right?
And I'm sure they're not particularly nice either.
Yeah, but yeah, from what I know, they do not seem like the good guys by any means.
Just looking at the abuse of women and girls alone would make me conclude that.
So even if you were going to...
You know, interview somebody that is a member of that group and you wanted to highlight the complexity of the situation and not present them as just, you know, some homogenous evil group.
I think it would behoove you to still ask some challenging questions when there's so many documented human rights abuses and they are currently engaging in the kidnapping of commercial crews,
right?
Not military people, just people who are on boats that are transporting commercial goods.
And the way, of course, that commercial shipping works is that it's very much a globalized industry where it's very much not clear which country...
Or what is the nationality of a ship, right?
So you can have a ship that can be owned by some holding company in the Cayman Islands, but it could be transporting goods on behalf of this other company, and the crew could be from China or Indonesia or somewhere.
It's that kind of industry.
Yeah.
So now you might, if you were going to weed into this, you would want somebody to have done preparation and to treat the topic with some seriousness.
Yes, the people in Yemen are just normal people.
They're going to have interests and hobbies and so on.
But you have a situation which appears to be strongly anti-Semitic and which has documented human rights abuses.
If you were going to interview someone from that group, you would want at least some level of challenging questions.
That's what you would hope.
That even somebody sympathetic to their plight would maybe strive to be a little bit balanced in approaching such a sensitive topic.
So let's see how Hassan does in this interview.
So after the kind of introductory things and that question that you saw him asking, how are things in Yemen and the young guy?
Response basically saying, you know, normal.
And one thing to note here is the young guy is 19, right?
He is a young guy from Yemen that was foisted into public awareness.
Yes, he had a TikTok channel and whatnot, but it's primarily because he was a photogenic 19-year-old.
That is what's led him to have this big public profile.
And so expecting him to have...
Deeply well thought out political points of view or, you know, to be able to answer on behalf of the Hufis or the Yemeni people.
It's not really appropriate because you wouldn't expect like a 19 year old in the UK to be able to do that.
Okay.
What led him to go to one of the ships personally?
Like what were some experiences that he had that caused him to want to go?
and film it.
-Hussan, I want to know what was the one that pushed you to visit this island?
And what was the experience that made you think of this?
And how would you be able to visit this island?
-I love the battles and this is all the time in Palestine.
And I hope there will be new things and more things.
He says he likes adventures and he is a big supporter of Palestine and he's looking forward to bigger and more exciting things.
So I do want to say that, you know, I've seen other things that this guy has put out which are anti-Semitic.
So I'm not saying he's without blame, but I'm just making it clear that a 19-year-old Yemeni guy who's drowned or at least has sympathy for a rebel movement.
It's not really him that I want to focus on in this conversation.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
But Chris, just to clarify, the incident that brought the hot Houthi, what's his name again?
Rashid Al-Hadid, but also known as Tim Houthi Chalamet.
Yes.
So the incident that brought him to fame was this hijacking of the galaxy leader, which is...
Like an automotive roll-on, roll-off type transport vessel.
So it's a good example of one of these international boats.
The registered owner is Galaxy Maritime, which is registered in the Isle of Man, but it's flag state.
It's registered in the Bahamas.
And at the time of its seizure, it was chartered by the Japanese shipping company, Nippon Yusen.
But Galaxy Maritime is owned by Ray Car Carriers, which is co-owned by an Israeli businessman, Abraham Ungar.
So, yeah, it just shows how you can't really identify the nationality of the actual owners of the boat, really.
So, what happened is, like, about 10...
Houthi hijackers used a military helicopter to board the vessel.
They seized the vessel.
They brought it back to Yemen.
And along with the boat, they took 25 crew members, which included 17 from the Philippines, some other crew from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Mexico, and Romania.
So, yeah, they video recorded their attack, at least the footage.
Some of it went viral.
So, yeah, as far as we know, those 25 crew are still, Being kept hostage.
Nothing is known about their whereabouts.
Yeah, they're not.
I mean, the specific details there as well.
So a helicopter, a military helicopter, this is not people approaching the ship on rubber dinghies, right?
Or makeshift wooden craft.
They boarded a ship with a military helicopter and took hostages, the majority of whom are from the Philippines.
So, 70 people from the Philippines.
What a blow against the anti-imperialists that, you know, yes, you stole the cargo, but you would imagine that maybe you could have released the innocent crew if it was really about sending a message to the people,
just like a blow for Palestine and against the anti-imperialists.
Why do you need to keep all of the crew members hostages?
That seems a question that Hassan might ask.
So I'm sure he will inquire about the well-being of the crew.
So let's see how he gets on.
So yes, and just to say, I'm not saying that we have to ascribe no blame to the young Rashid guy, but just that I don't really fault him for delivering, as you'll see,
fairly stock.
Uninformative answers, because that's exactly what I would expect from a 19-year-old rebel who's following in with the Hufis to deliver, right?
So here we go.
Anyway, this is just after the introduction.
Here's what Hassan leads with.
How does, what is the mood in Yemen overall since America started bombing positions in Sana'a and other places?
How do you feel about Yemen and how do you feel about Yemen after America started in the war?
It's natural, there's no fear or any doubt.
We're actually working on this from 11 years ago, it's natural, there's nothing.
He's saying that it's pretty usual.
They've been used to this for 11 years now and they're not scared.
Okay, that's...
That's crazy.
Okay, this is a stupid question.
Okay, you can preface it with that.
Does he know what One Piece is?
One Piece, like, is that an organization?
No, One Piece is an anime.
Oh, okay.
So, the hard turner.
Like, one, an absolutely anodyne question.
Maybe he's just getting to set things up, right?
But, you know, just, how is Yemen responding?
To the American attacks.
And then, like a kind of, huh, okay.
Does he watch One Piece, the anime?
And you hear the translator guy being like, is that some sort of military?
What is that?
And he's, yeah, it's an anime.
A popular anime.
I like One Piece, by the way.
It's the most popular Japanese manga and anime at the minute.
I don't like One Piece.
But my understanding is that it's about, like, it's pirate-themed, right?
It is pirate-themed, but, like, pirate-themed in the sense of Jolly Rogers and a crew sealing the seven seas with cut glasses and special powers, not military aircraft seizing the cargo containers and taking hostages,
right?
So it's a slight difference.
So raising that was quite a hard turn.
But he hits gold, or what Hassan considers gold, because he gets a kind of positive response.
Luffy?
Yeah, he said he's been watching it since he was a kid.
No way!
Yeah.
That's sick!
Yes, yes.
That's fire.
That's so fire.
Oh my god.
Dude, we think the Houthis Ansarallah is doing what Luffy would do.
