Hasan Piker, the popular online streamer, seems to be everywhere these days—at Zohran Mamdani’s election night party, palling around with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), sharing a stage with Republican-turned-Bulwark operative Tim Miller, and in splashy media profiles. Especially the media profiles.
Piker, who has three million followers on Twitch, has risen to prominence and influence on the Left thanks to his profanity-laden social and political commentary—a socialist shock-jock for the Internet era. He’s also benefited from a surge in glowing mainstream media coverage.
There was a New Yorker profile in March where Piker was portrayed as someone who could help leftists win the “battle for the bros”; an April profile in the New York Times—where Piker posed seated on a basketball court, his shorts hiked halfway up his legs—that called him “A Progressive Mind in a Body Made for the ‘Manosphere'”; a GQ profile in August—featuring Piker posing on a bed, his shorts again hiked toward his waist, sporting three rings and two bracelets; a fawning NPR interview—also in August—that described him as “charismatic” and asked him why working out is “conservative coded”; a softball Wired interview in September that centered on “his looks, his love of Italian sandwiches, and any future political aspirations he might (or might not) want to tease”; and a Variety profile last month—complete with a glamour shot of Piker posing in a tree—that uncritically quoted him claiming to have spent his “entire professional media career combating” anti-Semitism.
But those media pieces universally fail to give their audiences a complete picture of who Piker is and what he believes.
To fill that void, the Washington Free Beacon has compiled 10 moments from Piker that help round out the picture of the mainstream media’s favorite anti-Semite.
America ‘Deserved’ 9/11
Piker established his anti-America bona fides early in his career as a host for The Young Turks, the left-wing YouTube channel owned by Piker’s uncle, failed MSNBC host Cenk Uygur. “America deserved 9/11, dude,” Piker said in an August 2019 show. “Fuck it, I’m saying it.”
Piker later whined that the firestorm over his remarks led to death threats against him and his Young Turks colleagues. “It was one of the worst weeks, months of my life.”
Praise for the ‘brave’ terrorist who wounded Rep. Dan Crenshaw
In the same episode as his infamous 9/11 quip, Piker mocked Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) for losing an eye in the Afghanistan war. Piker praised the “brave” “mujahideen” who injured Crenshaw. “What the fuck is wrong with this dude? Didn’t he go to war and like literally lose his eye because some mujahideen—a brave fucking soldier—fucked his eye hole with their dick?” said Piker.
Hasan doesn’t ‘have an issue with’ Hezbollah
Piker has lauded Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah and its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
In one clip, he said Hezbollah’s flag is his favorite. “Overall, what’s my favorite flag? Hezbollah. Look it up. I’m not even kidding. It’s actually a dope flag,” said Piker. “It’s got an AK on it, and a fucking hand holding it up.” Sensing that Piker may have crossed a red line, a fellow panelist noted, “we might have to cut this.”
Asked about Hezbollah in another show, Piker stated: “I don’t have an issue with them, let’s just say,” while noting that “they are a designated terrorist organization.” He hailed Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon last year, as being “regarded as a pretty brilliant person.”
‘Doesn’t matter’ if Hamas raped Israeli women because ‘the Palestinian resistance is not perfect’
Piker has repeatedly mocked reports that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women during and after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack. Never mind that many Israeli women have described being brutally sexually assaulted during captivity.
“It doesn’t matter if fucking rapes happened on Oct. 7,” Piker said on his show. “That doesn’t change the dynamic for me even this much. So that’s the other part of this problem that many people can’t contend with. Like, the Palestinian resistance is not perfect. They’re not, like, so good, they have magical bullets.” And Piker mocked a social media account, StopAntisemitism, that posted about Hamas’s rapes of Israeli hostages, saying that the organization was having “rape fantasies” and “rape hallucinations” about Oct. 7.
Date rape ‘better’ if it happens to rich women:
Rape seems to be a recurring theme on Piker’s Twitch show. In one episode, he proposed sending wealthy college students to the same handful of colleges so that rich college men will end up committing “date rape” solely against rich college women. That would be “a little bit better” than Piker’s view that wealthy college men are raping poor or middle-class female students. “If you have these fucking millionaire, billionaire WASP fail-sons, at least taking them out of other colleges so they can only do date rape to other billionaire/millionaire fail daughters is, in some respects, you know, from a utilitarian perspective, of course, a little bit better,” said Piker. “Taking these guys and putting them in a pen with one another is ultimately getting them away from the broader society.”
‘Kill’ your landlord
Piker became triggered on one show during a discussion about landlords in Berkeley, California, refusing to rent to some tenants.
“Yeah, kill them,” said Piker. “Kill those motherfuckers, murder those motherfuckers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood, dude.”
Orthodox Jews are ‘inbred’
Piker predicted that Israel would eventually fail as a state, though not because of an outside military attack or some other event. Instead, he speculated that liberal Israelis will eventually flee the country over opposition to Israel’s wars against its jihadist neighbors. Thus, according to Piker: “You are left with a country that is packed to the fucking gills with the most inbred, uneducated, ultra-nationalist, rabid, Haredi population,” said Piker, referring to Haredi Judaism, a branch of Orthodox Judaism.
Hasan Piker: animal abuser
While Piker’s socialist and leftist followers have largely ignored or defended his many inflammatory statements, for many of them, he crossed a different line in October. During a rant in which Piker declared, “I hate this fucking country so much,” Piker lashed out at his dog, Kaya, after she got up from her bed in Piker’s room. Piker appeared to activate a shock collar, forcing Kaya to yelp and return to her bed. “Jesus Christ, what are you doing?” said Piker, “You’re being such a baby.”
Hasan says China is a ‘normal country,’ while he has no ‘patriotism in [his] heart’ for America
Piker, who has called himself a propagandist, raised eyebrows this month during a tour of China, where he sat for an interview with CGTN, the Chinese Communist Party-controlled television outlet. Piker praised the regime and declared his disdain for America, providing a public relations coup for his CCP overlords. “I also wanted to show my audience and the Western world in general that there are a lot of rumors about China, there’s a lot of misunderstandings and also just outright lies,” Piker told CGTN’s Li Jingjing. “It’s just another normal country, just like every other country is.”
“I would say China is probably the closest … to an example that we should follow and lessons that we should learn from,” Piker said after his trip. Piker visited Tiananmen Square, site of the infamous June 1989 massacre, for a flag-raising ceremony in honor of CCP founder Mao Zedong. Piker, with a Chinese flag in hand, declared, “I don’t have any sort of patriotism in my heart for any—yeah, for America, but just in general.” In an ironic twist, Piker was stopped by a Chinese police officer and ordered to show pictures of the event to ensure he was not mocking Mao. “It’s a cultural difference,” said Piker in defense of the Chinese cops. “America is worse.”
Russia’s ‘annexation of Crimea was absolutely a justifiable annexation’
Piker sometimes ventures away from favored topics like rape, hating Israel, and hating America to discuss other issues, such as Russia’s war on Ukraine. Once again, Piker positioned himself on the side of America’s foe. “What do you call Crimea?” Piker asked in one show. “I call it a part of Russian territory, bitch. I call it Crimea River, a Russian river. The annexation of Crimea was absolutely a justifiable annexation.”
