An American “MAGA communist” influencer who joined the crowds at the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran and chanted “Down with U.S.A.” is facing calls for his arrest should he ever return home.
California-born Jackson Hinkle, 26, who is known for pushing pro-Russia and pro-China narratives on social media and now lives in Moscow, shared a video of himself on X holding a red flag bearing a Shia inscription meaning revenge and engaging in a call-and-response with a large crowd gathered in Tehran’s Enghelab Square.
Chanting in English, he shouted “Down with U.S.A.” and later “Down with Israel” as his audience enthusiastically responded in kind.
Mohammad Mehdi Imanipour, head of the Islamic Culture and Relations Organisation, told Iran’s state-linked Tasnim News Agency that an estimated 400 foreign nationals were allowed into the country to pay their respects to the late supreme leader, who was killed by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on February 28, the first day of Operation Epic Fury.
Hinkle is one of at least four pro-Iran American activists known to have been in attendance among the millions of mourners at the ayatollah’s memorial commemorations, the others being Christopher Helali, Max Blumenthal and Calla Walsh, The Times reports.
Hinkle is a former “Bernie bro,” a supporter of influential leftist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who twice ran unsuccessfully for the city council in his hometown of San Clemente, Orange County.
Originally pitching himself as an environmentalist, he has more recently pivoted to becoming an online political voice, finding a place in a crowded field by taking an unusual anti-American line that has seen him banned from YouTube and Twitch for spreading disinformation. He has since been reinstated on the former platform.
Hinkle has an audience of around 3.8 million followers on X, more than 146,000 on YouTube and 112,000 on Rumble.
He is also a co-founder, along with Helali, of the American Communist Party, a challenger to the existing Marxist-Leninist Communist Party USA, which preaches “MAGA communism” and “Xi Jinping thought.”
He has posted regularly from Tehran since his arrival, writing, “Iran has never been more united,” as it mourns the ayatollah.
Hinkle has also uploaded video clips of the funeral commemorations and pictures of his meetings with state officials and visits to local landmarks – while also taking time out to complain about alleged FIFA corruption at the World Cup.
Since the renewal of hostilities with the U.S. Tuesday, he has expressed his support for Iran and slammed President Donald Trump’s government by referring to it as the “Epstein administration.”
However, his activities have provoked fury among conservatives at home, with Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Trump, reposting a reaction to a video of Hinkle’s chanting, citing Title 18, Section 2381 of the United States Code, which defines and criminalizes treason, making the maximum penalty death.
Conservative newspaper columnist Marc Thiessen has called him a “traitor” and MAGA activist Laura Loomer has also attacked him, writing on X: “Jackson Hinkle is a communist who lives in Russia and travels the world celebrating and meeting with terrorists and the enemies of America.
“How has he not been arrested yet for his associations with and promotion of Islamic terrorists?”