You should tell him that.
I'm telling you, Hasan, what the Huthians are doing like the Luffy.
Who is Luffy, Chris?
Luffy is the protagonist, the kind of hero.
Hassan is very proud of this take, which he offered.
I heard him outline it on another podcast called Trash Taste, which is an anime kind of focused podcast from three guys who are living in Japan, but not Japanese and are in the anime and that kind of culture.
Anyway, His hot take was that the protagonist in that, because the story has a kind of evil world government, which is kind of oppressing the people on behalf of these elites, and Luffy is the pirate hero who is...
He's not even an anti-hero, he's just the hero, but he's a pirate fighting against the world government.
Hassan is arguing that One Piece is a...
Anti-imperialist work of art, which in some sense is not that much of a leap, but I don't think the author would be making parallels with the Yemeni pirates, like the Houthi pirates.
Would Luffy hijack a container ship and take 17 Filipino people hostage?
That's the question.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think it would be the opposite in the story.
I think the way Hasan sees this is that he's humanizing the guy, right?
He's showing, you know, he's just like us.
Look, he watches anime and this kind of thing.
But on the other hand, it's just such a shallow, vapid approach.
And now, if this was the only time it came up, you might forgive him, right?
Like for just, you know, raising the issue about anime and a pirate-themed anime, just to build rapport.
But also, you can see that the guy, Rashid is a little bit confused about what the point here is, so listen to this.
He's saying that the only motivation that they have is their solidarity with Palestine and to stop the attack on Palestine.
And it's not for any kind of...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
No, I'm saying it's a good thing.
I understand.
So that's what he's saying that the reasons as to why there have been any sort of interceptions on vessels is due to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
It's not for loot.
No.
Tell him it's not for loot.
I know it's not for loot.
Oh, okay.
So, yeah.
They're not like story-tale pirates, because story-tale pirates, whether it's Captain Hook or Pirates of the Caribbean people, they sometimes hijack things for loot.
But, yeah.
So, Hassan unequivocally supports the hijacking and kidnapping.
He's sort of made that quite clear.
Yeah, yeah.
He sees it as rebels fighting back against imperialist, capitalist.
It's quite clear that for him, it is a bit like One Piece in his mind, right?
There's an evil globalist government, and this is just the oppressed striking back against it.
But also there, Matt, you get to hear that bit where Hassan provides the answer, right?
He doesn't say, you know, what are the motives?
He's like, tell him, tell him we know.
That it's not about loot, right?
Yeah, people are saying that, but it's not about that, right?
And you can see in the follow-up for this that Hasan has a desperate need to be recognized by the guy as like an ally, right?
Despite him being the multi-million pound streamer, right?
Like he needs this guy to consider him credible and, you know, a supporter.
As a comrade, yeah.
Yeah, so this is the Rashid responding to that loot point and then Hassad interacting with his chat.
So that's what the typing and stuff is.
You can hear him, you know, kind of because he's talking to his chat at the same time as he's doing the interview.
Yeah, he acknowledges that.
Okay.
Dude, I'm at a loss, basically.
This guy doesn't know your politics or you forgot?
I know, exactly.
So first of all, Matt, that's at the start of the interview.
Where you can hear Hasan being like, what am I going to ask now?
He's obviously done a ton of preparation.
So he's right out of questions.
He asked, how's everyone in Yemen?
Do you watch One Piece?
And there's like, okay.
I love it.
Yeah, but also...
His chatter saying, hey, maybe he's responding a bit wary because he doesn't know your politics.
And that sounds like, yeah, yeah, he doesn't.
So you will see in various clips that are coming that he tries to make his politics clear to head that off.
So one thing he does ask, this is perhaps a responsible...
Journalistic-style question.
He doesn't ask it very well, but listen to this.
So, as far as the Ansarallah militancy goes, as far as the standing military goes, I don't know if he is allowed to speak on this.
I don't know if he's actually a part of the groups at all, or just simply a TikToker, you know what I mean?
I don't know how to ask that in the best way possible, though.
Yeah, I feel like you can ask it pretty directly.
Okay. Raphad, I'm going to ask you, do you think any of the groups, do you think you're a person of the law or do you think you're a person on TikTok?
Do you think you're a person of the law?
Okay, I'm going to say, I'm Yemen, I'm going to be in the Gulf of Palestine.
His answer is he's a Yemeni who stands with Palestine.
Yeah, so there, Matt, the young guy's response, I also understand because he doesn't want to claim to be a spokesperson for the Hufis, right?
Probably because that would get him in trouble in both directions, depending on what he says.
But just Hassan's response is just like, yeah, I'm just a Yemeni guy that happened to be on board a vessel.
Yeah, hijacked.
So, yeah, just a normal guy.
There is some issue, though, because, you know, it's very likely that he is a supporter, but he might not actually have a position, right?
He might just have taken the TikTok thing.
Yeah, he's a 19-year-old young man.
He may well not have very clear or well-thought-out.
Ideological convictions, you know what I mean?
Like, yeah, anyway, that's fine.
It wouldn't be surprising.
So anyway, you can hear a bit more about Hassan's desperate need for him to understand that he's, you know, he's one of the good guys.
He's on side.
Well, one, tell him that this community, this community of mostly Americans raised more than a million dollars for Palestinian charities.
So like, so he knows that I'm not, you know, some fed or some shit.
It's so pathetic, like such, you know, just, yeah, so he doesn't think I'm afraid to tell him I've raised money for charities.
Like, I don't know that I have much analysis there except to say, Jesus Christ, it's...
Yep, yep, yep.
Okay, all right, so he's super keen.
He wants to ingratiate himself.
He really seems to like...
This young man and loves what he's doing and wants him to know that he is shoulder to shoulder and on the right side of the course.
Yeah, and the young guy said, you know, he's out for adventure.
Yeah.
That's his motivation, apparently, which Hassan is fine with.
And when he asks him a little bit more about motivations, he gets this.
Like, he's just reiterating that.
The cause is to cause disruption to the shipments that Americans have interest in until they stop bombing Gaza.
And if they weren't affected by it, then they wouldn't retaliate on Yemen.
But I asked twice about the media and he's just not like...
Okay.
So the young man just doesn't know the answers to some of these questions.
But he understands the general line.
It's against Israel and it's, I guess, Obliquely causing harm to the United States in as much as the United States has an interest in international shipments going through the Persian Gulf.
And that's why they're doing it.
Yeah.
And Hassan Piker's interview style should be coming through quite clearly.
But I really think he did less preparation for this interview than we did for decoding him.
I genuinely believe he will have looked at less information about the Hufis.
