How A Mamdani Win Will Send Shockwaves Around The World | HasanAbi | Zack Polanski

0:00You've heard it said countless times. Donald Trump sneezes, the UK catches a cold. So how worried should we be about a second Donald Trump presidency and everything that's happening in the United States right now? One of the leading voices on the left in the US has been Hassan Piker for years now. What's up, everybody? I'm Hassan Piker. I live in Los Angeles, California. I'm a socialist, Marxist, communist. And I'm delighted to be chatting to Hassan today.

0:32hey zach chris packham here i just want to tell you about something really exciting ecotalk it's a phone company that helps restore nature and it's brilliant you can find out more about it at ecotalk.co.uk

0:54so hassan one of the most surreal experiences i've had since i was elected as leader of the Green Party, was seeing you talk about me on your stream. And that's because I've watched your stream for a long time. I've loved your work for a long time. And in fact, on election night, in terms of the US election night, I was watching various American channels before I got really, really sick of the coverage that I put your coverage on. And it was great. One thing that really struck me, though, was you knew for a long time that Kamala Harris wasn't going to win and America was going to have a second Trump presidency.

1:25And it felt that evening like you're almost in like some sort of nihilism like you're just like this was the route we were down uh is there any hope like can we come back from this place there's always hope i mean uh if you're leftist for socialist marxist uh if you're an anti-imperialist look around over the course of the past two years and while there's so much uh chaos and commotion happening everywhere uh a lot of people especially with respect to the the genocide that israel is committing in gaza people's attitudes have changed dramatically and and as someone who has been uh an advocate for uh palestinian emancipation for the past decade i i never would have imagined that the attitude shift would be so dramatic uh in in only two years now of course the violence is is untenable and it's unacceptable it's horrifying but um to me that that uh is a constant reminder that things can change that we can organize and as long as we're steadfast and principled we can eventually uh win back some power and then hopefully uh give people more liberties more autonomy and in the states does that change come from within the democratic party it's difficult to answer that question because this is the question that everybody talks about all the time myself included this is an ongoing issue uh right now uh entryism is not the end all be all but i do think my own personal assessment of it is that uh you cannot restructure the democratic party to be a socialist party i don't think that's the case but i do think that there are uh readily available tools and and a willingness from self-identifying liberals to vote for self-identifying socialists within the democratic party so in the absence of a third party ticket in the absence of a third party viability i think you just got to use whatever tools are readily available exhaust all options and i think uh one of the major problems in america is the lack of class consciousness and also the adverse reaction to even the moniker of socialism most people don't know what socialism is and those who have heard about it have been uh properly uh they've been they've been educated against socialism they they hate it they think it's it's a bad thing so uh i think it's important for people to at the very least become more comfortable with the with the ideology as it's happening right now in america i think it's like 65 of democratic party voters say that they're they sympathize with socialism and i think even 16 is an even weirder number of republican party voters also sympathize with socialism i guess i guess those are the national socialists i don't know what's going on there uh and i somewhere around i think like 45 of independence so that's what i think uh leftists could do while not ever stopping uh their organizing it's a it's a it's a multi-faceted approach this is just one of those uh this is just one aspect of a multi-faceted approach that reflects a lot of what's going on in the uk right now um bloomberg did a piece about me the other day that was meant to be i think a hit piece that compared me to zoran mandani and i spoke to the washington post yesterday that famous leftist organization and they're doing a piece this weekend i think about what's going on in the uk with me and what's going on in new york with zoran um i don't think the washington post are necessarily coming from a place where they want to see a big left-wing transformation in the world but nevertheless do you think there is a moment right now both in the states and around the world and what sense do you get that if zoran does win in november and i think it's looking pretty good without being complacent what ripples will that have around the world i think it'll be pretty significant for the national democratic party and its outlook i think uh socialists democratic socialists like people like zora mamdani are are basically saving the democratic party from itself um it it shows me that liberals by and large which is the as it stands unfortunately the most mass political movement that we have people who just simply self-identify as liberals or people who are liberals that are realizing and people who might have uh sympathetic uh values to to marxists and socialists but just think that they're liberals the people that think that liberals are the left right um i think it shows them that a charismatic young vibrant dynamic candidate who is uh unafraid to call himself a socialist uh and and is unafraid to uh call out israel for doing a genocide who is going to work tirelessly to solve some of the material harms that you're experiencing, that is a successful candidacy.

