Jackson Hinkle

Jackson Hinkle (born September 1999) is an American political commentator and social media influencer, who hosts the political show The Dive with Jackson Hinkle. Politically, Hinkle has been variously described as an American conservative, MAGA, right-wing, and far-right influencer. As of November 2023, he is one of the most viral users on X (formerly Twitter).

Initially a high school environmentalist, Hinkle later adopted pro-fossil fuels stances. As he campaigned against an alleged globalist threat, Hinkle's politics shifted to a more conspiratorial tone, while describing himself as an "American Conservative Marxist–Leninist". He is a proponent of "MAGA communism", calling on those who support the working class to ally with the MAGA movement. He is also known for his support of Vladimir Putin in the Russo-Ukrainian War, and for his anti-Israel views in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. He has appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight, One America News Network, and Russia's state media, such as RT.

Hinkle has a history of publishing misinformation and conspiracy theories, which led him to be banned for a number of social media websites, and has been the subject of several controversies. His show on Twitch was removed for violating misinformation policies and propagating disinformation about the war in Ukraine. Following his deplatforming, Hinkle went viral on X for his posts about the 2023 Israel-Hamas war; some of his post were described to be part of disinformation in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. He is frequently cited by Russian and Iranian state media.

Hinkle was born in 1999 in San Clemente, California. He was a member of his middle school surf club, played the guitar, and painted. Hinkle attended San Clemente public schools. Attending Shorecliffs Middle School and then San Clemente High School, he graduated high school in 2018. Hinkle began to fight against plastic waste at age, his understanding of the environmental issue stemming from his time surfing. In March 2016, while still in high school, Hinkle founded the Team Zissou Environmental Organization (the name came from Steve Zissou, the protagonist of the Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), an environmental association that does lobbying and volunteer work, such as beach cleanups in Orange County. Under Hinkle's guidance, the club gathered hundreds of students to work collaboratively towards improving the environment.

In 2017, Hinkle became Water Ambassador for The Water Effect at The Ecology Center. Hinkle was also named one of "The 17 Most Inspirational Kids of 2017" by Reader's Digest, and was featured in Teen Vogue as one of eight young environmentalists "working to save the earth" in 2017. In 2018, Hinkle went to Washington, D.C. as a representative of nuclear safety advocacy group San Clemente Green. He spoke at a congressional briefing on the subject of safely dealing with decommissioned nuclear plants, and met with congressional members, an event covered by the Los Angeles Times, where Gary Headrick, the San Clemente Green founder, told the paper about Hinkle: "He's the kind of guy who gives you hope about the future. It's hard to find young people who take these things seriously, but Jackson is fearless and well-informed." That same year, Hinkle attended Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California, to pursue political science.

Hinkle began his political activism in the late 2010s, running in a San Clemente city council special election in 2019, a year after graduating from high school. During this campaign, he advocated that the city of San Clemente have its own police department, he "categorically and unconditionally" opposed the legalization of prostitution, and proposed combatting the presence and effect of nuclear waste in the area. Hinkle ultimately lost the election, winning a little less than a third of the vote.In 2020, Hinkle launched the political show The Dive with Jackson Hinkle on YouTube, which reached 300,000 subscribers by 2023, and on Twitch as JacksonHinkleTV, later expanding to Rumble, when he was banned for "harmful misinformation" related to the war in Ukraine.

In January 2022, Hinkle debated progressive political commentator Sam Seder on his talk show The Majority Report with Sam Seder. In the debate, Hinkle attacked Seder's support for the Squad and argued that they had backed the American government's imperialist foreign policy by funding the State Department, which he said "is leading coups across this world and is launching hybrid warfare through the National Endowment for Democracy." He also attacked the Squad for accepting money from billionaire investor George Soros, which Seder countered by asking if Hinkle believed the Squad "sold out for over $2,700 from George Soros?" Seder challenged the idea that the Squad is given preferential treatment in the media and said their funding for the State Department is of limited importance, saying "I don't care" repeatedly in reference to that and Hinkle's argument about the Squad being a part of the establishment.

Hinkle claimed that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator who was building a "fascist, dystopian state" in Ukraine. In October 2022, Hinkle and fellow Twitch streamer Haz Al-Din went to Twitchcon, where they filmed themselves "harassing seemingly random attendees" and mocked topics like COVID-19 face masking, support for Ukraine, and calls for online content moderation. A few days later, the two were joined by "Dark MAGA" streamer Jon Zherka in their attempts to engage with UCLA students on campus.