Like, I listened to a couple of historical and contemporary podcasts about the situation and read some stuff.
I don't think Hasan does that.
He just kind of vibes to headlines.
And if you want to know why, it's stuff like this.
Okay.
What has the...
What has the response from Yemen been since the bombing?
Do you mean like the government or the...
Okay.
I'm still here.
I'm still here.
Do you mean like what's the response like from the people or from the government?
What's the response from the people, the government?
Like, both.
I mean, is the people separate from the government?
Yeah.
So, Hassan almost certainly doesn't understand that there are two governments, essentially, at least, in Yemen, that there's a civil war going on, and that the Houthis do not control by any means all of the country.
No, or that reference, is the people different from the government?
I mean, what kind of absolute nonsense is that?
Like, in which country is the people just wanting to see him as the government?
That is not the case almost anywhere.
And you'll note there that he asked the question, and he got up and walked away.
And then...
That's why they asked for clarification and then they came back and was like, oh, sorry, yeah.
So he was going off to do something after asking the question.
Presumably he had headphones on so he could still hear the answer.
But that's just, yeah, that level of preparation, Matt, it's hard to overstate.
And just to drill down on this a little bit more, whenever he was talking, I'll ask you if you're Shia or Sunni.
I'm not Shia or Sunni.
I'm not Shia or Sunni.
He says that he's not Shia or Sunni.
He's just Yemeni Muslim.
I don't think Hassan knows that there is a Zaidi.
That is the dominant form in the Hufi-controlled parts of Yemen.
I also don't think that he...
Whenever he asks that question, I don't know, Matt.
I just get the impression that he doesn't know anything about the situation, but he knows there's Shia and Sunni.
Or two divisions in Islam.
So which one are you on?
And when he says the guy seems media trained, no, he doesn't.
Like, he's given very generic answers.
And in this case, asking somebody that belongs to a particular sect, you know, and the answer is basically saying, well, I'm just a Muslim, right?
You know, because that sect is the correct interpretation.
He's not giving a very strong...
But it's not like a super complex dodging answer.
He's giving just the generic response to just say, yeah, I'm an ordinary Muslim in Yemen.
Yeah, I guess it's also obvious that Hassan has totally run out of questions.
I guess he can go to the chat.
At that point, Hassan comes from Turkey, or at least he has a background, some family from Turkey.
So, he does have some understanding, more than I think is usual, about countries which have more of an Islamic representation.
But not that much, because, listen to this.
What kind of, I mean, what kind of role religion plays in his life?
Does he, does he, can I ask, I don't know if I can ask, does he pray five times a day?
No, you don't want me to ask him about religion?
I feel like that's just not, like, interesting.
I don't know, I mean, I can ask him a few times.
No, no, no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, right, right.
Right.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't fucking...
I don't do any of that stuff.
I don't either.
I know.
I'm just wondering what dudes in Yemen are doing.
Are they going to Juma 'a prayer or are they not?
You know what I mean?
Are they pulling up?
Yeah.
Or...
Ooh!
Well, I have a question about what is it that there are so many Yemeni music videos?
Right.
So he's got this guy.
He's got the hot Yemeni young militant, I suppose, who's part of a hijacking operation.
And he wants to talk about music videos.
Yeah, this does come towards the end of it.
But if you think that that's because he's ran out of penetrating political questions that he's been digging down on, you would be wrong, right?
You would be wrong.
This is very much what it is like.
Throughout the whole interview, and to show how much Hassan layers on his particular ideological interpretation to things, here is him asking what Rashid thinks about the presentation of the conflict in the US.
He's saying that he just wants a victory for Palestine and he acknowledges our solidarity as well.
What does he think about the fact that American media in general keeps claiming that the reasons as to why the Yemeni militias are intercepting vessels is for completely oblivious reasons,
like belligerent reasons, and not for Palestine.
They don't talk about that at all here.
How does he feel about that?
Okay, so you heard him...
There, later on to the top of that, what does he think about the US media misrepresenting what the Hufis are about?
And he responds...
He's just reiterating that the cause is to cause disruption to the...
The shipments that Americans have interest in until they stop bombing Gaza and if they weren't affected by it, then they wouldn't retaliate on Yemen.
But I asked twice about the media and he's just not like...
Okay.
He doesn't know.
So not surprisingly, he doesn't have an opinion about how American media is reporting on Houthi motivations for their thing because he doesn't know.
Of course he doesn't know.
Yeah.
And all throughout it, you get this sense that Hassan isn't really able to see beyond his own myopic perspective.
Like, he takes a very US-centric perspective.
Well, yeah, I mean, you'd have to be able to read and understand English to be able to consume any amount of US news in order to have an opinion about that.
So he seems to lack any kind of, you know...
Model of mind to understand that this young guy almost certainly would not know the answer to that.
Yeah, yeah.
And you hear him reference his political takes.
We'll see this come up quite a lot, like his ideological perspective, layering that on top.
But also just his references, like his world, which is streamers and America.
And culture war topics and popular YouTubers.
He kind of takes that as the baseline references that everybody shares and are interested in.
And it's amazingly biopic.
That's the only way I can put it.
So here I'm talking about the issues pertaining to Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Yemen.
What does he think about...
I want to ask him questions about Saudi Arabia and UAE.
Do the people of Yemen recognize Saudi involvement or UAE involvement in Yemen as it's an extension of American involvement or American proxies?
Or do they separate that at all?
So there you had the kind of presentation that...
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are just proxies of the American imperialist system.
So does he recognize that perspective?
So what he wants them to give back is an answer that basically acknowledges that, yes, they're fighting back against the hegemony of the U.S. and the Saudi Arabian alliance.
But the answer doesn't really satisfy and illustrates, Matt, the complexity.
Of the ever-shifting geopolitical landscape there.
So listen to the guy's answer.
I don't understand the question, but we're with the Saudis brothers and brothers and sisters, and even the ones that have come through the social media, there's no one from us.
We didn't see any of them.
It's true that there was a war against them, but we're now, brothers, there's no war between us.
Everything is okay, until I entered the Saudis.
They hate the Saudis, they hate me, everything.
Okay, thank you.
Hassan oh sorry sorry I keep saying he's saying that right now there's no like animosity between like to him there's no animosity between Saudis and Yemenis
and Emiratis like he's saying like he acknowledges that there was a war but right now like he's saying that there's nothing but
Brotherhood and he even says that he went to Umrah recently in Saudi Arabia and that he was treated normally.
So he himself doesn't, I mean, he doesn't, I guess, I don't know, he's not like tying the American and Saudi involvement together.
Okay, that's interesting.
Yeah.
That's probably why, okay, that's good.
That's probably why it's like more...
