cawacko
Well-known member
A somewhat provocative headline but the article tells his story pretty well.
Anyone here a fan of his? I can't claim to follow him that closely but he has a very large following, especially among the young and progressive/socialist leaning crowd.
In the run-up to Michigan’s heated Senate primary, Abdul El-Sayed hit the trail with a key surrogate: Hasan Piker.
The two took selfies with students in Ann Arbor and stopped by a pool party for content creators supporting El-Sayed in Detroit. In between, he popped over to Milwaukee to campaign for Democratic socialist Francesca Hong. On election night, Piker held court at El-Sayed’s watch party.
“Hasan is reaching folks no one else is talking to,” El-Sayed wrote in an email before voting started. “Every event I do, I get seniors who ask how I got so many young people to come, and young people who say ‘I saw you on Hasan.’”
One of the most controversial—and influential—online commentators, Piker has become famous for the impassioned left-wing appeals he makes to an audience of millions. He criticizes Israel and its supporters on hourslong livestreams, leading opponents to accuse him of antisemitism. He has said that America “deserved 9/11,” one of the remarks he said he could have phrased more carefully. He’s currently banned from entering the United Kingdom because his presence “may not be conducive to the public good”; a spokesperson for the Home Office declined to comment on the status of his travel authorization.
His broadsides take aim at both Republicans and Democrats in a brazen, provocative tone that now suffuses the leftist internet, and has drawn 35-year-old Piker into debates and attack ads during the primaries.
His name has become a political litmus test as Democrats fight over the party’s future. Democratic strategist James Carville and Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) have threatened to leave the party over his rise (though Carville walked back his words). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) have teamed up with him. When asked on a radio show about El-Sayed’s decision to campaign with Piker, his opponent Rep. Haley Stevens said, “I think that we should all be condemning some of the words of Hasan Piker.”
After El-Sayed’s primary victory, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released an ad that seized on Piker’s remarks and criticized El-Sayed for refusing to disavow them. Days later, El-Sayed called the 9/11 comment “dumb,” though he also characterized questions about the quote as “gotcha politics.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Piker said he doesn’t think that his comments that led critics to accuse him of antisemitism—such as likening liberal Zionists to “liberal Nazis” and saying he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every time”—could cause harm, even at a time when hostility toward Jews is rising globally.
“There are people out there who speak about Jewish people from a very antisemitic perspective,” Piker said. “Some of them are on the right, as a matter of fact. And those people do not get the same level of scrutiny that I do.” He considers himself an anti-Zionist.
Despite the controversies, some progressive Democrats have embraced the streamer’s platform as part of their campaign strategy, betting on a brash antiestablishment coalition that has grown louder in President Trump’s second term. El-Sayed’s narrow victory over Stevens was a coup for the populist left. Hong’s loss in Wisconsin delivered a blow. Now comes the real question: Can the candidates backed by Piker go all the way?
“I don’t think that progressives have a harder time beating Republicans,” Piker said. “I think that logic is flawed. It’s just somewhat untested.”
With 3.1 million Twitch followers and millions more on X, Instagram and YouTube, Piker has become a stand-in for the existential threat facing the Democratic establishment. He appeals to populists whose views skew DSA: He advocates for a wealth tax for billionaires, rent control, a free Palestinian state and cuts to U.S. military spending in Israel.
On his livestream and on the campaign trail, he’s advocated for progressive and socialist candidates. Several have won, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. But as the Democrats seek to regain control of both chambers of Congress, swing states like Michigan are considered must-wins. Conventional wisdom among establishment Democrats has held that moderate candidates are the party’s best shot at maintaining a blue stronghold. Many politicians and pundits have voiced doubts that El-Sayed can beat former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican with the backing of President Trump.
And then there’s 2028 on the horizon. Some in the party may still recall the 1972 contest of George McGovern and Richard Nixon; McGovern, an antiwar liberal, advocated for a form of universal basic income and easing restrictions on marijuana before losing in a Nixon landslide.
“The Democrats never have and never will nominate a leftist candidate,” Carville said in a phone interview. “So be very nice to people because you’re going to have to be nice to them in the general.”
Piker rejects that thinking.
“The ‘things are fine, we must pivot to the center’ mentality is exactly what caused the Democrats to lose to Trump twice,” he said. “The difference this time around is the voters are aware of it.”
