He is one of those liberals that thinks we can eliminate all violence in the world by eliminating Poverty, Ignorance, and Disease. This is from a random article he has his authorship attached to:
"...The people in ISIL are not a “cancer,” as President Obama claims. The massive and multifaceted global public health problem is violence, which shares characteristics with many diseases, such as cancer, meth addiction, the Black Death and Ebola. Violence is the disease, not the cure. This metaphor applies to the violence committed by ISIL and the US alike. Both claim to be using violence to eliminate injustice. Both ISIL and the US dehumanize entire swaths of people in order to justify that violence. Much like drug addicts, both armed groups alienate and indiscriminately harm others while claiming it’s in everyone’s best interest..."
Like many committed liberals, he believes there are no "bad" people, only people who have been forced to do things against their wills by bad environments or circumstances. That is why the Nazis carted away people like him by the trainload, because he is blind to the simple fact that evil does exist, and a person doesn't need to be poor, ignorant, or diseased to be evil.
I suspect if one of these ISIL thugs was holding his ponytail up in the air while holding a dull, rusty knife to Hasting's throat, he might well think his best defense is what would come naturally to liberals like him, to declare he is on their side, which he is. And they might view him, accurately, as a useful idiot. But they would always see him as a westerner and an infidel first.