Mehdi Hasan speaks onstage at Semafor’s Innovating to Restore Trust in News: A National Summit at Gallup Great Hall on Feb. 27, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Shannon Finney / Getty Images for Semafor)
By Johnathan Jones August 27, 2026 at 11:34am
One of the left’s worst ideas is, and always has been, the idea that black Americans are owed financial reparations for slavery.
Claiming that people who never committed historical atrocities should pay people who never suffered atrocities, all in the name of so-called justice, is absurd.
That argument has always been empty.
Living Americans did not own slaves. Living Americans are not slaves.
To boot, history is neither fair nor cruel in any moral sense, and it has no debts that can be billed to the present via PayPal, CashApp, Venmo, Zelle, or direct payments via ACH or paper check from the Treasury.
History is simply a documentation of what happened, no matter how uncomfortable it might have been.
But that has never stopped the left from demanding cash from people who had nothing to do with slavery.
Enter former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, a vocal supporter of sweeping reparations.
This week he was so eager to defend his fellow Muslims ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, that he undercut the entire reparations premise while chasing a quick political point.
Conservative commentator Will Chamberlain posted a video of Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed arguing for cash payments more than 160 years after slavery ended.
Chamberlain wrote on X:
“I totally agree. American Muslims like Abdul need to pay reparations to the families of the victims of 9/11 and the soldiers who lost their lives in the war on terror.”
I totally agree. American Muslims like Abdul need to pay reparations to the families of the victims of 9/11 and the soldiers who lost their lives in the war on terror https://t.co/gkAiSM1qLm
— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) August 25, 2026
Rushing to answer Chamberlain, Hasan replied, “Nothing to see here, just a conservative pundit blaming all Muslims in America for 9/11. Imagine if a leftist pundit blamed all Jews in America for Gaza. Will we see heated condemnations of this racist freak, à la Piker? Of course not.”
Nothing to see here, just a conservative pundit blaming all Muslims in America for 9/11.
Imagine if a leftist pundit blamed all Jews in America for Gaza.
Will we see heated condemnations of this racist freak, à la Piker? Of course not. https://t.co/ZTOkHKorA6
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) August 26, 2026
Chamberlain spotted the contradiction immediately and nailed the radical leftist.
“Wait are you saying it’s wrong to demand people compensate others for an atrocity they had nothing to do with? What a concept,” Chamberlain replied.
Wait are you saying it’s wrong to demand people compensate others for an atrocity they had nothing to do with?
What a concept
— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) August 26, 2026
Either entire groups can be held financially responsible for paying other groups over historical wrongs, or they cannot.
You do not get to apply the rule only to the groups you dislike.
Hasan has never been known for pushing sound logic, and this slip is more of the same.
It’s what you get from someone who has built a career on bad-faith arguments across almost every issue.
At least he is now on record conceding that the immorality of a few is not a debt the descendants of an entire group must pay.
That is a win for anyone who wants to move on instead of keeping racial grievances permanently open for debate to scare people into voting for bad policy.
Hasan appears ready to move on as well, even if he only admitted it by accident.
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Johnathan Jones is a journalist, novelist, and media analyst with experience as a reporter, editor, and producer across radio, television, and digital platforms. Follow him on X: @misterjkjones
