America’s Hasan Piker Problem

Sources

Bash, Dana. Hasan Piker Tests the Limits of the Democratic Party’s Big Tent | CNN Politics. 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/08/politics/video/inside-politics-hasan-piker.

OHCHR. “‘More than a Human Can Bear’: Israel’s Systematic Use of Sexual, Reproductive and Other Forms of Gender-Based Violence since October 2023.” March 13, 2025. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/more-human-can-bear-israels-systematic-use-sexual-reproductive-and-other.

Pemberton, Nathan Taylor. “Some Democrats Shun Him, but Young Voters Want a Selfie.” Style. The New York Times, April 8, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/style/hasan-piker-abdul-el-sayed-michigan.html.

Sunkara, Bhaskar. “Why Do Elite Democrats Fear Hasan Piker?” Opinion. The Guardian, April 8, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/08/why-do-elite-democrats-fear-hasan-piker.

Transcript

Hi it’s Saturday, April 11, 2026, you’re tuned into a special Saturday edition of Why, America? I’m your lawyer friend Leeja Miller. This week, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate running to represent Michigan in the US Senate, was joined by leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker at a campaign rally at Michigan State University. Despite the fact that Trump was literally threatening to genocide an entire country while stripping away crucial social safety nets to fund his pointless war of aggression in the Middle East, despite all The Horrors, the Democratic establishment was more incensed and up in arms about a leftist streamer stumping for a progressive candidate than they were about pretty much anything else this week. And hey guess what, prior to this week I had never heard of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. Weird, it’s almost like he’s successfully campaigning for a seat in the senate by aligning with people who will help publicize his race. Maybe instead of running around like their hair’s on fire and twisting themselves up in knots trying to cancel Hasan Piker, the Democratic establishment could take some fucking notes. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Today we’re breaking down what the fuck is going on with this Hasan Piker debate–and who he is if you’re like Leeja I’ve never fucking heard of this guy–and why this discussion matters deeply for the future of this country.

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This headline from CNN helped inform my reporting on this issue, and believe me we are going to break down this “panel discussion” cuz it’s a doozy, “Hasan Piker tests the limits of the Democratic Party's big tent” Using the Ground News browser extension, I can get helpful background information on this publication in one quick glance. To get the big picture, I can click on Full Coverage, which will show me coverage of the same story from publications across the political spectrum.

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Hasan Piker is a 34 year old leftist content creator who mainly is known for his livestreams on a livestreaming website called Twitch. He got his start in the media world through his uncle Jenk You-ger of The Young Turks, a left-leaning news organization. He livestreams every day for 8 hours a day from his home in Los Angeles, mostly watching and commenting on the news to his over 3 MILLION followers there, and then reposting clips of the livestreams across other social media platforms. His views have been described as far left, socialist, marxist, he tends to espouse anti-imperialist, pro-worker, pro-Palestinian ideology. So of course he’s been labeled a major threat by the Democratic establishment. As recently laid out in a great opinion piece in the Guardian by Bhaskar Sunkara, quote “Representative Brad Schneider branded Piker “an unapologetic antisemite”. Michigan’s own senator Elissa Slotkin, a former Pentagon official, weighed in with her condemnation, as did Representative Haley Stevens, one of El-Sayed’s primary rivals. Another opponent, Mallory McMorrow, went so far as to liken Piker to Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has enthusiastically praised Adolf Hitler on camera. When Politico came calling, both Cory Booker and Ruben Gallego rushed to declare they would refuse an invitation to appear on Piker’s stream.” Again, at a time when we’re fucking BEGGING anyone in the Democratic establishment to do ANYTHING to stop the onslaught of horrific fucking atrocities being committed by our government they are instead like hey we need to cancel this progressive twitch streamer. This speaks volumes to two things: the extent to which our entire political and media establishment is bought out by Israel and AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the power that modern political commentators on social media have in America today.

First, the primary objections that people have to Hasan Piker seem to stem from some controversial things he has said at various points throughout his career. Here’s Dana Bash on CNN talking about it as though someone from AIPAC is holding a gun to her head just off screen. [insert clip]