6:32And I think, by and large, liberals just don't want the Republicans to be in charge. They just don't want the Republicans to win. They are understandably disturbed with what the Trump administration is doing. And they're also pretty frustrated with the lack of response from the Democratic Party, from the establishment Democrats. So I think this would spell the beginning of a tide shift, hopefully in a much larger way than we saw with the Justice Democrats in the 2018 midterms. I was interviewed last night by Mehdi Hassan on Zateo, and I know he interviewed Zoran a couple of weeks ago. And something he asked him about was Donald Trump has already said that if Zoran wins, Trump will do everything he can to disrupt unless he quote unquote behaves himself.

7:19How much of that is a credible threat? I'm not aware too much of a centralization in American politics of how much Trump can tie the hands of a New York mayor. Oh, it's not just tying the hands of the New York mayor. Trump is unprecedented in the way that he's behaving, for sure. I mean, he is the logical conclusion to a multi-decade long project called the Unitary Executive Theory. that uh republicans have been trying to establish in america for quite a while it's just it's just a way to consolidate power in the hands of the executive basically turn the white house into a monarchy and donald trump happens to be the perfect guy to do it um or at least all of the people that are surrounding him do have that deliberate uh and and direct interest in and conducting this uh centralization of power trump is just the guy who's crazy enough to not even realize that he's doing it or it just suits his narcissistic tendencies but yes uh he absolutely will do everything in his power to hurt new york and new yorkers but i think new yorkers are not fearful of that they understand that this is the uh this is the finance capital of america is where wall street is uh it's a a fairly powerful constituency fairly power powerful people live there and uh uh there are interests outside of of like simple class interests of like uh destroying the city that i think people might uh people might react negatively to what i mean by that is a lot of people that live there love new york they care about it quite a bit you got a lot of journalists there there's going to be a lot of resentment from people not directed in uh not directed towards zoran but instead directed towards the administration i think it'll people will put up a strong fight and that's probably a better alternative than andrew cuomo who is already uh already a right winger but also uh has a doj case hanging over his head that would make him just as compromised as uh eric adams is gosh it's quite the mess there trump uh in the last 48 hours has finally put on I say finally, he's put on sanctions on President Putin We've seen his relationship with Putin and Zelensky, he's just flip-flopping all over the place and doesn't seem to have taken a clear stance I was asked about this last night and I basically said I think Donald Trump cares about one thing only and that's Donald Trump Do you get a more sense of a nuanced position on what Trump actually feels about Russia and Ukraine and also whether he cares what the american public think about that uh or if he's just he's playing another game uh yeah i think donald trump just cares about donald trump like there was no in there was no interest like even with uh with with uh the the gaza peace plan the so-called gaza peace plan there's no like real uh interest there's no real humanitarian interest from the trump side he just wanted to i think bank set up business deals with gulf states uh and also uh thought that like israel was losing too much momentum and and uh goodwill around the world and he just wanted to set up business deals and he was just like all right enough like and and that ceasefire is on 10 years ground it might not hold but i'm just saying that like that was the major motivator for him it wasn't like the humanity of palestinians right uh and the same thing goes for ukraine and russia i don't think he cares uh one way or another i think he has a lot of sympathies towards putin i think he respects putin he has a lot of reverence for putin uh just as he does for rejip tayyab ardoğan uh and even xi jinping like what he considers to be like a charismatic authoritarian strong man he has a lot of respect for i'm not putting xi in the same category as these other guys but i'm just saying like he he likes someone who commands respect i'll give you another example claudia scheinbaum i think donald trump always had a good relationship with uh amlo and he has a a decent working relationship with claudia scheinbaum as well despite their ideological differences and i think that's because like he he sees someone being charismatic and he like that works for him anyway um i'm all over the place what i was trying to say is the real story with russia and ukraine isn't necessarily trump's own narcissistic tendencies his own personal selfish desires i think the real story is multi-polarity and not only multi-polarity but i think the lack of cards that america truly has in this uh in this in this struggle in the absence of trying to approach this in a more unified fashion and trying to bring other larger partners senior partners in the coalition on the opposing side to the uh treaty table as well and what i'm talking about is china i think there is no way out of the the uh russian invasion of ukraine by simply assuming that you have a decent relationship with vladimir putin putin has shown time and time again he is uh he's going to manipulate donald trump he has already manipulated donald trump he has floated the the notion of a ceasefire knowing full well that it would have positive reverberations for donald trump it's something that he ran on right putin's very aware of trump's uh background and trump's promises and yet he's dangled that ceasefire in front of him uh only to continue uh extending the process only to continue fighting and even taking over additional territories the first time he he actually dangled the ceasefire he got donald trump to actually uh humiliate zelensky in this previously unheard of fashion.

