Hasan Piker

Piker at the 2018 Politicon.

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Hasan Doğan Piker (also called HasanAbi. translates to "elder brother" in Turkish) (July 25, 1991–)^[1] is a popular Turkish-American leftist streamer on Twitch with over 2.7 million followers. Piker had previously worked for The Young Turks and is the nephew of the creator of the show, Cenk Uygur.^[2] Although popular among many left-wingers, Piker has attracted criticism from across the political spectrum.

Controversies

Controversy over reaction content

Hasan primarily does reaction content, or videos where he watches content for the first time and gives his thoughts as what he's watching plays. However, some creators, including those whose content he has shown on stream, have taken issue with how Hasan goes about this, noting he commonly fails to say anything of substance during these reactions and will sometimes leave his stream while the video continues playing, something he is aware of to the point of once saying one could make an entire compilation of him leaving while the video he is supposed to be reacting to plays.^[3]

In 2022, Jay Exci, a YouTuber who Hasan had reacted to, went over Hasan's segment and noted how little was properly contributed to the video being shown. Similarly, she broke down the justifications made by Hasan and his fanbase in order to explain why she finds these arguments to be lacking. Of note, she points out many of Hasan's fans commonly blame the person whose content is being used for Hasan not contributing anything to the video while watching it, discussing how difficult it is for creators to avoid these situations even if the work fails to fall under fair use.^[3]

To be clear, Jay stresses that she is fine with reaction content on its own as long as it is transformative,^{[note 1]} even giving examples of creators that she felt do the kind of reaction content she approves of. In the process, she also draws comparisons between Hasan and Jinx, a YouTuber who had previously gotten into controversy for spamming out large amounts of reaction-based content where he commonly contributes very little while watching a video; she notes that Hasan tends to do better than Jinx at doing the bare minimum and attempting to comment while watching something, even if she finds Jinx to be better at shouting out the original video in the end.^[3]

There is also a veritable cottage industry of HasanAbi react channels out there.^[5] This creates a sort of weird phenomenon where Hasan will "react" to content, and these various channels will then feature Hasan's content in turn and profit from this. Fans of Hasan have dubbed this the "HasanAbi Industrial Complex."^[6]

Hasan's House

Another area of controversy regarding Hasan involves his choice to purchase a three-million-dollar house in Los Angeles County in 2021. Some on the left, such as socialist activist Alexis Isabel, argued that "it's just flat out unethical to be profiting off of socialism and buying yourself a 3 million dollar home in a state that has one of the highest homelessness rates in the country."^[7]

Arwa Mahdawi, discussing this controversy in The Guardian, notes how she personally understood the claims of hypocrisy from Hasan's fanbase, but she personally does not see it as a big deal and could easily imagine Hasan getting in trouble for buying a modest home for equally understandable reasons:

Look, if you’re making a living through socialist politics then you shouldn’t be surprised if people raise an eyebrow when you shell out millions of dollars on property. That said, I don’t really care about Piker’s fancy new house. There is a strain of purity politics on the left that means that nobody seems to be able to do anything correctly. Had Piker bought a more modest house in a cheap neighbourhood, for example, he would probably have been accused of being a gentrifier. Instead of wasting all its time in-fighting, the left really ought to exert its energy building a broader base and trying to actually get into power. Let Piker enjoy his fancy new pool. There are bigger fish to fry.^[8]

Hasan himself fired back at these criticisms by noting, similarly, that his only other options are renting or buying a house in a less affluent place, which could easily be considered gentrification given Hasan's massive wealth. He also told his audience “listen if you’re mad at me tax the fuck out of people like me,” showing that, despite his wealth, he is in favor of fixing the various problems people are pointing out.^[9]

It should be noted that, despite his wealth, he appears to still be advocating for left-wing politics, so this decision did not seem to signal a noticeable change in his personality or politics, at least judging by his creative output.

Other controversial actions

Hasan's public statements have also caused him to receive massive backlash at times.

