Jake Hanrahan is a journalist, documentary filmmaker, and the founder of Popular Front, the fastest growing war and conflict news platform in the world. Hanrahan has been reporting on war and conflict for nearly a decade. As a conflict journalist, he’s reported on the ground from Syria, Palestine, Northern Ireland, Greece, Turkey, France, Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. He’s worked with reputable outlets such as HBO, Vice News, Wired, The Guardian, ProPublica, and more.
In 2015, Hanrahan was arrested and sent to a maximum-security prison while reporting on the youth wing of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) rebels in south-eastern Turkey. In 2020, his investigative reporting on white supremacist movements and Neo-Nazi networks in the United States earned him the prestigious DuPont-Columbia Award.
Popular Front is a grassroots news organization that doesn’t rely on corporate investors. The platform runs solely on Patreon subscriptions, individual donations, and merchandise sales. In nearly five years, Popular Front has recorded over 170 podcast episodes and produced 14 documentaries—one of which, Plastic Defence, has gained over 2.8 million views on YouTube.
Popular Front is a break away from media orthodoxy. It covers what it wants, how it wants. Journalism doesn’t have to be boring; it can remain professional without being watered down or sterilized.
It’s 2023. War has changed… and so has its coverage.
RK: Your work has brought you to areas of intense conflict, the front lines of war, and criminal underworlds. What was your life like before you took this path? Where did you grow up, and who were the people, places, and things that shaped who you are today?
JH: So, before I did journalism, I had very normal jobs—every kind of normal job you can think of, pretty much. I worked in a call center… selling bullshit that people didn’t want. I was really bad at that because I just didn’t care. I couldn’t sell someone something they didn’t want.
I worked on a building site as a laborer, which basically means you pick up bricks, smash things up, and carry out the detritus from the building site. Everybody on the site fucking hates you. I had no skill. I hated it. If I have to do something I don’t like, I just hate it.
I used to do unlicensed boxing for extra money when I was a teenager… every now and then. It’s kind of legal, but not really. It’s a gray area, but you get paid for it. You don’t have to be any good. I wasn’t. I did that for a little while and worked in the boxing gym too.
But yeah, man, all types of different jobs. I left school at 16 with no qualifications because I just messed around in school. Things could’ve been much worse, but I was lucky to come from a good family. My parents and I have had various issues, but my grandma and grandad were always there for me. Very solid. They helped me steer clear from the worst shit in our area.
By the time I was 10, I’d moved homes about 12 times. We moved a lot because my dad has various issues, so we were always in what you’d call social housing. Over here it’s called council housing. The government gives you a house, but they don’t do a thing for the area.
We also had to stay in a hostel, which was really weird because I was about seven years old, sharing a bathroom with junkies and stuff. But like I say, it wasn’t so bad. I was lucky to have my grandparents. They’re humble, working-class people with good values, and I was lucky to have their influence. I fucked up school, but my grandad helped me a lot through life and always told me to keep reading books. So I always kept reading.
Ray, from my Thai boxing gym, really helped too. He gave me my first job that I ever actually liked—working at the gym. I worked there for four years, from about 15 until 19. That really taught me respect and helped me communicate with all kinds of people. It was a working-class gym in a rundown area, but respect was everything there. This wasn’t a criminal gym or a soulless franchise. It was a real community gym, like family, you know? I still go there to this day. It really set me right and helped set me up for life.
Honestly, one of my biggest motivators was just having jobs that I hated. I thought, I cannot do this. I can’t go out doing this shit. I guess I pushed on from there and taught myself everything I needed to.
RK: Where did you grow up?
JH: It’s in the East Midlands. The Northants. It’s basically a district of several different towns of various sizes. I’ve lived across a lot of them. This is how funny this place is: we have a town with a cathedral, which means it’s technically a city, but it hasn’t been given city status for 400 years. So the “main city” where I live is actually a town.
This place is fucked. No one cares about it. No one gives a shit. But ironically, back in the day, it was really important. It’s the place where the Diggers and the New Levellers rose up. They were real English rebels—anti-monarchy, Christian proto-socialist revolutionaries. They were amazing people. More progressive than progressives, and they were around in the 1600s.
They’re from where I’m from, which is cool. I’ve even got a tattoo of one of them. Very cool people. But since then, nothing cool has happened here. Actually, that’s not true. The whole area is deeply interesting—just not in a way the local council would brag about to attract tourists. The most interesting things about where I’m from are things the council would rather ignore because they’re weird, creepy, or violent. It’s a very interesting place now that I think about it.
RK: What do your friends and family think about what you’re doing now?
JH: They’re real proud. My grandad died two years ago—God rest his soul. He was a great man. He was very proud of what I’ve built. We’re a small but close family, but we’re not lovey-dovey and all that. You just know through actions, and the way people have treated you, that you love each other and have each other’s back.
My grandad died suddenly of a heart attack. He didn’t know he was going to die or anything, but one of the last things he said was, “We’re proud of you, you know.” And I was like, Yeah, I know. It felt kind of awkward because we’re not that kind of family. Those things don’t even need to be said. But my grandad was like, “No, are you listening?” And I looked at him, and he was like, “We are so proud of you.” That was real nice.
That was just after he watched my Ghosts of Karabakh documentary. He was real proud, and he got to see the first issue of the Popular Front zine too. I think he really got it. He laughed at the intro, because I was saying, you know, Popular Front is not the “broom-up-the-ass” style journalism. And I think then he really got it. He was like, okay, you forged your own path. He was real proud of it.
In terms of friends… Recently I was talking to Ray from our Thai boxing gym. He’s like our dad at the gym in many ways. I mean, I don’t think he’d like us to say that, but he certainly is. He said, “I’m really surprised you went on to do this. You’ve done real well.” He’s definitely not the guy to be like that.
So I think everybody is real proud of it. It’s a really nice feeling, because my same friends from back in the day, from when I was like 12, 13, doing dumb shit, getting in trouble… they’re like, “We are proud of you, mate.” And it’s like, fucking hell, man. It’s a really nice feeling, you know?
I didn’t really do this to make anyone proud. I just did it because I felt like it had to be done, and I wanted to do my own thing. I don’t think people were proud of me when I was a teenager. I was a fucking maniac. It’s nice that they’re proud now.
RK: You recently filmed a documentary about the Hoods Hoods Klan, an anti-fascist football hooligan group from Ukraine that formed their own military unit in the nation’s Territorial Defense. Most Americans have probably never heard of a hooligan. What exactly is a hooligan? And, I’ve always wanted to ask, were you ever a hooligan?
JH: I mean, I certainly would be considered a hooligan by people that knew me back in the day, but not a football hooligan. I don’t even give a shit about football, to be honest. I’m not interested. I never have been. But there is a difference. I think it’s a class issue in Britain. Whereas, if you are kind of middle class, you would call someone a hooligan in the most distasteful way. Like, oh… they’re a hooligan, they’re trash, they’re shit. But if you’re more working class, you would say someone’s a hooligan and it’s not necessarily all bad. It’s someone that is involved in chaotic activity, often fighting. It’s much worse to be what we would call a ‘roadman’, in my opinion. That’s someone that’s selling drugs in the community and stuff like that. Senseless crime. Cowardice, stabbing people, rude for no reason. That sort of thing. Where I’m from, if you call someone a hooligan, it wouldn’t be so bad, you know what I’m saying? Not that it’s good, but it definitely is not the same thing.
But no, I wouldn’t say I was a hooligan. I was more of a hellion… That’s an Irish word, hang on. How would I explain that? Like, a hoodlum, you know what I mean? Not a criminal or anything. Just like a fucking little shit, a shit bag, you know? You’re riding bikes up to the river, fucking around, there’s an abandoned car that you set fire to because everybody knows that it’s abandoned. Getting into dumb fights with the other schools because we go to a different school, dumb shit like that. Like, I thought I was this big fucking hooligan, but I wasn’t really, you know what I mean? I was just a normal kid where I was from, which when you hit a certain age in my town, you either knuckle down with schoolwork or you get into stupid street fighting and setting off fireworks and stuff.
But like we were never bullies. We, my friends, were all very aware of that shit. I got excluded from school for sticking up for a friend of mine who was the kid that everybody picked on. Some kid smashed him in the head with a fucking stool for no reason, so we ended up fighting because I wanted to defend my mate. The school was like he’s hyper aggressive, he attacked this kid. But no, we were actually defending our friend from getting bullied. You know what I mean? So, there’s always a different context. I think I really learned that quite young. I was like, okay, well, the teachers are saying this, but actually we were helping somebody, you know? So, it was a weird coming of age. I was involved in all that rough activity in some way, but also I was getting beaten up because I had a big mouth. Then I would get my shit pushed in because I wasn’t the tough guy I thought I was [laughs]. I was really young then though. Like 14. When I hit about 18, I’d really learned a lot from the boxing gym. I’d learnt so much by that age that I was like… yeah, this is immature to be acting like this, you know? So, I changed. I grew up a little bit, and I think that really helped me get on. I was like, right, I need a career.