Oh, whoa!
What has happened to...
So he completely rejects the premise and contradicts it by saying, you know, well, actually, we don't have an issue with Saudi Arabia.
I've been there recently.
And so, of course, that is not completely true when you look at the geopolitical stakes and who Saudi Arabia are supporting or not.
But it just shows that he didn't pick up what Hassan...
Wanted them to get, which is like, you know, just blame it on the US.
Yeah, there's an amazing disconnect there between these two people.
I'd like you to expect between a 19-year-old Yemeni man, the kind of person that takes up a gun and goes on a helicopter to take over ships, and this multimillionaire...
Streamer, you know, anime enthusiast in the United States somewhere in his mansion.
Like, they come from completely different worlds.
Hassan would very much like it to be that they are really vibing together and that they have this big shared connection because they share a common, you know, anti-US hegemony socialist something or other, a revolutionary worldview.
But of course they don't.
They don't have anything in common at all.
Apart from maybe One Piece.
Yeah, and actually, Hasan wants to constantly try and invoke that.
That they're basically just the same.
And so, you do hear him repeatedly throughout the interview try to bring up those kind of questions.
So, for example...
Like, who are his favorite...
What does he watch other than One Piece?
Because he watches One Piece.
What else?
Because he's like a normal 19-year-old, right?
So, ask him what other stuff that he watches.
Like, does he play video games?
Does he like FIFA?
Sure.
Does he play FIFA?
You know, what's he doing playing video games?
Right?
And the answer from the guy, Matt, illustrates the divergence here, despite what Hassan will go on to say.
So here is the response.
But I mean, I don't watch anything.
I don't have any games, I mean, even when I just finished it.
Mm. I mean, I like the enemy.
I mean, in a way, I wanted to watch a lot of kids.
But I started it.
Now, you don't have anything to watch?
No, I mean, I'm working with the game, I mean, I'm watching.
You've worked now?
Yes.
He says that he used to He likes watching Turkish and American TV shows, and he also used to love anime a lot, but he says that he's been very busy recently, so he hasn't been watching or doing anything.
What does he watch in Turkish?
What does he watch in Turkish?
I'll ask you, if you were to introduce Mohamed Nour...
Mohamed Nour was the first time I listened to him.
The Turkish version was very popular in the time.
It wasn't the time, it was probably 10 years ago.
No, he hasn't watched that one, but I watched that one.
No, you watched that one?
Yeah.
Yeah, so the response was he doesn't have time to watch animes because he's busy, you know, fighting for Palestine.
But Hasan heard that, oh, he said that he used to watch Turkish TV.
Maybe there's some connection there.
TV shows.
And he goes down trying to reference TV shows that, you know, maybe he's seen and you can hear some of this.
Okay.
So he doesn't have time to watch stuff now, but what did he watch when he was younger?
What is he like?
Tom and Jerry, SpongeBob, Smurfs.
Nice, nice.
Okay.
Hell yeah.
That's good.
Okay, so you watch Spongebob and whatnot.
Does he go to school?
How does that work?
I don't know.
Do you think Hassan's into the Smurfs?
He didn't pick up on that one.
Smurfs, Kulmat, Tom and Jerry.
Awesome.
Yeah, that's...
I mean, it's painful, right?
It's actually painful because he's so grasping to say, oh yeah, we're just to see him and the best that he can do is you watch Spongebob when you were A kid.
Oh, that's great.
That's excellent.
But he's no follow-up, right?
Because where do you go from there?
And also, just Hassan's general thing is, is he at school?
Does he go to school?
Now, first of all, Matt, he's 19. Second of all, he's a goofy.
Pirate, right?
So, I wonder what his response will be about going to school.
And you can also hear San say, like, I don't know, you know, what do people do over there?
I don't know.
Here's the response.
He says he's done with school.
He's 19. So, what does he want to do?
What are the aspirations other than go on adventures?
What do you have to do or dreams that you want to make?
truth is...
I don't have anything.
anything to do?
No, no, I don't have anything to think about this truth.
Honestly, I live my life every day and I live every day.
I don't think about it after that.
He's saying that he just lives every day as it comes.
doesn't really have any long-term goals.
This guy's a himbo, bro.
Oh my god.
Yeah, it's incredibly vapid, isn't it?
So I guess the best model that has
Hassan has of this young guy is that he's a pirate in the same vein as a pirate on One Piece who likes going on adventures and they share a common interest in cartoons.
This is his.
I think there he actually got a little bit frustrated because the guy, you know, he was asking long-term plans and he's just saying, you know, I live every day as it comes, which is a normal thing for a 19-year-old to say, but especially one that lives in a precarious situation, right?
But Hassan is like, oh, he's a himbo, like, you know, a male bimbo, because he's just out having fun, partying or whatever.
Like, he doesn't have...
Yeah, what are his long-term plans going to be, Hassan, in a country stricken with civil war when he's part of a rebel group that is currently engaged in, like, a ceasefire, yes, but they're certainly in danger from the conflict.
So just...
It's just such a gap, right?
He's kind of like, what do you want to study at university?
Or do you want to be a streamer?
This kind of thing.
And if you've ever been around hostels or bars at university, this will be a very familiar conversation that you end up when people meet people from a different country.
What's that?
Tell them to teach us, like, not a bad word in Yemen, but, like, how to say, like, fuck you.
Like, in Turkey, we have this, right?
Wouldn't they have that in Yemen as well?
Like, something like that that's unique?
Um, okay.
Middle finger?
Do you know that?
Well, I mean, in, like, Arabs do this.
Like, have you seen this?
Yeah, yeah, I have.
Yeah, this, right?
Yeah, so they...
They've got to the stage at that point of, you know, just get him to teach me bad words in Yemeni.
And he also asks him various questions about, like, for example, this one.
He's saying that once Palestine is free, then he can rest and he would like to visit Palestine and he would like Palestinians to visit Yemen as well.
Me too, brother.
Me too.
Okay.
Ask him his thoughts on Sean King.
Okay, Chatters.
Fucking so stupid.
Wait, what the fuck?
He smiled at that.
Does he know who that is?
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Okay, Jesus Christ.
Does he know who Donald Trump is?
So, does he know who Sean King is?
You know, the online leftist figure.
That's from Hassan's chat, and he's like, that's a stupid question.
But when he sees some reaction, he's like, well, maybe he does know who Sean King is.
And what about Donald Trump?
It's just like naming people that he might have heard of.
And another one, Matt.
You know, like, does he know who Mr. Beast is?
Ask him that.
No, he thinks you're talking about Mr. Bean.
Mr. Bean?
No, no, Mr. Beast on YouTube.