13:08It was just so insane to ruin your own proxy, your own ally, whatever you want to call it. To ritualistically humiliate them while simultaneously aligning with your adversary is not exactly art of the deal stuff, but maybe that's what his ghostwriter wrote in there. I don't know. but my point is i don't think that donald trump can establish a long-standing treaty without trying to bring china on board as well and i don't think he's going to do that anytime soon because china is the major um there's only two ways to handle this there's only two ways to handle every crisis but especially this one as well you either keep increasing the militancy you keep sending more weapons you send the tomahawks you say oh you can start hitting long-range targets um but ultimately if this conflict is going to be resolved on the battle lines like who has leverage depending on the battle lines then russia is doing quite well a lot better than they were doing when they went into kiev and then they got pushed back right that was when america and the western powers had the maximum amount of leverage and i think that western powers actually failed to to do the right thing in that moment having said that ever since then with the spring counter offensive failing and and with uh ukrainian numbers uh diminishing ukrainian manpower diminishing and the appetite for continuing uh even this defense is going away in the eyes of ukrainians by and large uh it feels like they can't make up for it with uh more weapons like they can't make a stronger defense with more weapons they need more people and in the absence of like i don't know invoking article five or sending in uh standing militaries from other countries which i don't think anyone's going to do um you have to and also you know trying to escalate on the sanctions side which trump is trying to do right now by like tackling uh by attacking india i just don't think that uh that that moving in that direction is going to solve this because i don't think america has as much global power as it once did.

15:22So you got to move in the opposite direction and try to set up like a like a multilateral treaty with other partners on the on the adversary side. And zooming in on this kind of issue of charisma and leaders with charisma, how do we on the left kind of walk this tightrope between needing someone who is the leader of a movement who can say, follow me, let's go and do the community organizing, but without people losing their own agency and empowerment and instead just looking to a figure and saying you know tell me where to go whereas our politics on the left is a complete opposite of that which is about uh empowering people to organize themselves but do you think in 2025 with social media with capitalism with the world we are we kind of need those figures or where do you sit on that i don't think like uh a singular great man is going to move history i've never been a believer in that um i will however say that good leadership is a necessity at all times uh charismatic leadership is a necessity for sure because i think uh good leadership is is capable of of emboldening people galvanizing people getting them excited and and getting them to organize so it's never it's never a bad thing it's never a bad thing to have uh leaders who get their notes from the masses uh on the socialist side on the social movement side but are empathetic unafraid to be radical and bold that will then I think instill confidence upon the masses to also feel the same way to also be able to express their discontent at times or to organize.

17:04Why do you think there's been a lack of that leadership on the left and maybe I'm not clearly nearly as familiar with left-wing politics in the states as you are I'm pretty familiar but I felt like before Zoran came along for instance we were looking at people like pete butage which you know i think there's a strong argument if that's a left-wing politician but was certainly without a doubt he's someone who was able to communicate in a way that spoke to to people's hopes and fears but that often feels like there's a a desert of it on the left um yeah i don't think pete butage is a good example of this because uh obviously good leadership alone is not going to float you right um i would go so far as say like barack obama is a better example of this like he was a charismatic leader he was an orator and he brought about uh perhaps the the most devastating blow to the progressive movement like he had an organizational tool called obama for america he basically put it under the dnc he shuttered it uh the the organization was supposed to actually work as a as a bully pulpit mechanism when he was uh in office right he was going to use this you know million door knocker army to just like go and demand medicare for all right or the public option um an expansion of social safety and stuff like that and he didn't do that and um i would i would say that uh his charisma and his skills actually uh definitely uh emboldened a lot of people and definitely caused him to i mean he was he's a once in a lifetime candidate for that reason but uh the reason why i wouldn't compare him to people just because one he's not people just nowhere nearly as charismatic and two people just doesn't even have like the background that obama did like obama was fairly radical uh when he was running and the way he had designed himself in chicago politics like uh you know a lot of the uh early allies that he dropped uh with a little bit of scrutiny uh were people that had actually built his built up his brand as like someone of a young radical uh jeremiah wright being a great example of this or uh i mean he's he was pictured with rashid kalidi and edward saeed uh like this is a man who is very well read and who is very knowledgeable about all these uh these issues all this injustice happening all around the world and he dropped it but i think that caused him to also win a lot of favors with the with the masses as well it caused them to be more like uh i think using some of that revolutionary language uh is what uh what made more people uh tune in and get excited about him yeah it makes a lot of sense i I also realize I'm not talking about AOC and the squad and Bernie Sanders.

