The Democrats’ In-House Philosopher

The spirited defense of shoplifting, and a somewhat sympathetic stance toward murder, offered in the New York Times by the podcaster Hasan Piker and the New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino is a sign of the journalistic times. That these intimations of immorality were indulged by the Gray Lady’s correspondent, Nadja Spiegelman, suggests that the rot is hardly confined to the fringe Mr. Piker is alleged to inhabit.Feature Ms. Spiegelman asking Mr. Piker “would you steal from the Louvre?” His response: “Yes.” Ms. Tolentino asserts that she would “cheer on” every attempt to do so. Mr. Piker adds that in respect of larceny from one of the world’s repositories of beauty that “we’ve got to get back to cool crimes” like “stealing priceless artifacts.” Ms. Spiegelman then asks Ms. Tolentino if she would steal from Whole Foods. That precipitates an unequivocal “yes.”Mr. Piker chimes in that he is “pro stealing from big corporations, because they steal quite a bit more from their own workers,” though he would never contemplate stealing from a “Zohran Mamdani-run, city-owned grocery store.” Ms. Spiegelman explains that she and her friends “have started calling this microlooting, because it has a slight political valence to theft.” Call it criminal chic.Or call it a blight. Retail theft jumped 64 percent between 2019 and 2023. That resulted in $4.4 billion in losses at New York City in 2022 alone. That toll is also told in, say, toothbrushes and deodorant locked away in pharmacies. So bad had things gotten that even Governor Kathy Hochul in 2024 backed stricter charging and bail tactics. Improvement has ensued, though, it appears that the likes of Mr. Piker and Ms. Tolentino yearn for the bad old days. When Ms. Spiegelman raises the topic of Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive officer, Brian Thompson, Mr. Piker muses that “Friedrich Engels wrote about the concept of social murder” and reckoned that Thompson was “engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder.” Ms. Tolentino reckons that figures like Thompson are “universally understood as merchants of social murder.”While Mr. Piker and Ms. Tolentino stop short of endorsing Thompson’s murder, the overall impression of the colloquy is of a disregard for the rudiments of the social compact. This comes as scant surprise to anyone with a passing acquaintance with the rhetoric of Mr. Piker. He has said that America “deserved 9/11,” that Hezbollah flies his favorite flag, and that a liberal Zionist is equivalent to a “liberal Nazi.” He praises Chairman Mao.The question is not so much what Mr. Piker believes as why even less rabid precincts of the left continue to hand him microphones — and demur from critique. Last week he campaigned in Michigan with a Democratic senate hopeful, Abdul El-Sayed. Mr. Piker’s appearance with Ms. Speigelman and Ms. Tolentino comes less than two weeks after a sitdown with the Gray Lady’s Ezra Klein and just days after he spoke on the “Pod Save America” program. So ubiquitous has Mr. Piker become that the host of that program, Jon Favreau, insists that “Zero people have tried to make Hasan Piker ‘the spokesman for Democrats.’” That accusation was lodged by another liberal stalwart, Neera Tanden. Mr. Favreau protests entirely too much. Piker-ism is clearly a potent strain of the left, and his journey from Twitch to center stage left as the Democrats’ in-house philosopher is close to a fait accompli.

The Democrats’ In-House Philosopher

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