The other day on X, leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker got into an argument with a commentator known as Swann Marcus. Marcus had scoffed at the notion of Piker trying to connect with blue-collar workers. In retaliation, Piker claimed that Marcus had written a “how to” manual about sex tourism in Asia:
As you can see, Community Notes quickly corrected Piker. The person who wrote the “how to” articles about sex tourism was actually a rightist influencer named Matt Forney. Apparently, some leftists had — intentionally or unintentionally — gotten Marcus mixed up with Forney because Marcus had made a documentary about Burmese missionaries. But Piker refused to delete his accusation against Marcus, even after being informed of his mistake.
Recently, a video resurfaced of Hasan Piker launching a profanity-laced tirade against a Vietnamese refugee named Bach Hac. The refugee complains of suffering under Vietnam’s communist regime. Piker responded by saying “Fuck you old lady. Shut the fuck up you stupid idiotic old lady. Suck my dick, old lady. God damn, Yo, fuck this refugee”. He then tells her to go back and live in “South Vietnam”. Piker later deleted the stream, but has never apologized.
During a recent speech at Yale, Hasan Piker declared that “The fall of the USSR was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century.” This is an almost direct quote from Vladimir Putin, who said in 2005 that “The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This would be news, of course, to the countries that fought to escape Soviet communist rule, and whose economies flourished after the USSR’s collapse.
Recently, Ezra Klein wrote a New York Times op-ed urging Democrats to open a dialogue with Hasan Piker instead of trying to freeze him out of the party. The Times gave Klein’s post the headline “Hasan Piker is not the Enemy”. On a podcast, Piker then declared that Hamas is “1000 times better than Israel”. The New York Times promptly changed the headline of Ezra Klein’s post:
This kind of behavior is par for the course for Piker. Jeremiah Johnson had a good roundup back in December:
For the last few weeks, I’ve been grappling with one of the worst colds/flus I’ve had in my life. During that stretch, I leaned on one of my guilty internet pleasures - watching livestreamers on Twitch. The content on these streams is rarely good, but it’s often comfortingly bad, like the terrible daytime television I used to watch when I stayed home si…
5 months ago · 428 likes · 196 comments · Jeremiah Johnson
Some excerpts:
When questioned about China’s lack of LGBT rights, Hasan said the country is ‘gay as hell’ and defended the CCP banning gay dating apps as a ‘privacy issue’…He went on state television to talk about how great China is, and dismissed criticism of the CCP as ‘rumors’ and ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘lies’ that he wanted to help correct…He’s downplayed the genocide in Xinjiang, calling the concentration camps there ‘re-education’ camps and claiming they’re all closed now.2 He’s said that Chinese colonialism in Tibet was a good thing…
He’s defended the idea of