So it seems like the young Yemeni hijacker is not up to date with millennial culture.
No, yeah.
He doesn't know all the popular American YouTubers.
That's weird.
And he does know Mr. Bean, which if Hassan had any...
Shred off a non-American perspective, we'd know that Mr. Bean is very well known and popular.
So we actually could have established a connection if he'd started talking about Mr. Bean.
But of course, Hassan is just like, no, no, not Mr. Bean.
That's not someone I'm interested in.
So, like, Mr. Bean is actually very well known around non-English speaking countries because you don't have to speak English to understand it.
It's physical, puma, and it's kind of universal.
It may not be very good, but I mean, it's okay.
I tell you.
But it is universal.
Yeah.
So, yeah, there's just that.
There's the cultural divide which Hassan is trying to pretend isn't there.
But there's also the constant, like, I don't know how to put it.
It's just like, it's sycophantic from a millionaire.
TikToker, American leftist, needing to get recognition in a very teenage boy like Lex Friedman style way.
So listen to this question, for example.
He doesn't play any video games, he said, right?
No video games?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
I already asked about the anti-Zionist Jews.
He said he loves it.
Anyone who is anti-Zionist and with the Palestinian people, he's happy with.
I mean, I want to ask him about the knife.
The knives are sick.
What's up with the knives?
You know, the curved knives.
What's up with the curved knives, Matt?
They're sick.
They're cool.
They're cool.
They are cool.
So it makes sense to me that he would seek recognition and validation because I guess someone like Hasan knows that he's a performance.
He's an artist from his, you know, streaming and he calls himself a propagandist for, you know, socialist revolution.
He does, but I think that's in response to being constantly labeled.
A propagandist.
At some point being unable to deny it.
Yeah.
Yeah, but he, you know, like a lot of people online, they talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk, obviously.
Their real life is making a lot of money.
He's a millionaire living in a mansion, hanging out with YouTube influencers.
Living in a mansion.
Playing computer games.
And so an actual person who's actually hijacking ships and knows how to shoot a gun and is doing revolutionary things in his mind, he's everything he isn't in terms of having the socialist cred or the revolutionary cred.
So it makes sense that he would want to ingratiate himself.
Yeah.
And you can see alongside his kind of very...
He's grasping sycophantic responses, like this one.
He says if one of those knives comes out in front of you, it's not going back until it has blood on it.
Oh, shit.
Okay, my bad.
Well, I mean, I think it's cool, though.
Okay, maybe explain why you're trying to get this type of humanizing information from him.
Okay, shut up, chatter.
Come on.
That's crazy.
We're not going to explain that.
Does he watch TikTok or YouTube?
It just goes on, doesn't it?
He won't stop.
Oh, I think this is a good time to mention that if you thought that Hassan was kind of banging a drum where he's not getting much bites about YouTuber culture, anime, this kind of stuff, I think he got cocky because he got Luffy.
At the start, and then he was like, oh, you know, we can just draw all the parallels.
And like he responded to his chat there, his goal, his stated goal is to humanize him, right?
To show that he's just the same as us.
And it's one of those things, Matt, which I consider just an absolutely fucking mundane point that every alternative influencer seems to regard as this hugely insightful thing.
Putin is just a man.
Nazis are people.
People in the Muslim world are just people.
I know.
Like, I know.
Everyone in the world is a person.
Hitler was a person.
Everybody is a person.
It's presented as this huge insight.
And you're just like, no, anybody with any common sense should understand that basic point.
And it's usually not the point you need to focus on because that's not why they're being criticized.
It's usually for specific actions.
Yeah, well, I think if someone like Hassan had any ability to actually empathize...
And actually understand the person he's talking to, he'd understand that they are living in and grew up in an extraordinarily different environment, both social and material.
And step one in humanizing or empathizing, whatever, is to understand those incredible differences and not to be asking about the stuff that you're into, TikTok and gaming and, you know, millennial American things.
No, I mean, I've...
Criticized the leftist and anti-imperialist perspective for being fixated on the West.
It seems in some respect that it isn't because it's trying to focus on other countries and what has occurred there.
But it almost always is reframing things around Western powers, the US in particular, and kind of robbing the agency or the notion that these other countries might have their own.
Regional interests and perspectives that don't revolve around the US.
And just to illustrate this, here's Hassan.
He thinks basically that the guy must have some opinion about Americans and interests about Americans.
I mean, the slogan of his group suggests that.
But listen to the response when he tries to ask.
Okay, so what does he think about Americans?
Because there's a lot of people in America that also are showing solidarity to the Palestinian people.
How does he feel about that?
Is that shocking to him?
So he asks about what the guy thinks about America and the response is relatively muted.
Do you know that there are many people who are supporting the Palestinian people and who are competing with them?
Right, there are many sides.
I saw many sides.
They are doing with me with the regulations.
They are all with Palestine.
I saw many people.
I love you.
They are all.
Yeah, he says he knows that a lot of the people that are supporting him online are foreigners and he reciprocates and sends back the love to them.
Okay, that's cool.
Yeah, we love you too, man.
Big time.
I love you.
Do they...
Okay, so does he feel like...
You know, he says he appreciates that there are people that show support, but he doesn't really get into what he thinks about America, right?
So Hassan tries again later.
I don't know.
I mean, he's...
I asked him about, like, is American media consumption and whatnot.
Overall, what does he think about America?
Not just Americans, but what does he think about America?
When you think about America, what is the first thing that comes to his mind?
Hassan is like, right, well, you know, he didn't have much to say about American media, but what about just America?
Like, what is his opinion about America?
And let's hear the answer.
I don't think about America.
I like that.
Okay, fair.
Does he have any questions for me or for Americans in general, if there's anything that he wants to know as well?
Yeah, I mean, it's just striking to me, like, apart from anything else, he's actually just absolutely, totally uninterested in the person he's interviewing.
Like, I find it at least a little bit interesting.
Now, this interview made me think about it.
Like, here is this young man, you know, where did he go to school?
What's his background?
What's his family?
What was it like where he grew up?
Were they very poor?
Did they have money?
When did he join the militia?
What made him want to go and go on the boat?
I mean, there's a bunch of...
Interesting things that you could find out.
Right.
He's not interested.
He doesn't care.
He's looking for a connection, sure, by asking him about stuff that – whether he likes stuff that he likes, bloody, you know, cartoons and computer games.
And like most Americans, he wants to know what he thinks of Americans and America either.
And obviously, he wants – To draw him out and hopefully get him to talk politics and talk about the evil global hegemony and things like that.
But he also would like him to be aware also that there are good Americans like him who are trying to fight the system from within by taking huge amounts of sponsorships and living in mansions and playing computer games.