But, yeah, to answer your question though. A football hooligan is someone that is involved in organized violence between other football hooligan firms. A firm is what you would call… I guess the crew, or, like the posse, of the hooligans. It originated in Britain, but now it’s a lot bigger in eastern Europe and other countries. Germany has a very big football hooligan scene now. Generally, most football hooligans are either right wing, apolitical, or far right. So the anti-fascist hooligans—there aren’t a lot of them. Those ones are very, very violent and extremely well organized because they have to be. But yeah, hooligans… They fight other people that also want to fight them. They’re not in the streets smashing the place up anymore. They’re not setting fire to the stadium. It’s organized fighting in secluded areas and fields now, often where no one else is. Of course, the more political ones do end up fighting each other in the streets, but that’s a political thing. It’s not a football thing. Personally, I don’t care if someone wants to fight someone else and they both agree and it’s away from the public and it’s not causing anybody harm. I don’t know what the state has to do with that. I mean, who gives a fuck? It’s up to them. To be honest, I am friends with football hooligans, both anti-fascists and apolitical. They’re some of the most helpful people you’ll ever fucking meet. And they have very good friendship bases. Certainly, they’re more in tune with real life than most of the people I know that would call somebody a hooligan as a derogatory term.
RK: When did you start getting into Muay Thai?
JH: I was 14. I was at that cringe moment in a young man’s life when you’re all angry and lost. I didn’t have the confidence to deal with it properly. I was in school getting my head kicked in [laughs]. So, this lad in my year at school, Shane, he’d been a Thai boxer since he was literally four years old. Everyone knew he was a weapon, but also like the nicest most chilled out guy. His dad is Ray. He owns the gym I go to. Anyway, so Shane one day was just like, mate, you’re getting into all these scrapes, you should come to Thai boxing. At first, I thought, yeah, that’s great. I’ll get tough and then I can fight everybody. I was so childish. But quickly you learn all that street shit is irrelevant. So, when I started going to Thai boxing with Shane, I began to really love it. It was a safe and warm environment to get all that anger out and to learn real discipline and comradery. It gave me a constructive way to release all that stress.
My grandad was really happy when I started too. He could see it was good for me. He did boxing when he was a teenager back in Ireland. He was like this is good for you… I’m surprised you’ve got into this, because I wasn’t that kind of kid, you know? I was very shy. I was angry, but I was shy.
When I was about 16 I started doing weights with my friend at the boxing gym too. So I was training five times a week. I was working at the gym. I’d moved out from home at my mum’s house by then too, and I lived five minutes from the gym. So, my whole life just became the gym. It was my social life, work, health, everything. And it was the best experience. Even when the gym closed for the night, we’d all go hang out together. So, for me, it really saved my life. It gave me my confidence back and gave me a new direction. It really helped me. I think if I hadn’t found that gym, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now. It really set me up to do reporting and be successful.
RK: When did you start getting into journalism and taking it seriously?
JH: Well, I was always into it, even when I was really young. In school, I remember being 13 years old watching Ben Anderson in Afghanistan. I was like, wow, that is fucking crazy. Ben Anderson is a normal guy. He’s actually from Bedford, which is not far from where I’m from. I met him later in life at Vice. He was a really nice guy. I got advice from him. When I was like 13, he did this series where he went to North Korea and places like that.
Also, I was a very online kid from very early on. Like, I made a Final Fantasy 7 fan page using HTML and Notepad when I was nine [laughs]. My grandad gave me an HTML For Dummies sort of book. I can see it now. It had an ostrich on the front cover. I made a whole website. I was like, really into it. So through that I was always tapped into shit.
Early on it made me realize there is a whole world of adventure out there. It seemed so far away, but something clicked, and I was like, man, you can literally just go there… like anyone can go. And I was always reading. I was reading all my life. I was really into fiction, but when I was a teenager, I got into non-fiction, and that’s when I started to really be like, wow, there are so many different things that are just not on the news and interesting.
I never had any money, and I was doing all these day jobs, jumping from one thing to the other. I just had this idea that I really had to get money. And when I slowed down and matured a little bit, I was like… well, what do I want to do? I’m good at writing. I would love to write, and I always had this idea that I’d write a book, but I was like… nah man, I need the experience first. So, then the weirdest thing happened.
I was about 19 or 20, and I’d left the gym by then. They couldn’t afford to keep me on. Times were hard. I was earning like four pound an hour, you know, like I needed more money [laughs]. So I was looking for jobs. I thought I wanted to be a journalist, but I didn’t know what that really meant. I’d look at the news and see some guy in a suit and a tie with a very strange voice. I’m not that guy, you know? I could never be that guy.
So anyway, I went to this job interview at TK Max. I think you guys call it TJ Max, but over in England it’s called TK Max. I don’t know why…
To be honest I didn’t even want the job, but I needed money. It was one of those bullshit interviews where you have to do a team building exercise with like 15 other people that also want the job. It was like Battle Royale for low wage work, you know? It was just awful, man. Like, all these corporate scumbags are just watching you, like, just loving how hard you’re trying to earn minimum wage. Awful.
But anyway, this one girl and I got chatting and she asked me, “what do you want to do”? And I was like, “I don’t know. I’m good at writing.” And she was like, “oh, me too. I want to be a journalist”. And she was so normal. I forget where she was from, but she was clearly like a normal, working-class girl. When she said that, something in my head clicked, and I was like… well, fuck, if she can, I can, why not? You know?
So from then on, I was like, fuck it man, I want to be a reporter. And that’s when it started. I didn’t know how, but I started to read books by other journalists. And that really opened my world up. From 19 to 22, I read more books than I’ve ever read in my life. I was reading constantly. I read books from all these reporters, like Evan Wright, David Yallop, Ben Anderson, Don McCullin.
RK: Were you always dead set on going into conflict journalism?
JH: Yes and no. I was interested in what I’m still interested in now. Like, underground shit, the outskirts of society, the fringes, and a lot of it has to do with war. A lot of people at war are from the outskirts, the fringes of society. As a kid, I found the idea of war so fucking boring. Because in school we just learned about how great the British army was.
I grew up with my grandad telling me that Michael Collins was a hero, which I believe he is a hero, so all that jingoistic stuff just didn’t work for me. I was an arsehole as a kid. I was a contrarian. I’d be eight years old, and they’d be teaching this shit in school, and I’d be like, well, what about when, you know, the colonial empire murdered all these kids? Like, I was really like into that shit. Not even on some annoying woke shit. It was before that shit existed. My dad and grandad were just very political, but not performative. They were just very matter of fact. They were like… this is how it is. Early on, I realized things are often not what they are presented to you as. My grandad was so smart though, not a contrarian.
For example, my grandad would tell you he believed in Irish Republicanism. He very much did. But you wouldn’t see my grandad singing “Up the RA” or anything like that. He was very pragmatic. He was like… well, the RA had to happen because this, this, and this, but they’re not angels. It wasn’t something to glorify. It was just a thing that had to happen to stop the Irish being oppressed. So, I grew up with that attitude that bad things have to happen sometimes for good things to happen. And no one is all good or all bad. People aren’t caricatures. From very early on, I was aware that life is not like that.
So anyway, I wasn’t interested in war so much, but then I started learning about real guerilla conflict, and I was like… there’s so many interesting facets to this. I never thought I’d go to war. I always said I wouldn’t but within a year of getting my job at Vice, I was at war. So, I guess I really wanted to, but I didn’t know it until I really got looking into it, you know?
I started off doing weird, niche shit, strange stuff. I was writing about conspiracy theorists, and for a while I thought… maybe I’ll do like a satire on that. I didn’t know what kind of reporter I wanted to be. I was trying to be too clever, which to be honest, back then it was quite a big thing. That shit has vanished now because everyone’s so crazy.
Over time I just really put a lot more effort into the stuff I liked. Then I got recognized for the stuff I liked. For example, I did an article about Anonymous, quite early on, because I was into that.
I interviewed the co-founder of WikiLeaks who broke away from Assange. I wrote about skateboarders that had taken over a mansion in war-torn Libya and turned it into a skate park. You know, rebels, stuff like that. So, I guess from very early on, I was working out my niche, and to be honest, it’s not really changed. I’m just a lot more certain of what it is now.
RK: Did you have any experience filming documentaries before you started working on docs at Vice News?
JH: I kind of did. Not documentaries, but when I was like 11, 12, 13, I was into skateboarding. I mean, I’m still into it. I think it’s great, but I just don’t skate anymore. I was a decent skater. I was doing big stair sets. I was getting to the point where I was trying out handrails and shit.
I loved the whole scene behind street skating. I remember being an anxious kid, and getting into skating was really the first thing that pulled me out of it a bit. That was like a big part of it. Skating was the first level, and then the second level was the Thai boxing. But the first thing was skating and learning about that culture. And I made a lot of good friends that I still have now, through skating.
It was the first thing where I really discovered subcultures and counterculture. It was the time of CKY and Jackass, which were both just the best things I’d ever seen in my fucking life. Jackass was cool, but CKY was my thing. I thought Bam Margera was so cool. That was unlike anything that had ever happened before. And it really was. Literally, nothing looked like that. They came up with their own style and everything.
So, I saw that and used to pinch my grandad’s little digital cameras when they first started coming out. Like, fucking 420p was like… whoa, crazy quality! We would just film stuff. We’d film skateboarding, brawling, and playing with fire—like very wild dumb kid behavior, which you don’t really get these days anymore because everything is so poisoned now. Kids just end up criminals, you know?
But anyway, we had all this footage, and I was like, what should we do with it? And I just started editing it in Windows Movie Maker and getting music and stuff. That was my first foray into it, and to be honest, a lot of them influences I still have now. I mean, CKY is visually one of the best things I’ve ever seen. I watched it again last year. To this day, I still take a lot of inspiration from that and the skate videos as well. Like, I mean, it’s very minor, but even in our last documentary, we brought a fisheye lens. And that shit is a throwback to the old school skate video influences that we have.
When I was 22, Occupy Wall Street was happening. In England, we had our own version. It was called Occupy London, but it started off as Occupy the Stock Exchange. But very quickly that got moved up the road. The police moved it outside St. Paul’s Cathedral. It became Occupy London.
