Is Hasan Piker NSFW now? And Tung Tung's generational run

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0:37OK, Matt, we thought that we might be sitting here in the studio with Hassan Paikah this week because he was supposed to be coming to the UK for South by Southwest and also to speak at the Oxford Union. And he was going to be on top comment with us. Which was the main reason. And that is now not happening because he's been denied entry to the UK. So we're going to talk about him instead and why that happened. And other people it's happened to as well, right? And the kind of reviewing of social media profiles and comments people have made, particularly online, and where we're at in terms of what this all means.

1:07And whether, as some are saying, this is a huge overreach from the government that's going to alienate a lot of people. And then we're also going to talk about Tung Tung, Tung Tung. How do we say it? Tung Tung Tung Sahor, one of the Italian brain rot. You're on full name, sort of basis. Well, yeah, because our producer just told me that I misnamed him. I think he was like number one stan of Tung Tung, by the way. Yeah, he's weirdly resurging in popularity. He's known as an Italian brain rock character, but he's actually Indonesian, which most people don't know about Tung Tung Tung Sahur. The least we can do on this podcast is disabuse people of their prejudices against sloppy AI characters.

1:43But before we get into that... We're going to talk about this other story, which we plan to come back to and analyze in more detail. But I think it's important for us to discuss, not least because it is popping up all over social media feeds at the moment. It's the murder of an 18 year old called Henry Novak, which happened in Southampton. And a man called Vikram Digua has been jailed for life for killing him. And it's been a particularly shocking and emotive case, which explains a lot of why people are reacting to it online, particularly because Henry Novak was, after he'd been stabbed, he was arrested and handcuffed as he lay dying on the floor.

2:21And there's footage that shows this. It's quite graphic and distressing and it's been circulating everywhere. And his killer had falsely accused him of racism. It's led to a lot of questions for the police and the way this case was handled and will be reviewed by the IOPC, which looks into kind of allegations of police misconduct and all that kind of thing. Yeah, people are understandably outraged over this young person's death and the question over whether anti-racism sentiment or guidelines could have played a role in him dying, whether he could have been saved, something the police deny. We're going to be looking into this in much more detail.

2:53But before we do, something that's come up in this story in the now is the misidentification of one of the police officers. Yeah. So when I was scrolling yesterday, I kept seeing images of one particular police officer popping up on my social media feed. And I kind of was thinking at the time, wow, how have they identified this officer so quickly? I mean, it tends to be the case with an incident like this that certainly the officers wouldn't be named publicly necessarily, not least until there's been a kind of review and misconduct hearing, that kind of thing. And so this image of this particular officer kept appearing and other details like where he lived and details about his family and that kind of thing, particularly on my feed on X.

3:30And I saw that Grok, the X chatbot, had been aggregating information and pointing people towards this name as well. Obviously, the way that Grok works is it's pulling from stuff that exists online. So that suggests that this name had been circulating, whether it was in a blog post or a local news article or for some reason. Since then, the force, which is Hampshire and Isle of White Constabulary, they've revealed the name of the officer on background, but they're not publicly revealing it. This person is not the person, essentially, and please do not in any way further fuel this kind of misinformation.

4:01And we know from the Home Secretary as well, who spoke about it in the House of Commons in the UK Parliament, to say that an officer seems to have been moved to a safe house has had to actually be protected essentially because they're receiving so much hate and abuse and misinformation and yet all of these social media posts are very much still up they've got millions of views i mean not all of them some people might have taken them down but certainly the most viral ones i just checked before recording are still there and there's another officer a former police officer who's a woman who's come out to say that she's been misidentified and she says she's had to go into hiding she's been really critical of the social media companies particularly grok on X because that appears to be one of the reasons why her name and image have gone so viral.

4:43And, you know, whatever you think about whether police officers should be tried in the courts of social media, you know, some people have legitimate reasons for wanting these police officers' names. In this case, this person was misidentified. I would say I have investigated at least every month an example of where, and this is not just about policing, it's way beyond that, someone is misidentified, whether they're accused of being like a perpetrator in an attack or whether they're accused of being involved in something violent or whatever it is, their image and their details and their social media footprint starts to circulate online.

5:14They're subject to huge amounts of misinformation and hate. And by the time they kind of come out to clear their name or people say, hang on a second, don't think this is right, it's too late. Because the reputational impact and the post and the virality, that's all happened. And I just don't think the safeguards exist online right now to stop them occurring again and again and again.