Let that sink in. Dana Bush is comfortable with Israel genociding the entirety of Gaza as retribution for the crimes of a few Hamas terrorists, crimes that Israelis also commit against Palestinians at staggering numbers. There is no question that Hamas engages in terrorist activities, and Hasan’s flippant language around sexual violence is absolutely condemable, but the global hypocrisy is staggering, and something so much bigger than one person livestreaming from his bedroom. Hamas is condemned globally as a terrorist organization, and the atrocities its militants carried out on October 7th, including alleged rapes, some of which have been debunked as untrue, I’ll note, have been pointed to as key evidence justifying this terrorist designation. Yet at the same time Israel is a legitimate state that deserves to exist and be protected. This despite a UN report from last year that found quote “Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination and carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it is very important to pay attention to WHO is being called a terrorist org and who isn’t, and by whom. Israel violently colonizes land that is already occupied, creates a genocidal apartheid state, both sides commit atrocities and violence against the other, one is a “designated terrorist organization” and the other is a state that has the right to self determination. But you are not allowed to point that out in this country because every single politician and every mainstream news organization is bought and sold by Israel and AIPAC. And so they lob the anti-semitic accusation around and fearmonger anyone who might step out of line and speak out against the well-documented atrocities committed by Israel. The Hasan Piker problem is that he’s outside this web of control and yet has amassed a LOT of political power in this country because no one watches or trusts mainstream media anymore.

Which I think is the age-old problem for famous leftist activists in this country. Actual avowed anti-semites, white supremacists, neo-nazis, skin heads, the KKK, far right conspiracy theorists are running around successfully advocating for actual violence and the people in the highest rungs of power are worried about a guy who’s pro-worker and anti-imperialist who’s said a few problematic things about Israel and 9/11. They compare him to Nick Fuentes as though that’s a fair comparison–one man is advocating for socialism and workers rights and in favor of the marginalized and against billionaires, and the other OPENLY DENIES THAT THE HOLOCAUST EVER HAPPENED. Because the terrorists on the far right, the ones who actually carry out far more extremist violence than the left ever does, their terrorism is directed towards minorities. A person like Hasan Piker, someone who advocates for working people, for minorities, against the American imperialist experiment, he is genuinely a terrorist in the eyes of the 1%. To them, his ideas bring them terror. And that’s the only kind of terror our establishment cares about–the terror of the 1%. Because people like Hasan are advocating for them to be wiped off the face of the earth. To the 1%, taxes and regulations are their own personal genocide. Their existence as billionaires can’t withstand the types of ideas that a person like Hasan Piker advocates for. So that is what those in power are going to find most threatening and attempt to shut down, and they always have.

And I think Hasan Piker and the debate we’re having over him, as fucking annoying as it is, I think it’s good for America. Now let me be clear about my own stance on Hasan. Does Hasan Piker present his ideas in a tactful, palatable way? Absolutely not. I find Hasan Piker to be incredibly off-putting most of the time, he reminds me of the boys I majored in Poli Sci with in college who would talk over me at parties, I don’t like the way he speaks to his audience, I don’t agree with the brazen, insensitive way he talks about these issues. And I think livestreaming lends itself really well to running your mouth and saying shit you later regret. That being said, Hasan has watched numerous of my videos on his livestream and only had nice things to say, and I appreciate that. And I think, for better or for worse, whether you like his content or not, Hasan Piker is meeting the people in America where they’re at in a way nothing else on the left has managed to do. I don’t mean all the people in America, I mean young men in America. The demographic everyone was most wringing their hands over in the 2024 election. The demographic we’re all still wringing our hands over.

I, like many people, recently watched Louis Theroux’s new documentary, Inside the Manosphere. If you haven’t seen it, journalist and documentarian Louis Theroux interviews various men who create content and who are part of the “manosphere”, a loosely connected cohort of content creators who talk about being red pilled, how to be a “real man,” and “alpha male” how to get women, how to look as hot as possible, and, I learned in the documentary, also how to make money while you sleep by joining their signal chat and downloading the stock trading apps they get commissions from by convincing their followers to join. The promise is that if you follow these men, they’ll teach you how to be rich and handsome and get women. It speaks to this moment when the American dream is dead, it’s harder than ever to provide for yourself let alone a whole family, men are isolated and lonely, women no longer need them, and so they’re turning to someone for guidance, for inspiration, to tell them how to get what they want, to explain to them why they feel so shitty. And the manosphere offers them the antidote. Many of these content creators livestream from their mansions in Ibiza or Miami, and a common form of content is them walking down the streets hitting on women or pulling off more and more shocking stunts to get views and likes and virality. And if you watch Hasan Piker’s content, and you watch this inside the Manosphere documentary, there are shades of the manosphere in Hasan Piker’s content, and before you go thinking I’m trying to cancel him please let me explain.

