National “Public” Radio trashes conservative extremists, but finds left-wing extremists exciting. On Thursday’s Morning Edition, Muslim co-host Leila Fadel interviewed radical Islamist/Marxist Hasan Piker.
The home page promoted the interview and its headline: “Hasan Piker isn't worried about being a political boogeyman this midterms season.”
NPR gave him one of their “Newsmakers” interviews, posting the 40-plus-minute video on YouTube. Piker said it was an "honor." This series is on a serious “anti-Zionist” roll this fall, if you add Piker to recent interviews with Rep. Ro Khanna and Tucker Carlson. The worst section on Thursday morning was the implication that Islamophobia is driving anti-Piker reaction:
FADEL: Do you think that the statements you make as a streamer are the sole reason that they cause such controversy or that you make them while being named Hasan?
PIKER: I absolutely do think that a big part of the problem is that, yes, my name is Hasan. I'm - you know, I'm a Turkish American dual citizen. I say incendiary things. But it's not reflected on in the same way when someone who's white, Christian, born and raised in America is saying incendiary things.
NPR co-host Leila Fadel suggests criticism of Hasan Piker's hateful rhetoric is coming from Islamophobes, that it's because he's named "Hasan." Sure, if he said all this and his name was Steve, well..... https://t.co/8v34YZzrZ4
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) October 16, 2026
The only pushback in the radio story was about Piker saying "inbred" Jews and "Zionist pigs," but that's just for bullies and racists, apparently:
FADEL: As somebody who knows what it's like to feel dehumanized for your ethnic background, for your - I know you're not religious, but being from a Muslim background. When you hear people say, why would you use dehumanizing language like inbred for some ultra-Orthodox Jews or Zionist pig, what do you say to them as somebody who has felt that as well?
PIKER: I have a policy to be ruthless to those who are bullying others, to be ruthless to those who abide by certain ideologies that are conducting great harm. As far as the language that I deploy that is considered dehumanizing, like inbred, I find it to be an apt pejorative to deploy, considering that these supremacist ideologies oftentimes revolve around ethnic purity, racial purity. It's never directed at someone for their actual background. It's usually the actions or their belief system.
But the section that really encapsulates Piker's message of being misconstrued was highlighted on the home page:
PIKER: The way that I'm portrayed in the media is an America-hating communist, Islamist fundamentalist who wants to secretly do jihad, and then also at the same time, very woke and gay. But who I am is very simple. I'm a socialist. I'm an anti-imperialist. I want what's best for everyone all around the world. I feel like we live in the wealthiest nation on the planet, and I find it unconscionable that we do not have a public healthcare system in this country. I find it morally repugnant that we use so much of our resources on waging wars overseas instead of using all of that wealth on ourselves.
Fadel and NPR never dug into Piker describing mass-murdering communist dictator Mao Zedong as a "great leader," and never touched his declaration that "America deserved 9/11." Those would deliver context to the notion that gee, he sounds like an America-hating communist. He mocks anyone comparing him to jihadis, and Fadel never touches Piker suggesting he'd "vote for Hamas over Israel every single time."
The other noteworthy section of the Morning Edition segment is Fadel bringing up Tucker Carlson, and how they're different even though they both hate Israel with a passion:
FADEL: There's another very online person, Tucker Carlson, who you couldn't be more different politically, right?
PIKER: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
FADEL: But you do come to the same conclusions on certain issues when it comes to Israel, Palestine, the continued killings in Gaza. Make that make sense for me. How do you guys agree on a lot of U.S. foreign policy issues and yet you're completely different politically?
PIKER: Yeah. I think about that a lot. And, you know, I'm still very critical of Tucker Carlson because I find his worldview to be not dissimilar to the ideology that he criticizes in Israel, Zionism being an ethno-supremacist, religious supremacist ideology that...
FADEL: That's how you see it.
PIKER: ...Accepts the extermination - yes, that's how I see it. And that...
FADEL: Not everybody sees it that way. [NPR routinely feints toward "not everyone says genocide," and then platforms people who love saying "genocide."]
PIKER: No, I understand. The Tucker Carlsons of the world, on the one hand, will criticize the actions of Israel, but then also simultaneously want to turn America into Israel, but for Christian nationalists or for WASPs, right? And that I find to be very frustrating. I'm an anti-fascist. That is the reason why I oppose Israel. I do not oppose Israel because it's the, quote-unquote, "Jewish state." As far as Tucker Carlson's analysis of Israel, do I believe that he legitimately has seen this bloodshed and finds it to be horrifying? It's tough to assume that he's being insincere. Having said that, I would assume that the reason why he's doing this is because he understands that there's a sea change happening, especially in the next generation of Republicans, and he wants to get ahead of that wave shift and play a role in a broad coalition that we need to form in the post-Trump universe.
Overall, NPR was trying to soften and "add context" to Piker, to mock conservatives for their "boogeyman" approach in actually quoting some of the outrageous things he has said.