19:52I realize that everyone's been on a journey, though, with some of these guys in terms of in times they felt like they really were the answer and at times they've been deeply disappointing. How do you navigate as someone who is there to essentially commentate on these things? You're not there to necessarily pick a side and certainly not unconditionally pick a side, but people who have compromised on some of the worst things to compromise at different points. Yeah, I mean, Bernie was a big disappointment these past two years. made me very sad as someone who i think is a very important figure in contemporary american politics like right i never would have thought that he'd just be hard stuck on liberal zionism you know like the person who um in 2016 was advocating to deny weapons transfers to israel on his presidential nomination run i never thought that he would just go and that's all i want to do i thought a person that was doing that in 2016 would be uh an avowed anti-zionist and just like seeking to um expand the permission structure uh and and yet it turned out that uh he's a very stubborn guy and that's just like he does have a hard line there now he doesn't stop other people who are far more radical than he is, far more to his left from running.

21:15He will stand by their side. He doesn't shy away from promoting them for being anti-Zionist. So I respect that. But we have to be critical of the people that we admire. But we also have to, I think, look at it with a broader perspective. While he's doing that, He's also moving the needle in a positive direction for a lot of other issues. I will always come at this from the recognition of what Bernie has done and what he means for the modern left movement in the United States of America. And for that reason, like that's just not something you can take away from him. All of his life's work in that regard.

22:04It's just not something you can take away from him. So, you know, I will always have my disagreements on issues and disappointments, but I will always be serious in my in my criticism. My expectations are always matched to to what I consider the mean to be. In terms of congressional performance, he's my expectations for him are much better, but he's still one of the best. Agreed. I think that's a really nuanced answer that people can be floored. And actually, when we support people, they're not like football teams or soccer teams. We don't have to support them all the time or support the other one.

22:40You can kind of recognize people's achievements at different times and have a much more kind of transactional relationship with who you support. Yeah. I jumped straight into this interview because I was excited to talk to you and find out your opinions on things. I realized I missed a pretty big bit, which is I know exactly who you are. But for the UK audience, some of them who won't know who you are. Who are you and what do you do? What's up, everybody? i'm a son piker i live in los angeles california i'm a i'm a socialist marxist communist uh leftist political commentator here in the united states of america and uh yeah that's it i i live stream on twitch every single day for seven hours every day now i've lowered the amount of hours i used to be eight to ten now it's around seven to eight uh seven days a week i started part-time in 2018 when i was working at the young turks and i started doing this twitch stuff and then i went full-time in 2020 and do you ever i often think about this when people are really engaged with politics in the way that you are ever think actually things are so bad right now i have a lot to offer or contribute i want to get involved or i want to do something i want to speech right or i want to go on a campaign or do you see your role as and this isn't to dismiss your role i think commentary is really important you're clearly doing important things but uh i guess i'm putting myself in your shoes there's no way i'd be able to go no i just want to go fix that now but maybe that's why we do different roles yeah i um i mean i do everything short of uh actually running for office like i i talk to politicians both privately and and um you know out in public interview them um i uh work with campaigns i i have a community that is uh almost entirely filled to the brim with uh door knockers organizers labor leaders and the like so you know that's a fairly powerful tool for change in terms of like what I see my role as.

24:45I'm just a regular dude that sees right from wrong and wants to express his discontent or at least give people the tools to understand exactly what to get mad at. Because I think there's a lot of anger and resentment in the air right now, but most people don't understand exactly who's causing the pain that is making them angry. Yeah, I mean, there's so much anger going on. So what drives you? because presumably you're not just driven by the anger i don't know people say it's because i'm autistic and i have a a stubborn but strong moral compass that i just abide by that's probably a little bit that probably has a little bit to do with it i genuinely don't know i'm i'm a very stubborn person and this is just something i've always cared about i feel like injustice is is unacceptable um and it's not like i wouldn't say i'm a victim to it i mean i i've lived a fairly privileged life uh i i came from an affluent background and uh but it's just something that i've always been frustrated with and i genuinely don't know what it is i just i i think that um um at its root i guess if uh if i were to think about it i think it's inappropriate and messed up that people don't get an honest shake uh simply because of where they're born and some people having more than others uh due to their starting position i think is is uh completely unacceptable and that uh there are so many people out there around the world that have unlimited potential that just never get to achieve their dreams or never get to actually make these wonderful contributions to society and i i uh direct the blame back to the systems that we exist under that thrive on these inequities that make these inequities a necessity uh for uh for the way commodity production is currently designed and i want to address that i want to change that and i never get a sense that you're waiting around for the perfect candidate of a perfect campaign so do you have a vision for the future kind of what what you want to see politics going towards Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a perfect candidate or a perfect campaign that will just like single handedly change everything.

