It has been a hectic year for Hasan Piker. On top of broadcasting the slow death of liberalism nearly every day out of his home in West Hollywood, the 33-year-old socialist streamer has left his desk to appear at Bernie Sanders’s Fighting Oligarchy Tour, Kneecap’s Coachella performance, the Palestine Rally in D.C., an interview with New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and, most recently, the ICE protests in Los Angeles – taking his massive Twitch audience along for the ride.
Once widely known as “woke bae” for his sharp yet horny daily broadcasts, Piker, who was raised in Turkey, has recently amassed enough respect to ignite feverish debates on whether he can be the long-awaited “Joe Rogan of the left.” As legacy media hemorrhages its youth audience, Piker’s viewers turn to him to explain the news and analyze often unprecedented moments in global history. Piker sees the current political moment in stark terms, and his recent output suggests he’s operating with a new sense of determination. “Liberalism is failing, fascism is rising through the ashes, and God forbid the alternative, any sort of socialist thought, is terrifying for the masses to actually develop any kind of allegiance to,” he said when we spoke on the phone earlier this year. But, after years spent amassing a devoted audience, as his profile has grown, so has the target on his back. In the last month alone, he has had his Twitch channel suspended, been detained by Customs and Border Protection, and gotten caught up in a tortuous feud with frenemy Ethan Klein.
His Twitch stream, however, to which he still devotes hours a day, remains his primary focus. While his work has resulted in a good deal of notoriety, the job itself can be unglamorous and painstaking. Before logging on, Piker says he spends his mornings perusing every corner of the media before setting an agenda that he’ll post to his social-media channels. The lineup for a recent broadcast: “NEW POPE! TRUMP DRAMA W/ ISRAEL? RUMEYSA OZTURK FREE! I AM STILL SUCK IN FRANCE!”
Piker’s is a new version of a leftist news broadcaster. “Liberal media — MSNBC, Bill Maher, Pod Save America — is making a very cold, calculated decision to demonstrate loyalty to liberalism at a time when it’s very clearly failing ideologically: Everything is fine. Plug your eyes. Keep the ideological zealotry going. They’ve given up,” he says. What he delivers is clearly finding an audience with a young, eager, very online audience. “There is a structural hurdle that they cannot clear; they cannot turn around and get people to go back on TV. When you look at the audience numbers for 18 to 35, or even under 50 — and this even includes Fox News — it’s gone. I, on my own as a singular content creator from my living room, reach a larger audience of 18- to 35-year-olds than numerous TV channels combined. That’s crazy.”
Outside of his own show, Piker frequently appears on other podcasts and livestreams. After watching him play Assassin’s Creed, talk about Vinland Saga, work out with Dr. Mike Israetel, or pal around with fellow streamers Maya Higa and Valkyrae elsewhere on the internet, people might tune in to hear Piker make a case for a political future that includes Medicare for All, Palestinian freedom, and transgender rights. Where did these disparate interests all come from? Piker described the influences that shape his Twitch broadcast.
Mainstream Media
My media diet consists of everything. I pride myself on looking at everything all the way down to a hyperniche subset of an online movement, while also consuming more Fox News than your grandfather. My mornings consist of listening to NPR and the New York Times to get a good grasp of everything that’s going on. I probably watch a lot more right-wing commentary now because I’m trying to figure out exactly what Republicans are saying and doing, what they’re focusing on, and then also trying to figure out ways of dismantling these arguments that they put forward or see what kind of misinformation campaign they’re running nowadays.
Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Amy Goodman has been very influential for me. I don’t even know when I started watching Democracy Now!, to be honest, but I think it was during college — 2009 or so.
I can’t point to a single event, but broadly during the war in Iraq, The Daily Show was basically one of the only voices out there that was genuinely critical of both parties. So that definitely influenced my commentary. I wouldn’t say Jon Stewart influenced me ideologically; I already had this opinion. Growing up on that side of the world, I already felt what America was doing was wrong, but seeing someone tackle it in an entertaining and palatable manner and give it to both sides was very influential for me. Ironically, I filled that void for many of my international fans who were like, “Is there an American out there that’s criticizing a lot of the stuff that America’s doing around the globe?” the way Amy Goodman and Jon Stewart actually filled it for me.
The Boondocks
Someone recently asked me, “What unlocked your social consciousness?” Growing up in Turkey, I only saw Black culture as a fascinating commodity to consume. If you’re coming from a country where there’s not a lot of Black people, your introduction to American culture is simply Black culture, and everyone is fascinated with that. And for me, it was Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks that was influential in my understanding of Black revolutionary history or issues that pertain to Black and brown communities.
The “Boondocks predicted” thing is actually kind of annoying, because they’re not predicting anything. They were leftist; that’s it. The people who were making it at the time had a closeness to historical materialism. It’s not prophecy. It’s just looking at the way things are and interpreting them correctly rather than engaging in silly, liberal, good-bad dynamics. That’s mostly the reason why The Boondocks and old Simpsons come across as brilliant and prophetic.
Playing video games
I think gaming is a very good way to approach a broader audience and have people see me engage in something that they are also interested in. Charitability is the most important thing for my commentary, because for a lot of people, they’re hearing the way I view the world for the first time ever. So I need that, and I think gaming plays a big role in that. I get to be able to share something that I love and something that I enjoy with my audience, and I try to be as entertaining as possible in that process.
Video games also play an important role in preserving my mental sanity. But there are some rage-inducing games that I have to quit after a while despite how addicted I get to them because they have a negative impact on my mental health, like Valorant. I love Disco Elysium. It has something for every flavor of anti-capitalism. It was not a very good stream game, unfortunately. I think the YouTube video afterwards did well, but during the stream, people were getting kind of bored because it’s like a novel.
Bill Burr
I try to be funny. It’s really important to be entertaining and cool and fun while you’re doing your news coverage, especially when you’re trying to teach people an entirely new way of seeing the world. Comedy is the greatest way to do that. I’m not one of those people who’s like, “Comedians are the philosophers of the world,” or whatever, because I laugh at a fart joke just like anybody else does. There are plenty of things that make me laugh that aren’t brilliant or thought-provoking. Bill Burr does this really well. He’s carrying the torch of George Carlin. He’s not perceived as a crazy guy who’s a radical, who has scary opinions. Why? Because he’s a comedian.
Sci-fi films
I, weirdly enough, love the movie Elysium, which is so embarrassing to admit because it’s a dogshit movie. It’s not a good movie at all, but the world-building is what I like the most. I just really like tech-dystopia future movies. Movies can critique power. The greatest example of that is Star Wars, right? George Lucas very clearly defined Star Wars as an interpretation of the Vietcong against the American empire. It is supposed to be an anti-imperialist work. That’s not a secret at all, and yet everybody misses the point. I wouldn’t consider George Lucas a revolutionary figure at all. Gaining that level of power and prominence does have a capacity to kind of stunt your radical approach to the world, or your revolutionary fervor goes away when you become very comfortable. It’s something that I also think about in my own personal experience.
Movies can create real critique of power, but once it is commodified and it’s ready for mass consumption, you can’t really control the ways in which the masses consume it and interpret the message you’re putting out there. Another great example is obviously Starship Troopers. The novel it’s based on is supposed to be pro-fascist, but the movie is a critique of fascism and ultra-nationalism and patriotism and war, imperialism, all that. Good luck explaining that to anybody. Most people look at that and they go, “No, I don’t care. Bugs are stupid, and they must be eradicated.” It’s up to interpretation, and therefore a lot of people will miss the message.
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The socialist Twitch streamer explains how his media diet inspires him to win over young viewers to his side of the internet.
