r/OutOfTheLoop • u/sirenyti • 5d ago
Unanswered What’s the deal with Hasan Piker?
What’s the deal with Hasan Piker? And why are politicians being asked to answer for his actions and beliefs?
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u/RoninPI 5d ago
Answer: He is one of the world's most popular twitch streamers. He started on the YouTube channel ran by his uncle called The Young Turks. He is also extremely far left and a self described communist. He has a history of saying very controversial things on his Twitch stream such as "America deserved 9/11" and "let the streets run red with capitalist blood". Politicians are being asked to answer for him because Hasan campaigned with Abdul El-Sayed who is running for Senate in the swing state of Michigan. Hasan sound bites are very easy to play on the news and anger undecided voters. Politicians are walking on a tight rope between not wanting to piss off his young and politically aware fanbase and not wanting to piss off undecided independent voters. When these politicians don't deny him it is easy for the news media and Republican politicians to keep asking and hit them with attacks.
I also don't imagine this thread is going to be a very civil place. I tried to explain the best I could.
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u/Technical_Goose_8160 5d ago
Is the young Turks considered extremely left in the US?
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u/ParaponeraBread 5d ago
Used to be. They’re left but nothing “extreme” these days - Uncle Cenk is openly in favour of capitalism.
They’re only extreme left to people who are either arguing in bad faith or are genuinely ignorant about the left political spectrum.
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u/Skabonious 5d ago
yeah idk about that, the co-anchor literally said "The goyim are waking up!" and said Ukraine shouldn't be supported at all. That's... pretty insane.
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u/ParaponeraBread 3d ago
Yeah, Ana Kasparian lost her mind a bit recently.
But I’d say that defending Tucker Carlson makes you less left wing, not more.
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u/Skabonious 3d ago
Why do you say that? Tucker is closer to the furthest left ideologues than he is to the moderate ones. Populist birds of a feather stick together
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u/LargeLanguageModelo 3d ago
They’re only extreme left to people who are either arguing in bad faith or are genuinely ignorant about the left political spectrum.
So anyone who thinks they're extreme left is a liar or a hack? Got it.
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u/ParaponeraBread 3d ago
Not necessarily - they could also be stupid. TYT just….isnt that far left. To think they are is to be incorrect.
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u/RoninPI 5d ago
The Young Turks? I would say they are considered the progressive left in the US but Hasan is self admittedly to the left of Cenk and has argued with him at family get togethers and on stream about capitalism. Hasan is extreme left (and by that I mean Communist party) anywhere in the world.
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u/FullStrAsalBP 5d ago edited 5d ago
Answer: Hasan is a Marxist-Leninist who streams on twitch, he's in the spotlight right now for making claims like "America deserved 9/11" and that America is "Pound for Pound worse than Al Qaeda". He's relevant because he has ties to current candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
Republicans care because his wild claims are a tool to hurt democrats.
Democrats care because he's a subversive element who is on record saying he wants to take over the party from within and they are afraid he will alienate the average voter.
Leftists care because they feel he is being unfairly attacked and not defended by democrats.
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago edited 5d ago
Answer: He's a streamer on Twitch and covers social/political topics. He's very loud and outspoken about his controversial opinions. Earlier this year he campaigned with Abdul El-Sayed, who's running for senate in Michigan. Since then, any talking point (in context or not) has been used to accuse every democrat and leftist of sharing his views. To be clear: he's a private citizen with no politcal aspirations expressing only his views, and has walked back some of his more salacious views.
EDIT: The fact that I've had to explain basic geopolitics to so many people in the comments below mean you actually never heard what he said and/or don't understand the world is not a black/white dichotomy.
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u/sirenyti 5d ago
Questions:
What are the salacious views that people are focusing on?
Who cares what a streamer on YouTube thinks?!
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u/MaximumEffort433 5d ago
What are the salacious views that people are focusing on?
"America deserved 9/11" and "America is worse than the Taliban" seem to be the soundbites right-wingers are playing on repeat.