Hasan Piker is brazen and often says things that have really high shock value. Much like men of the manosphere content creation universe who rely on doing drastic or shocking shit to get views and clicks. Both attract attention. One is harassing women in the street or getting into physical altercations. The other is calling into question America’s imperialist warmongering by saying we deserved 9/11. Hasan Piker often takes his livestreams on the road, followed by a cameraman and accompanied by his entourage. He’s usually wearing a lot of jewelry and expensive looking clothes. The same happens in the manosphere. One group is wandering around the streets of Miami hitting on women. The other is exploring communist China or the US blockade in Cuba. Both are creating content for the same generation of men. One is perpetuating toxic tropes of masculinity and patriarchy and reinforcing the glorification of the military industrial complex, and sending more and more men down the capitalist pipeline–if you just work hard enough you can be like me, and you should value money and power above everything else. The other is uplifting marginalized voices, breaking down “ethno-religious supremacist” ideologies, speaking out forcefully against the billionaire class, and questioning the imperialist nature of the United States as a whole, in a way that speaks to young men and meets them where they’re at. You might not be comfortable with the way in which men under 40 consume content, with the content they like, with the tactics used to communicate with them, with the world as it is right now, that’s okay, this content isn’t for you. But the reality is that this is the world the internet has created, for better or for worse, and I would sure as shit prefer young men to be questioning the geo-political world order with Hasan Piker than learning how to hit on women on the Miami waterfront.

And this speaks to a larger issue with the Democratic party, one that Naomi Klein lays out really well in her book Doppelganger, and that is that Democrats have a tendency to bury their heads in the sand and ignore the way things are, the real genuine issues people have with the system, instead of figuring out how to fit them within their larger tent, and Republicans and far right conspiracy theorists are able to step in and fill in that void. For example, anti-vaxxing and objections to COVID-era mandates at least in part come from a place of truth–it is not irrational or unfounded to question the pharmaceutical industry in this country, an industry that has profited off our death and off keeping us sick. Instead of acknowledging that there are regulatory issues, that there are good reasons why people might distrust big pharma, the establishment left wrote anti-vaxxers off as nut-jobs and continued to cozy up to pharmaceutical lobbyists, giving the far right an opportunity to swoop in and win over anti-vaxxers by acknowledging the truth that sent them down the pipeline to begin with–you’re right, there is something fishy about how pharmaceutical companies operate in this country. That wins over trust that then becomes easy to exploit with lies and conspiracies. The same is true of young men and the manosphere. The manosphere is capitalizing on something that is true: young men in this country are not okay, the economy is rigged against all of us, the patriarchy makes them feel horrible about themselves because they can’t be “providers” anymore, and the manosphere acknowledges that truth and then sends them down the toxic pipeline. You’re right, life is really hard, you ARE being exploited. That wins over trust that then becomes easy to exploit with lies and conspiracies–the manosphere tells them the way to win back your agency is through stocks and emotionally abusing women. Hasan Piker tells them that actually the billionaire class is the reason why your life sucks. Young men are seeking this shit out online whether we like it or not. And they’re not seeking it out from mainstream media, they’re not seeking it out from even someone like me, a leftist yes but someone who’s a lot more measured and doesn’t do or say things that go particularly viral and is also a woman in her 30s so sorry but I’m not particularly intriguing to 20 year old men and I’m really okay with that. That’s just the reality of the situation, and I don’t know about you but I’d far prefer a world where they jump onto the leftist Hasan Piker train than the manosphere death spiral. I think that’s a net positive for America.

And yet the establishment Democrats, the legacy media would rather shoot themselves in the foot than acknowledge that they need Hasan Piker in their tent. They would rather throw their weight behind attempting to cancel him than attempting to understand what it is about him that speaks to a base of people they have been clamoring to win back over–young men. They all of the sudden demand purity, to never associate with anyone who’s ever said anything objectionable, while openly and vociferously supporting Israel, an apartheid state actively committing genocide while the world watches. Instead of attempting to figure out how to actually fit the entire left wing of this country in their tent, which is their burden in our fucked up two party system, which would require acknowledging differences, having hard conversations, strategizing, open-mindedness, coalition building, they are once again alienating the entire left of their base. Because this isn’t just off-putting to Hasan Piker fans. It’s off-putting to anyone outside “left of center” who wants to see the Democrats attempt to mend this party, take back power, and make the types of progressive changes that need to happen to ensure a Donald Trump figure never happens again in this country. And that requires addressing the truths that Donald Trump and the right have been willing to exploit–that billionaires are amassing wealth and leaving us to fight over the scraps, that life in America is about surviving, not thriving, for the vast majority of Americans. Trump promised solutions to that and of course delivered nothing, but Democrats could actually step in and increase taxes on the wealthy, provide affordable healthcare and childcare, if they were willing to embrace progressive ideals. But they’re not. Just like in Germany in the lead up to World War II, in America we are seeing the quote unquote “opposition” party, choose money over morals, cling to their elite friends, align themselves closer with the fascists while paying lip service to the concerns of the masses and doing NOTHING about it, and throwing us all under the bus in order to keep their power.

