Hasan 'understands' Stalin's purges

In this livestream segment, Hasan Piker reacts to Robbie Starbuck and says that confronting "reactionaries like this" helps him understand how a leader in the post-World War II USSR could become paranoid, resentful, and willing to kill a dissenter. Although he twice says that doing so would be "not the right thing to do" and "not appropriate," he also says that, in Stalin's position, his reaction to someone objecting to the redistribution of grain supplies would be: "all right you're dead."

The clip frames that reaction in the context of Soviet reconstruction after World War II, the death toll suffered by the USSR, and conflict with the United States. Taken together, the remarks present an extended attempt to explain, and in that sense appear to empathize with, Stalinist violence against a political opponent during a discussion about grain redistribution and postwar Soviet conditions.

On understanding Stalinist violence against a dissenter

"I get why people can become incredibly paranoid and and so angry and so resentful especially if you have like a little bit of that authoritarian dog in you dude ..."

On grain redistribution and killing a critic

"I don't like the way that you're redistributing and reallocating grain supplies I would be like all right you're dead like I'm literally you now ..."