On a morning in June, before the recent primaries, Piker was wearing a Denver Democratic Socialists of America hat and a T-shirt from the Palestinian Youth Movement, looking the part of progressive activist meets gym rat. Inside his West Hollywood home, which he bought for $2.7 million in 2021, his recording studio was stocked with soda and stacks of Zyn to power him through hours of talking straight to the camera. He’s been called the left’s answer to Joe Rogan and the manosphere (which he said he wants no part of).
Born in New Jersey and raised in Turkey, Piker grew up in an affluent family. Living in the Middle East while America was waging two wars close to home helped inform his political identity, he said. He was a self-described nerd, bullied for his interests, not a particularly diligent student, with a passion for drawing manga and playing videogames.
After graduating from Rutgers University, in 2018 he started livestreaming on Twitch—where subscriptions account for the majority of his revenue—while also working for the Young Turks, a left-wing news commentary site created by his uncle, Cenk Uygur, before going solo in 2020.
“I had an understanding of the world,” he said. “I had a vision, and I guess I was arrogant enough to assume that other people would want to hear it.”
Piker has courted critics practically since he got in front of the camera. After the death of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, he called the politician “evil” and “bloodthirsty.”
In an April letter to the editor published in The Wall Street Journal, the Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott called Piker “an America-hating, terrorist supporting lunatic.” “I stand by that,” Scott said in an email to The Journal. (The two do have a bit of history: Piker once suggested that people who cared about Medicare or Medicaid fraud “would kill Rick Scott,” referring to Scott’s tenure as the onetime leader of a hospital chain that later settled with the government to resolve Medicare-fraud allegations. Afterward, Twitch briefly suspended Piker’s account.)
“I’m rude,” Piker said matter-of-factly. “And I will sometimes bully bullies, right? But I would much rather be someone who’s not super well put-together, someone who doesn’t abide by civility, but is on the right side of history.”
While critics have tried to cast his controversiality as a political liability, some of the candidates elevated by Piker have notched wins. He disagrees with those who have called him a kingmaker for socialist politicians, but believes he’s on the crest of a new political wave, and the front lines of a new vision for the left.
“I’ve told the Democrats over and over again, you can’t podcast your way out of this problem,” he said. “You have to change your policies. You have to change your outlook.”
Anyone here a fan of his? I can't claim to follow him that closely but he has a very large following, especially among the young and progressive/socialist leaning crowd.
Online Agitator Hasan Piker Is Driving Democrats Up a Wall
The Twitch streamer has become an undeniable force in politics, elevating far-left and progressive candidates—and fighting with everyone else
In the run-up to Michigan’s heated Senate primary, Abdul El-Sayed hit the trail with a key surrogate: Hasan Piker.
The two took selfies with students in Ann Arbor and stopped by a pool party for content creators supporting El-Sayed in Detroit. In between, he popped over to Milwaukee to campaign for Democratic socialist Francesca Hong. On election night, Piker held court at El-Sayed’s watch party.
“Hasan is reaching folks no one else is talking to,” El-Sayed wrote in an email before voting started. “Every event I do, I get seniors who ask how I got so many young people to come, and young people who say ‘I saw you on Hasan.’”
One of the most controversial—and influential—online commentators, Piker has become famous for the impassioned left-wing appeals he makes to an audience of millions. He criticizes Israel and its supporters on hourslong livestreams, leading opponents to accuse him of antisemitism. He has said that America “deserved 9/11,” one of the remarks he said he could have phrased more carefully. He’s currently banned from entering the United Kingdom because his presence “may not be conducive to the public good”; a spokesperson for the Home Office declined to comment on the status of his travel authorization.
His broadsides take aim at both Republicans and Democrats in a brazen, provocative tone that now suffuses the leftist internet, and has drawn 35-year-old Piker into debates and attack ads during the primaries.
His name has become a political litmus test as Democrats fight over the party’s future. Democratic strategist James Carville and Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) have threatened to leave the party over his rise (though Carville walked back his words). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) have teamed up with him. When asked on a radio show about El-Sayed’s decision to campaign with Piker, his opponent Rep. Haley Stevens said, “I think that we should all be condemning some of the words of Hasan Piker.”
After El-Sayed’s primary victory, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released an ad that seized on Piker’s remarks and criticized El-Sayed for refusing to disavow them. Days later, El-Sayed called the 9/11 comment “dumb,” though he also characterized questions about the quote as “gotcha politics.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Piker said he doesn’t think that his comments that led critics to accuse him of antisemitism—such as likening liberal Zionists to “liberal Nazis” and saying he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every time”—could cause harm, even at a time when hostility toward Jews is rising globally.
