The Left’s Hasan Piker Problem

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
~Robert Frost

In his 1949 book The Vital Center, American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argued that American liberalism in the postwar era was reshaped “by the exposure of the Soviet Union, and by the deepening of our knowledge of man. … The consequence of this historical re-education has been an unconditional rejection of totalitarianism.” One of the more depressing features of contemporary US politics is the degree to which those lessons have been forgotten on both sides of the political spectrum.

On the Right, moderate Republicans have allowed themselves to become acclimatised to the extremism of a party remade in the image of its demagogic leader. On the Left, a number of prominent liberal commentators have spent recent weeks insisting that Hasan Piker—a Turkish-American Twitch streamer, gamer, Marxist, and anti-Zionist with millions of followers—deserves a place in the Democratic Party’s tent. Such is Piker’s influence that he may yet become a power-broker in Democratic politics—he does not just endorse and promote political candidates, he campaigns for them too, speaking at rallies for candidates like Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, Summer Lee, and most recently Abdul El-Sayed.

Piker’s list of inflammatory and otherwise objectionable statements is lengthy, and it covers all the usual areas of radical leftwing idiocy. He has said that “The fall of the USSR was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century” (a statement that so closely echoes Vladimir Putin that it sounds like trolling). He argues that the American unipolarity that followed the end of the Cold War accelerated the rise of neoliberalism, for which he blames the ills of the modern world. He has defended Russia’s annexation of Crimea and most of what he says about Ukraine shadows Russian talking points about NATO encroachment. He travelled to Cuba to display solidarity with the moribund despotism there. And after visiting Tiananmen Square for China’s flag-raising ceremony in front of Mao’s portrait, he suggested that the Chinese communist regime offers “an example that we should learn from.”

Piker’s sympathy for anti-American regimes is naturally complemented by a thoroughgoing anti-Americanism. “I don’t have any patriotism in my heart for America,” he acknowledged in Beijing, and he says he’d like to see a fundamental “transformation” of the United States and of the global order that its power underwrites. In 2019, he declared that the United States “deserved 9/11” before praising the al-Qaeda terrorist who disfigured Rep. Dan 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?” And of course, Piker flaunts an extravagant hatred of Israel. He has described Hezbollah’s yellow banner as his favourite flag and saluted the terror organisation’s “brilliant” late leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. He insists that Hamas (“a resistance group and emancipatory movement”) is “a thousand times better” than Israel (“the fascist settler-colonial apartheid state”).

Piker dislikes liberal Democrats as much as he dislikes liberal democracy, so it was not a surprise when he refused to endorse either Joe Biden in 2020 or Kamala Harris in 2024. Nevertheless, the Harris campaign invited him to livestream from the 2024 Democratic National Convention as part of its “Creators for Kamala” initiative. Earlier this month, El-Sayed’s campaign told Semafor that controversy over Piker’s endorsement had brought a “29% increase in volunteer sign ups, and a 221% increase in dollars raised via our website and social media.” In response, Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid remarked, “Seems there is a Piker effect for Democrats.” Piker has received favourable profiles in the New Yorker and the New York Times, and spoken at the Oxford Union and Yale. Matt Duss, who has advised Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has championed Piker, as have progressive writers at the Nation and the New Republic.

Most recently, Piker has been defended by New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and invited for a comically soft interview with former Barack Obama advisor Jon Favreau. Klein’s defence of Piker was originally headlined “Hasan Piker Is Not the Enemy,” and it acquits Piker of charges of antisemitism by noting that he’s merely an “anti-Zionist.” Anti-Zionism seeks the abolition of a flourishing parliamentary democracy and UN member state—an extreme position that Klein seems to think falls within the scope of acceptable discourse. After all, he explains, this is an understandable consequence of what Israel has been doing since 7 October.