“After the 2024 election, Democratic strategists argued that what the anti-Trump coalition needed was a ‘Joe Rogan of the left,’” wrote Andrew Marantz for The New Yorker on March 17, 2025. The piece was neither an examination of the candidates nor an autopsy of the 2024 presidential race. It was a profile of streamer Hasan Piker.
Born in New Jersey to Turkish immigrants, Piker spent his childhood in Istanbul. His uncle, Cenc Uyghur, has been a far-left activist and the founder of The Young Turks network, where Piker first made a name for himself. His success since then erases any accusations of nepotism. Certainly, Piker is talented, and that is the problem—or, at least, one of the problems.
Once upon a time, the far-left was apologetic about its abhorrent views. It would debate the role that American foreign policy played in radicalizing a segment of the global Muslim population, resulting in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in academic language, sympathetic with the victims.
Piker is authentic and transgressive, which is his appeal. “America deserved 9/11,” he once declared with total certitude. His favorite flag is Hezbollah’s. He calls Crimea “a part of the Russian territory, b*tch,” adding, “Cry me a river” over its annexation. He is not in favor of date rape, but he said that it is “better if it happens to rich women.” He also thinks that blacks should “shut the f**k up” about border security.
Piker is also a socialist, Marxist, communist, Maoist—pick your term. He is an advocate of the Cuban regime, an apologist for the Chinese Communist Party and nostalgic for the Soviet Union, whose collapse he declared as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century—also making him a plagiarist and a contender for the Harvard presidency. In a recent College Democrats convention, Piker showed up in a Mao Zedong costume—only his second-most objectionable attire—and gave a speech partially echoing Joseph Stalin with Benito Mussolini’s mannerism. Elsewhere, he once said:
“I wouldn’t say I’m a communist, but when people call me that, I don’t really care because I’m, like, I think that’s pretty cool. It’s ‘Star Trek.” It’s the ‘Star Trek’ universe. They have a moneyless society. I feel as though that is definitely an honorable end goal to reach where we have all of our needs met.”
There is one argument in defense of Piker’s denial that he is a communist. The Soviet and Chinese systems are quite different, both of which he likes. He is a multimillionaire with an estimated annual income in seven figures. He is also extremely progressive socially, and communist regimes have historically been the opposite. He has a soft spot for Islamist groups (he is not a practicing Muslim) while Marxists are anti-religion.
Piker has certainly read the Cliff Notes of Marx’s works (if not the whole thing), but his convictions are not affirmative. His starting point is a deep hatred of America and the Western world order it upholds, and he works backwards to find justification in the conduct of rival regimes and systems. He is a hater, and as is the rule, haters eventually become Jew-haters.
Piker wants to eradicate Israel. He justified the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He calls pro-Israel Jews “Nazis.” He prefers Hamas to Israel “a thousand times.” He calls Charedim “inbreds.” He reads aloud a comment on his stream telling Jews to “go back to Auschwitz” and laughs at it.
He claims to be anti-genocide when it comes to the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but he dilutes condemnation of China for the (actual) genocide of Uyghurs by invoking Israel.
Yet left-wing journalists, often Jews, insist that he is not a Jew-hater. New York Times columnist Ezra Klein quoted Piker to defend him against the charge.
In a podcast interview, Piker had told Klein: “From pogroms to the Holocaust, Jews have always been singled out by those in power as a scapegoat for the instability and economic volatility that people in power caused,” adding that “a resilient, nascent antisemitism is a constant threat.” For a second piece of evidence, Klein noted that Piker had a Jewish friend—or, rather, endorsed Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who is Jewish, for re-election.
Eric Levitz wrote for Vox that Piker is a problematic figure for the left, but he felt obliged to say that he does not “think that Piker is an antisemite.”
Why is this the case?
The easy answer is that these left-wing journalists believe that they need him, and in some instances, even like him. But there is also a second answer.
The most important denominator in distinguishing between the right and the left is education. Academia has trained the average progressive to create caveats, branches and complications when examining a phenomenon. The average right-winger simplifies things. This includes their influencers.
Like Piker (and unlike Rogan), groyper Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, is a transgressive provocateur with a huge influence on the right-wing youth. The right-left contrast between the two is evident. Fuentes calls for a “holy war” against Jews, while Piker calls those who waged a holy war against the Jewish state—Hamas—“the lesser of the two evils” (the great evil being Israel). This makes it easy for the left to condemn Fuentes and excuse Piker. But a little right-wing simplification could be useful on occasion.
Piker brings everything back to the one Jewish state, including Chinese genocide. His condemnation of Hamas as “evil” only comes out in comparison to being a preferable alternative to Israel. His Jewish best friend happens to be the Jew who, as early as November 2023, was questioning Israel’s war against Hamas—“as a Jew.”
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, the wizard Gandalf tells the hobbit Frodo: “Always after a defeat and a respite, the shadow takes another shape and grows again.” The last form of the shadow was genetic; Nazis hated Jewish blood.
The shadow has a new look—a more disguised one, as anti-Zionism. But a fixation on the one Jewish state on the planet, with double standards applied to single Israel out, is anti-Jewish bigotry nevertheless.
Except in the eyes of journalists with nominal connections to Jewishness beyond their heritage, including Zionism (though overly familiar with academic theories and caveats), who squint and tilt their heads just in the right angle to Jew-wash Piker. That, and also, they really need the progressive base’s votes.
At the end of the day, the best argument against Piker is not his anti-Jewish bigotry. It is that he hates America; it is his view that America deserved Sept. 11, which happened 25 years ago next month. Just like his embrace of Mao, his hatred of the Jewish state—the closest resemblance of the United States in the Middle East—is just one symptom of that greater disease of anti-Americanism.