26:59This sort of movement building requires time. Just like Bernie Sanders himself wasn't like a singular force that changed American politics or anything like that. But but but he gave a lot more people the confidence, the tools to be able to communicate their their desires better. the liberty almost, the expansion of the permission structure to say that you're a socialist, to show people that that is an alternative out there, to show liberals that that is an electable alternative as a matter of fact. And we're kind of seeing the impact of that right now. And that's like eight years after the fact, nine years after the fact, right?

27:32So you never know how things might change. But I think in order to build a popular movement, there is a tremendous need for organizing and it takes a long time. it takes mass awareness initiatives so it's not like a singular person that's going to be able to magically hypnotize people and to shake them out of their drunken stupor and their firm commitments to capitalism in spite of its obvious ways of class antagonisms that harm people of the working class so I you know I think I think it just takes time you just got to keep organizing you just got to keep building the the network uh and the mechanisms to to offer pushback are you gotta be careful using word hypnotize on this podcast by the way but maybe that's that's not reached you um oh wait why is that so and before I was in politics I was a theater actor and while I was a theater actor I also worked for a while as a hypnotherapist and you can imagine what the right-wing media have done with that in in this country oh no what you were a hypnotherapist oh god you must be breaking people's brains because you're jewish too like there's probably so many nazis that go crazy hassan i'm a jewish gay vegan that used to be a hypnotherapist uh that has a gap in my teeth that is left wing and leads the green part you can imagine what the right wing media in this country are doing right now uh each day there's a new story and uh i'm enjoying the kind of new creativity that they reach for it it shows they're rattled it does work though but like think about it though but you but i i do think in a way um the the ways in which people attack anti-zionists like it is kind of op when you're jewish when you're just like okay you know it just because i i'm muslim i get attacked non-stop by dudes who i used to call out for anti-semitism right i've spent my entire uh my entire career as a political commentator combating bigotries of all sorts including anti-semitism islamophobia and the like and like all of a sudden these past two years half of the people that were making uh holocaust jokes and oven jokes all of a sudden found themselves uh being very pro-israel they're still anti-semitic they're just pro-israel so now they get to attack me and say i'm i'm the anti-semite you know but in your position i feel like it at least people understand like that's so ridiculous right it blows my mind for people who hate jews so much but love israel and will do everything they can to to wave that zionist flag it's it's becoming yeah tommy robinson right exactly that's becoming increasingly obvious that they maybe don't have jewish people's interests uh at heart no no he's a real big maccabee tel aviv fan i heard it's just i had i'll tell you something funny i don't know if this is allowed to be talked about in your podcast but i i have people from all different backgrounds that follow me all right and there are a lot of right-wingers that follow me as well mostly to just like you know come in and talk shit and there was a guy who's like the other day there was a guy who was like yeah he's been going on about israel far too much this past week i had to finally unfollow tommy robbins and i was like this was it for you it was like a it was like a reform guy or like a right-wing guy who was just like you know i'm honestly england first okay if i kind of start sensing that you're putting israel in front of england i'm gonna tell you to get take that shit out of here.

31:19Like this guy was a was a authentic EDL guy who just who didn't like how much Tommy Robinson was was working with Israel. Love it. We're going to be right back after the break.

31:35Hello, Zach. Chris Packham here. I hear you're being politically bold. Well, we at Eco Talk are being equally bold. It's the best service going, I've got to say. Best network coverage in the UK. Lots of different deals, lots of packages and if you get any trouble you don't speak to a bot. You speak to a real human but you know the best thing? The best thing is that the profits are going into nature conservation for beavers and badgers and birds and butterflies and lots of other things which don't begin with bee. So Zach I'm telling you if you want to talk bold mate You'd better be doing it on EcoTalk.

32:12And you can switch really easily at ecotalk.co.uk.

32:21The best thing that's happened to me today, other than this conversation, is Piers Morgan has said in the press that I'm the person who bothers him the most. And I just feel like that's a real achievement to get under Piers Morgan's skin. Wait, why? So he interviewed me recently on his TV show, and it was meant to be an interview about how the Greens have doubled our membership recently, we're highest in the polls that we've been for a long time. But he spent the entire conversation asking me if a woman can have a penis. And I met him back with the same robustness he gave me and I just accused him of trying to distract from the inequality in our society and the deep poverty and the elites and multimillionaires and billionaires basically sucking up our property, our assets and taking our power and wealth.