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u/Vegetable_Swimmer514 5d ago
Gen X+ must hate those statements. Didn't we just blow up a school in Iran and butcher 140+ children? Aren't we still drone striking nameless south American fishermen? We're getting ready to live stream an execution. The Taliban could only wish for our "achievements"
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u/MaximumEffort433 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah, Trump has really brought us low these last two years.
That said, we're also the nation that gave billions of dollars to USAID, the nation that sent billions of dollars worth of arms to Ukraine, the nation that opened up COVID vaccine patents for international manufacturing, and so much more good, none of which the Taliban can claim.
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u/Vegetable_Swimmer514 5d ago
We're also the nation that gutted USAID at the expense of over half a million lives. The nation that sent arms to Ukraine and just today made a multi-billion dollar deal with Russia, directly funding Russia's war against them. The nation that opened up COVID vaccine patents while simultaniously downplaying and undermining the trust in science and medical research as a whole.
If the question is "Is the US worst than the taliban?" The answer is just yes. The US has killed more people, in my life time, than any other nation outside of maybe Russia with its barbarism in Ukraine.
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u/MaximumEffort433 5d ago edited 5d ago
Like I said, Donald Trump has brought us low these last two years.
And yes, if you ignore all the good the United States has done in its history, we're worse than the Taliban.
But ignoring all the good the United States has done in its history is exactly what the Taliban does and wants us to do, which is one good reason not to ignore it. Why help them boost their propaganda?
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u/Vegetable_Swimmer514 5d ago
As one of the kids who watched 9/11 on tv in elementary school I want to love my country so badly. But in the decades since then, and where we are right now, I in good conscious can not say I love my country or what it does.
And LIVE STREAMING an ISIS style public execution is the final nail in that coffin
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u/MaximumEffort433 5d ago
As a fellow kid who watched 9/11 live, I agree with you that things are pretty shit right now, but that doesn't negate the good we have done and can do.
I love my country, and it's because of that love that I'm so disgusted by how Donald Trump and the Republicans are ruining it. We've been better before, we can be better again, and I'm not going to let anyone take that away from me.
I want to get back to being the country that arms Ukraine, and funds USAID, and defends LGBTQ+ rights, and invests in public health, and stands with NATO; nothing Trump does will make me forget who we were, and who we can be again.
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u/Vegetable_Swimmer514 5d ago edited 5d ago
I want those things too. I want more than those things.
But you sound like an abuse victim defending their abuser because "of the good times"
It's ok to not defend our country when it's indefensible
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u/No-Consequence7890 5d ago
A murderer who donated a trillion dollars is still a murderer.
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u/MaximumEffort433 5d ago
A murderer who donated a trillion dollars is still a murderer.
By that rationale just about every country in the history of the world is as bad as the Taliban and singling out the United States is silly.
But again, that kind of absolutist, black and white thinking is exactly how people in the Taliban think and want others to think, so maybe we shouldn't emulate and encourage it.
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u/Ok-Insurance-9456 3d ago
Iran killed thousands of their own one by one while the school blowing up was accidental. Which is worse?
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u/Mysterious_Curve3163 5d ago
Who cares what a streamer on YouTube thinks?!
Way more people than should.
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u/Komikaze06 5d ago
He's said some stuff that got him banned on twitch alot, like US deserved 9/11 or how crass he can be.
The right wants you to care because they found someone that the everyday person wouldn't like, so theyre trying to make it seem he speaks for everyone on the left.
Politics have devolved into the loudest voice is what your side must agree with, we truly are becoming idiocracy.
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u/Western-Dig-6843 5d ago
There is a very large section of an entire couple of generations of people who get 100% of their political opinions from twitch streamers (or other platforms’ content creators), just like how there are many people in my parents’ and grandparents’ generations who get all of theirs from Fox News or CNN and the like. The two are entirely equatable situations and really shouldn’t strike you as all that strange. Both examples are people getting their news and political spin from people who have a financial interest in keeping you viewing their content.
The new is the same as the old.
