Hasan Piker is a moron, but don’t cancel him — criticize him!  

Remember when Democrats wanted to cancel Joe Rogan? Now Hasan Piker, a much more insufferable commentator, is in the hot seat, with various personalities arguing about whether it’s OK to appear alongside him.  

This is, to be clear, a very stupid controversy with a very obvious answer: You should mock Hasan Piker if given the opportunity, because he is a gigantic moron, but you shouldn’t try to cancel him or boycott him. Really, you should treat him the way he treats atrocities committed by the Chinese government — by which I mean, you should ignore him. 

I’m reacting, of course, to the discourse of the past few days, in which The Bulwark, a Never Trump media outlet turned into a reliably partisan organ of the Democratic Party played host to a spirited debate over whether Dems needed to do more to distance themselves from Piker, a far-left commentator who is big on Twitch and popular with leftists. 

Democrats and their friends in liberal media just can’t help themselves — it’s just yet another tantrum about who is allowed to say what and speak to who and go on which podcast and platform … you know how this goes. Democratic discourse invariably sounds like it’s stuck in the Stone Age relative to what’s going on now. Liberal figures still talk about whether going on Fox News means normalizing the MAGA movement, egads! Meanwhile, young people get their news from figures that depart so radically from conservative and liberal media orthodoxy that they don’t appear anywhere on television. 

Now this Hasan Piker debate has gone on for so long that mainstream media people have actually started asking prominent Democrats to address the issue, including Ro Khana. Let’s take a look. 

As a reminder, Piker has previously said the following things: 

America deserved 9/11. His favorite flag is the flag of Hezbollah, the terrorist group. The Chinese government is his ideal form of government and he doesn’t want to criticize them. He wishes the Soviet Union won the Cold War. In fact, he savagely attacks anyone who criticizes communist authoritarianism. Here he was reacting to a South Vietnamese dissident describing life under communism. Rising’s producers had to beep most of that, but you get the idea. To communist governments, he says: Good job! Keep at it. 

Sarah Longwell, a Never Trump strategist involved in The Bulwark, has been leading the charge against Piker, but she’s faced pushback from Tim Miller, who is arguably The Bulwark’s best-known commentator. And Tim has indeed appeared alongside Piker in the past, in friendly circumstances, so obviously he’s not going to clutch his pearls about Democrats appearing with Piker. (And yes, I mean that literally — both men actually wear pearls on camera. Which is fine by me! No judgment. But I digress.) 

Here are Miller and Piker together at Crooked Con, which sounds like an apt description of what some of these people get up to but is actually a conference for Crooked Media, the company that distributes Pod Save America.  

Of course these people aren’t going to cancel Piker — he’s a friend and fellow commentator, they already view him as one of them. And you know what, I say that’s perfectly fine. If the American people wanted friends to excommunicate each over for political disagreements, or get worked up about offensive statements, well, Donald Trump would have never become president the first place. I don’t think anyone is saying to themselves, I won’t vote for Ro Khanna because he went on Hasan Piker’s podcast. 

But here’s what conservatives and libertarians need to do: Hold on to this example and hold on to it closely. Because these same people who treat Piker as a friend and say, well we disagree with comments he’s made, but you can’t deplatform people, blah blah blah, will forget all about this when it comes to people on the right with similarly obnoxious, bigoted, offensive, evil viewpoints.

These same people would swiftly condemn any Republican who associated with Nick Fuentes, for instance. With Fuentes, it wouldn’t be good enough to just disavow his gross comments but say, hey, we can’t turn down this platform. The rules are for you, not for them, which is why most Republicans who aspire to experience political success have long since stopped following them. 

In summary, I can’t tell you what personalities and platforms should actually be avoided or engaged, and I think most people trying to actual enforce that sort of thing either A) haven’t thought about it very hard, or B) are nakedly hypocritical when push comes to shove. Sometimes both.  

My advice to Republicans, Democrats, anybody still listening, Ro Khanna had it basically right: Go wherever you wish and talk to whomever you want to talk to, but if you have the chance, please tell them terrorism is actually bad and communism is a very dumb form of government that causes mass starvation. That’s all I ask for. Thanks for listening. 

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary. 

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