5:39So there has been a lot of noise, particularly online this week, because the Home Office in the UK decided to deny entry to the UK to two really popular left-wing content creators, right Matt? Yeah, so Cenk Uygur, who's the co-founder of The Young Turks, and his nephew, Hasan Paikar, who is arguably one of the most famous men in the world and one of the most influential people on the left, particularly amongst young people. and the UK government has denied them entry to this country, hugely controversial. They denied it on the grounds that they were not conducive to the public good. Dear Hassan Doan Piker, your UK ETA has been cancelled.

6:17This means you cannot travel to the UK without a visa. This is because your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good. You cannot appeal this decision. Apply for a visa. If you still want to travel to the UK, you need to apply for a visa so we can consider your circumstances in more detail. Having your ETA canceled does not mean you will be refused a visa. Now, we should get into why they did this, what the effects are going to be. But just on that conducive good thing, there's been a few cases of them denying people entry due to them not being conducive to the public good.

6:46Lots of the speakers at Tommy Robinson's last Unite the Kingdom rally were denied entry. People at that rally saw that as a huge infringement on free speech. It further entrenched them into their positions, the ones that I spoke to. Now that is coming for people on the left too. Now people on the left are starting to criticize the UK government's approach to free speech with the same vocalness as the right. But other people have been banned, you know, Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, he was banned from the UK. So, you know, the UK government could be making that point. Tyler, the creator, was banned by Theresa May because of his lyrics, because she didn't understand that it was a character who was playing in his songs.

7:23Martha Stewart was banned from entering the UK, although that's due to her criminal record. and most famously recently Kanye West was denied entry. Yeah, the wireless festival. And accusations of antisemitism, particularly posts he's shared online. And a lot of the stuff we're going to be talking about is comments that people have made on social media, whether it's in a post or a video or what have you, that have then been seemingly used as evidence to say, right, you hold these views which are not in the kind of public good and could be too controversial so you can't come. Exactly. I mean, look, Kanye West did lots of very antisemitic things.

7:54He made shirts with swastikas on them. He made a song called Heil Hitler. The crazy thing about him being denied entry to the UK was he had just taken out a page in the Wall Street Journal to apologize. He put it down to his mental health struggles. He had met with some rabbis. The Board of British Jews invited him for a meeting. He was kind of on the beginning of the long road to redemption. And then the wireless festival organizers were like, nope, he's ready now. He's going to headline wireless, which was a crazy move. Well, and so many, and like there was so much controversy around that. I mean, obviously there were lots of people who were like, I get to see Kanye.

8:30I get to see Ye. And then there were also people who were like, oh my God, how can he? I think no one expected the home office would deny him entry. People were like, wireless surely has to cancel this. I mean, surely the advertisers, the advertisers did pull out. Yeah, yeah. And it was like, why did you think that he was ready for his like moment of redemption now? But when the home office stepped in and said, we're denying him entry, people began to say, okay, you know, this is an overreach. of course he said some terrible things but does the home office get to decide when someone's apology for offensive comments they made is now accepted or is that an overreach at the time people were making the point that this is a slippery slope if you start banning people then where does that end right yeah a it's a slippery slope but be also like how are you going to be consistent in this approach like what reaches the threshold of this is too extreme and you're not allowed to enter because we're talking here about sort of allegations of anti-semitism but then also you've got people who are extreme on the right who are accused of spreading neo-nazi ideas and other things some of who've been not allowed in but then we've seen youtubers who were allowed to like for example take nick shirley who was allowed to be at that unite the kingdom rally who again is seen as a pretty controversial figure yeah i mean the things that for example Ye has said are so much worse than the things that Hassan Piker has said.

9:52And that brings us to this new story, which is now that Hassan Piker and his uncle have been denied entry, everyone is understandably kind of relitigating this debate about how do we decide who is not allowed and on what basis? And if you compare the allegations that have sparked controversy and condemnation in some cases from Hassan Piker, those feel much less extreme than the ones we're talking about in relation to Ye. Or what Smotrich has said, potentially arguing that the starvation of millions of Gazans is somehow morally justified. Or Valentina Gomez, who was banned from the Unite the Kingdom march, she has filmed herself shooting a mock migrant and called for executions of migrants who commit certain crimes.

10:32So these people are very extreme. You're lumping Hasan Paikar in with them. We should get into why they've done this. But first, should we give a little bit of a bio to people who don't know who he is? Yeah. Hasan Paikar is so massive, right? Like, would it be fair to say that he's almost like the left wing equivalent of Charlie Kirk, say, who was killed last year? Like their influence in what we would kind of consider the alternative media space on totally different sides of the political spectrum. In fact, complete opposites in their views and so on. But like in terms of their prominence, particularly for younger people, like massive, massive.