In April 2023, Hinkle dubbed the firing of fellow conservative-populist pundit Tucker Carlson as the "end of an era". In June 2023, Hinkle spoke at the Rage Against the War Machine rally in Washington, D.C., which included the involvement of the Libertarian Party, the People's Party, and the far-right conspiratorial LaRouche movement, among others, amplifying Russian disinformation narratives and demanding an end to Western support for Ukraine and to NATO's existence. Hinkle expressed support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On July 26, 2023, Hinkle debated television personality Piers Morgan on the subject of the Russo-Ukrainian War on his program Piers Morgan Uncensored, with Hinkle arguing that Ukraine and Zelenskyy hold a neo-Nazi ideology, while Morgan held that this was a "bonkers" notion given Zelensky's Jewish heritage.

In 2023, Hinkle began appearing on RT. He was interviewed on September 20, and denounced the West's foreign policy, stating that they amount to a "hollow skeleton of power". Hinkle added that he believed Zelenskyy would suffer the same fate as Osama bin Laden. Hinkle also visited Russia and expressed a positive view of his trip there, stating that the patriotic will of the Russians is similar to the sentiment of people from the American heartland. On October 27, Hinkle appeared on RT to denounce Israeli policy in regards to the Gaza Strip, having previously interviewed Vladimir Solovyov in February 2023.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation

Hinkle has a history of publishing misinformation and conspiracy theories, and his show has also been a source of controversy. In April 2022, the Tech Transparency Project stated that the show was peddling "Putin propaganda" in violation of the site rules of Twitch, where the show was hosted on. The show violated the three new policies outlined by Twitch, namely "(1) persistently sharing (2) widely disproven and broadly shared (3) harmful misinformation topics, such as conspiracies that promote violence." The show was eventually taken off Twitch and YouTube for misinformation about the war in Ukraine. Hinkle also has a history of posting pro-Russian and far-right commentary.

Since being deplatformed, Hinkle has attracted attention for his tweets regarding the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, gaining 1.4 million followers on X (formerly Twitter) by October 2023, and has been labeled by The Jewish Chronicle as one of the "most viral misinformation spreaders" in regards to the conflict. Grouped as part of an online reactionary and paid clout-chasers for leveraging pro-Palestine views, he once proclaimed: "I do everything for the clout, you will never see me do something not for the clout."

Hinkle's tweeting style has come into question, with much of it being criticized as misinformation as well as misleading. His posts have been cited and referenced repeatedly by Russian and Iranian state-affiliated media. For example, the Russian news outlet Lenta.ru used a headline quoting Hinkle's suggestion that the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive be labeled as a suicide mission. In the wake of the Israel–Hamas conflict, Hinkle was deplatformed from YouTube, calling himself the "most censored man on YouTube", as well as the "most viral worldwide". With posts reaching over 20 million views as of November 2023, Hinkle reached 2 million followers on X, where he offers a premium subscription to those wanting to help him "DEFEAT THE ZIONIST LIES". In August 2023, Bloomberg reported that Hinkle had requested antisemitic AI-generated images of "satanic George Soros" using a tool called Midjourney, which a study found to be easy to generate racist and conspiratorial images.

A graphic image from the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel was shared on X by Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. Hinkle subsequently claimed that the image was fake due to an inaccurate AI detector classification; however, the image was determined to be genuine by other AI detectors, and later verified by third-party sources as authentic. Hinkle also falsely claimed on X that Haaretz had reported that the Israeli government inflated the death toll for the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. Haaretz quoted the post in a tweet and said that Hinkle's post "contain[ed] blatant lies" and was not substantiated by their reporting on the attack.

In October 2023, Hinkle shared a fake news release stating that the United States was sending billions of dollars in aid to Israel. He also published fake news on the arrival of the United States Marines in Israel, using an image from July 2022 in Romania that was unrelated to Israel. Hinkle followed up by falsely claiming that Iran had declared war on Israel and that Yemen had announced they were at war with Israel. Before deleting his post, Hinkle also claimed that video footage showed Israel bombing hospitals; however, the footage instead showed an infirmary in Aleppo dated to 2016. He has also mislead his audience after posting an old video from 2018 of a three-year old being detained by border police in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, receiving over one million views. On November 12, 2023, Hinkle posted on X a photo of a woman near a demolished building, with the caption: "You CANNOT BREAK the Palestinian spirit." Fact checking discovered that the captioned photo, which showed a woman stepping down the stairs of a demolished building, was not from Palestine but from Syria, and had been submitted in 2020 for the Siena International Photo Awards.

In December 2023, Hinkle called for a boycott of the video game Grand Theft Auto VI, linking the game to Zionism. Vice disputed the game's links to Zionism and described them as a conspiracy theory.