Yeah, so he does ask him details about his life and stuff, but it's very clear that he's not really...
His only interest in that is for its rhetorical value to show that the guy is a normal person.
That's what he wants to say.
He's just like us.
He likes the same kind of cartoons.
He's explicitly trying to humanize in the way that you are talking about that a person would be humanized if they were interviewed, but it's not an interest in that person.
It's an interest in what that person can do for Your ideological purposes.
So that's why Hasan is constantly, like, he's not really engaging.
He could adjust his approach to focus on the kind of things that the guy seems to express an interest in, but he doesn't, right?
He just is constantly coming back to his narrative.
And it gets really bad.
This is one of the points where he's having difficulty, you know, coming up with questions.
What does he know about Turkey?
He told you, "What do you know about Turkey?"
Turkey, Pushi, Istanbul.
He wants to visit Istanbul.
Okay, so ask him what made him record the video.
Yeah, I mean, he already said it though.
He already responded to it.
Ask him if he knows Western women are comparing him to a very famous actor.
Oh yeah, does he know who Timothee Chalamet is?
He also went to Turkey, you know, because he knows something about Turkey.
Like, what's his opinion of Turkey?
And then he doesn't get much purchase there.
So then his chat suggests, like, maybe ask him about, like, Timothee Chalamet, but he doesn't have much of an opinion about Timothee Chalamet.
Very famous actor.
No.
People in the West are comparing him to a very famous actor.
I'm telling you that there are a lot of people in the West who are talking about Timothy Shalami, a very popular character.
He says that he's American and I'm Yemeni.
That's it.
Fair, fair, fair, fair, fair.
He doesn't know who he is.
No, no, it's fine.
It's fine.
He also asks him this question.
He's saying nothing is more important than Palestine right now, so that's what he's spending his time on.
Okay.
He just graduated high school, Chad.
What does he think about China?
Does he know anything about China?
Let's see I said gonna my *laughs*
In China, there are Muslims.
There are Muslims.
There are a lot of Muslims in the whole world.
I didn't sit with them in China, but the truth was that the Chinese people were Chinese, and they were married, and they were pregnant, and they were pregnant.
He's saying he hasn't spent much time with Chinese people, but one of the captains, the captain was Chinese, and he did qat with them, and he danced some music with them, and he was vibing, so he likes him, yeah.
I mean, what?
That's so crazy.
So they're just fucking chilling with the captains?
Like, I don't understand.
America's like blowing them up while they're just like doing cat and fucking chilling with the captains.
Like, how does he feel about that?
Isn't that fucking crazy?
Like, I don't know how to describe it.
It's like, he seems it's normal, but it's not normal to have your ship blown up, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
I wonder if the Chinese captain wants to go home.
No, no, he's just vibing, Matt.
He's just hanging out.
And you can hear Hassan's framing there very strongly that, you know, These guys are just hanging out, relaxing with the captains and stuff, and the U.S. is just blowing them up.
Yeah.
They're nice guys, and the U.S. is like the evil people blowing them up.
And that point about doing CAT, you know, a chewing drug that is popular in India.
Oh, yes.
Yes, yes.
So that's something, again, in like a teenage boy way, that...
Hasan gets fixated on about people taking cat and, you know, doing cat and everybody having a nice time.
He's saying they've all tried cats, including the captain of the ship that he went on.
He's saying that the vibes are immaculate.
No fucking way!
He's saying he wants us to visit.
Oh, dude, I would love to one day.
I'm afraid of America bombs though.
That's what I'm afraid.
They say that they want to go to the ground, but they fear the American crime.
No, no, they come and let them go to the ground.
They live as one base.
They think they're one base.
He says if you go visit there, you'll feel like you're in one piece and you can visit all the boats.
That's good.
Yeah, that would be an interesting scenario, wouldn't it?
This millionaire streamer visiting the boats.
Everybody's just having fun.
It's like One Piece, Matt.
They can all two-cut and hang out.
What's the problem?
Why are people complaining, Matt?
It sounds like it's a barrel of laughs over there.
Yeah, if it wasn't for the American airstrikes on those launch sites, then Yemen would be fine.
Be happy and just chilling out.
Yeah, and actually, Rashid does explain that actually all of the hostages, they all are fine with the situation.
He's saying that they win over the crews on these ships and they win them over with their charm and they make them hate America and the US government.
That's so funny.
Okay, that doesn't probably take much, to be fair.
I mean, what does he plan on doing once Palestine is free?
You know what I mean?
Yeah, so, you know, you said, does he support taking the hostages?
But you didn't factor in that, actually, the hostages have kind of been talked round.
They've been won over by their charm.
Yeah, I'm sure there's no pressure on them to endorse.
The view of their captors.
That's not it.
They just realize that the US is actually the one that is threatening them.
And they're fine.
They're just hanging out, taking cat.
They can enjoy themselves.
Hasan eats all of this up totally uncritically.
Not just uncritically, Matt.
You said that he's a propagandist.
And I think that is putting it mildly.
Okay.
What does he have to say to dumbasses that consider him to be a terrorist?
What does he think about that?
I just banned one of those stupid fuckers in the chat just now.
He says, who are they?
Just fucking dumbasses.
He's like dismissing them.
Oh, okay.
Nice.
Okay.
Respect.
So that's that.
That's that solved.
You know, you thought, Matt, what about people who say that they're terrorists or that they have human rights abuses?
No, they're dumbasses.
And who says that?
Yeah, great point.
Done.
Well, that's good.
Yeah, that's all cleared up now.
So before we get to just the very end, I think most people will have got the general gist of it.
But the absolute inanity, Of it cannot be overstated, right?
You've already heard comparisons to One Piece.
You've had questions about Mr. Beast.
What does he think about Timothee Charlemagne?
What does he think about Sean King?
Whatever the case might be.
FIFA.
Now, what about this one?
Okay, what else do I want to ask?
What else do I want to ask?
So, like, I mean, he's asking if he would stop going on bows if Israel stops a genocide.
I mean, yeah, he's going to say yes, Chad.
What are you talking about?
Those are, like, dumbass questions.
Has he ever had, like, Western food?
So, you know, the dumbass question suggested by his chat related to the situation of motivations.
Hassan, has he had Western food?
Unclear here what that actually means.
And actually, the response of the guy by kind of highlighting that.
He's not really answering any specific foods.
He's just saying it's the same food that he eats is the same food that we eat.
Okay.
Is there a KFC there?
They're everywhere?
I don't think there's a KFC in Yemen, dog.
Now, you might have thought this chat asking about KFC, that was a bit flippant.
But actually, they get into it.