9/11 comment

In 2019, while criticizing the right-wing views of Republican Dan Crenshaw, Hasan said “America deserved 9/11, dude.”^[10] Piker later apologized for this statement on The Young Turks, saying that although he believes US foreign policy in the pre-9/11 era led to the attack,^{[note 2]} his statement was overly broad and failed to make it clear.^[11]

Still, his use of words like "deserve" was, at the least, an example of bad optics. Saying an event happened because of previous events is not the same as arguing nearly three thousand innocent people deserved to lose their lives^[12] nor that a nation deserved to suffer the deadliest terrorist attack in modern history.^[13] Hasan said a rather crass claim, and even if one could argue a more intellectual version of it, what Hasan actually said is not defensible, even by his own admission since.

Foreign policy takes

Hasan has a history of defending authoritarian governments on the condition they are geopolitical enemies of the United States. Slightly before Russia invaded Ukraine, Hasan declared such a thing would never occur and called those who believed it would "Liberal Q-Anon."^[14] He would later describe the content as "mass shelling on both sides," as opposed to a unilateral invasion.^[15] He also got frustrated on stream by those who compared Putin to Hitler, while also calling the annexation of Crimea "understandable."^[16] Hasan did, however, raise $200,000 for a Ukrainian relief fund during a stream of Elden Ring.^[17] ...after the invasion already started.^[18]

Hasan has similarly shown distaste for those who criticize Chinese imperialism, on one occasion comparing Taiwan to the Confederacy,^[19] a tactic he has also used while talking about Tibet.^[20] In one 2023 stream, Hasan described himself as "Pro-China" and downplayed the status of human rights in Hong Kong under China.^[21]

While watching a video by JT "Second Thought" Chapman, a campist YouTuber who defended Russia's invasion of Ukraine^[22] and would later go on to defend authoritarianism as a necessary tool of the state,^[23][24] a Twitch chatter asked Hasan for "thoughts on [Chapman] being a tankie." In response, Hasan stated he hoped Chapman would "drive a tank" to the chatter's house and banned him for a week while telling him to think about "how stupid [he is] as a human being".^[25] Hasan also appeared as a guest on The Deprogram, a podcast co-hosted by Chapman alongside fellow campist YouTubers Hakim and Yugopnik.^[26][27]

In 2024 Hasan expressed support for Hezbollah, which he compared to Nelson Mandela.^[28] He also conducted an interview with a self-described Yemeni "pirate" named Rashid Al-Hadad onboard the Houthi-hijacked ship Galaxy Leader, following the Houthis' attack on commercial vessels in retaliation for Israel's assault of Gaza.^[29] As a result of this interview, critics accused Hasan of whitewashing terrorists.^[30] The Houthis also promote Antisemitism, with their flag literally stating "Curse the Jews" in Arabic.^[31]

Cracker-gate

In late 2021, Hasan was banned from Twitch temporarily because of his use of the word "cracker," a negative term for white people, on stream.^[32] Hasan was not the only example of this at the time, as Twitch had banned Vaush from the platform for the same reason.^[33] This caused controversy as some felt that Twitch was giving into white supremacist notions of white people being victims, which many felt was especially ironic given Twitch's bad moderation of bigotry against marginalized groups.^[34]

Political activity

2020 US presidential election

In October 2020 Hasan played the video game Among Us with US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez live on Twitch for a "Get out the Vote" initiative.^[35] The viewership count ended up reaching almost 700,000.^[36]

During the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Hasan was the sixth most viewed source of the election, taking up 4.9% of total marketshare.^{[37][38][39][40]} He was also the most viewed Twitch streamer during 2020's election week, with nearly seven million hours of view time.^[41]

Hasan's coverage of the January 6th coup attempt reached 231,000 viewers.^[42]

2024 DNC

Hasan was one of the internet influencers given press credentials for the 2024 Democratic National Convention.^[43] While there, he interviewed progressive Congressman Ro Khanna.^[44] Hasan also met with uncommitted delegates at the DNC,^[45] the same delegates the DNC was committed to ignoring.^[46]

Hasan was ultimately kicked out of the DNC on the final day.^[47] Hasan alleges the reason he was kicked was because of his meeting with the uncommitted delegates and tweeting that the DNC messaging was comparable to Israeli hasbara.^[48]

Notes

References