In November, the left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker took his first trip to China, live-streaming the trip to hundreds of thousands of viewers on the streaming platform Twitch. Hasan is a self-described socialist and a staunch critic of American capitalism, and he told me he had long wanted to see for himself how a Communist government ran a country. He wasn’t disappointed.
In this episode:
- Why Hasan sees China differently than liberals; growing up in Turkey
- First impressions of China, Tiananmen flag-raising ceremony
- The incident where Hasan got stopped by security at Tiananmen
- Hasan’s thoughts on Chinese (and American) censorship
- Surprising similarities between America and China
- Hasan’s Chinese fan base and how the red pill pipeline is going global
- What Hasan would advise a future Democratic president on China policy