“There are people out there who speak about Jewish people from a very antisemitic perspective,” Piker said. “Some of them are on the right, as a matter of fact. And those people do not get the same level of scrutiny that I do.” He considers himself an anti-Zionist.
Despite the controversies, some progressive Democrats have embraced the streamer’s platform as part of their campaign strategy, betting on a brash antiestablishment coalition that has grown louder in President Trump’s second term. El-Sayed’s narrow victory over Stevens was a coup for the populist left. Hong’s loss in Wisconsin delivered a blow. Now comes the real question: Can the candidates backed by Piker go all the way?
“I don’t think that progressives have a harder time beating Republicans,” Piker said. “I think that logic is flawed. It’s just somewhat untested.”
With 3.1 million Twitch followers and millions more on X, Instagram and YouTube, Piker has become a stand-in for the existential threat facing the Democratic establishment. He appeals to populists whose views skew DSA: He advocates for a wealth tax for billionaires, rent control, a free Palestinian state and cuts to U.S. military spending in Israel.
On his livestream and on the campaign trail, he’s advocated for progressive and socialist candidates. Several have won, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. But as the Democrats seek to regain control of both chambers of Congress, swing states like Michigan are considered must-wins. Conventional wisdom among establishment Democrats has held that moderate candidates are the party’s best shot at maintaining a blue stronghold. Many politicians and pundits have voiced doubts that El-Sayed can beat former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican with the backing of President Trump.
And then there’s 2028 on the horizon. Some in the party may still recall the 1972 contest of George McGovern and Richard Nixon; McGovern, an antiwar liberal, advocated for a form of universal basic income and easing restrictions on marijuana before losing in a Nixon landslide.
“The Democrats never have and never will nominate a leftist candidate,” Carville said in a phone interview. “So be very nice to people because you’re going to have to be nice to them in the general.”
Piker rejects that thinking.
“The ‘things are fine, we must pivot to the center’ mentality is exactly what caused the Democrats to lose to Trump twice,” he said. “The difference this time around is the voters are aware of it.”
On a morning in June, before the recent primaries, Piker was wearing a Denver Democratic Socialists of America hat and a T-shirt from the Palestinian Youth Movement, looking the part of progressive activist meets gym rat. Inside his West Hollywood home, which he bought for $2.7 million in 2021, his recording studio was stocked with soda and stacks of Zyn to power him through hours of talking straight to the camera. He’s been called the left’s answer to Joe Rogan and the manosphere (which he said he wants no part of).
Born in New Jersey and raised in Turkey, Piker grew up in an affluent family. Living in the Middle East while America was waging two wars close to home helped inform his political identity, he said. He was a self-described nerd, bullied for his interests, not a particularly diligent student, with a passion for drawing manga and playing videogames.
After graduating from Rutgers University, in 2018 he started livestreaming on Twitch—where subscriptions account for the majority of his revenue—while also working for the Young Turks, a left-wing news commentary site created by his uncle, Cenk Uygur, before going solo in 2020.
“I had an understanding of the world,” he said. “I had a vision, and I guess I was arrogant enough to assume that other people would want to hear it.”
Piker has courted critics practically since he got in front of the camera. After the death of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, he called the politician “evil” and “bloodthirsty.”
In an April letter to the editor published in The Wall Street Journal, the Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott called Piker “an America-hating, terrorist supporting lunatic.” “I stand by that,” Scott said in an email to The Journal. (The two do have a bit of history: Piker once suggested that people who cared about Medicare or Medicaid fraud “would kill Rick Scott,” referring to Scott’s tenure as the onetime leader of a hospital chain that later settled with the government to resolve Medicare-fraud allegations. Afterward, Twitch briefly suspended Piker’s account.)
“I’m rude,” Piker said matter-of-factly. “And I will sometimes bully bullies, right? But I would much rather be someone who’s not super well put-together, someone who doesn’t abide by civility, but is on the right side of history.”
While critics have tried to cast his controversiality as a political liability, some of the candidates elevated by Piker have notched wins. He disagrees with those who have called him a kingmaker for socialist politicians, but believes he’s on the crest of a new political wave, and the front lines of a new vision for the left.
“I’ve told the Democrats over and over again, you can’t podcast your way out of this problem,” he said. “You have to change your policies. You have to change your outlook.”