33:03And he just kept saying, I can't be a serious politician if I think a woman can have a penis. it's just like i think i mean you nailed it uh you're you're a very experienced in this front um and i think that's it goes back to zoran's popularity as well as just like a lot of the culture war stuff comes across as super insincere and silly if you actually focus your effort on on um the the material dispossessions of like the you know the masses in general when you talk about rent when you talk about landlords when you talk about uh the affordability crisis here in america or an expansion a modest expansion of like the pre-existing social safety nets uh and and your opposition goes well what about trans people it's like but this is a ridiculous thing like you're a ridiculous person you're obsessed and weird and gross for constantly trying to bring every conversation back to this like 0.1 percent of the population Like they, you know, leave people alone, leave them alone.

34:06I think let's focus on the real issues that matter. And I feel like that is fairly effective. I don't think we've been able to test this out as much because especially here in America, because Democrats are Democrats do shy away from class first politics. And I think they do cynically weaponize identity as a as a way to make it seem as though they have some sort of disagreement with the Republicans when they kind of don't. And we've seen that in tumultuous moments like this past election cycle where the prominent Democrats were like, you know what we did wrong? We defended trans people too much.

34:42And it's like, but you didn't do that. Like they were like, oh, yeah, we're going to win this election by being transphobic ourselves. It's like, no, that's not going to happen. But you're going to win the election if you actually focus on the real bread and butter kitchen table issues and show how insincere and silly your opposition is by forcing them to constantly go back to culture war stuff. So I've got a two part question. I think you're going to agree with the first bit and you're probably going to disagree with the second bit. And I'm a politician. I love to be challenged. So I'm almost doing consultancy.

35:12I feel free to challenge me. So the part one, Owen Jones called my strategy today and the no bullshit strategy. so I've been going out on media, I've been focusing on inequality and when asked a question on the culture war issue I've taken it head on and gone straight back to inequality every single time now the result of that, or I can't say it's a direct result but it's pretty clear, is membership of the party has doubled in six weeks, we're at the highest we've ever been in the polls and the other parties are starting to panic including the Labour Party who are in government who seem to be shifting their position on things and in fact the party of government keep putting out press releases attacking me, trying to discredit me So I think it's pretty clear they're rattled.

35:49But the second part is you've spoken a few times in this discussion about being explicitly socialist. Now, look, I am a socialist, but I find and I don't know if maybe there's a difference between the UK and US, but I don't imagine so. I'd imagine it's even worse in the USA that if you say you're a socialist, I feel like that's moving away from the inequality issues. because what I'm talking about then is political ideology that could lose people and we end up in a kind of nonsense conversation about what is socialism, what it doesn't mean to you. Then we're straight into a conversation about communism because people don't know what socialism is and definitely don't know what communism is.

36:19As opposed to going, actually, these are the things I stand for. You need to lower your bills. We need to tax billionaires. We need to bring our assets back into public ownership and nationalize them. And I find that's the smart comms strategy. But there are people on the left who will absolutely say, well, I don't want to be a part of that because he's not explicitly going around saying, I'm a socialist and this is a socialist party. I think do what you feel is authentic to you. There is no... I spend very little time with sectarian infighting on the leftist side in general. Even the terminology I use, leftist, is already up in...

36:57You know, is already contested and people get very frustrated about it. I think broadly, especially in the United States of America, we have no motion there is no like robust socialist movement yet there is no robust workers movement there is no workers party in this country so uh for me i've always tried to maintain solidarity to the best of my ability i don't really care about any of the monikers that people give me um i don't think that it's necessarily uh something negative like i i'm fine with just being like no you just don't know what this word means it's fine it just means um it just means an alternative to what you think the democratic party represents because like i think if you were to ask the average american like historically all the way since fdr if you look at uh a lot of people like they think the democrats used to be the workers party right it never really was it was always a bourgeois liberal party but like but there were at least like some significant social democratic gains that were made right Right.

38:00So especially under FDR. So for for people like I just try to work within their preexisting understanding of the world. And I care more about the issues than anything else. So I'm not married to any particular contextualization or any kind of moniker. I don't necessarily care. but um but i don't i also don't think that it's uh it's it's bad to explain to people what this is and what this has been historically but i think uh there are there's just far too much red scare so i i don't know maybe maybe it's more effective when you're running for office um but the boldness in which bernie sanders was able to openly state that he is a democratic socialist did i think play a formative role in a lot of people's uh understanding of the term itself they were like wait a minute this seems like a different kind of democrat i thought socialism was a bad thing but here you have a guy who i really like who i really agree with his worldview on on many things and he's saying he's a socialist he's an independent senator from vermont but he's caucusing with the democrats and he's running for president under the democratic ticket but he says he's a social what is that about and i think that like starts people on a lot of reading um it it gives people uh decent tools to to really understand uh the class dynamic at play um it can lead them astray as well to a certain degree but i don't think i don't think most people are going to dive into theory that hard.