So the discussion over Hasan Piker is about so much more than what do we do with this leftist guy who livestreams all day. It is a microcosm of how fucking broken this country is that we cannot even fathom how to include actual leftist, progressive ideas that would actually help the masses into our national political conversation. That we equate leftist progressivism as just as extreme and therefore bad as far right extremism. As though they’re equally at far ends of the political spectrum. Despite the fact that in many countries in Europe there are people who espouse very similar values to Hasan Piker who hold seats in parliament, whose “Democratic Socialist” parties are seen as center-left. Much like who and what we deem to be “terrorists” is dictated by bias and power dynamics, what we deem to be “extremist” political ideology is also seriously biased and skewed in this country. To characterize someone like Hasan Piker as “extremist” in the same way that someone like Nick Fuentes is “extremist” is an irresponsible, willful mischaracterization that is motivated by the same pro-capitalist, pro-billionaire bullshit that has gotten us into this situation to begin with. And the Democratic establishment is doing nothing but further alienating people when it attempts to cancel Hasan Piker and any progressive candidate who dares go near him.

And of course there’s also fretting about “what about the centrists!” “What about the independents!!!” It’s true, there is a huge swath of this country that isn’t particularly interested in quote unquote “progressive” policies, that do find Hasan Piker to be too extreme and may themselves be alienated by his ideas and past statements. What do we do about them!! As with a lot of issues with the Democratic party, this comes down to a messaging and strategy problem, something the Democrats notoriously fucking suck at. Of COURSE you don’t bring Hasan Piker into every single room–he is a particular person who speaks to a particular demographic. You gotta know your audience. And you have to mold your message accordingly. Something that I think Bernie Sanders has mastered. You don’t label shit “progressive” or “far left” or “politically extreme.” You just actually listen to people and what they want and you provide them with solutions that make them excited about you as a candidate. And the solution tends to be get money out of politics and raise taxes on the 1% to help fund the government. Those are negatively labeled as “progressive” ideas but they shouldn’t be. Leveling the playing field for people so that billionaires can’t rig the entire game isn’t a progressive idea. It’s pro-democracy. It just seems like there is zero creativity in these washed up dusty Democratic strategists out there that they just cannot come up with a single way to get people excited about voting for democrats. The only reason we’re excited to vote for Democrats in the midterms in November is because we’re desperate for something less awful than this. The only reason I was excited to vote for Kamala in 2024 was because she wasn’t Trump and seemed less likely to completely fuck up the entire country and world order during her presidency. Can you imagine a Democratic candidate ACTUALLY presenting you with ideas that you can get excited about because the ideas themselves are good? I mean that’s what happened in New York City. I said this last episode, Zohran Mamdani didn’t harp on about how bad his opponents were, he presented a really exciting vision for what New York City could be, and yes he even appeared on Hasan Piker’s livestream and what do you know it didn’t alienate everyone who doesn’t love Hasan Piker. It was one tactic of many that he used to actually talk to New Yorkers and understand who they listen to, what they care about, and meet them where they were at. He talked to a ton of people. What’s wild and crazy about being a politician is you actually have to communicate with and find compromise with people you don’t agree with 100% of the time. That’s actually a necessary piece of politicking. Zohran Mamdani did that while also seeming likeable, approachable, and reasonable. And the Democratic party demonized him for it, too, because again they would rather cancel the candidate with the progressive ideas in order to align themselves with elite interests every time. Which is why most Democrat party candidates are fucking creeps who seem so completely disconnected from actual real life. They’re not put in place for us. They’re put in place by the elite interests who want to control the narrative and keep their power. So when someone like Hasan Piker comes along who cannot be controlled and in fact seems to revel in shaking things up and pissing people off, and then a candidate like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed actually DARES to bring Hasan into the fold and treat him like the influential political actor he is, the Democratic establishment has to swoop in and nip that in the bud before it gets so out of control that people start actually learning about, understanding, and wanting these “extremist” progressive ideals. Until we vote these elitist creeps out of office and find better alternatives, this is what we’re stuck with in this country. And the way things are going, it is people like Hasan Piker who are going to have to do the actual political work of convincing people that progressive ideas actually aren’t that extreme after all.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like my episode from yesterday about how to remove a mad king from office.