11:03so hassan paikar started as a streamer and what that means is he streamed and still does sometimes 10 hours a day of him playing games and you can watch him play games and talk while he's playing the games so he's mainly playing fortnite right which is one of the most popular games for young people and it may seem really weird to like anyone over the age of 25 why someone can become arguably the leading political commentator on the left for talking about politics whilst playing video games. I guess that actually seems quite weird to me too. But that is like, that's the world we live in, right?

11:39He's a democratic socialist. He's a supporter of national healthcare, which in America, some people see as an extreme position. He is a vocal critic of Israel. And he's also very funny, very good looking, very fashionable. And like, he just has an appeal to young people because of all those reasons. This is Democrats openly saying, hey, guess what? We are insincere. We are not serious. We are not invested in making the necessary changes in this country. We are going to advance unbelievable idiotic distractions. Now, around the time that Trump won this election, there was a kind of mass panic amongst the Democrats and centrist people where they came up with this notion that like we lost the election in part because we don't have a left wing Joe Rogan.

12:29Right. Yeah. Probably Rogan is the person he's been compared to more so than Charlie Kirk. Yeah. Joe Rogan is the most popular podcaster in the world amongst men and also amongst women. Most people don't know. He's the most popular podcaster amongst women, too. So around the time that this soul search for a left wing Joe Rogan was happening, there were a lot of think pieces that were trying to put Hasan Piker in that role. Now, I think that's a little bit unfair because Joe Rogan is popular because he is very willing to entertain conspiracy theories. Well, yeah, also it's more that Rogan, like Rogan's approach, right, is more that he interviews people and kind of ask them questions.

13:08And the criticism of him would be that he's not like challenging or combative in his argument, whereas Hasan Paikah feels like he's got very specific views himself that he holds and that he advocates for. Yeah. And I think the other aspect of this kind of discussion of him is the idea that he somehow represents a new kind of masculinity. Right. And there's so many think pieces that, you know, the New York Times did an article that named him as a kind of progressive person in like a manosphere body. Because he's really into like sort of all of the same things to some extent that manosphere influences focus on.

13:41What kind of? Like Starley's type stuff. He goes to the gym and he watches basketball and he has progressive views. which is actually quite a lot of people yeah that i think i think the idea the idea that like anyone who has progressive politics is some kind of like a feat person living in a basement like and has never played sports is ridiculous right like the idea that like because he goes to the gym and has progressive politics he's going to save the democratic party is a little bit funny because to young people he's just like a normal person right well then that's why he's that's why he's so popular because he is really relatable and quite normal in the same way that lots of we talk about on the right are that they seem more like someone you could encounter and hang out with rather than like a kind of career politician who feels a bit icky and like what's going on here yeah this is like the opposite of cringe posting exactly and the other thing you see a lot of like centrist think pieces focusing on is that he somehow is an antidote to the manosphere because he like is muscular but he also like wears pearls but like again that just means he's fashionable like have you ever been to brooklyn right like if you if you went to brooklyn during the summer where guys started wearing pearls.

14:44It would be more shocking if you found me a man that wasn't wearing a pearl necklace. The whole Hassan Piker being denied entry story, I think, demonstrates the extent to which Israel-Palestine has become now the defining moral issue of our generation, right? And yeah, and so it's worth saying that both Hassan Piker and Cenk Uygur say that they believe they have been denied entry on the basis of their criticisms of Israel. These are some of the comments which Hassan Paikah has made in the past, which have triggered a reaction or sparked controversy. And it's worth us just mentioning them to explain on what basis they believe they were denied entry.

15:22The Home Office have not said what specific comment or reason they've been denied entry. So Hassan Paikah has described Israel as a thousand times worse than Hamas. So my question is, when you say Hamas is a thousand times better, do you actually mean that? Or is that a rhetorical move or like a solidarity signal? I mean, it's all of the above. I do mean it. I think it's a rhetorical move because it frustrates a lot of people. I've also said I'm a harm reduction voter. I'm a lesser evil voter. And therefore, I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time. He said America deserved 9-11 due to interventionism, but since apologized about that.