Because he sees that he recognizes KFC and they go back and forth a bit of Kentucky Fried Chicken of what it is and then this is the follow-up.
Oh, they do have KFC in Yemen?
I feel like it's off-brand.
Oh, yeah.
It's got to be, right?
What the fuck?
That's crazy.
Okay, that's sick.
That's wild.
They fucking have KFC in Yemen.
There you go.
What does he do for a day-to-day in Yemen?
Tell him to walk us through a day, like a normal day in his life.
Does he have a girlfriend?
What does his parents think about this?
I got a bunch of questions like that.
A bunch of questions like that.
By the way, man, I'm not going to play them all for you, but the answer is...
He just does normal stuff.
He's trying to free Palestine.
You know, that he repeats that point.
And Hassan asks him about girlfriends and about his parents.
He's saying that he doesn't talk to any girls.
He doesn't DM any girls.
He's not talking to any girls at all.
Uh-huh.
Sure.
Oh, okay, okay.
Okay. Okay, I'll ask you again, what was the answer to your parents'video that was associated with you?
I mean, it's natural.
That's a natural thing.
Yeah, he says his parents'reaction was normal.
Like, there is no big reaction.
His parents are just chilling.
Why are they...
They're so chill about everything.
Everything is chill.
No, like, everything is chill, apparently.
There's no...
Nothing is...
Like, we're overreacting, it seems like.
Being a 19-year-old Muslim boy in a conservative country, he says, you know, he's never...
Talk to any girls.
His parents are nice people.
And that sounds like, kind of, uh, all right.
Not giving him what's right.
Like, again, just an absolute failure to consider that, you know, the context would be different in a conservative country.
And not to say that they won't be interested in girls or that kind of thing, but just like...
Yeah, they're not going on dates.
They're dine at the mall, right, to get a burger.
But at least finally at the end, Hasan made some attempt to, I guess, even if it was pretty gormless, to ask some questions about this young guy's life, motivations, that kind of thing.
Yeah, they don't go very far, but yes, he does ask them.
That's where the bit came about, like him being a himbo, because, you know, he doesn't have these big plans or motivations.
So that was the kind of tail end of that.
So you've heard Hassan, you've heard what he actually did.
Now, here's the way that he characterizes what just occurred.
This is crazy.
I'm just fucking chilling.
We're just vibing.
No, I know.
This is the dream blunt rotation right here.
Yeah, we're just vibing.
We're vibing big time, okay?
This is the international language that everybody understands.
Cursing, fucking football, and all this shit.
But they don't have any...
They don't have any, like...
You know, he doesn't have any time to watch fucking anime and shit, so I don't know.
I don't know what else to ask about.
So he doesn't play any video games.
He already said he watches One Piece chat.
He already said that.
You need to understand overseas mentality.
Bitch, I'm overseas myself originally.
Shut the fuck up.
Oh, okay.
Hasan does not understand.
Like, I can feel quite confident.
Whatever his mixed background, he is absolutely trapped in an American-centric perspective.
Like, he's just...
Yeah, it's painful.
Listening to it.
Especially him being like, "Yeah, we're really vibing.
We're getting angry."
No, they are not vibing.
The young Houthi man is giving, like you said, completely anodyne, low-information, scripted-type answers.
"No, I don't have any plans.
Yes, I'm working towards freeing Palestine.
My parents are good people.
I respect them very much.
I'm a Yemeni Muslim."
He's naturally not going to be just opening his...
He's not the representative for them.
Despite what Hassan said, he's not mediatorian, so he's just giving fairly stock answers.
He's just a normal guy.
That's right.
But it is a relatively extreme, ultra-conservative social milieu in which he is.
You do not just speak freely on a public recording.
Right?
Like, you don't just, like, swing free and just give your opinions about all kinds of things, even if he had them.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Hassan has no, yeah, has no...
Understanding of that.
Yeah.
Yeah, and one thing to note, Matt, that, you know, we've talked about him crawling to get recognition, but he, like that time when he wanted to say about making the donations, he also does want to emphasize that...
He just says their life is full of adventures.
Okay, that's a positive way to look at it.
Tell him there's 25,000 people watching him live right now, by the way.
I don't know if he knows that.
He says he loves all of them and he wishes they could all try Qat soon and he's treating them to it.
Okay, yeah.
I can't wait.
We're going to Yemen and we're getting Qat.
God damn, man.
The fact that he is the most popular leftist streamer.
This is a searing indictment.
Leftism.
I'm sorry.
If people take Hassan seriously and he is popular, this is just absolute fucking juvenile nonsense.
I don't think that this interview is an outlier in his output.
I think this is quite illustrative of how he approaches things.
Ideology is the overriding thing.
Alongside all this influencer bullshit, which is such a terrible combination.
But even the ideology, as far as I can tell, it's cookie-cutter, two-dimensional ideology.
It's not sophisticated.
Even if you did have quite radical left-wing politics, then surely this is not a good version of it.
You could do so much better.
Come on.
Come on.
I'm serious.
And the very end, the last clip to play, Matt, after this brilliant thing is Hassan then characterizing what has occurred.
You know, the interview is done.
So what value was there to that?
I bet you didn't think that that was going to happen today.
OK, that was incredible.
You should ask him about Mr. Bean.
Yeah, that that was a wild.
Wild turn of events.
This is genuinely incredible.
This is more than anything I've seen in corporate media and it's incredible to see this community support and learn from their point of view.
Love you, Haas.
Yeah.
Instead of screeching endlessly about how bad the Yemeni people are, you know, sometimes you just got to go directly to the source, baby.
That's how it works.
Okay?
That was fire.
That was fire.
I hate that phrase.
This is me just being in grumpy old culture.
I hate that.
I want to be Richard Dawkins complaining about them taking away his pot of honey at the airport.
Calling things fire.
That's so fire.
But there's a reason, Matt, that you don't hear this kind of thing in the mainstream media.
And it isn't because it's so subversive.
It's because it's so fucking self-indulgent and insubstantial.
It's nothing.
You just...
Did a sycophantic, pandering interview where you tried to layer your political perspective on almost everything that was said, and you wanted to use the person for your particular political interpretation.
And the level of insight, again, maybe people in Hassan's audience do need to learn that people in Yemen are actual people.
They've seen things on TV.
They had childhoods.
They can make jokes.
That's not insight to me.
It's not insight to me.
It doesn't make the Hufis any less an organization that has been responsible for terrible humanitarian abuses and ongoing hostage-taking, stoning of people.
They're also not a cartoon villain.
That's true.
They're in a part of the world.
There is civil conflicts.
The people they're fighting are not all good people either.
But Hassan's view is absolutely cartoonish.
