Noushad Variyattiyakkal/ZUMA
Hasan Piker’s name is everywhere. Not because he won an election or passed legislation. Not because he’s a big sports star or an astronaut. It’s because he won’t stop yapping—and scores of people won’t stop listening. Depending on who you ask, he’s either one of the most dangerous voices in American politics—or one of the most honest.
Piker, an avowed Marxist, is among the loudest voices on the American left. His megaphone is a Twitch stream where he spends roughly eight hours a day, seven days a week, breaking down political news to an audience that skews young and male. He’s blunt, frequently crass, and deeply influential. There seems to be a profile of him every other day. (One such New York Times headline: “A Progressive Mind in a Body Made for the ‘Manosphere’”.) Time named him on its Top 100 Creators list. All of this is why certain factions of the Democratic Party have spent the last several weeks trying to make him a liability for the candidates he supports, pointing to off-color, if not offensive, comments he’s made over the years as evidence that he’s too toxic to touch.
So I sat down with him.
We talked about why Fox News can’t stop covering him—and why he thinks that’s a gift. We talked about the ideological fault lines inside the Democratic Party, what he actually believes about Israel and Zionism, and why people can’t stop talking about him. “We’re on the fourth week now,” he jokes. “Like, why are you still talking about me? I’m irrelevant.” We don’t think so, Hasan.
