CHEN | A Glimpse of Our Socialist Future: Hasan Piker at Cornell

On Thursday, September 24, 2026, socialist political commentator Hasan Piker spoke to a sold-out audience at Sage Chapel on a variety of issues, most notably the road ahead for socialism in America.

Who is Hasan Piker

Courtesy of Cornellians For Israel, and their recent post detailing various statements (listed below) made throughout the years, we know with some certainty what Hasan Piker stands for. 

• “He said ‘America deserved 9/11, dude,’ adding, ‘We fucking totally brought it on ourselves.’”
• “He dismissed reports of sexual violence on October 7 as ‘rape fantasies’ and ‘rape hallucinations,’ and later said, ‘It doesn’t matter if rapes fucking happened on Oct. 7.’”
• “He equated the United States with the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah: ‘If Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, [then] America is the top terrorist organization. Which it is, by the way.’”

(See Cornellians For Israel’s post for a fuller account of Hasan Piker’s depravity)

This is who Cornell YDSA chose to champion: a person who sees our country as a force for evil, and who believes that America ought to betray its founding values and embrace the alluring poison of socialism. In Hasan Piker’s speech this Thursday, he made clear his resolve to carry this perverse vision to its bitter end.

The following is an account of Piker’s speech, and the event at large.

Hasan Piker’s Speech

After a dramatic entrance and a slight jab at Cornell (“One of your clinical law professors went on Fox News[…] and said this would be akin to a Nazi rally, which is insane, and he said it on Fox News, which is the Nazi network”), Hasan Piker began to speak on the current political landscape.

“A new political reality is shaping all around us, but that means there are also new opportunities,” Piker said. “Radical political opportunities, through an electoral system that right now is going through a transformation” 

He recounted various socialist political victories as of late. “Some of you may be familiar with some of the transformation…Melat Kiros in Denver, Colorado, the stardom of Zohran Mamdani in New York City (audience big cheer… then chant “DSA!”)… Adam Hamawy in New Jersey, …, Claire Valdez, and many other names all around the country” 

Piker proclaimed that Republicans and Democrats both hate democracy (as opposed to his fellow socialists, who surely represent democracy…). “We know we carry the moral majority on our side.” “History will not reflect kindly on those who oppose us, and we will make these changes happen.” 

Hasan Piker then began speaking on the supposed injustices of the American system, and that there are “Kind people who can’t understand why, in the wealthiest nation on Earth, there are hundreds of thousands of people who go to sleep outside, every single night, and millions more who live paycheck to paycheck. ” 

“Hard-working people frustrated that an honest day of labor… is no longer enough to take care of a family or own a home, all while the world’s wealthiest man sits around tweeting racist creeds and unfunny jokes as others grow his net worth into the trillions.”

According to Piker, “None of this is an accident. The inequality is the design of our system. When you see broken-down towns in a state of disrepair or potholes that never get filled, or homeless people suffering in the streets, remember this is the design of our system.” 

Piker continues his socialist tirade:

“It is not the moral failing of the individual, but of an entire architecture, the ultra rich sticking their hands in the pockets of everyone else,” culminating in an expression of contempt towards the ultra-wealthy, “Just as every person who has no shelter is a policy failure, every billionaire is too — a policy failure.”

Piker also dismissed allegations of him being antisemitic as “heinous lies.” On his comment saying America deserved 9/11, Piker said that it’s “something I’ve apologized all the way back in 2019 for the language I used; I was talking about the blowback, you’ve already heard it a million times over.” Meanwhile, Piker says, “Benjamin Netanyahu, when asked about 9/11, said, ‘this is good for us.’”

He then took the time to attack Cornellians for Israel:

“It is that hypocrisy that I can’t stand. That Cornellians for Israel could invite an Israel occupying force soldier, terrorist… and that same exact organization can turn around and say that ‘Hasan said America deserved 9/11 that’s far worse.’”

Piker ended his opening speech as follows: “I’ll leave you with these parting words: regardless of what they say, their boos mean nothing, for I’ve seen what makes them cheer, and together, we will become unbound, unbossed, and undeniable.”

Q&A portion of Speech

The first question asked why Hasan Piker had been receiving so many attacks from the political mainstream. Piker explained that he believed that there was a genuine attitude shift in the public sphere and that “Zionists” felt the need to attack because they felt threatened.

“For far too long people have seen parents trying to find their children under rubble, under 2000-pound bombs that we send to Israel, that we pay for with our tax dollars.” “And on CNN…you see attempts to contextualize the violence, and then demand the silence… of all those who oppose this violence.”

“I think this is the last gasp of a dying movement… this is the end of zionism.” 

“Those who support Israel don’t want to recognize this reality”

The second question asked, “I was wondering how you see the 2023-24 student Intifada’s role in American public life?”

“We have now, for the first time ever…, politicians who are outwardly demanding an embargo on Israel, not just stopping aid from going to Israel, no offensive/defensive weapon distinctions, as if that distinction matters at all, it’s not like we’re giving Hamas an iron dome, which we should, I’ve said that before, sell to both sides of the conflict you can’t lose.”

3rd Question: “Where do you think DSA and the American Socialist movement goes from here?”

“There’s always gonna be growing pains, elected representatives are going to sometimes have to play ball with the opposing side… but I think in the interim the goal is to continue marshaling a large enough force… so that we can activate everywhere all at once if necessary and be that difference in the electoral cycle.” 