And it's kind of fitting that he spent most of it trying to find cartoons that he could reference.
Because, yeah, his politics is not really any deeper than that.
No, I'd say his politics are about as deep as, what's that cartoon called?
Sorry, anime.
SpongeBob.
I'm going to keep calling them cartoons.
One Piece is much deeper.
Much stronger critique than this.
No, you're right.
I mean, the thing is, even his objective was stupid, which was to...
Use this kid as a prop for his thing.
His stated objective would be okay.
Like, if he did a Louis Farouk-style interview to humanize somebody from a group that is, you know, presented as villainous in the media, you could do that.
But you need to do it responsibly and be willing to raise some challenging questions.
And as you've seen, Hassan can't do that, right?
Like, he is not capable or doesn't want to.
It seems to be an indulgent, self-obsessed man-child who lives in a mansion and plays computer games.
That's beautiful.
Exactly.
And that applies to so many of the streamer world.
Indulgent, grown-ass children who are just narcissistic, obsessed with whatever their particular takes are, and very, very unhealthily cultivating Abusive parasocial relationships like you heard at the start.
Yeah.
This is all in the context of that ongoing audience interaction.
Yeah, and I feel like the sort of cartoonish, ultra-simplified, stupid politics is just really window dressing for what's going on here.
And for me, the main thing is because of his personal failings, he completely fails in what he was attempting to achieve, which is to get to know this.
Young man, really understand what's going on in his head and what motivates him in his background.
It was just so superficial.
KFC and One Piece.
So yeah, I mean, the guru stuff is interesting.
I mean, on one hand, he definitely falls into the category of too useless to be a guru.
But we definitely saw the cultish dynamics there, didn't we?
Yeah, I mean, I don't think Hasan is the best example of politics streamers and their ability to channel the kind of eloquent...
Monologues that we've seen in the secular gurus, but I think in a lot of other ways in terms of encouraging cultish in-group, out-group dynamics, in terms of being conspiracy-prone,
grievance-mongering, being narcissistic, he's lighting up a whole bunch of it.
So yeah, I do think that there's at least a lot of strong parallels.
With the streamer influencer types and secular gurus, particularly when they're pushing a political line.
Now, yeah, they might fall a little bit more towards like pundits or activists in this respect, but because of the super strong audience interaction and the conflating of daily life with their stream, because people are interested in who Hassan is dating,
who he's collaborating.
With, you know, what new things he's bought or these kind of things.
So it mixes it all in.
It's not like a journalist or a pundit who just shows up on the political talk shows.
Yeah, that's right.
So it's an odd mix.
It sort of weaves in the geopolitical takes, the ideological stuff, but it's woven into him and his life and computer games and other random interests.
Yeah, I mean, we haven't mentioned, but he's like a buff, very handsome.
Young guy.
So that definitely plays into his popularity.
I saw a bunch of photos of him flexing his muscles with his shirt off and stuff on pictures.
It's, you know, whatever.
So that's all context.
Context, context.
Well, anyway, thanks, Chris.
That was absolutely fucking interminable.
I'm thanking you, ironically.
I hope you have picked up.
I did pick up.
I did pick up.
Was this my punishment?
I got to listen to Sean Carroll.
We got to have that nice chat about free agents.
And now you had to punish me with more of this.
This is Red Scare all over again.
Yeah, that's a good comparison.
A completely different ideology, but the exact same in terms of level of depth.
So, yeah.
And I will say, Matt, that it is your punishment because we're entering the season.
Of streamers, but we're going to balance it out by having academic gurus to kind of keep things going.
And some of the other streamers are more substantial in different ways.
So there we go.
But yeah, this is a very stupid piece of content.
But I think...
People need to be aware, I think is your point.
I mean, he is a super popular.
He's not just like a random...
No, he's not a random person.
Not a random person at all.
So yeah.
Okay, Matt.
Well, the last thing before we go and disappear is just to say thanks to a couple of patrons, the people that support Decoding the Gurus.
And if you want to join them, it's just $2.
You can get access to the supplementary material for the episodes.
You can get...
Decoding Academia, you can live stream with us.
We promise we won't abuse you like Hasan Piker does.
We'll be nice to you and the Patreon.
At first.
At first.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah.
Anyway, we have a Patreon.
It's $2 at the lowest tier and various people join and we say thank you to them.
And that would include, at the conspiracy hypothesizer level, Alexander Tronstand.
Vaughn Jensen, Daniel Shopee, Alex A, Matthew, Michael Davey, Botanical Experiences, Julia Strait, Go North Japan, Is a Sandwich, Chris Brudrick, Nick Wiebe, Jerry Fuji,
Victor Ivanov, Daz, Gingy, Austin Holland, Amelia Dispan, and CoolDad420.
Yay!
Thank you very much.
These people are the only thing standing between us and AG1 sponsorship, Athletic Greens.
That's true.
Thank you.
I feel like there was a conference that none of us were invited to that came to some very strong conclusions and they've all circulated this list of correct answers.
I wasn't at this conference.
This kind of shit makes me think, man.
It's almost like someone is being paid.
Like, when you hear these George Soros stories, he's trying to destroy the country from within.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
Okay.
And the revolutionary, if you're smart, the people that get access to the Decoding Academia episodes, they include Beagle Savant.
Al Hall, Generalized Linear Supermodel, Chuck Boy, Sophia de Fossard, Captain Princess God Dammit Freak Out.
I like that.
I like that.
Especially, I liked Generalized.
Linear supermodel.
Do you know what I was doing when you interrupted me to listen to this trash, Chris?
I was running a generalized linear model.
It was actually Gaussian, but with a log link.
So, yeah.
That's what I was doing.
As you know, I was very concerned about my residuals.
That's right.
Well, keep them on your mind while you listen to this.
I'm usually running, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time.
And the idea is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm.
I'm someone who's a true polymath.
I'm all over the place.
But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption.
Now, that's just a guess.
And it could easily be wrong.
But it also could not be wrong.
The fact that it's even plausible is stunning.
So there we go, Matt.
That's it.
We'll leave people with that note.
Make better choices than listening to Hasan Piker.
That's what I would say to people.
I mean, listen to him if you want, but just take him for what he is.
Yeah, if there is any overlap between the people who listen to us and the people who listen to Hasan Piker, take a good, hard look at yourselves.
I'm looking at the intersection between those two sets.
There's one!
We're making the in-group, I-group, I-G here.
No, that's fine.
You can listen to them.
No, it's fine.
Just know that we judge you for it.
Yeah, that's all.
We're just judging you for it.
All right.
Well, that's it, Matt.
I'll see you soon enough.
See you soon enough.
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