Jackson Hinkle

Jackson Hinkle (born September 15, 1999) is an American political commentator and influencer who hosts the web television show ''Legitimate Targets with Jackson Hinkle'' on X (formerly Twitter). He is known for his support for Russia in the Russo-Ukrainian War, and for his opposition to Israel in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Born in San Clemente, California, Hinkle has dubbed himself an "American Conservative Marxist–Leninist", while journalists have described him as conservative, right-wing, and far-right. Promoting a syncretic mix of conservative and communist ideas, he is a self-described proponent of "MAGA Communism", calling on those who support the working class to ally with the MAGA movement against an alleged globalist threat. Initially an environmentalist during his high school years, Hinkle has turned to promoting pro-fossil fuels stances in recent years.

Journalists and fact checkers have said that Hinkle has spread disinformation and conspiracy theories. He has been banned from YouTube on grounds of disinformation. His show, ''The Dive with Jackson Hinkle'', was banned from Twitch for violating misinformation policies and propagating disinformation about the war in Ukraine, motivating its move to Rumble. Since the start of the Gaza war, his posts on X attracted virality, with some described as disinformation in the war. His posts and commentary have been cited by Russian and Iranian state media, and he has appeared on ''Tucker Carlson Tonight'', One America News Network, and RT.

Early life and education

Hinkle was born on September 15, 1999 in San Clemente, California, where he also attended public schools, graduating from the San Clemente High School in 2018. He was an active member of his middle school's surf club, which made him familiar with the impact of plastic pollution and became the catalyst for his entry into activism. He became active in anti-plastic pollution movements at the age of 17, founding the Team Zissou Environmental Organization (named after the protagonist of ''The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou''), which engaged in environmental lobbying and organized volunteer beach cleanups in Orange County.

In 2017, Hinkle became Water Ambassador for The Water Effect at The Ecology Center, and was named one of "The 17 Most Inspirational Kids of 2017" by ''Reader's Digest'', with him also being covered in ''Teen Vogue'' as one of eight young environmentalists "working to save the earth" that same year. In 2018, Hinkle went to Washington, D.C., with representatives 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."

The same year, Hinkle attended Saddleback College, a community college in Mission Viejo, to pursue political science.

Political and activist career

Hinkle began his political activism in the late 2010s, aligning with the "Bernie Bro" movement and running in a San Clemente city council special election in 2019. During his campaign, which was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and Orange County Employees Association, he advocated that the city of San Clemente have its own police department, he "categorically and unconditionally" opposed the legalization of prostitution, and proposed combating the presence and effect of nuclear waste in the area. Hinkle ultimately lost the election. In 2020, Hinkle launched the political show ''The Dive with Jackson Hinkle'' on YouTube, on which he reached 300,000 subscribers by 2023, later expanding to Twitch. The show moved to Rumble, when he was banned from YouTube and Twitch for "harmful misinformation" related to the war in Ukraine.

On February 4, 2021, Hinkle announced on Twitter that he had joined the People's Party.

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 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. At the rally, Hinkle expressed support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In February 2024, Hinkle appeared on ''NewsNation'' anchor Chris Cuomo's podcast, being described as at the forefront of "political thought in the country" for the next-generation, and according to Mediaite, advocated for "cessation of all American aid to Israel". Cuomo defended his interview with Hinkle saying "It is clearly untrue that I have ever, or would ever, give any deference to any kind of anti-semitism."

In March 2024, Hinkle began posting on Weibo following a collaboration with Guancha and Fudan University's China Institute.

In July 2024, Hinkle participated in a Russian sponsored press briefing at the United Nations, during which he talked about the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine he visited.

On July 21, 2024, Hinkle announced the launch of the American Communist Party (ACP), where he serves on the Plenary Council. ACP supports MAGA Communism. Later in July, Hinkle was invited as an international observer to the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election.