I was really interested in that whole scene. Sam Black, who’s now one of my co-collaborators with Popular Front, we were both very political at that age. I mean now it would be considered some kind of anarchism, but we weren’t anarchists. It wasn’t like that back then, in England especially. Even in America, it wasn’t quite like that. It wasn’t this side versus that side. It was anti-corruption, anti-control.
We felt the boot on our heads. It was the first time that the younger generation, my generation, became aware that, like… oh, America is bombing children or… Britain’s MPs have literally been running a pedophile ring within government. All stuff now which would get you called a conspiracy theorist, even though it’s all completely documented and true.
Things were way less factionalized back then. We were hanging out with communists, anarchists, maybe even a more right-wing libertarian, you know? We were in that whole WikiLeaks, Occupy, Anonymous scene. It felt real.
So anyway, I filmed at Occupy London. I got my friend Sonny, who was studying photography at the time. He filmed, and I just interviewed people at Occupy London. And that’s the first thing I ever did. I was such a baby. I have the footage somewhere. I’m so young.
RK: You should share it.
JH: Yeah. I’ll have to look for it.
RK: I remember reading a book where they were talking about people using 4Chan to help organize some of the Occupy movements.
JH: Yeah, 4Chan was different back then. 4Chan was not what it is now. At the time, 4Chan was a pretty good place for real grassroots political activity. It was a space for that. Now, if you even say that people can get upset. But it’s true. I mean even now there’s loads of interesting shit on there. Obviously /pol/ is the most cringiest and disgusting place ever, but there’s tons of other boards. There’s literally boards for knitting and UFOs, you know what I mean? It’s just a thing…
Now though I guess you have to have the 100% Correct Opinion or else. You must acquire all the Good Boy Points [laughs]. Habitual Redditor mentality. I just didn’t come up in a time like that. Things were more open and nuanced back then. I see a lot of people from my era doing cool shit now, and I just know they were a part of that scene back then. I can just tell.
RK: So, you were arrested and imprisoned in Turkey in 2017 while covering the youth wing of the PKK. What exactly happened, and how’d you get out?
JH: Yeah, basically the PKK, the youth wing, were taking over Kurdish cities in Southeast Turkey. The Turkish government, historically, has been awful to the Kurds. At that time, the war was on a ceasefire, but it was when Rojava (the Kurdish region in Northeast Syria) was really getting into full swing. They were fighting ISIS. To be honest, the Turkish government was a lot friendlier at that time to the Kurds. They were allowed to have their own flags in their areas.
Compare that to now, for example, where a man was arrested in a Kurdish city in Turkey for having ice cream that was yellow, red, and green, because it was perceived as pro-Kurdish colors. I mean… it was just fucking vanilla, strawberry and mint. Insane. That’s how bad the oppression is there now. No one wants to talk about it because, you know, Turkey is in NATO. Everybody knows… if you’re on the NATO side, you’re an official Good Boy. You can’t possibly commit war crimes.
Obviously, we knew that wasn’t real life, and we knew that the Turkish government were committing very brutal war crimes against the Kurdish people. Not just the rebels that were rising up either. I mean, if you take a gun in your hand and get shot… that’s life… that’s war. But it wasn’t just that. It was killing children. Nihat Kazanhan, Umit Kurt, all these young boys getting shot dead for doing nothing. Shot dead just for being Kurdish. For existing. And that’s kind of where it grew from. That’s when the armed youth started really rising up.
So, we went and covered it. We covered it once, we covered it twice, and then we went back a third time, and it was clear all-out war was bubbling. At first it looked like it might turn into a small conflict. Then the Kurdish youth had literally taken over some of their neighborhoods. Chased out the police. Then they had checkpoints with machine guns. Quickly it was a full-scale war.
In the space of two years, Turkey was literally dropping airstrikes on its own cities. A lot of people don’t realize how ferocious that war got. They were bombing teenagers with AKs with fucking war planes. That’s how bad it was. It was crazy out there. It’s the craziest conflict I’ve ever covered.
Urban combat like that, where one side has an air force, and the other doesn’t even have boots… It was a guerilla war versus NATO’s second largest army. It was insane. And I was one of maybe… four foreign journalists that were there. I mean, to be honest, I only know of one other at that time, but I’m sure there were probably more. And, yeah, it was chaos.
We were behind enemy lines… in terms of the Turkish perspective. We had very good access to the Kurds because I was one of the first people to cover the Kurdish youth militia in Turkey without towing the government line and smearing them all as “terrorists”.
Cizre, where the war began, was crazy. I went back to Cizre at the height of the war, and we had kids coming out with machine guns being like Heval! Come with us! Come with us! Normally, you have to really fight for access. For us, it was the opposite. They were like, we’re making bombs in here, come see.
We went to other cities, and the PKK—like the actual PKK, the mountain guerillas—turned up in civilian clothes carrying 20-kilo ANFO bombs. The whole thing was nuts. The whole town got shut off. The electric got turned off one night. We were wandering around, and the Turkish military were firing 50-caliber rifles into the city from the mountains nearby.
I remember the holes they made in the walls were the size of fucking tennis balls. People’s houses were falling down from being shot up. They weren’t even getting shelled. The amount of rounds that were going into people’s houses were collapsing the houses. And that’s also due to the fact that houses were made very badly there, because the Turkish government doesn’t give a shit about Kurdish regions.
Anyway, we covered that. We got incredible footage. I’ve never seen anyone get that kind of access to the PKK during combat. And then we got arrested because we covered the areas where the government had lost control, but we wanted to also cover the areas where the government was.
PKK had control of one neighborhood, but not every area, you know what I’m saying? And that’s when we got arrested. They came to the hotel. We had just come back one night. I remember we had this really nice chicken kebab, and then we get back to the fucking hotel and, literally, police pulled the guns out. Basically, straight to prison that night.
Me, Phil, Rasool. We spent 11 days in four different prisons. We were held in max security, until the last one, which was a deportation prison. And that was pretty crazy. That was gen pop [General Population]. So, we were in main flow with everybody. And that’s when we were in prison with fucking ISIS and having to eat dinner with them. Shit was crazy, man [laughs].
Luckily, some Afghan refugees were in there with us. They saved us because the ISIS guys wanted to cut our fucking heads off in the toilet. So, we had some Afghan refugees and an Iranian guy that helped us and basically protected us. And some Syrian rebels. They were real FSA, not no al-Nusra or anything… These guys were real, proper FSA rebels who were done with the war, having realized it was already lost to Assad and jihadists.
Basically, the way the deportation prison worked was if you were caught coming over the Turkish border, and you are from somewhere else, they would put you in that prison to deport you. So, we were in prison with about 50 Chechen ISIS fighters who would come over the border to get R&R.
One of them had this fucking crazy gunshot wound in his arm. He went to Turkey to go to a hospital because the Turkish government was treating ISIS fighters back then, and then sending them back to war in Syria so they could kill Kurds, basically.
The refugees who’d been nabbed on the border and imprisoned were great though. They looked after us. They were like, hey, we’re Muslim, but we’re not fucking daesh. That made me laugh. We were like, yeah, we’re not against you guys, we’re cool with that. And they decided they were going to look after us.
Luckily, one of them made a knife from a sharpened spoon handle and light, to help ward off the ISIS guys. Eventually, we got deported, and it was okay.
Apparently, I’m being sentenced in March, but I’ve still not been sentenced. None of us have. This court case has been ongoing for like eight years.
RK: Oh my God.
JH: Yeah. It’s crazy. One of our lawyers was killed. The other died suspiciously. It’s fucked up. They were great guys.
RK: If this all gets sorted out, would you consider going back to Turkey?
JH: Never. Not even if they got a new government. No way. The risk of any possibility of going to prison again there… That shit is hell on earth. It’s unbelievable how bad it is in there, and, to be honest, we got off pretty lightly. Like, we didn’t get raped. We didn’t get poisoned. It’s real wild in there, man.
It was so fucked up for us, and that was for white kids from a foreign country. Imagine what it’s like for a Turk or a Kurd. You’re fucked. You know what I mean? If you’re a Kurd, you’re not getting out of there. You are fucked.
Well… Our Kurdish friend who was with us, who was our translator, he got out. But you get what I’m saying. Not everyone gets lucky.
RK: Rasool?
JH: Yeah, Rasool, my bro. He spent like a hundred days extra in there. I don’t know, he got lucky… he got real lucky. But, if you are a Kurd from Turkey, you are fucked.
RK: What is it like hanging around ISIS fighters and jihadists? Did they put out bad vibes?
JH: No. It’s the opposite, actually, because they don’t see themselves as bad guys. They think they’re doing the right thing. Later on, one of our Afghan friends, a refugee, was like, yeah, they were planning to behead you.
I mean, I kind of thought that was the idea, but it was still like oh fuck. But the Afghan lad helped us. He had the intel because all the Muslims prayed in one room, and obviously the normal guys have to pray next to the ISIS guys because it’s just the one room. Our Afghan mate would hear stuff.
He told them apparently that if they cut off our heads he’d straight up snitch on everybody and then no one would get out [laughs]. He told them, I will go straight to the guards. The guards, as bad as they were, are not going to let you get fucking beheaded because it will just be a huge international scandal if some British guys get beheaded in what is essentially a NATO member prison.
So anyway, the main guy that was planning to chop our heads off was hanging out with us. Well, not hanging out as such, but we’d eat dinner, and he would sit with us sometimes. He spoke English. So, you could talk to him, and he’d be like, hey, what’s for dinner? The food’s not bad tonight. That sort of thing.