In addition to the electoral cycle, Piker also expressed his desire to change the Overton window for ideas in politics. 

“My goal is to also push the envelope and expand the permission structure on what can and can’t be said…I’ll go on media opportunities and talk about American imperialism, which unfortunately is a conversation that many Americans refuse to have… nobody likes a mirror being held up to their face… but the role I see myself playing is just that…”

“There’s a finite amount of resources, and if we’re using all of that so that a handful of petro capitalist pedophiles in the Epstein class can have a better return on investment, then we’re not going to spend any of those resources on building roads, bridges, hospitals in the wealthiest nation on Earth.”

The 4th question asked Hasan Piker about his role in the socialist movement and “how to develop more Hasans?”

Piker attacked conservatives: “The right is very well organized: they’re part of a well-oiled machine, and also more importantly perhaps, the right ‘independent’ media ecosystem is not antagonistic to the Republican party.”

He did not hesitate to attack the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whom he has recently viciously mocked on his show. “One example I always point to is Charlie Kirk, who obviously was a lackey for the party.”

“He spent a good deal of time talking about revelations in the Epstein files until it became a problem for Trump.” 

Piker argued that he and his fellow socialists have it rougher:

“Our uphill climb is far steeper than what Republicans have to go through, where all they have to do is get money from the same exact billionaires that also donate to the party, and say the same exact talking points that are coming down from Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute…”

“We don’t have that on the left. What we have to do is lean into a true grassroots movement.”

“We just have to continue focusing on building these networks… and also lean into organizations like Democratic Socialists of America.” 

Piker summed it up, to the cheers of the audience, by highlighting the growth of the DSA over the years:

“This is a relatively new movement. If you look back to 2016, when Bernie Sanders ran this insurgent socialist platform against Hillary Clinton, the number of self-identifying socialists, or the number of dues-paying members of the DSA, was minuscule. I think it was 15,000 or something like that; now it’s 120,000 dues-paying members — it’s become the largest socialist organization in the United States of America.”

5th question: “A lot of us would love to hear about your personal experience in Cuba… specifically what it was like being in a country that’s been under such a brutal economic siege from the entirety of the global North.”

Now Piker makes the age-old socialist defense of Cuba, arguing that it is desolate and poor due to US embargoes rather than its own inherent socialist failures.

“I was taken aback by how beautiful Cuba is… but also very quickly I saw such devastating poverty. And it was man-made. Now the Republicans and the American government will say that it’s the byproduct of communism, that it was central planning and that’s the reason why there is so much destruction in Cuba, but no, it was man-made in the other direction. It was our fault.”

“They’ve been successfully strangled since the inception of the Cuban revolution, which wasn’t even a socialist revolution initially; it was a national revolution, it was an agrarian, and then it took on a communist ideological life on its own, partially because of America’s actions immediately after, and it’s only gotten worse, and it was a horrifying experience to see such systemic cruelty and to be able to put a face to the victims.”

Such excuses generally do not appeal to Cuban Americans, with their various lived experiences. Yet, the fact that Cuban Americans overwhelmingly reject socialism does not stop Hasan Piker from disregarding and even mocking them. “If you were to ask every single American, with maybe the exception of, ya know, Cuban Americans living in Florida, most of them would be horrified of what we’re doing.”

Piker further attacked US actions against Cuba:

“It’s not even an afterthought for our president…the starvation… the destruction of the energy grid, and a man-made blockade of all energy, all oil and gas going into this island of 9 million people.” Then he encouraged everyone to visit Cuba for themselves.

The 6th and final question addressed concerns about ICE, their recruitment on campus, and Hasan Piker’s personal experiences protesting. 

Hasan mocked ICE viscerally:

“If you got a Cornell education and then you fucking work at ICE, holy shit you’re a loser” *audience cheer* “What a waste of a phenomenal education, you’re signing up and the guy next to you is illiterate, like he can’t read, ‘oh I saw an AI ad, and I signed up’, and it’s like a fucking incel.” 

Piker then proclaimed that he had been shot at by cops and tasted tear gas in numerous countries. But he had a few words of encouragement for future protesting.

 “It does work… if it didn’t, they wouldn’t try to suppress it.” (referring to protests)

“Even the Trump admin had to retreat from Minneapolis… that was because the people of Minneapolis, from regular workers to even small business owners, actually, they got together and protected their community.”

For his parting words, Hasan Piker attempted to motivate his allies in the audience. 

“But we have to unite, and we have to seize those changes ourselves.”

“Our corporate overlords are not going to one day… say I don’t need a third yacht; I’m going to pay my workers better” 

“Maintain solidarity…and we will win”

Closing Thoughts

Perhaps we ought to be grateful that Hasan Piker came to speak at Cornell and revealed how he and his socialist comrades hate our country. As evidenced by Piker’s speech here, they are unable to see America as the force for good that it is, and they are unable to see the wealthy as anything other than oppressive and unjust. Piker’s hatred goes so far as to suggest that the rape of more privileged women is somehow less horrific, and to proclaim about landlords, “Let the streets soak in their red Capitalist blood.”

Socialism is an ideology of pride, envy, and a deep-rooted hatred for anything great or beautiful. And unfortunately, it is the most pressing evil in America we must now face. As our great, patriotic, Cuban American Secretary of State Marco Rubio so eloquently put it:

“This is a distinctive and unique evil… It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good. It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things, and take their revenge upon the world for their own inadequacy by seeking to destroy those who can. This is what radical leftism is.”