15:56He praised the Chinese Communist Party. And he said that many Americans understand the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. He's the person that Luigi Mangione is accused of, alleged to have killed. So those are the kinds of comments that have sparked reaction and controversy, even though, as you point out, Matt, in the online world, these kinds of comments don't feel perhaps as controversial as they do to people who don't inhabit the social media sphere. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you only have to look at the timing of this to question whether this comes out of a desire within Labour to assuage certain people who believe that Labour hasn't done enough on anti-Semitism and particularly a certain type of anti-Semitism that is associated with the left and associated with criticism of Israel in their eyes.

16:43and Hassan Peikar has repeatedly said that he's terrified of the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is a canary in the coal mine of fascism. It's one of the oldest bigotries that has caused those of the Jewish faith a tremendous amount of pain. From pogroms to the Holocaust, Jews have always been singled out by those in power as a scapegoat for instability and economic volatility people in power cause. This is precisely the reason why I am terrified of the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The conflation is dangerous.

17:21If this was really about just anti-Semitism, then why was Tucker Carlson let into this country by the Home Office? Someone who said far more anti-Semitic things, but not from a left-wing perspective. He would argue that they're not anti-Semitic. And it's worth saying as well that Hassan Paikha consistently says, I am not anti-Semitic, I am anti-Zionist or anti-Israel. Exactly. And I think the issue that the current government has with this is that they may be trying to appease some people, but they are alienating a lot of especially young people. And this is what I mean when I say that the Israel-Palestin issue has now become the kind of the defining moral issue for a generation, is that they're seeing tens of thousands of people dying in Gaza constantly on social media.

18:02This is, you know, something that a UN commission has called a genocide. Amnesty International, Medicine Sans Frontier have also said that Israel denies that it's a genocide, but the reality that they're seeing in their social media seems to contradict that. And they believe that the government, that their government, whether they're talking about in the US or in the UK, is not doing enough about this. And they believe that mainstream media isn't covering it in the right way. And then someone comes along who does. And that person gets denied entry to the country. Don't you think that lots of this is the product of the massive gap that now exists between what you would consider the kind of I guess political circles the professional media traditional media however we want to frame it and then like what's happening in the social media world like it feels like there's a massive gulf which is some of these comments the ones we just listed are the kinds of things that would be run on the front page of a paper and a paper would say this is really really controversial view you know that they would say that it's anti-semitic or it's not okay or whatever whereas in the social media world and certainly that the kind of realm where often these comments have been made they are just very sort of commonly held or expressed opinions online and it just feels like when you think about the political decisions being made a lot of that is is focused on which i mean kind of makes sense but it's focused on the pressure and criticism that will come from say the media or other political figures and not from what the reaction will be from the average social media user which is like a younger person who'd think hang on a second i see people say this kind of thing all the time and i really don't think it's that controversial yeah and then And there's this really important point, which is a lot of the people we're talking about here are people who will be following Hasan Paikha on his streams or his social media content or whatever, where he is reaching millions of people.

19:40And so the decision to kind of deny entry on the basis of, say, like concern around public good or whatever, you're not actually limiting his reach in any way. He doesn't need to come to the UK to speak to his millions of followers. And he'll probably do lots of these events remotely, right? Exactly. So I just want to read out the statement from the president of the Oxford Union, who we're going to have him. They've said, The Oxford Union intended to host Cenk Uygur and Hassan Paikar on 6th of June for discussion and head-to-head event with our members. We are deeply concerned by the revocation of both speakers' electronic travel authorizations on the basis that their appearances would not be, quote, conducive to public good.

20:16These events have been publicly announced for months. This 11th hour call signals a much more than democratic decline. It is a direct threat to free expression. The Oxford Union was founded on one principle, that ideas are challenged through debate, not silenced by decree. We have never turned a speaker away because of their political beliefs, nor have we sought a permission slip from the state. We will not start now. This event will not be cancelled. The union will ensure this discussion takes place. Free speech does not require a visa. We will update our members shortly. So, I mean, that is a damning statement.

20:48It went so far as well. Like loads of people were resharing it. And it brings us back to the kind of central part of this, really, which is around freedom of expression and what people kind of can or cannot say, particularly on social media I guess where what you say will have prominence it will be promoted to people it will be very very visible and if you're a public figure obviously like what you say again will be held to a certain standard that's perhaps different to someone just sitting in their bedroom or at home but there has been kind of constant criticism and a lot of it comes from people on the right as well as people on the left about the approach that the UK government takes to social media comments and posts and whether the government are too draconian in terms of how they deal with people posting things that could be hateful or harmful but aren't necessarily illegal flip side of that is there's also a lot of pressure on the government to tackle like harmful stuff online and the suggestion that like the kind of misinformation we're talking about right at the beginning like the false identification of a police officer like that will exist and circulate and there's quite a lot of pressure to say hang on a second like why is that not being taken down or removed yeah and i think you know obviously the labour party has been trying to demonstrate that it is clamping down on anti-semitism ever since they suspended jeremy Corbyn from the party due to not doing enough on anti-Semitism.

