Hasan Piker’s FBI Subpoena is the Tip of the Iceberg for a New COINTELPRO
The recent subpoenas of Marxist media personality Hasan Piker is part of a larger, concerted effort to marginalize the left using the weaponry of the state.
On May 23, famous socialist streamer and influencer Hasan Piker, along with 40 other American nationals, were alleged by Fox News to be subpoenaed by the Department of the Treasury under the pretense of ‘aiding the enemy’ in their recent trips to Cuba. Other highly noted figures within the non-profit CodePink, Medea Benjamin, and Jodi Evans, were also listed. Reporter Eric Hovagim confirmed with CodePink and Hasan that neither party was actually subpoenaed at this time. Hasan, due to being among the biggest online figures of the Left, will get the most attention during this potential case if the subpoenas are delivered. However, the reality is that, regardless of whether Hasan and CodePink are legally repressed, we have seen a dramatic rise in state repression over the years.
Piker, along with the others under potential investigation, is being probed over allegedly supporting the Cuban government by staying at state-run hotels–something far-right provocateur Nick Shirley also did earlier this year without facing legal consequences. Unlike Nick Shirley, however, those who may be facing subpoenas are not fans of Trump. They did not go to Cuba to record sensationalist political propaganda. They are facing legal harassment by the Trump administration for the crime of delivering food, medicine, and solar panels to a country under siege. But this isn’t anything new; the Cuba Flotilla is only the latest to face state repression in a list that has been growing for years.
Since the ongoing Nakba reached a peak over Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza, the genocide of Palestinians by Israel and the US has become a massive rallying point for the left. Mass demonstrations, student encampments, and clashes with far-right zionist mobs and state forces became a norm throughout late 2023 and 2024. Anti-zionist activists Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and over 3,100 others were arrested by police during Palestine solidarity protests. Many are still facing charges and threats of deportation.
Additionally, over the last year and a half, Donald Trump unleashed the Department of Homeland Security against cities throughout the United States to kidnap and terrorize immigrants and migrants. As of April 4, there are over 60,000 people currently detained in ICE “detention centers” better described as modern concentration camps. The Trump regime boasts that a shocking 500,000 people at the minimum have been deported since the start of his administration. ProPublica reported in April that over 300 people were arrested simply for protesting or being a bystander to ICE.
And we cannot forget the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. The regime has shown that it is okay with murder. On record, 49 people have died in ICE camps since the start of 2025. Even this is likely an extremely conservative estimate: a terrifying number of people placed in ICE camps are completely unaccounted for–in effect, completely disappeared by the regime. In the infamous “Alligator Alcatraz” camp in Florida alone, at least 1,200 detainees are unaccounted for.
Neither is this limited to ICE and the protest movement. Federal authorities have also arrested and continue to repress the Chicano-rights group Centro CSO in Los Angeles. In addition to arresting organization member Alejandro Orellana for supporting anti-ICE protests, federal agents also ambushed and seized the phone of activist Verita Topete while the latter was walking her dog. Just recently, another Centro CSO member, Nadia Topete, was subpoenaed. Organizations such as Union del Barrio, CHIRLA, and PSL have been threatened with congressional investigations. ICE watchdog site, StopICE.net, was subpoenaed for all financial records at the height of the anti-ICE movement. VC Defensa, a community-based anti-ICE group based in the San Fernando Valley in California, has faced physical attacks and numerous raids on its homes.
There are also more controversial examples. 9 members of an “antifa cell” in Prairieland were convicted for allegedly attempting to raid an ICE facility on the 4th of July. Four members of a group called the Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF) were arrested for an alleged “terrorist” plot in Southern California in late 2025–potentially set up by a federal informant. While these cases may be dismissed as adventurist activity by many organizations and activists, this misses the point. The point of commonality between these types of actions and other legal means of resistance, such as legal aid, is not that one is adventurist and the other is not, but that both challenge the politics of the right.
What Hasan Piker and CodePink are facing is not a new stage of development for the class struggle, but is only the tip of the iceberg of the mass repression we are seeing from MAGA fascism. But MAGA fascism is only an escalation of a type of political repression that has been minted decades prior and practiced by both parties. Indeed, it should be remembered that many of the arrests of Palestine solidarity protesters occurred under the Biden administration. Further back, the COINTELPRO tactics being deployed against these groups were first resurrected under the Obama administration to go after activists belonging to Black Lives Matter and the Occupy movement. What we see today under Trump is only the traditional mode of bourgeois politics weaponized to its full possibilities–and which will only grow in its repression and scope with each passing month.
This is a dire moment for the left. The last time we saw this amount of state repression, an untold number of communists, progressives, and Indigenous people were assassinated, imprisoned, exiled, and disappeared. It destroyed the Old Left, Communist movements, the New Left, and burgeoning national liberation movements in the United States in the 20th century. Today, the left is defined by this historic repression and loss. As our movement has grown once more, the desire for repression on the part of the bourgeois class has returned. What we are facing will only escalate until we lose this latest period of class struggle–and, with the impending existential ecological crisis looming over us, we cannot afford to lose again.
But this apex of oppression has also, unwittingly, revealed to the world the energy held in reserve by the working class. The struggles just described that have been attacked by the Trump administration are being attacked because they are successful: they have helped organize, educate, and radicalize our class. They have revealed in miniature the class forces and tactical shape of the future. The military occupations of Los Angeles and Minneapolis developed the sharpest resistance in the face of the most devastating repression.
Mass community defense became organized and an aspect of daily life for thousands of people throughout the last 18 months. Patrols, barricades, street and highway closures, physical clashes with police and federal agents, and private property burned–all classic guerrilla acts when facing a better-equipped enemy. The working class proved it had the appetite and the capability to hold its own. Not only in militant direct action, but also in its increased capability to provide mutual aid and legal defense. With Hasan Piker and others allegedly facing state repression, it's a time to bring together the lessons from these often legal struggles to protect all parts of our movement. At this juncture, it has become clear that we must consolidate legally in order to consolidate politically.
