The Guardian normalises extremist Hasan Piker

A recent Guardian op-ed on Hasan Piker’s role in an upcoming Michigan election completely erased the Twitch streamer’s record of extremism, while blaming “elites” in the party for the criticism he’s faced.

The piece, (“Why do elite Democrats fear Hasan Piker?”, April 8), by Bhaskar Sunkara, president of The Nation and founding editor of Jacobin, begins by noting that Abdul El-Sayed, who’s running in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, announced that Piker would appear at two campaign rallies alongside him, and then decries party leaders who denounced El-Sayed’s association with the streamer.

Hasan Piker is, in fact, one of the most popular political influencers on Twitch, and is as known as much for his crude, cruel, adolescent and, at times, conspiratorial ramblings as he is for his unambiguously extremist and racist views.

Piker has a soft spot for the former Soviet Union, fancies himself a reincarnation of Vladimir Lenin, and has praised the Chinese Communist Party. Yet, showing that he doesn’t discriminate between diametrically opposed ideological movements within the anti-West camp, he’s also endorsed Islamist extremists, including, but not limited to, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Piker said America deserved 9/11, praised the Houthis, and glorified the “brave mujahideen” for wounding US Congressman Dan Crenshaw, who, during his third deployment in Afghanistan, was hit by an IED blast, causing him to lose an eye.

A day after the Oct. 7 massacre, Piker said “Do you think that this happened out of nowhere? Do you think this happened out of thin air? Are you f***ing stupid? Do you think the Israeli state was just, like, peacefully coexisting, and then these guys came in with f***ing gliders out of nowhere?” he said angrily. “You cannot push people into a f***ing corner their whole lives and not expect them to fight back at a certain point”.

Despite being repeatedly asked by Piers Morgan, in 2024, whether he condemned or condoned the October 7 massacre, he refrained from directly answering the question. “I think that violent means of maintaining an apartheid is inevitably going to yield violent retaliation,” Piker said.

There’s no comparison between Israel and Hamas,” Piker said last May in one X post. “One is a militant resistance comprised of orphaned soldiers born into a 77 year occupation, the other is a ethnoreligious supremacist apartheid state w nukes doing a genocide backed by the USA!”

While failing to outright condemn the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust, Piker referred to Israel’s response to Hamas’ massacre as a “livestreamed Holocaust”.

Piker also described the documented Hamas sexual violence of Oct. 7 as “rape fantasies” or “rape hallucinations.”

He also said, that it “doesn’t matter if f*ing rapes happened on Oct. 7, like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me even this much [pinching fingers]. So that’s the other part of this problem that many people can’t contend with. Like… the Palestinian resistance is not perfect.”

Yet, the Guardian columnist ignores almost all of this, acknowledging only that Piker has said “controversial” things, and claiming that he’s merely engaged in “forceful criticism of Israel and its crimes in Gaza”, while praising him as a “progressive” voice fiercely critical of the US/Israel war with Iran who’s brave enough to talk about class politics, and who appeals to alienated young men.

Once again, the Guardian has demonstrated that there’s no Jew-hating, pro-terror, anti-Western agitator that editors aren’t willing to normalise.