A couple days in we realized people were cool with us, pretty much. So, we’d put the dishes out, we’d help serve the food, and stuff like that. But anyway this ISIS guy that was chill was actually planning to kill us. Pretty annoying.
One or two of them were so extreme that they couldn’t even be diplomatic though. They couldn’t even pretend to like you. They just wanted to kill you every minute. Like they were the crazy ones.
A woman would come on TV in the telly room, and if she wasn’t in a burka they would scream and throw things at the TV. Like, there was one room with a small TV, and they would throw shit at it. Bonkers.
One day, we hung out with all the FSA guys because they’re real cool. It was my friend Phil’s birthday, and I told them, so they held a little party for us. I mean, obviously we couldn’t drink or anything, but they put like 15 sachets of coffee into a jar, and we drank it with hot water. It was the worst shit ever.
But they held a little party for us, and this jihadi ran into the room and was like, you shouldn’t be singing or dancing with them! They’re fucking Shaytan! They’re the devil! They’re kafar!
It was the weirdest scene. All these FSA guys were sticking up for us. They were like, fuck you! Like, someone who spoke English was translating now and then, and basically, they were saying to the jihadist guys, you came to our country and chopped people’s heads off and brought in this foreign jihadi culture into our country! How fucking dare you tell us what to do here?
It was really crazy, to be honest with you. Very dangerous. But we survived. Those FSA guys were really solid people.
RK: It’s the most surreal shit.
JH: Yeah. It’s fucked up, man. And there was one instance where this ISIS kid—he was from Kenya or somewhere nearby, I forget—but he was getting deported as well, having been caught at the border by the wrong guards. He was like 18, and one night he slit his wrists. A guy from our room helped him out.
Now I don’t smoke, but in prison, you smoke. In war, you smoke. So I was smoking a cigarette. It’s currency, and to have cigarettes it’s some kind of power when you have no power… At least if you can smoke, you can get a cigarette or you can give a cigarette.
I was smoking cigs, and this kid sat next to me. He had all these bandages made out of bed linen wrapped around him because the guards didn’t give a fuck. They didn’t even take him to the hospital. I mean, he’s a Black kid, so they saw him as nothing there, you know? It was awful. Horrible and obvious racism.
So he just sat there, like all his life was gone. He was done. All the jihadis wouldn’t talk to him because, obviously, he’d tried to kill himself, which is a sin for them. I felt bad for him, so I just held out a cigarette, normal, like everyone would do with the other prisoners you’re cool with. Obviously, they weren’t allowed to smoke, you know? They couldn’t smoke. Haram. The ISIS guys would scold them.
He looked at me and shook his head. I was like, gesturing, just have the cigarette. I knew he smoked, you know? And he just took the cigarette and nodded at me. I nodded at him. We just sat there quietly smoking together. I just thought, damn, what led us both here?
It was a real strange moment. Outside, I would want to kill him, and he would want to kill me, but for that moment we were just two lads, just young men, like… all fucked up. I don’t know. It was sweet and sour at the same time. He’s probably dead now.
RK: So, I’m sure you get a bunch of young adults and teenagers who listen to Popular Front asking how they can become conflict journalists. What advice do you normally give them?
JH: Yeah. We get a lot of young people watching us, which is great. Our main audience is roughly 18 to 35. We did this survey one time. It’s crazy because I have a friend that works in marketing, and he was saying to me that there are people where he works that get paid to get that audience. That’s their whole job.
We didn’t try for that; it just happened. We just did it like this. And it’s great. I’m really glad that young people like it.
We get a lot of young people contacting us. I just say to them, honestly, don’t do it. That’s always the first thing: don’t do it. You don’t want to die. And you can die very easily doing this job. Like, very easily. I don’t know. If they’re going to do it, they’re going to do it no matter what I say. People told me not to do it. I did it. There’s nothing I can do to stop them, but my first point is: don’t do it because you can die.
Secondly, don’t do it because you won’t earn much money. You won’t get the respect you should have, and a lot of people within war reporting are very bad people. It’s a fucked up industry. I don’t mean to be negative; that’s just the reality.
I think honesty should be the main point of your work. But often, it’s not for a lot of war reporters. It’s about them and their ego. It’s about a lifestyle for them. It’s about talking about things at the bar, and it’s about who’s the most Good Boy, who’s the “good side,” what will get me the most positive attention back home.
Anyway, I say to a lot of people: if you are going to get into it, do your research properly. And that doesn’t just mean the historical context. It means knowing what kind of terrain you’re going to, what kind of car you need when you get there, if you’ve actually looked at a map of where you are going. If you haven’t, then why are you going there? You need to know what kind of people are there, what religion they believe, what subset of that religion, and if they will tolerate who you are.
Things like that. Very minute details that you really have to know about. I basically tell a lot of people to really focus on that stuff, because there’s not enough of that going on.
I’ve seen a lot of young cowboys going into the Ukraine war, especially right now because it’s close. I’ve just seen the most ridiculous shit in my life. I saw a filmmaker recently on Instagram, playing with a live grenade in a fucking café in Ukraine. Madness. You’re putting people’s lives in danger. That is pure stupidity.
You can’t research your way out of stupidity, though. Anyway, I guess my point is: do your research on more than the story. Do your research on the local level. Listen to locals. Always.
RK: When and why did you end up leaving Vice News and starting Popular Front?
JH: Well, I owe Vice my career, mostly, but the main issue was that it got taken over by American corporate psychopaths. So then the UK office became just a vassal that was run via Skype from the US. That wasn’t how it was before. We were the ones that made all the good stuff. We were pretty autonomous before that. I feel like when HBO bought out Vice News, it became a dishonest and soulless environment.
I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I didn’t like the new manager that we had in the UK office either. He was nasty. I remember him telling us all, “You are not important. I don’t care about any of you.” I said, “Here, without us, the HBO show wouldn’t have got commissioned and you wouldn’t have a fucking job.” So, obviously, they didn’t like my attitude, which is understandable.
When HBO got involved with Vice News, the Vice bosses made a new environment where people had to do what they were told and that was that. It wasn’t HBO that wanted that—Vice just decided to fall into some weird pattern of yes-man behavior because they got a big deal. I’m never going to be a yes-man, so they came to me and were like, “Look, we don’t like your attitude, you clearly don’t want to be here, and we want you to leave, but we don’t want to fire you. Do you want to leave?”
I said, “Yeah, I do want to leave.” So they gave me £10,000 to leave without a fuss, which at the time was, to me, like a million, you know? I was on 30 grand a year at Vice. Peanuts for the work I was doing. It’s hilarious. I was going to war for the wage of a middle manager in a department store. It was crazy, but I didn’t care back then. I loved it. It was everything to me.
But anyway, I left. I had the 10 grand and still did a bit of freelance work for them now and then, but even that got fucking intolerable. So, I burned through the 10 grand within six months because England is a joke. I had to go back into freelance work. I worked as a producer for a little while for a UK-based cultural media company. I was doing a lot of freelance work on the side, and I started Popular Front about that time. I felt like I’d gone back to just working for money because I was broke. I was lucky to still do some kind of media work, sure, but I didn’t like it. And I was like, I want to do only what I want to do.
Popular Front was everything I knew about in my head. I had this idea, and I saw this emerging geeky anorak culture within war reporting that was getting ignored, or big outlets were stealing ideas off people. Known reporters were just stealing research from a guy that had 10 followers on Twitter but was doing amazing work from his desk. I thought, fuck that. I wanted to bring those unknown people in. I wanted to make it a whole thing.
That’s what I did. I started the podcast because I didn’t have any money, and that was cheap to do. Then I got to the point where I was like, right, I’m going to do documentaries with it. That’s when it really took off. Popular Front is five years old this May.
It’s now the fastest-growing conflict reporting platform in the world that’s fully independent. There’s no one else doing what we do, and no one’s doing it like we do it either. I was very conscious of making it cool, but not “too cool for school.” You know, as in Vice. I was always like, nah, nah, nah, I’ve never been the cool kid. I’m not a cool kid. I knew there were a lot of kids out there like me.
War reporting can become a very exclusive, niche, up-its-own-arse kind of club. I wanted to do the opposite of that. That’s why the line was always: “No Frills, No Elitism.” No frills, as in nothing fancy, and no elitism, as in this is for everyone that wants to be involved, you know? I wanted to do it for the misfits, the geeks, the goths, the hooligans, the whatever. We’ve worked with everyone. But it’s not performative. It’s just whatever—so long as you’re good at what you do and have a similar ethos, cool.
Like, oh, you’re a communist? Cool. Oh, you’re trans? Cool. Oh, you’re whichever race? Cool. It’s all good with us. There’s too much focus on putting people into identity categories. That’s so twisted and inhuman. We just want to work with cool people with great ideas.
That said, to contradict myself now, we would never ever work with anyone that has a problem with someone based on their ethnicity or gender or whatever. We’re very clear about that. Anti-fascism is important. Sometimes we’re considered left wing, but we’re just interested in real freedom. Freedom to be who you are, unapologetically. Other than that, we’re not interested in being part of any political scene. Not online, anyway.
RK: So why the name Popular Front?
JH: It was a bit of a joke because I saw that the conflict journalism industry was being overrun by very elitist people—“you are not in our gang” attitudes. I wanted to do the opposite of that. I wanted to be like, fuck your decorum and your uni.
So, the idea was, it’s the Popular Front for the Liberation of Conflict Journalism, playing on the way militant groups would use that term. And the idea was, we are liberating it from all the old guard, you know what I mean? All these people with a stick up their arse.