On October 7, 2024, Hinkle launched a new political show, ''Legitimate Targets with Jackson Hinkle'', interviewing representatives from the Houthi movement, which is designated by the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

On February 23, 2025, Hinkle attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Lebanon. In an interview with Al Mayadeen during this visit to Lebanon, he stated that he had been living in Moscow, Russia for the past five months, fearing U.S. government retribution for his support of Russia, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

On March 22, 2025, Hinkle attended a four-day Ansar Allah conference in Sanaa, Yemen hosting pro-Axis of Resistance figures, where he met Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree and made a speech condemning the U.S. strikes on Yemen.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation

Hinkle has a history of publishing misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories, and ''The Dive with Jackson Hinkle'' 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 Gaza war, gaining 1.4 million followers on X by October 2023, and has been labeled by ''The Jewish Chronicle'' as one of the "most viral misinformation spreaders" in regards to the conflict. In response to being characterized as part of a group of online reactionaries leveraging pro-Palestine views for clout and money, he once proclaimed: "I do everything for the clout, you will never see me do something not for the clout." Chinese state media outlet '' The Paper'' called Hinkle a "spreader of false information", although some advocates close to the Chinese Communist Party have promoted him.

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 Bloomberg article in November 2023 about misinformation on X said Hinkle was "known for spreading antisemitic hate speech in the past". The ADL identified him as one of five key far right influencers on X who had used the conflict to gain an audience, whose combined follower count increased by over 1070% in the period, Hinkle reaching over 2.6 million in late 2023.

A graphic image from the October 7 attacks 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 not determined to be fake by other AI detectors according to DW fact-checkers. 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 dblatant 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 misled 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.

In July 2024, Hinkle was noted as one of the main social media influencers sharing a fake story about Olena Zelenska, the First Lady of Ukraine, purchasing a Bugatti.

Views

Hinkle has been variously described as far-right, right-wing, a conservative, "a pro-Putin propaganda machine", "pro-Trump", " anti-Trump", "avowedly progressive", and an " extreme left-wing ideologue"; 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", as a Stalinist and Maoist, and as 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 repression of its Uyghur minority as well as the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against its own people." Hinkle has referred to al-Assad as a hero, and denounced his 2024 overthrow, describing it as a "victory for the US-backed al-Qaeda". Hinkle has also professed admiration for Joseph Stalin, and was described by ''LM Neuquén'' as an admirer of Bernie Sanders. Hinkle is a supporter of the views of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and called on Ibrahim Traoré and other leaders of the Coup Belt in Sahelian Africa to develop nuclear weapons. Russian-American journalist Cathy Young described Hinkle as a "ragebait-monetizing 'MAGA communist' troll", and according to Elad Nehorai, Hinkle has a documented history of transphobia.

Hinkle has been described as vocally pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine. He tweeted that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is "responsible for every death in the Ukraine war" and shared posts on Instagram that praised Putin. According to ''Euromaidan Press'', Hinkle claimed that Zelenskyy is a dictator who was building a "fascist, dystopian state" in Ukraine, and newspaper '' Türkiye'' wrote that he believed the president would suffer the same fate as Osama bin Laden. 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 Gaza war also showed a division within the MAGA movement, with Hinkle criticizing the likes of conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and Trumpist activist Laura Loomer for supporting Israel. Hinkle has been accused by some elements of the MAGA movement of promoting anti-white racism due to his support of South African black nationalist and communist politician Julius Malema and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party. Hinkle dubbed the firing of conservative-populist pundit Tucker Carlson as the "end of an era". Hinkle takes a pro-Pakistan stance on the Kashmir conflict, claiming that the 2025 Pahalgam attack was an Indian false flag operation.

On Twitter, Hinkle described his views in a November 2023 post as "American PATRIOT, GOD fearing, Pro-FAMILY, Marxist Leninist, Pro-PALESTINE, RUSSIA & CHINA, Anti-DEEP STATE, Anti-IMPERIALIST, Anti-WOKE, Pro-GROWTH, ANTI-MONOPOLY, Pro-GUN, ndPro-FOSSIL FUEL". In a January 2025 post, Hinkle described his political messaging as supporting "Anti-Imperialism, Multipolarity, nd Orthodox Communism".

MAGA communism

In late 2022, Hinkle began advocating 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 movement in the United States, to incite a populist revolution. While MAGA communism is seen as supporting Donald Trump and Trumpism, Celia Fernández of ''El País'' wrote "they don’t fully agree with Trump’s political vision. But addressing the working class through him, they explain, is the only way to channel working-class militancy away from capitalism and towards a communist future".

