Who is Hasan Piker, the anti-Zionist streamer and mouthpiece of the American radical left?

Following Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, many analysts attributed a decisive role to conservative podcasters – with whom the president had been interviewed on several occasions – in persuading young men to vote Republican. Over the past year, particularly during the primaries, the more left-wing candidates within the Democratic Party have found their most influential mouthpiece in Hasan Piker, a radical left-wing streamer who describes himself as anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist. Last year, he interviewed the then Socialist candidate for mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, and this year he held various events during the primaries with the Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, who, however, decided not to campaign with him in the general election. El-Sayed described him as “a streamer who lives in California” and, according to CNN, reportedly pointed out to him that his anti-Israeli rhetoric was costing him votes. 

Piker says he began campaigning for progressive candidates after witnessing the ‘No Kings’ movement’s marches against Trump and the ‘Stop the Oligarchy’ events organised by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. In an interview with the Financial Times, he said he did not feel he was anything like a successful figure such as the conservative podcaster Joe Rogan: in his view, Rogan’s political engagement in his shows is very superficial. Instead, he said he had more in common with the ultra-conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, “but for Generation Z”.

Born in New Jersey and raised in Turkey in a family of academics, Piker undertook an internship at the progressive online network The Young Turks, co-founded by his uncle Cenk Uygur. In 2018, he launched his Twitch channel, which now has over 3 million followers: according to a demographic survey conducted by Piker himself, his audience is now less male-dominated than it was in the early days. Over a six-year period, the proportion of male viewers is said to have fallen from 83 per cent to 63 per cent. He has been temporarily banned from the platform seven times, most recently in January when he used the term ‘Zionist pigs’. 

His career has, in fact, been marked by controversy. In an interview with Axios, he claimed that “the United States has committed more atrocities than Al-Qaeda”; in 2019, he said that “the United States deserved 9/11”, a statement for which he later apologised. However, his most extreme statements have targeted Israel: he has claimed that the Jewish state is “a thousand times worse than Hamas”, that “7 October is Israel’s fault” and that he does not care “whether rapes took place” during the massacre. On the podium at the UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Mamdani for his alleged links to the streamer. Piker has had rather serious run-ins with the Anti-Defamation League, the organisation dedicated to combating anti-Semitism in the country; accused by the League of anti-Semitism, he described it as “the League for the Defence of Apartheid”. During more than 22,000 hours of footage, with live sessions lasting up to seven hours, in which he interacts with his audience and plays video games, Piker often lets his guard down. He accused the chief executive of United Healthcare, who was killed on the streets of New York, of "social murder" and described the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong as "a great man in history", stating that the United States should learn from the Communist Party of China.

For Republicans on the campaign trail, Piker is one of the most dangerous men in the country. Various adverts, particularly in Michigan, highlight the podcaster’s most offensive statements and seek to link him to El-Sayed. Even figures within the Democratic establishment are opposed to his Marxist and anti-Zionist views, and fear they could erode the party’s mass appeal ahead of the mid-term elections. Despite this, according to a poll conducted by the New York Times, 54 per cent of voters in Michigan still do not know who he is.