And, like I said before, the idea was we don’t need everybody to agree on everything. You don’t need to be in the club to be a part. You just have to have the uniting features that we have, which is: are you interested in war that goes underreported, and are you interested in looking into conflict in a more nuanced way, with more detail to make it easier to understand?
If you are, cool, get on board. And that’s why everybody loves it, I think.
RK: What interested you in focusing on the niche details of modern warfare and underreported conflicts?
JH: I was often told my pitches were “too niche”. “That doesn’t need that detail. It’s not understandable. You make it too complicated.” But I disagree. I think, when you get more niche, it becomes easier to understand. Because when you get into the nitty gritty details, if you do it right—don’t get me wrong, there are really bad ways of doing it where it does become more complicated—but if you do it right, in a simplified way, which means you’ve done your research properly, and know how to express and explain it, it becomes more understandable. You realize why this group is so pissed off at that group. This little thing happened here. You know? Every group will tell you why but there’s many other reasons. There are other reasons that they don’t talk about, you know what I’m saying? So, for me, it was a no-brainer. I’m a nerd. I used to have a spreadsheet with every single Kurdish militant group’s name, each group’s music, flag, all sorts of different things and really nerdy details. It became extremely easy to understand. It’s a very complicated topic, but when you get into the details things become clear. So, I just use that element with everything.
For example, El Chapo’s son was arrested, but why were 30 people killed when they tried to arrest this guy? Well, where he’s from, everybody loves him because he’s the only one that really helps the people. Yes, they’re cartels, but the government is shit as well. So, when you get into the detail, you get a real understanding.
The under-reported stuff is purely because there are so many wars going on right now, and if it doesn’t involve NATO or it doesn’t involve a NATO ally being seen as a hero, then it just doesn’t get reported as much. I mean look at Armenia. The Armenians are screwed right now. They’re nearly 60 days into being barricaded in Artsakh. People are going to starve because the totalitarian state of Azerbaijan gave the EU some gas and the Armenians have had help from Russia. Basically, the Western community has gone fuck Armenians. Which is hilarious considering they talk about democratic Western values. There’s no such thing. There’s only self-preservation.
We decided we don’t want to be involved in that he said, she said, this side, that side. If someone’s getting killed, we want to know why. And we’re going to be honest about it. We are not what’s seen as traditionally objective, but we’re always honest, you know what I mean? We tell the truth regarding Armenian wars and some people say, oh, you said Azerbaijan’s a totalitarian state, so you are not objective. I would argue that it’s an objective opinion. That it is a fact. They are. To say otherwise is literally a lie. It’s not like one man’s dictator is another man’s president. There are very clear-cut rules to what is and isn’t destruction of freedom. People have seen our shit and know that we’re going to tell them what’s happening on the ground. We’re not going to try to please one side or the other. We’re just telling what is happening.
RK: Who all makes up Popular Front’s core team?
JH: It’s like mostly me in terms of the majority of how things work. We do have a roster of cameramen we work with, but Popular Front doesn’t make enough money to hire anyone as staff or anything like that. Everyone has to be a part of the team on a freelance basis, but we have a core team of people that we always use.
For example, Johnny Pickup is one of our cameramen, great guy. He is definitely a big part of the team. Luke Pierce as well. He’s one of our cameramen, and definitely a main guy on the team. Conall Kearney hasn’t done that much for us in a while, but he’s always been a part of the team. He’s been there from day one. He’s just busy doing his own freelance shit.
Adam Doyle, or Spicebag, as he is known, is our main art designer. I would say Sam Black’s the only other constant team member. He wouldn’t say this, but it wouldn’t be where it is without him. He does all the music.
RK: Yeah, the music’s dope.
JH: Yeah, the music is a big part of the aesthetic, which is one of the most important parts. I understand that no one’s going to watch if it looks dull and boring. They might if they’re a hundred years old, but if they’re a teenager, which is who we want to watch our shit, they’re just not going to pay attention to it.
So, you have to make it look cool. And it’s fun to make shit look cool. It’s that simple. But also, it’s war. It’s serious. We never show something gnarly and put things out of context. Like if a woman is crying with her kid injured, we’re not going to then put drum and bass over it. People that criticize our style as insensitive have never paid proper attention to it.
If it’s a riot, we make it look energetic and wild. Why? Because that’s what it feels like to be there. Our idea is to make it feel like what it feels like on the ground. Obviously, you’ll never really feel it, but if you can edit that atmosphere in with the aesthetics, the music, and the cut, then that’s solid.
You can see what a riot looks like, but the way we edit, we create a feeling, you know what I mean? Which sounds a bit up its own arse, but it’s true. If we can do that, then I think that’s great. I think that’s real proper filmmaking.
RK: When I first stumbled upon Popular Front, I thought the aesthetics were really cool. Then I just started listening and getting into it. It’s really opened my eyes to a lot of stuff.
JH: Yeah, I’m glad. That’s exactly how we want it. I’ve had so many people with a similar story. They found Popular Front because it looked cool, and then they’re like, oh, I didn’t know about this. Now I do. There you go. We’ve done what we set out to do. We pulled you in, but then we deliver substance. It’s not fashion before function. It’s all fashion, all function.
RK: What are the inspirations or influences that shaped Popular Front’s aesthetic and style of reporting?
JH: Visually, CKY was a big inspiration. Early skate videos. 2000s-era graphic design. Also the vibe of DIY backyard wrestling-type stuff—before YouTube existed.
RK: Backyard wrestling?
JH: Yeah, where they’re setting fire to themselves and jumping on barbed wire. I remember watching the videos, and the way they’d make it was so ratchet. It was DIY, and they’d edit it on the actual camcorder. I actually did this when I was young.
When we first started filming stuff, we did it on a Hi8 video camera and would edit by pressing record on the tape in a VHS. When we wanted to do a cut, we’d have to press stop, fast forward the camera, and then press record again on the VHS, manually doing a cut. And that’s how these mad backyard wrestling people would do it. I like to have some nod to that style still in our edits.
Some people think our edits are messy, but I think it’s raw. It’s meant to be jumpy like that sometimes. I think it looks cool, and it really owes to riot footage—because that’s what it feels like, right? Like, one minute one thing’s happening, and the next, another thing is happening.
We do it less now because we try and keep up with current ideas, but when we first started, Vaporwave was real big, and we incorporated that into Popular Front. But it wasn’t just the sound, it was the aesthetic and the ideology behind it. Vaporwave was very anti-corporate, but without being obviously tied to a current “ism,” you know? It wasn’t this or that or whatever boring theories are in fashion right now. It wasn’t that. It was real grassroots. It had its own soul, and no one could bottle it. That was really a big inspiration at the start.
I read a book at the beginning of Popular Front called Babbling Corpse: The Commodification of Ghosts, which is a very niche, nerdy book about the culture behind Vaporwave, where it came from, and what it really stands for. It felt like a continuation of the old school Anonymous/Occupy ideology that I came up in. It’s like a nomadic anti-authoritarianism.
JH: Also, our style is often very tongue-in-cheek. To be honest, that’s an inspiration we took from old war propaganda posters. They were so funny sometimes. Popular Front has been like that from the start. Some things we do have people saying, “oh, that’s really cheeky, but it’s funny and true.” That’s fine, I think.
Like, the UN T-shirt we sell has “The UN is Deeply Concerned” printed on it with the logo of the UN sign on fire. It’s that whole cheeky aesthetic and vibe. You meet people like that at war, you know? That’s part of it. It’s people that believe in something, but they’re also jaded by the fuckery of the industrial military complex or whatever else is putting the foot on their neck. Now obviously, we’re not earnestly saying, “let’s burn down the UN!” That’s nonsense. We’re just highlighting issues with such a huge monolith in a quick and funny way, is all.
Also, to a lesser degree, the whole Weird Twitter scene inspired us a bit. It’s not such a big thing now, but Weird Twitter was an inspiration back then. When we first got 500 Patreons, the dancing alien meme was about, so we used that to announce it. People were like, “what the fuck has this got to do with war?” Nothing. That’s the point. You know what I mean? It’s not that we’re clever or anything like that. I just think—why not be weird sometimes? Make people go “eh?”
Also, regarding inspirations, old school punk stuff. When I say punk, I don’t mean perhaps what Americans will consider punk. I think American punk was very cool—like, especially in the nineties and 2000s. Straight edge culture was definitely a very big thing that we like. But I don’t mean that kind of punk. I mean the Eastern European kind of neo-punk, which is very different. It’s hard to explain. It’s like streetwear style, but it’s also punk, you know? It’s 1312 culture, but without highly political 1312 culture, you know what I mean? It’s different. It’s from people who have a real reason to hate the cops, not just some activist saying it on Twitter.
European ultra culture is also a big inspiration for us. Not on a vulture vibe either. We’re associated with or friendly with these people, and they have very cool scenes. I mean, no other legit media organization has joint screenings with football hooligan firms, but we did a screening of one of our documentaries with St. Pauli hooligans last year. That doesn’t happen if you’re just trying to steal stuff from people’s lives. We really appreciate and respect how sacred things are to people.
So, all in all, I think we’ve incorporated things we like from outside of war into it because there’s a lot of people like that. It wasn’t us that started this, it was already there, but people felt that before us they had to conform to a certain style and way of being. Now, I think people realize you don’t have to. I know they do because people have messaged me saying, “hey, before this I thought I had to hide that I was this person.” No, you don’t. You don’t have to be a suit and tie and posh to know about conflict.