39:41So I don't even worry about that necessarily. I feel like international solidarity among the left and socialists is really important. We also know that the other side are doing it much better than we are in terms of their solidarity and their networks. And we know Steve Bannon was fundamentally involved with Brexit in the UK. Do you think that the UK and Brexit was kind of the beginnings of what became Donald Trump and that you're experiencing now? Or has that all been bubbling away for much longer and Brexit was kind of just one one symptom of a wider problem i mean i'm a i'm a firm believer that well first of all yes you're right there's a lot of international solidarity among fascists there always has been it's probably a little bit easier as well uh in terms of like building a robust network fascists have historically always aligned with moneyed interests so uh they're not disruptive to the the uh capitalist hierarchies they're actually uh seen as as a force of stability when capitalism is in decay um so that makes it a lot easier for them to organize internationally that's why elon musk is going to the afd rallies and talking about you know deutschland for deutschlanders or whatever um having said that uh i don't i think brexit is is yet another symptom rather than the the inflection point where people get frustrated austerity tories push for austerity they privatize your water uh the river's not clean the water is the water supply is is uh is not great energy crisis taking place uh cost of living is exploding all the council housing has been privatized and and the the pre-existing social housing uh that uh uh english people had is going away all of this frustrates people the austerity frustrates people nhs uh it gets uh gutted and then you have longer wait times transportation gets privatized and year over year it gets worse and worse results um too many stoppages uh it's inconsistent people get more and more frustrated and then who do they shift that blame to well on the right you have people that say it's the polish it's the muslims it's the immigrants right and if you don't have a a decent vision on the left a strong opposition to that kind of fascist sentiment to really re-center the conversation back to labor to really re-center the conversation back to the class dynamic at play you're always going to lose to that reactionary sentiment because it's alluring it's it's such a simple message to be like yeah everything is shit now because brown people are here they don't speak your language and they're scary and and a lot of people uh in the absence of of a socialist alternative uh find themselves in the throes of of reactionary thinking and that's precisely what has happened in in every single western european and eastern european as well liberal democracy so far and it's it's been it's been going on for quite a while and i don't think brexit was uh the the first instance of this uh i think brexit is just a continuation of that same uh same issue getting worse and worse year over year and i think like the labor party turning into i can't even say a more moderate version of the tories at this point because i feel like what's the what's the major difference between the labor party now and like what the tories used to represent uh i i they're they're tough on immigration right like they they wanted to they even talked about potentially doing the the was it the rwanda plan right like like it's just insane i i've never i was gonna say i've never seen anything like it but that's exactly what the democrats did in america as well so i have seen something like it and they lost right the democrats lost for doing that exact same thing taking a right-wing approach to immigration um and and uh that's what it is that's what brexit was brexit was just like shifting the finger over shifting the finger of blame over to uh a a lack of perceived sovereignty over the uk because this much more powerful uh scary uh globalist force uh that is known as the eu was actually not offering england favorable trade deals or something and it's just like they were and it was beneficial for the uk and and capital owners still have uh in the absence of like improving work conditions in the absence of giving more autonomy to the labor force like they're still going to need uh a migrant labor force that they can use as a depressive vehicle for wages in general and the solution to that is to immediately document people and allow them to participate in labor democracy rather than to to have this two-tier labor system like we have here in the united states of america that uh that is a constantly refreshing pool of the dispossessed masses from all around the world that are victims of american and western imperialism that come in and and will work for pennies on the dollar as opposed to the uh natural born uh um labor force in the in the country that's a much more holistic and long-standing solution to this problem but it's also very difficult to communicate that in this current messaging environment where you know billionaires control every single uh outlet every single medium whether it be twitter tiktok uh all the social media platforms and uh and it's it's uh virtually impossible to to organize in that in that situation unfortunately but we still do it you know and you've got an amazing perspective on this because you've had a ringside seat to what happens when a party that claims to be of the center left tries to challenge fascism and does it by appeasing the right what advice would you give to Keir Starmer in the UK considering what you've just lived through I can't say it out loud what advice I give to kid starver i i just i can't uh i would go on in trouble get myself i'll get myself in trouble no i mean look he's i mean he's such a charlatan uh he is such a ridiculous charlatan even with the palestine action stuff like the very same defense that he successfully mounted for iraq war protesters uh he is now on the opposing side for israel i mean you got potentially like uh Allegedly, Royal Air Force surveillance drones participating in the genocide of Palestinians.