Interviewed by One America News Network host Addison Smith in September 2022, Hinkle echoed conspiracy theories about George Soros while defending his MAGA communism ideology, 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." When 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 modern communism's "liberal-leftist values" are a perversion "funded by George Soros".

One of the core beliefs of MAGA communism is opposition to NATO in favor of supporting a "multipolar axis", which is to include Russia, North Korea, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. MAGA communists criticize liberal identity politics, denounce American imperialism, and dismiss climate change concerns as "virtue-signaling" and "green fascism". They consider themselves Marxist–Leninists and are opposed to the social-democratic and "woke" left. MAGA communism also opposes feminism, environmentalism, and the LGBTQ movement; it seeks to combat "negative developments in society", which they list as "the decline of basic masculine virtues", "the rise of a kind of effeminization, especially among men", and "trans terrorists and propagandists". The model of communism followed by MAGA communists is the one of the Chinese Communist Party. Hinkle stated: "What we're trying to do as MAGA communists is show American youth that yes, communism is good. China is its embodiment, and we should respect them and also try to work with them instead of going to war with them." MAGA communists consider themselves post-liberal and illiberal, arguing that liberalism is no longer a progressive ideology, but rather became the doctrine of the American ruling class; because of this, MAGA communists declare their support for anti-liberal movements regardless of their political orientation. MAGA communists also support the President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro, the government of the People's Republic of China, and Palestine, regardless of whether it is Hamas-led or not. MAGA communists admire Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, and Kim Jong-Un, as well as Joseph Stalin – because of this, MAGA communism has been described as a form of Stalinism.

On July 21, 2024, Hinkle and fellow political commentator Haz Al-Din announced the launch of the American Communist Party (ACP), described by ''The FP'' as a MAGA communist party. The party positions itself as a patriotic and anti-revisionist alternative to the Communist Party USA. The party has been met with criticism from some elements of the MAGA movement, notably Trumpist activist Laura Loomer who described it in an X post as anti-Trump, pro-Iran, and linked to the Open Society Foundation, and additionally called for Hinkle's arrest.

Left-wing critics have described MAGA communism as an alt-right ideology which seeks to combine aspects of "authoritarian MAGA" with " tankie communism", eschew communism's leftist values, and co-opt socialism; while pro-Israel think tank MEMRI described MAGA communism as a form of Islamism and grouped it as part of the broader white jihad movement. Ana Kasparian of ''The Young Turks'' said of MAGA communism: "We should be careful hen discussing MAGA communism 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." Kathleen Hayes, a researcher of Marxist and antisemitic movements, rejected attempts to label MAGA communism as right-wing or far-right but instead described MAGA communists as " enuinecreatures of the left"; Hayes wrote in the ''Jewish Journal'' that MAGA communism appeals to a modern American left that is sympathetic to "Middle Eastern jihadism" and warned that the movement could forge a red–green alliance with Islamists. '' Compact Magazine'' argued that the MAGA communist movement was a response to broad dissatisfaction amongst the American working class with the traditional left's abandonment of economic issues in favor of cultural politics.

MAGA communism has been described as lacking ideological consistency and focusing its appeal to people disillusioned with modern American liberalism. 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 eo-fascistnetworks, 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."

In March 2025, MSNBC highlighted the Trump-appointed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s ties to Hinkle and the MAGA communists.

Personal life

Hinkle is an Eastern Orthodox Church, Orthodox Christian. He was engaged to Miss Russia 2022 Anna Linnikova and they lived together in Miami, but the couple reportedly separated in December 2023. Hinkle currently resides in Moscow, Russia.

Electoral history

See also

* Collaboration with Russia during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
* Russian information war against Ukraine
* Haz Al-Din – MAGA Communist American live streamer and activist
* Eva Bartlett – pro-Assad Canadian activist and journalist
* Patrick Lancaster – pro-Russia American vlogger
* Gonzalo Lira – Chilean-American YouTuber who died in a Ukrainian prison
* Graham Phillips (journalist), Graham Phillips – anti-Ukraine journalist from the United Kingdom
* Scott Ritter – pro-Iran American pundit

Notes

References

External links

Official website (archived)

American Communist Party website

Jackson Hinkle for San Clemente City Council (archived)
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hinkle, Jackson
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