Hinkle has been predominantly described as far-right, right-wing, and conservative, primarily as a social media influencer, and political commentator, as well as an Internet troll, and YouTuber. Hinkle describes himself as an "American Conservative Marxist–Leninist", a "Marxist–Leninist anti-imperialist American patriot", and a "MAGA Communist". Hinkle has also been described as a pro-Russia operative, and grouped as part of the anti-Israel far-right. Emanuele Ottolenghi and Marina Rosenberg, respectively the Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Senior Vice President for International Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, wrote that Hinkle is a "known conspiracy theorist, and a staunch admirer of Russia's Vladimir Putin and Syria's Bashar al-Assad; he has denied China's brutal repression of its Uyghur minority as well as the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against its own people." Hinkle has also referred to al-Assad as a hero. Russian-American journalist Cathy Young described Hinkle as a "ragebait-monetizing 'MAGA communist' troll".

Hinkle refers to himself as an American patriot against the perceived White House's imperialist foreign policy. He has been described as vocally pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine. He tweeted that Zelenskyy is "responsible for every death in the Ukraine war" and shared posts on Instagram that praised Putin. He has urged the Republican Party (GOP) to reject Zionism, and called for MAGA-aligned GOP Representative Jim Jordan to focus on American domestic issues rather than backing additional military aid to Israel. The 2023 Israel–Hamas war also showed a division within the MAGA movement, with Hinkle criticizing the likes of conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and white nationalist activist Laura Loomer for supporting Israel.

"MAGA communism"

In late 2022, Hinkle advocated for the idea of "MAGA communism", leading it to trend on Twitter. Vice described it as a "swirl of social conservatism, patriotism and subversive energy", and described Hinkle as coming from "the far-right entertainment playbook by agitating on livestreams". Hinkle and other supporters of the idea argued that those who care about the working class should ally with the MAGA movement, which they considered to be the largest anti-establishment populist movement in the United States, to incite a populist revolution. "MAGA communists" criticized liberal identity politics, rejected American imperialism, and dismissed climate change efforts as "virtue-signaling" and "green fascism". Interviewed by One America News Network host Addison Smith in September 2022, Hinkle echoed conspiracy theories about George Soros, saying: "Communism and Marxism historically have been conservative. It's a new era in the West that made it adhere to liberal-leftist values. This is not true Marxism. It's Marxism funded by George Soros. They don't want communists, left-wing populists, right-wing populists, uniting on common issues to fight the deep state." Hinkle was questioned on whether he actually supported communism; he said that the United States can learn from the Soviet Union and Communist China, that Marxism–Leninism has historically been conservative, and that what he described as communism's "liberal-leftist values" are a perversion "funded by George Soros".

Observers and left-wing critics described "MAGA communism" as an alt-right spin to combine aspects of what Vice characterized as "authoritarian MAGA" with "tankie communism", eschewing progressive values, and co-opting socialism, referencing a far-right strategy described in Blackshirts and Reds by political scientist Michael Parenti. "MAGA communism" has been described as lacking ideological consistency and focusing its appeal to people disillusioned with modern American liberalism. Ana Kasparian commented: "We should be careful, because when you think of Nazis and fascists and how they brought people over to their sides. They co-opted socialist rhetoric to bring people in, and then their 'populist' movement was what? Extermination." Sam Seder, who had a debate with Hinkle, said of an interview Hinkle gave about "MAGA communism": "This is such a word salad that I can't follow what the hell he's talking about."

Daniel HoSang, a professor at Yale University and an expert on modern American right-wing movements, told Motherboard that "it doesn't necessarily mean communism in the literal sense of, say, demanding collective ownership. I think it's meant to be a kind of cultural invocation—a defense from that which the elites want you to believe. It suggests something about how people's political moorings are unsettled, and the search to find new bearings." Brian Hughes, the associate director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, said: "Various figures are trying to take advantage of the moment. Skull-mask [neo-fascist] networks, and accelerationist networks more broadly, have been juicing MAGA Communism because they like to inhabit odd, esoteric subcultures. They're smaller, and easier to exploit. It helps that MAGA Communism has little ideological consistency, and can vibe with people who want to be edgy, on the political fringe." Hinkle's movement has also been placed within the context of an American conservatism that, in the words of Democratic Party strategist David Shor, was getting "really very weird", with The New Republic describing it as a movement that "combined American nationalism with praise for another authoritarian leader despised by most Americans, China's Xi Jinping."

Hinkle has described himself as a Christian. Until December 2023, Hinkle was in a relationship with Russian model Anna Linnikova, who won Miss Russia 2022.