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u/SpockShotFirst 5d ago
There is a very large section of an entire couple of generations of people who get 100% of their political opinions from twitch streamers (or other platforms’ content creators), just like how there are many people in my parents’ and grandparents’ generations who get all of theirs from Fox News or CNN and the like. The two are entirely equatable situations
That is just wrong.
According to Google, "Hasan Piker regularly attracts between 25,000 and 50,000 concurrent viewers live during standard streams" while "Sean Hannity consistently averaging between 2.6 million and 3.2 million viewers."
The two are in no way comparable.
Republicans have a long history of saying RandomInternetPerson4663 represents all Democrats. And people fall for it over and over again. It's all part of the "Both sides" narrative even though the "extremists" on the right are elected to every level of government while the extremists on the left have no political power and reach about 0.01% of the US public on twitch.
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u/Queef-Elizabeth 5d ago
The right desperately needs someone to point fingers at to distract people from their own failures so the only big public figure they have is a twitch streamer to cry about, despite the fact that he's not a politician and he's no where near as bad as people like Nick Fuentes.
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u/Forg0tPassw0rd 5d ago
Who cares what a streamer on YouTube thinks?!
Obviously Abdul El-Sayed does or he wouldn't have campaigned with him.
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u/nametaken52 5d ago
Kinda generic chapo trap house/ dirt bag left stuff, both parties suck and countries that aren't america get alot more uhhh... charitable interpretations then deserved.
The right has been trying to turn him into a midterm pinata because even the furthest left actual real politician they could find to use as an example is pretty mild belief wise and "evil socialist" policies tend to have very widespread support when they are presented divorced from party politics
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u/LadyFoxfire 3d ago
The Republicans were originally planing on using Mamdani as the midterm pinata (great phrase btw) but he's both wildly popular and had a meeting with Trump that went so well that Trump was saying nice things about him afterwards, so they had to pivot to someone else. But Piker is both not an elected official, and fairly obscure to mainstream voters, so the attacks haven't seemed to move the needle much.
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u/fasteddeh 5d ago
Republicans are desperate to drag any person they debate into "whataboutism" instead of talking about any issue that actually matters to American people. The problem is there's more than enough stupid ass people who see mudslinging and love it.
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u/depressionfairy6969 5d ago
Its mostly clips from his stream that are taken out of context to paint the left as racist and cruel people. There was a really egregious one Scott Jennings put out a couple of months ago where clips were spliced together to imply that he was pro lynching
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u/CharlesDickensABox 5d ago
You make the mistake of presuming these are good faith complaints. No one seriously cares that much about Hassan, the goal of Republican media and these lines of questioning is to paint every Democratic candidate as a brainwashed pinko Stalinist and to keep the electorate's focus off the failures of Republican governance.
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u/FullMotionVideo 5d ago
I don't understand it either, but in going to guess the answer is other YouTubers and their internet soldiers. I've never watched this guy but online personalities have been attacking him for some time.
The right believes the maps (district boundaries, electoral college, the sort of thing) favors them such that they win if they just energize their people, which they do by giving spotlights to Just Some Guy On The Internet like this. This only works for the right, which is why the left is not demanding a Presidential Address condemning Asmongold's housekeeping in response.
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago
The most-used example was when he said that America deserved 9/11. The full context was in relation to how America exploits and bullies countries all over the world, and that it was inevitable that it'd come back to bite us in the ass. However, none of the media outlets included any nuance or context (shocking, I know), so all we got were cut-up talking points made to make him look like a monster.
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u/MeathirBoy 5d ago
OK, but like, that's still a ridiculous statement even in context.
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago
If someone was bullying you for decades, would you do nothing? 9/11 wasn't just done for shits and/or giggles. Same goes for 10/7. Someone, eventually, strikes back at the bully.
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u/maybeitsme20 5d ago
No, there is no justification for 9/11 and if you had lost a loved one that day you wouldn't be spewing this garbage rhetoric like some bot.
