Yesterday, Trump adviser and right-wing internet agitator Laura Loomer called a group of elected Black women “ghetto, entitled, race-obsessed, destructive black BITCHES who are completely unfit for the power they hold.”
When State Rep. Angie Nixon (D) clapped back by pointing out that Loomer once ate dog food on camera, Loomer went so low it actually shocked my sensibilities, which is hard for her to do these days:
These comments have not made the news at all—not only because we have come to expect them from Loomer, who is, again, ADVISING THE PRESIDENT. But because less than three months before a deeply consequential midterm election, the mainstream media have been hyper-focused on pressuring Democratic candidates to answer for recent remarks by Hasan Piker, a leftist Twitch streamer that most Democratic voters haven’t even heard of, about Israel and antisemitism.
For context: Piker essentially said last week that that Jewish people are not “monolithic” and that conflating Israel’s policies with the values of all American Jews may exacerbate threats of antisemitic violence in the US. Here are his words, condensed for clarity:
“Look, the anti-Zionist Jews in my community, you have a very tough job ahead of you, where you have to go back to your communities and try to get your elderly relatives to understand that this connection between Israel and Zionism that is expressed over and over again through a lot of these Jewish institutions…is teaching people the idea that Jews are monolithic. And this is a dangerous…mode of propaganda…If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action. Not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews…I don’t know how many different ways I can explain this. I don’t know how people don’t recognize how dangerous this predicament is, how dangerous this is for Jews.”
Was this artfully stated? No. Was Piker actually blaming Jewish people for any future attacks against them, as the worst faith interpretations of his words claim? Probably not. Piker has condemned antisemitism many times and was trying to echo a point that has been made by many others, including Jewish scholars, about the dangers of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
More importantly, you do not have to listen to Hasan Piker or give one shit about anything the man says! He is not running for anything, was not elected to anything, and does not work for the Democratic Party in any capacity. He’s not a politician with media training and message discipline; he’s a leftist Twitch streamer who broadcasts his random thoughts for something like eight hours a day. Sometimes he uses his platform of 3+ million Twitch followers to advocate for candidates he likes on the left, much like Elon Musk wore a cheesehead on stage in Wisconsin to campaign for a conservative state Supreme Court candidate.
But this does not explain, for instance, why Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia was pressed to answer for Piker’s remarks, despite never campaigning with him and having nothing to do with him. An Ossoff spokesperson responded to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s repeated questions about Piker this week that the senator “unreservedly rejects reckless and dangerous rhetoric suggesting that policy advocacy invites violence against the Jewish community or any community.” This generated headlines all over the MSM that Ossoff has joined the chorus of Democrats condemning the a beloved figure on the left, which in turn prompted Piker to snipe at Ossoff back. All of this was completely unnecessary and, frankly, stupid.
Likewise, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed is repeatedly being forced to answer for Piker’s words, to the extent that no reporter lets him talk about anything else. Here he is getting grilled about it again two days ago on MSNBC:
CNN has panelists talking about how El-Sayed campaigning with Piker is more "depraved" than the president having dinner with literal neo-nazi Nick Fuentes. Democratic congressmen are even going on Fox News to condemn Piker:
Meanwhile, whose “extreme” comments and ideology are Republican candidates being pressured to answer for? Not those of virulently racist Loomer, who says all Muslims are terrorists and once wrote that if Kamala Harris won the presidential election, "the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.”
Not Elon Musk, who spends his days spreading white supremacist propaganda, is about to nuke the Louisiana coastline, believes “childless” people should not be allowed to vote, and is spending hundreds of millions to elect Republicans this cycle.
Not right-wing influencer Matt Walsh—probably the closest equivalent to Piker on the right—who wants women confined to the kitchen and said the country is better off because of slavery.
Not even the president himself, who recently posted a video of the Obamas as monkeys, called an entire African country “low IQ,” and does so much wildly offensive and corrupt shit on a daily basis that it’s hard to pluck out specific examples.
No, Republicans are mostly being allowed to use their media hits to condemn so-called “extremists” on the left, like Piker. The only words that seem to matter in U.S. politics right now is this one ungenerously interpreted paragraph of Hasan’s; everything else is just background noise!
The irony here is that Piker is really the first successful left-wing personality in the streaming space, which has long been weaponized by right-wing provocateurs to activate young men toward Trump and Republican candidates. Independent media is full of well-funded reactionary quacks like Tim Poole, but very short on left-wing equivalents, as Taylor Lorenz pointed out in my Elle profile of Jessica Reed Kraus. It clearly drives Republicans crazy that there’s a Twitch streamer demanding Medicare for All rather than the subjugation of women, which is why his words are being treated as the Gospel of Mainstream Democratic Opinion.
If Democrats want any shot of flipping the Senate this year, they need to recognize this trap for what it is. Republicans will call left-leaning candidates extreme socialists and communists no matter what they say or who they campaign with; the task here is not to alienate half of their own base by stumbling over themselves to track to the center.
And now for…