It’s ironic that most of the people holding the keys—the analysts, Think Tanks, the investors—are upper-class or very stuffy, conservative type people, when the reality is that most people actually involved in war are the opposite. War is fought by shitbags like us [laughs].
I guess we just wanted to bring that culture back. That’s why we say Popular Front is for the people, which sounds kind of corny, but that’s fine. When we say people, the people that know it’s for them know what we mean.
RK: When you started Popular Front back in May of 2018, it was only a podcast. Did you plan for it to become what it is today?
JH: I want to say yes, as if I followed this clever path… but no. I remember at the start thinking, where am I headed with this? I remember being really unsure, and then within the first 10 episodes it exploded. I’m not exaggerating. The numbers exploded, and I was like, what the fuck? This is working. Within the first six months people started saying it was a new type of journalism. I was unsure of my ability to build something back then though, but it worked. Anyone could have done this though. I just happened to, you know?
When Popular Front started we’d done one small video thing, but I was really unsure if we could do it properly. One night I was chatting to this Brazilian woman who was one of the few people giving me encouragement to make PF something bigger. I was mad in love with her, man [laughs]. We had great times. We don’t even speak anymore actually. I hate that. But anyway, she was one of the few people around me who was like, you can make this much bigger!
At the time she was in France, and I remember her saying to me, you should cover the Yellow Vest stuff. I was like, what, on a podcast? She said, no, you should come and film it. Just do it for Popular Front, don’t sell it, just do it. I don’t know why but the fact she thought that was viable lit a fire under me and I did it. That was the first proper video work we did, covering the Yellow Vest protests. We really went into the details too. The mainstream were very much saying: This is an uprising and the rioters are being a little bit violent with the police being a bit violent back to them.
It wasn’t like that. Sure, the rioters were being violent, but you’re talking about people throwing bricks and rocks versus police literally taking people’s eyes out. Several people died. French police are just unbelievable. In my travels, the only police I’ve come across that are worse than French police is Turkish police, and that’s saying something. Even German police are better than the French cops, and they’re brutal. So we documented almost every single “very serious” injury in a 15-minute doc, and it took off from there. It did well. That’s when we got a lot of attention. Thanks for the encouragement, Reggie.
Then, eventually after a few years, we made Plastic Defence. That’s when shit blew up for us. So, now, ironically enough, we’re more known for our documentaries than the podcast, and the podcast has nearly 200 episodes and millions of downloads and we’ve only made about 10 documentaries. Only two of those have over a million views.
Being on the ground is still king. There’s nothing like it. What you see is a lot better than just listening, I think. It’s a better art form for us as well… Not art form, but you know what I mean. We can get our style and ethos across a lot better in documentary form.
RK: Yeah. And talk to more people, too.
JH: Absolutely, yeah.
RK: What does Popular Front look like in the future?
JH: That is a good question, and honestly, it all depends on cash flow. We do okay on the Patreon, it’s not bad, but it’s been stagnant for about two years. So, it’s one step forward, one step back. You lose 10, you gain 10, you lose 10, you gain 10. It’s kind of like that.
To keep up with the momentum—the speed at which Popular Front is growing—and do everything we want to do, we need a lot more capital. So, the future depends on capital. We need someone to come in and give us a hundred grand. We need a real proper sponsor.
We have a few sponsors, and we love them, but it’s very little money. They’re people we like, they’re good people, but they run small, independent businesses, and they can’t really afford to pay a lot. If we can get the money, we’ll start doing whole series and everything will get branded up. It won’t just be random doc here and random doc there. It will be a whole series focused on one region or focused on this or that.
I want to get other reporters in front of the camera, as well. I want to have a proper team. I want the whole team to be able to do this 24/7, where everybody’s working and doing stuff. But until then, yeah, it’s difficult.
The shop is getting revamped soon though. We’re shutting down the zine and we’re starting a proper quarterly magazine, like an A4 magazine. We have a company that we’re collaborating with called Easy Days Studio. They are good people that are very established in their own way but want to work with us.
We want independent people that are in bigger positions to reach out and say, do you want to work together? We love collaborating.
RK: Do you think Popular Front as a concept will inspire other news platforms to become more unique, independent, and engaging to a younger audience?
JH: It already is, I think. There are so many Popular Front clones, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Some of them copy us so much that I think, come off it, but that doesn’t matter. But then there are other people that have been inspired by us.
Modern Insurgent is a good example. Rose Warfare, he’s a good guy. You know, those kind of people. They’ve been inspired by us, but they’ve done their own thing, you know what I mean? Rubber Bullet, they’re interesting.
Also, we’ve inspired several massive news publications to report on our work. I think that’s cool.
RK: Would you ever consider doing collaborations with larger platforms like Netflix or HBO for a documentary series?
JH: Yeah, definitely. We do journalism for everyone, not for other journalists. I want as many people as possible to see what we do. That’s the whole point of journalism. That’s the whole point of Popular Front.
It’s niche but not a niche clique. So, I would love to do that. We actually had a conversation with Netflix early last year, but that didn’t go very far. We spoke to the director Darren Aronofsky too, who wanted to work with us, but it kind of never took shape.
But I’m very open to collaborations like that. I think we can make some very original work.
RK: What all goes into filming a Popular Front documentary?
JH: It’s very unorganized in a way. It seems like chaos, but when it comes together, it’s perfect. Normally, me or one of the team comes up with the idea.
What makes a Popular Front doc is very specific. Here’s an example: Thiago Dezan—he’s kind of on our team in a way, he’s one of the filmmakers that we made Sinaloa Foot Soldier with. He edited it, and he’s just incredible. I think he’s great.
So, he’s from Brazil. I really wanted to find a story in Brazil, and I found this Red Commando story. We wanted to film with Red Commando, which is a militia—a drugs militia, but also a community militia. I was talking to Thiago, and he mentioned that we’d have to wear Nike if we did it. He said Red Commando all wear Nike, and their enemies all wear Adidas.
When he said that, I knew that was a Popular Front doc. Things like that. And it’s not about aesthetics—it’s about niche details that you’re not going to find out about in most places. Something as seemingly trivial as that really speaks volumes about who is fighting: young men from the ghetto. That’s a Popular Front doc.
There have to be more layers to it. It can’t just be the frontline, because that’s what the news does. We went to Ukraine and covered the Ukraine war, but we didn’t just go, “Here’s the war.” I mean, there are excellent people doing stuff like that—Quentin Sommerville, for example. If you want to find out what’s happening on the frontlines, very specifically, check out Quentin Sommerville. He’s incredible. He’s one of the best war reporters ever.
But that’s not what we do. We do things differently. For example, anti-fascist football hooligans, Russian partisans… You know what I mean? We do things that are different, that other people can’t do. I’ve spent 10 years cultivating this style and this access. It’s not always that easy. It takes a lot.
RK: What type of cameras do you take to the frontline?
JH: We use an FS7 or an FS5. Those are our good cameras. Luke has a different kind of camera. He loves it. I don’t really like it, but it’s good for run-and-gun riot stuff.
I’m also a big advocate of the A7Sii. That’s a great camera. I think there’s an A7Siii now. Anyone that wants to get started, if you can afford an A7Sii, they’re probably about £700 now on MPB without a lens. Just buy a kit lens if you can’t afford anything else.
I bought a kit lens for mine when I was skint. It cost me like 20 quid. It looks shit, but it’s better than nothing. We used some shit cameras at the start, like fixed-lens bullshit. But now we’re trying to get things a little bit better.
RK: Do you have any horror stories about going out to a conflict zone or the front lines of a war and having a bunch of technical issues with your equipment?
JH: Not really. We always find a way. We’ve had problems with sound, which is pretty annoying. I’m very loud. We’ve had a few of our things broken and cracked in riots, but generally, we’ve been lucky with that.
RK: How do you find the right fixer? Have you had any bad experiences with a fixer?
JH: With Popular Front? No, but when I worked at Vice, there were some bad experiences. The bad experiences were always just fixers being lazy. Like, they just didn’t give a shit about you. They just wanted to get paid, and that’s not okay.
It’s a fucking war. Come on. There’s a little bit more to it than just getting paid. Are you really risking your life just to get paid? Do you not care how your own fucking country gets portrayed to the world?
There’s a fixer that used to work with us in Ukraine. He’s great. Everyone else hates him, but I actually really like him. He’s kind of crazy, but he’s a good guy. The problem is that he’s very opinionated. He’s opinionated to the point where I think he literally wanted to fight me one time over basically nothing. He went nuts.
We got into an argument. That got really heavy. But in the end, he came out, hugged me, and was like, “I’m really sorry.” I knew him very well, so it didn’t matter to me. That was fine. I said sorry too and we were fine again. We had an issue there, but he was actually really cool in the end. We became even closer friends from it.
So, I wouldn’t really call that a nightmare. It’s just the way I work and the way I am. For a lot of reporters, that would be a living nightmare. But me and my mate Phil, we loved working with him because he was crazy but very cautious.
I’ve worked with fixers that are not scared of death, and I will never work with them again. People that are not scared to die are the last people you want to work with at war because they’ll get you killed.
99% of the time, all the fixers I’ve worked with have just been absolute fucking angels. I mean, they’re the real unspoken heroes of conflict journalism, to be honest with you. They really are.
RK: What’s the energy like on the frontlines?
