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“It doesn’t feel great to constantly be berated like this,” said Hasan Piker.
By Friday morning, when he caught up with Semafor, the socialist influencer had spent the past week watching Democrats condemn him or distance themselves from his commentary.
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who he’d campaigned with, promised that he had “no plans” to rally with Piker again. Multiple House Democrats, including Leader Hakeem Jeffries, accused Piker of making the “malicious claim that American Jews are inviting violence against themselves.” That, said Piker, was a wild misreading of his argument.
In the episode that sparked the backlash, Piker claimed that pro-Israel Jewish leaders conflate Jewish identity with support for Israel, and cause anger at Israel to fuel antisemitism and endanger American Jews.
“Virtually all of my critics, ironically enough, have been saying the exact same thing that I’m saying,” Piker argued. “They’re like: Associating Israel’s actions with every Jewish American is anti-Semitic. And I’m like: Yeah, that’s my point.”
Piker has been one of the left’s most popular online commentators for years. That’s led to some whiplash in how he’s covered. Profiles of his rise suggested that his brash, jocular commentary was just what the left needed, after “wokeness” wrecked its image. Then he started campaigning for the candidates he liked, and centrist Democrats began warning that their party would own all the offensive things he ever did or said.
That more or less happened this week, with dozens of Fox News segments about Piker, portraying him as a left-wing kingmaker and the id of the socialist movement. Democrats were now familiar with his greatest hits, or misses: Joking in 2019 that America “deserved 9/11,” praising Mao Zedong, crediting Hezbollah with his “favorite” flag.
The last being another joke, he said – ripped out of the context where he was riffing on how boring the rainbow Pride flag is. “The yellow and green is not exactly great,” Piker said. “I’m not exactly a vexillology nerd, but I do like the AK-47 with the fist holding it up. I think it’s a cool design philosophy.”
Jokes aside, what did he really think about Hezbollah —and violence against people who endorse Israel’s conduct? I mentioned Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., who has cheered on the war and called Muslims “terrorists.”
“I’ve never been an advocate for violence against civilians, no matter how hard people who, unironically, are advocates of ongoing acts against the civilian population in Gaza or the civilian population in Lebanon, try to make it seem like that’s the case,” he said.
“I’m always going to explain the inception of Hezbollah or the inception of the Palestinian resistance, even if I disagree with their, you know, domestic forms of governance or their political philosophy outside of that,” he added. “But yeah, occupied people have a right to resist militarily against a military occupation from a foreign state.”
As he got more involved in electoral politics, Piker thought more about how a stray impolitic comment could be clipped and used against anyone who appears with him. It was a mistake, he said, for a spokesman for Sen. Jon Ossoff to distance himself from his commentary. Didn’t they see what was happening?
“I am considered a very controversial figure in the online, apolitical right wing circles,” Piker said. “They’ve been treating me the same way that Neera Tanden is talking about me for a decade. They’ve been doing this clipping operation for almost a decade, at this point. So I am very aware of that. I’m always aware of that. That’s always in the back of my mind.”
Piker believed that the backlash from Democrats could impact the revenue from his streams. “There’s definitely talks behind the scenes with advertisers that shy away from collaboration opportunities,” he said. “There’s an emotional toll that it takes on me. I mean, nobody likes to be misunderstood.”
More was probably coming. Piker was still considering a defamation lawsuit against Scott Jennings, the CNN commentator who claimed that Piker had endorsed lynching. He was weighing to do the same with Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., and Rep. Brad Sherman, who had accused him of calling for “violence against an American Jew” and endorsing child rape, respectively.
Piker was also taking seriously Rep. Josh Gottheimer’s D-N.J. proposal to condemn him on the House floor, with a resolution about “bigot streamers” that calls on social media companies to rein them in.
“People are literally tagging the Twitch CEO to be like: See, look at all these Democrats that have condemned this guy. Why won’t you ban him?” Piker said. “Because that’s the goal. That’s the goal for a lot of people. That’s the goal for a lot of internet trolls… and also the entire Republican Party, the State Department under Donald Trump, and also damn near the entirety of establishment Democrats.”
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David’s view
I wanted to check in with Piker because this week really felt like an inflection point. Back in April, the campaign by Third Way and some centrist Democrats to demand candidates stay away from Parker fizzled out. He kept campaigning, drew big crowds, and convinced a lot of Democrats that it was time to get over “cancel culture.”
This week, pro-Israel and anti-socialist Democrats took another and more aggressive approach. Jewish Insider published the clip of Piker talking about blowback on American Jews with the headline “Hasan Piker says Jews who support Israel are inviting violence.” That angered Michigan Democrats who were frustrated with El-Sayed, and brought Jeffries and other Democrats into the fray, putting the candidate El-Sayed had invested the most in on the defensive.
Piker believes that the attention on him is ludicrous, an attempt by the old political establishment to toxify views that are now held by most Democrats; specifically, that Israel is committing a genocide of the Palestinians and America should stop sending it weapons. This is not wrong. The weakness of the Democratic Party’s image and its lack of a coherent agenda that every candidate has written a Republican playbook: Find the craziest thing anyone on the left has said, and glue it to the Democrats’ foreheads.
To the extent that works, it’s for the same reason Piker can’t be “de-platformed” unless social media platforms are goaded into killing his revenue. Politicians don’t control the conversation, or the attention economy, and neither do the traditional outlets that used to herd this stuff.
Room for Disagreement
Even the Democrats going after Piker have some concerns that their attacks are blurring the party’s message. “I think this kind of stuff is what Republicans are going to use to drive a wedge,” Gottheimer said on Fox News.
Notable
In the Atlantic, liberal critic of the left Jonathan Chait worries about the Michigan race: El-Sayed “winning could invite a future in which the United States has not just one party that is open to bigots but two.”
In Jacobin, Branko Marcetic accuses centrist Democrats of hating Piker more than they love victory.