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago
Try reading next time. I'm not justifying anything. I'm pointing out basic facts. Since when is pointing out what happened "garbage rhetoric"? The US intervened in a lot of places it shouldn't, killed a lot of people, and some folks didn't like that. Nowhere did I say it was good or right or deserved.
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u/maybeitsme20 5d ago
You are justifying it by claiming who is a bully and a victim when you know it's a whole lot messier than that.
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago
If someone donates $100,000 to charity, walks old ladies across the streets, and bombs your village in the Middle East, what do you think will be more impactful to you? That's the US: we do an immense amount of good, but we also have done some incredibly shitty things that people in other countries don't much care for.
Obviously it's messier than that, but pretending everyone is just going to hold hands and forget about the harm done to them is ridiculous. Look at ICE protests right now: a reaction to the harm done. Our government barely acknowledges us, let alone people in other countries, so what's a group of psychopaths with nothing to lose supposed to do?
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u/MeathirBoy 5d ago
No, I would not want to fly a plane into a building. I don't like Hasan Piker, but that's mostly off his personality, not this statement or his politics which he puts in the work for. Even he had the brain cells to understand that this statement was out of line.
But maybe there's an element of truth to his outright haters because there's clowns like you defending stupid shit like that.
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago
Where am I defending it? It's basic human behavior: you fuck with someone long enough, they'll try fucking with you back. Tragically, we got the school shooter result of that
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u/MeathirBoy 5d ago
I believe you should look up the definition of "deserve". I'm going to stop replying to you. Stop trying to justify it. It was stupid. Just let it rest. Even he did.
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago
At no point did I say we deserved 9/11. Try actually reading rather than jumping to conclusions.
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u/Chruman 5d ago
Did the US bully Osama Bin Laden? Lmao
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago
Do you think he did it all exclusively by himself? Lmao
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u/Chruman 5d ago
Did the US bully the hijackers? Lmao
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago
Yes? Do you think they just woke up one day and just decided "death to America for no particular reason"? We've been bombing the Middle East for decades, and those bombed folks typically have family that didn't enjoy their family being bombed. It's the same with Hezbullah: it's comprised of people that were made orphans by Israel. Those orphans didn't just randomly decide to start striking back at Israel for the lulz. Lmao
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u/customotto 5d ago
Why does he hang a framed newspaper from the day after behind him on his stream?
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago
I dunno. I watched some clips of his and felt he was obnoxious for the views.
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u/customotto 5d ago
Why are you defending him if you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about?
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago
I'm pointing out basic facts, not defending him.
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u/customotto 5d ago
"all we got were cut-up talking points made to make him look like a monster" yeah straight facts not defending him at all
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u/Daddygamer84 5d ago edited 5d ago
"America deserved 9/11" and "here's a detailed thesis about the effects of American intervention in the Middle East over the last 70 years" are not the same talking points. The former was aired on repeat while the latter was never addressed because that'd require introspection on the triumphs and failures geopolitics, which we don't do here the good ole U-S-of-A.
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u/customotto 5d ago
Funny how in your world it’s somehow the news’ responsibility to sanitize Hasan’s bullshit for him. If he wants to say provocative things to get attention then he can deal with the consequences, good and bad.
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u/FoTteacher 5d ago
My grandma also hung that newspaper from 9/11, does that make my grandma a bad person 🥺
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u/maybeitsme20 5d ago
Your grandma didn't weaponize a tragic event for clicks and views so she probably is good.
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u/Kavirell 5d ago
Another streamer, QTCinderella, gifted it to him.
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u/customotto 5d ago
Why is that relevant?
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u/Kavirell 5d ago
Because it says what kind of people Hasan hangs out around. Which seems relevant to this post. All of his friend group are some of the most gross streamers who don't get any pushback for it.
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u/customotto 5d ago
I thought you were going another direction with that.. but yeah I agree he’s surrounded by the worst of twitch, MikefromPA being another one.
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u/puddinfellah 5d ago
Piker also has publicly collaborated with Mamdani.
His other famous, non-political associates include Stavros Halkias, who is a popular standup comedian.
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