JH: It really is energy. It’s a certain energy. I’m not into holistics or anything like that, but I believe in energy. You feel it in the fucking air, you know? Everybody else that’s been there will tell you. You can all feel it. You can feel shit coming before it comes sometimes. I swear to God, it’s so weird. It’s ethereal. Sometimes, when something’s about to kick off, you may hear something in the distance and not realize you hear it. Maybe that’s the explanation. I don’t know…
The frontline is a very friendly place in a lot of ways, which sounds really strange because it’s one of the harshest environments you could ever be in, but there’s a thing where everything is stripped back. You can’t be a poser on the frontline. People try, but it never lasts. When death is that close and killing is that close, you can’t bullshit, you know?
I think that is a beautiful environment at the same time as being a very awful, terrible environment. It shouldn’t have to be like that, but it is. And the energy is hyper-charged because of that.
But it’s certainly friendly in a very mysterious way. And what I will say is even people that you are not particularly friendly with or even friends with or may never see again… if you’ve been on the frontline together, you’ve shared a bonding experience in a way that will stay with you forever, I think. Which is cool, but sad at the same time.
RK: Do you still keep in contact with the guys of Hoods Hoods Klan?
JH: Yeah, I talk to Anton or his wife regularly. Of everything I’ve made, they’re some of the people that I feel the most genuine friendship with after working with them. I really respect them for what they do and how they look out for each other.
It takes a lot to be the only anti-fascist hooligan firm in Ukraine. They’re also very nice people, like really sweet people. Anton’s wife even came from Ukraine to Hamburg to be at the show and represent them while they’re on the frontline.
RK: In 2017, you filmed a documentary with The Guardian where you visited a far-right children’s camp run by the Azov Battalion. Those kids have to be around 18 or so by now, right?
JH: Oh yeah. I mean, some of them are probably dead by now from the war, no doubt. We interviewed a girl that was about 18 at the time. Not the one with “white pride” tattooed on the back of her legs.
I actually made friends with her years later. She messaged me and had walked away from all of that. She’s definitely not a Nazi. Anyway, we made friends and I helped her and her boyfriend escape Ukraine. She’s left the country because her flat got bombed in Kyiv.
It was very weird to see her progression, you know? She’s completely different now. What I will say about Azov is that whilst it’s definitely taken on a new form, the idea that they’re not still fundamentally a far-right organization is absurd.
They absolutely still are and the whitewashing of their political views by so many reporters is a spit in the face to everyone Azov has bullied and attacked for being different.
RK: What do you notice about communities in Artsakh, Iraq, Syria, and Eastern Ukraine who have had a long history with constant war, conflict, and generational trauma?
JH: I think that they’re all doing a lot better than we would in the West if we had to live under that. I think if the wars that are happening in their countries came to Western Europe or America, you would see real war crimes, you know?
You see right wingers talk about people in the Middle East, for example, as if they’re beasts. Bro, if that shit came to where you are, then you would see real beasts. I mean, look at us. We’re the ones that conquered the whole world through violence. It’s in us, it’s ready, it’s just right now we don’t have to do that. It’s arrogant to look down on anyone living in war if you’re at peace.
I think people living in these regions are very resilient. They really have accepted such a hard way of existence because most of the world doesn’t care about them, and it’s very fucked up, but it is how it is. You can’t change it.
I think they’re very aware that you can’t change it completely. At the same time, they’re usually so friendly and full of life. I don’t know how they do it.
RK: How do parents prepare their children for growing up in that kind of environment? Do the kids know what’s going on?
JH: The kids grow up very fast. They all know. They’re all very aware. You can see it in their eyes. You just know. They’re what I call “affected.” They just know. Especially the Kurdish children. Like… it’s beyond, man. They know what’s happening and they all have family members that are dead because of some injustice, some oppression, some hell.
They’re all very aware. It’s like, Where’s your uncle? He’s dead. What about your brother? He’s dead. Cousin? Dead. Why? Because he wanted to liberate his country or maybe he was just walking home in the wrong direction. It’s that deep.
So, they’re all very aware of what’s going on, especially as soon as war comes to their country. You can just see their innocence being torn away immediately. It’s so unbelievably sad. It just makes them grow up very fast. It’s depressing.
I feel like children are the only pure thing on earth, and to see the way they’re forced to understand that literally a bad person wants to kill them… And it is actually that simple. As much as I’m going on about the nuances, sometimes it’s literally that simple. That guy over there wants you dead because of who you are. It’s crazy.
RK: Nearly every time I get on social media, I see videos of drone bombings. In what way has technology changed the modern battlefield?
JH: That shit is fascinating. Popular Front really came of age in that period, transitioning from old school to new school. It’s still in the process, but like you just said, the advent of the drone bomb with commercial drones and a fucking mortar round attached to it is a new technology that just came straight in.
People aren’t even shocked now when they see it. Within the space of three years, it’s not shocking to see homemade drone bombs. It’s crazy.
I think 3D-printed weapons are the future of warfare as well. It’s happening everywhere. The future is going to be so weird. They’ve got 3D-printed rocket launchers now. Some guys in America made them. So, shit’s going to get crazy. It’s going to be like Metal Gear Solid [laughs]. Not yet, maybe, but when we’re old, you know what I mean?
RK: I can’t say this is for sure… because I just saw this video online, but some guy was saying that AI can use people’s Wi-Fi and track you moving throughout your house.
JH: Yeah… we’re fucked. There’s no coming back from this. It’s over, in terms of privacy, you know? It’s a new phase and maybe something will come from that, but it’s essentially over for now. Like, privacy is done. It’s gone. It’s too late.
Honestly, you can’t have revolutions anymore in the Western world because technology has everything locked down. Technology has outworked the revolution. It just is that way.
Look at China. To quote JStark, “it’s a living fucking nightmare,” and it really is if you’re a Uyghur and you want a tiny opinion that isn’t the same as the government’s. There’s nothing we can do apart from use that technology against itself.
Which is why I refuse to condemn 3D-printed guns. Firstly, it’s not my job as a reporter to condemn it. Secondly, it’s just a tool, and all the tools that we use every day, like the internet and cameras, are being used against us. They’re as much a weapon as a 3D-printed gun, in my opinion. I think it’s all in the same realm.
I was a lot more naive when I first met JStark than I am now. I mean, I’ll never fully agree with him, but some things that I didn’t think about too tough back then… now I’m like, that guy was on to something.
When people think the West would never go despotic… It’s already getting despotic. It’s just a different way. Just because you got TikTok and can call people a dickhead on Twitter, you think it’s free. It’s not fucking free. My country brought in a law that has basically made protesting illegal.
RK: Yeah. I was just about to ask you about JStark. In Plastic Defence, you call him one of the most dangerous people. Do you still feel that way?
JH: Yes, I think he is. I still stand by that. He’s one of the most dangerous people I’ve ever met, but I don’t think being dangerous is good or bad. That was my point. I don’t personally see dangerous as a negative connotation all the time. Who are you being dangerous to, you know?
If someone’s attacking me, I want to attack them back. Now for them, I’m then dangerous if I start to win. But that’s good, right? Because I’m defending myself. I’m utilizing the ability to be dangerous to save myself from harm.
Take Ukrainian soldiers for example. They’re dangerous people. They’re trained to kill. When they have weapons, they’re incredibly dangerous because they’re good at fighting and they have a good spirit. They want to keep going and that’s dangerous, but it’s good danger because they’re dangerous for Russian troops who’re invading their country and killing their kids.
Maybe that’s not the correct way to talk about danger, I don’t know, but that’s the way I see it. Which I’m not saying is right, but when I say someone’s dangerous, for me I don’t see it as a negative thing. In fact, in England, we actually use the word dangerous to mean that someone is really pretty sometimes. As in, wow she’s dangerous. You know what I mean?
It’s not always negative. Sometimes it’s positive. A guy you know that’s a good fighter, like in combat sports, is dangerous, and that’s good. We don’t mean anything bad, so it’s a tricky one. I don’t know. I should have probably used different words. I understand that the whole world isn’t going to see shit the way I see shit, and I know I’m a weird guy [laughs], but I see it how I see it. You need dangerous people to keep you safe sometimes.
RK: Yeah, totally. So, what’s the difference between someone like JStark and PrintShootRepeat?
JH: JStark’s a fucking lunatic and PrintShootRepeat’s an entertainer [laughs]. Nah I’m joking. JStark was nuts in a world that was nuts, you know? The depression that he had I tend to understand. I get depressed about the same things. How can you not?
When JStark said what about the Uyghurs? Do you know how much he cared about that stuff? That was something he’d done real research on. That kept him up at night. He was a Kurd. His peoples have been oppressed for hundreds of years, you know?
He understood things differently, and because he didn’t fit into the perfect box of left or right, some people didn’t appreciate it the same way, but he meant what he said and he really cared. It came from a different place.
Now PrintShootRepeat is a friend of mine. He’s a very, very, very sweet person. A lot more of an accepting person than JStark. JStark was very here’s my line, you know what I mean? PSR probably has the same beliefs as JStark minus one or two things, but he’s just more socially adapted to the world. That’s basically it. He’s really funny too.
RK: In what way has technology changed the way war is reported?
JH: It depends which war, but popular wars become part of pop culture. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing, even when the way people share the information is bad and they have no good intentions behind it, it’s still not, in the grand scheme of things, a bad thing, I don’t think. Because the more eyes on the reality of cruelty and violence in the world, the better. Because you can’t say you didn’t know. I think ignorance can lead people in a direction they weren’t even aware of.
But at the same time, I hate the way it’s turned war reporting into a football match for some people. Like how some turn the Ukraine war into fun and games for Twitter. I think that’s disgusting, but it’s also a tactic. I mean, it’s not as much Saint Javelin as it is some of the people around them online.