21:55This comes in the wake of, you know, the horrific attack in Golders Green. And genuine concerns around anti-Semitism online and in the real world. Of course. But you only have to look at the fact that he was denied entry and Tucker Carlson wasn't to question that this could be them targeting a very specific kind of left-wing criticism of Israel or perhaps anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. And in doing so, have alienated a lot of people. For me, this is very much about how politicians still just really struggle to grapple with the social media world and to understand it. I think that's one of the main things that I've seen popping up and the main criticism I've seen popping up is the questions around consistency.

22:35And it's like, okay, if you're going to do this, then do it. But you have to do it in a way that feels consistent across the political spectrum, on all sides, all views, and so on. And because there's not transparency, right? Like, we don't know why the Home Office, We know the broad reason, but we don't know the specific reason why they've denied entry. We can make guesses and lots of people are making guesses, including the people involved. But because there's not transparency, it's like we don't know their work. We can't see their workings, right? And everyone in the social media age is so used to being able to see like, how did you come to that decision?

23:02Like, how did you decide this person was banned and this person wasn't banned and whatever? And probably the answer to that is that there isn't a consistent, coherent policy. And a lot of it is about what is going to trigger the least bad reaction, which is a lot of how politics operates. The UK government is increasingly being criticised on both sides now for clamping down on free speech. Remember how upset people were when the US began investigating people who wanted to visit that country and get visas, investing their social media presence. And having to give their social media handles. Exactly.

23:29You know, this government's willingness to deny people entry based on their political views and the comments that they've made. The right has been saying this for a long time. Now the left are going to start saying it as well. yeah so you think of like when the writing happened following the killings in southport and there there were lots of examples of where misinformation appeared to inflame the real world tensions contribute to violence and so on and so forth there were also people who were arrested and charged for their posts for stirring up racial hatred and what have you and they then became also kind of like poster people for the freedom of expression movement and lots of people on the right said well hang on why is this person this feels really disproportionate why is this person received this sentence or been charged with this when this person hasn't.

24:09And I think it's just that like consistency issue that appears to be the problem because no one's quite worked out how to hold people accountable for what they say online or not. And this comes back to the discussion of, yay, of Kanye West. The second you start banning people, the question becomes, where do you draw the line? And that is something that's very unclear to everyone right now. And why you wouldn't let South by Southwest, who are going to have Hasan Piker take the heat, Why you wouldn't let Wireless Festival, who for some reason decided to have Kanye West headline, take the heat? Why has this become a government question?

24:39This also comes at a time, and some have argued the UK government's decision has been insulated in a way by this, when the US government is investigating in a sub-unit Hassan Piker for traveling to Cuba. Interestingly, Nick Shirley, who hasn't been sub-unit, who was allowed into this country, also traveled to Cuba and stayed in the hotel that the US government are accusing Hassan Piker of having stayed in. So we're increasingly seeing on both sides of the Atlantic governments investigating people who those governments appear not to politically agree with. And then the criticism of this being a free speech issue understandably arises.

25:16All right, now let's take a hard tack to talk about tongue, tongue, tongue, Sahur. Italian brain rot, quick primer, Italian brain rot. So basically the trend was there were these weird AI figures, including like a Bombardillo Crocodillo, which was like a crocodile slash airplane. Tra-la-la-la, tra-la-la, bruh-bruh-bruh, pata-team or whatever. And people would go to people on the street on TikTok and they would like show them pictures of these characters. And they would say Bombardillo Crocodillo or Tung-tung-tung-sahur, right? And you had to go pick one. And this is in itself, this or that, which is in itself a kind of a satire of the stupid brain rot trend of being like Chapel Rowan or Zendaya.

25:55And you go, oh, Zendaya. It's like the most mindless, stupid content. It's like you're just picking something randomly. Yeah. And it's part of this thing called power scaling, isn't it? Where you're basically getting like like two things or sort of concepts or like groups of people or characters to compete with each other. And then you decide which one you think will come on top. This is why the Italian brain rot trend actually is good satire of social media, just to show how absurd it's almost like absurdist theater. It's like, look at what we're all doing on social media. How ridiculous is this?