46:27Is this the best use of of the the modest wealth that the British population has is the best use of resources right now? I mean, there is an unprecedented affordability crisis happening all over the place. People are very angry. People are very resentful. instead of fixing your infrastructure, instead of fixing public transit, instead of renationalizing certain sectors and then trying to do your very best to to fix England and restore its former glory. Keir Starmer is too busy being a lapdog to Israel and a lapdog to private interests in the exact same way that the Tories were. And as a consequence of that now, I've seen the polls.

47:15I mean your party the greens are are cooking labor now like that's crazy labor has such a long standing uh tradition in in the UK and and the very fact that like the the Keir Starmer uh the the Blairite flank has has absolutely destroyed uh this uh once famous stronghold for workers is is devastating um but i guess you know i guess there is a it's good that people are are noticing that though it's good that people are noticing that like uh they want something different and they want a left alternative not like this right-wing fascist alternative in the form of reform because i i do think that that is that was what my initial assessment was was that Keir Starmer was going to be a centrist liberal.

48:09He wasn't going to address any of the problems, any of the financial issues that were going on. And then that was going to breed more hostility. And it was going to allow even more reactionary forces such as the Reform Party to basically take over. And we're seeing that happen all over Europe with the rise of the nationalists in France, the rise of AFD in Germany. and luckily there are some alternatives out there you got you know you got the greens in the UK you got France unbowed and and whatever remains of the popular front that they had put forward and the in the last election cycle which I think is important it's an important coalition to keep together um they're doing their very best to to show the public that there is a a real committed alternative that focuses on workers rather than all of this other nonsensical uh bullshit like blaming brown people you know a final question because you're amazing at predicting politics and i might regret asking this but as someone who is observing uk politics what is going to happen to us over the next few years and of course what do you think is going to happen with the green party in the coming years i hope that uh there is is more momentum um and and that there could be like a like a broader coalition uh launched here that could put up a strong defense against uh conservatives which are falling apart already and and uh and uh you can uh overthrow the reign of reform potentially the the the way things are going i think that uh there is an opportunity here um but then again i don't know the um the profile of like the median british voter like i don't know what uh their expectations are or how susceptible they are to right-wing framing because it's a little different in every country i think that the issues remain the the issues surrounding capitalism are still the same um but how successful uh the the uh divisive politics of of the reactionary right is dependent on uh is is entirely dependent on how receptive the audience is uh and i don't know how british people respond to it but it does i am a little fearful because i do think that um people look at this immigration stuff as like a major uh as a major issue and uh i think it's it's important to very quickly try to redirect people's focus into a class first politics and remind people that like whether it was polish uh migrant workers coming in uh or whether it's uh you know muslim refugees or or uh indian and and and pakistani workers coming in like these are these are people that have the same ambitions that everyone else has.

51:16They just want a roof over their heads. They want a hot meal and they want a better future for their children. They're not here to like invade or ruin the country. And as a matter of fact, they make the country much better in very meaningful ways, whether it be the cuisine or whether it be the culture. And I think, I think it's important to stress that, I mean, that's what has made America such a powerful country i think like many people don't realize that but uh the very fact that uh for example uh america is uh as a developed nation has remained in a much better standing on on um like in terms of its population not aging is because of the steady flow of migration patterns into the country like this is this is important for the nation's survival as well if you even care about that sort of thing uh if you if you believe in that sort of thing what what if i push back because i think you're giving a brilliant answer but i guess i have one extra jigsaw piece which i am so confident in the power of storytelling if you get it right and that's an important caveat if you get it right the power of storytelling if we get the storytelling right and the resourcing and the campaigning and the mobilizing then there's no reactionary right that can't be beaten ultimately it's about shifting the dial with the public and whether you live in the uk the us or wherever you live, as long as you have a democracy.

52:34And again, that's another caveat. Then with a powerful storytelling, you can take on vested interest because you can go from community to community and make sure that people see them as the protagonists in this story. And I think that's how we change our countries. And I think that's how we change the world. I mean, I agree with that. But I think storytelling is good to mobilize the masses. But I think there is always going to be a point where the masses have to showcase their their power the masses have to showcase like uh their their commitment and uh and i think you do that in a democratic process through the pressure valve of uh an election and and that's good and i think that will hopefully be the the uh that will have the least amount of friction in terms of of necessary change in the country and i think it i think that's how it happens i i really do hope that that is uh how it will work but you're right storytelling is very important well thank you so much nothing but international solidarity and i've really enjoyed the conversation and and let's let's maybe do it again it's a great work man thank you

53:50hey zach it's chris packham again i'm ringing to ask if you've switched to EcoTalk yet. Come on, come on, come on. The beavers are waiting for you and you can go and have a look at them at ecotalk.co.uk.