I know the guy that started St. Javelin, he is a personal friend of mine, and he’s been to war and seen very brutal parts of it. He’s a really good person. He’s raised over $2 million for Ukraine. So, that can’t be a bad thing. But he’s doing some stuff to raise money, whereas a load of the people in that social media pool gamify war basically just for a hobby. That’s a bad thing.
But the world is full of bad things, and you just have to embrace it. That’s the way it goes. We’ll be there for it, you know what I’m saying? But you can’t get rid of it.
RK: Here in America, people tend to have a mindset towards conflict being fought between the good guys versus the bad guys. How would you explain the reality of the conflicts you report on?
JH: That’s a good question. I think, ultimately, it’s people vying for their best interests on the highest level, you know? I look at the example of the EU, right? So, the EU, especially since Brexit, is this neo-liberal darling monolith. It’s the thing they love. It’s the thing they can use to project how good they are, how righteous they are.
But the EU is using all these faces of progressivism just to keep one of the most powerful economic partnerships in the world moving faster, which is how it is, but I wish they would drop the bullshit. Just be honest.
The EU isn’t progressive, not whilst it’s responsible for drowning countless refugees in the bottom of the sea via Frontex. The EU helps facilitate the slave trade in Libya. The EU has no morals, has no soul. It just is what it is. It’s an economic agency that keeps the Western power strong.
To wave a flag for the EU is in my opinion a misunderstanding of what the EU even is. But I guess that’s all a perspective of ideology.
Now, clearly, I have many issues with the EU, but I’m also glad it exists. NATO is a very brutal force for some, and it makes the lives of some of the most disenfranchised awful, but am I glad NATO exists? Yes. Of course. Otherwise, Russia would be doing even more atrocities.
It’s all push and pull. There is no righteous force on that level, the real ones are on the ground fighting and aren’t concerned with this stuff. Look, there will never be anything remotely close to world peace or utopia. So, there’s always going to be one bully bullying the rest of the world, right?
I would prefer it’s one bully over the other, but I wish they would both just own up and say, “Okay, yeah, we’re the bullies.” You know what I’m saying? The dishonesty is what gets me.
RK: Why do so many conflicts go underreported?
JH: Well, it’s not as nefarious as I make it out sometimes. Often the reality is that there’s not enough money in conflict journalism, and the resources generally go to the conflicts that people are more interested in. It’s bad that it happens that way, and it’s bad that there isn’t the funding, but that’s what makes sense financially to most news organizations.
When the Ukraine war happened for example, and some people said, oh, isn’t it funny that Europeans suddenly care about war? What about the Middle East? I just thought that was so juvenile. Why would most people living in Western Europe care as much about something in the Middle East if they have no direct links to it? I mean you know how many hours people work here? Normally, a standard work week in England is about 45 hours a week. It’s amazing anyone even has the time to watch the news.
Look, if there’s a house on fire, and it’s two streets away, that’s bad, sure. I hope they got out alive. I hope they’re okay. But my house is still alright. Now, if the house next door to me is on fire, I’m going to be terrified my house is going to catch fire, so I’m going to probably go and help a lot more than I would the house three streets away. People generally will do what helps their best interest. I don’t think it’s always a bad thing.
It’s a shame that people don’t care the same way, but do you think people in the Middle East give a shit about Ukraine as much as the wars next to them? Of course, they don’t. Why should they?
I’m not saying it’s good or right, but currently that’s the way I get my head around it. I think trying to rationalize it like that is the only way I can understand how media can ignore some wars and not others.
RK: What are some of the most under-reported conflicts right now?
JH: Like, the whole of Africa. Literally, the whole of Africa. Like, there’s so many wars going on right now. I’ve been to North Africa, but I’ve never been to the rest of Africa. I can’t afford it. It’s extremely expensive to work in Africa because anywhere you go takes days of travel and days of employing a good fixer.
It’s such a big place, and it’s so chaotic. It’s very difficult to work there. A fixer in the Congo… a good one that’s going to keep you safe… goes for around 800 quid a day. I couldn’t afford that. I think Congo has about six ongoing wars right now. Not six factions in a war, but six different wars.
When is the last time you heard about Congo on the news? You don’t even see it on Al Jazeera, and they are pretty good at covering under-reported stuff. So, it’s a real problem. I feel so sorry for everyone in Africa. Like, the world came in, raped them, and now you’re lucky if we even cover the shit we caused, which is why you have this war and that war. It’s crazy.
Outside of that, Armenia is a big one, and Kurdistan as well. Most people don’t give a shit about Kurdistan. The Kurds literally fucking fought ISIS for us, and now that bombs have stopped going off in Paris, everyone’s like, ok yeah, fuck off.
RK: What has your experience covering conflict journalism taught you most? Has anything radically changed your worldview?
JH: Hmm… I’m definitely more of a realist. I had a more lefty attitude when I was younger. I’ve realized that everyone has the capacity for good or evil within them, and even evil people can do good things. I guess it made me realize that we’re all just people and people should never be about what can facilitate and promote your worldview.
I became a lot more cynical too. On one hand, I’m kind of sad that I lost any innocence that I had left. On the other hand, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. I don’t mind. I’ve become a lot more depressed doing this job, but I also became a lot happier at the same time. It’s hard to explain.
I’ve met people that I would’ve never had the chance to meet. You know, I’m from a small rundown shit hole place that no one cares about. The best thing I’ve had from this experience was meeting amazing people. I’ve met people that are actually selfless. There are very few selfless people in this world.
I’ve met people that are actually selfless, you know? And they’re worth more than anything. And you’ll never hear about them other than maybe from their grandma or their niece or kids. But they’re not going to get famous around the world because real selfless people… they just do it, you know? I really think they’re the most beautiful people in the world. So, I think that is one of the best things to discover.
You discover people that are tougher than you’ve ever seen in your life, but are not burned out by it. I’m very burned and I’m very bitter through what I’ve seen in this line of work, and yet I meet people who’ve been through a hundred worst things than I have ever been through and they’re not even bitter. That’s incredible. I don’t know how you do that. I love people like that. People like that keep me going. It’s worth putting my life at risk to show the world how their shit got fucked up.
RK: You’re constantly covering this stuff. You’re putting yourself out there. That’s a lot of stress. So, what is your day-to-day life like outside of all this? I know you have a dog.
JH: Yeah, I’ve got one dog, Murphy. He’s a whippet. He’s the best. I’m kind of always working. That’s the problem with this kind of job. I hope that all this work will pay off, and I won’t have to work this much in the next 10 years. I don’t know. I mean, it is working. I definitely work a lot less than I did at the start because I can pay people to do stuff and things like that, but I work seven days a week.
I’m not working all day every day, obviously. I can’t concentrate for long enough to do that. So, I kind of dip in and out. But outside work, I just hang out with family. I’m big into family. I look after my grandma, go to the gym, and still do Thai boxing on the weekend. I lift weights in the week. I think weightlifting and combat sports are important for building character and healthy routines. Good to relieve stress too.
Outside of that, I kind of just watch films and TV and read books and that’s kind of it really. I barely leave my fucking house if it’s not for work or gym these days. Seriously, like I’m a recluse man [laughs]. I don’t even drink anymore. I used to go to the pub and stuff, but nah man, I guess I just hang out with friends and go to the gym. It’s not very exciting.
I watch a lot of stuff. I watch loads of independent stuff on YouTube as well. Like, I’m on YouTube all the time. I read lots of esoteric publications too. I like that. Sometimes, I play video games. Although I like the idea of playing them more than I like playing them sometimes.
RK: What do you play?
JH: I play World of Warcraft when I can. I got back into that when they released the classic version. I love that fucking game. I play weird games, like point-and-click adventure games. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Broken Sword or Monkey Island… them kind of games. They’re like investigative games. They’re story driven. Like, you can’t die in most of them. I like them kind of games. I grew up playing them. I still play them.
RK: If this wasn’t your career, what do you think you would be doing?
JH: I don’t know, probably still working at a gym or in fitness. I actually trained briefly to be a personal trainer when I was about 18.
RK: Oh, really?
JH: Yeah, but I just didn’t like it enough. I didn’t give a shit. I used to teach a boxing class which I liked though. I used to teach kids, like “problem children,” the so-called bad kids, and a few kids with autism. That was really rewarding. Yeah, I enjoyed that. That was important.
RK: Last question. How can people best support Popular Front?
JH: If you have money, you can support us at patreon.com/popularfront. But, if you haven’t got money, the best way is just to share our work. Share our stuff with people, that really helps. Outside of the financial, that’s the best way. Especially our YouTube videos. YouTube hates us. Our stuff gets censored by them a lot.
Ironic really. I mean, YouTube started off with the slogan “broadcast yourself” and the idea was phenomenal. It was revolutionary. But it’s not that anymore. It’s something else.
RK: I remember, you would just scroll through and click on videos as they appeared on the website.
JH: Yeah, and it could be like… an old man just mowing his lawn or something. Real nice. Now, you find all these fucking sponsors on everything. To make money you have to worm your way into an internet clique. Hasan Piker was watching our stuff on stream recently and he was like oh they’re anarchos.
He was being really nice about us, but I immediately went on Twitter and said, look we are not anarchos. We have friends who are, but we’re not under that umbrella. I don’t want to ever be in a clique. I started this for the misfits, not for the clique, you know what I’m saying? I don’t want to get in the clique just to make money because then what’s the point in anything.
RK: Yeah. That’s why I like Popular Front so much, to be honest.
JH: Thank you. We’re very honest about who we are and what we believe, and I think that’s all you can really ask for.