Hasan Piker is the King of the 2nd Screen
Piker's success comes because he gives his viewers access to our paywalled news system – through his own political lens.
If you're at all connected with political media like I am these days, you simply can't go more than a few hours without hearing Hasan Piker's name. His name is constantly on the lips of the centrist Democrats that Piker opposes on a daily basis.
In a political era full of pathetic acts of nothingness from across the political spectrum, one of the saddest things I've ever witnessed was former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo bringing up Hasan Piker at a mayoral debate in last year's New York City election.
Cuomo and his team apparently saw an opportunity to paint political upstart Zohran Mamdani as too extreme for the mayorship after appearing on Piker's stream earlier in the primary election cycle.
That attack fell flat, the people rejected Cuomo's warmed over do-nothing centrist Democrat agenda and elected Mamdani anyway.
I recalled Cuomo's Piker-moaning last week when centrist special interest group Third Way invoked the popular streamer's name in a call for Democratic politicians to shun him and not appear on his streams, citing a long list of misleading claims about Piker's views.
Let me get this out of the way first: I am not a "HasanAbi-head" as the streamer likes to call his most devoted followers. I occasionally watch his takes on YouTube and will only tune into his streams if there is major breaking political news, like January 6 or election night, and even then, I only stick around long enough to understand his take before moving on to other coverage. I like his podcast, Fear& but mostly because I find his co-hosts to be hilarious.
Having said all that, here is what I think about Piker:
-He is anti-Israel but not antisemitic, at least that I've seen. I've heard him talk compellingly about how insidious antisemitism is and how it's dangerous to conflate the actions of Israel as the actions of Jews. But people tell me he's said things that definitely crossed the line into antisemitism, but I haven't seen it as a very inconsistent viewer of his.
-At the same time, a big reason why so many Democratic primary voters have turned against supporting Israel is because of online voices like Piker who are reporting the nation's war crimes accurately.
-Yes, he called some Orthodox Jews inbred. But he also calls Republican voters in the south inbred. This is a nothingburger.
-He is misogynistic in the way many Bernie-bros are. On the whole I would say he's less misogynistic than society at large. He regularly speaks about how dangerous the incel and manosphere sections of the internet are for young men and I think he tries to set up himself as a counterweight against that movement.
-Yeah he did say America deserved 9/11, but he give analysis for it, based on the writings of Osama Bin Laden. From Bin Laden's point of view, the death, destruction, and financial control of the Middle East by the US did deserve a response like 9/11. Looking around now at what Trump is doing to Iran and it's hard to argue with that reasoning.
-I agree that there's a lot we can learn from the Chinese Communist Party. Have you seen their train system? Our system here that rewards unfettered capitalism and those at the very tippy top of the economic power scale is not working.
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The New Republic interviewed Piker recently and asked him about the statements put forward by Third Way, you can read it here.
Having addressed most of the core statements put forward by Third Way here, let me just say that as an organization, Third Way is completely useless. Their name literally means finding a way that is not Republican and not Democratic, but rather a secret third thing: spinelessness.
Previous to this, Third Way was working overtime trying to get Democrats to abandon trans people. They thought an anti-trans turn from the party would win over culturally conservative voters based on a couple of polls, but in reality this might move like 3 total voters in the whole country. Every dipshit who suggests this seems to miss that the average voter is not basing their vote on fucking trans issues and that issue becomes less and less relevant the more gas prices inch up.
Having failed to turn the Democratic party away from trans issues, now they are trying to exorcize Piker from the position of power he's managed to carve out for himself.
I want to dive a little deeper into how he's reached this point as an influence on this nation's politics. When Mamdani first went on Piker's stream, he was polling at about 1% (or so I recall). Now he's the mayor of New York City. Of course Piker didn't carry Mamdani to victory alone, the mayor also ran a brilliant race and connected with people on the issues that actually matter.
But Mamdani's appearance on the stream brought him some early attention amongst lefty voters. Watching now, you can see that little spark that so many voters came to recognize later in the process.
He may very well have gone on to win the Democratic primary without Piker's help, but the fact remains that his appearance on Piker's stream was an early spark. Now in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, a similarly lefty candidate named Abdul El-Sayed, who has also appeared on Piker's stream, is facing blow back in his race against the more centrist candidate Mallory McMorrow.
I happen to like both of these candidates. McMorrow is much more closely aligned with the Democratic Party apparatus, but I've been following her career with interest since she spoke up in the Michigan state house on behalf of trans kids.
The two are running in a tight-ish race currently, with McMorrow up by several percentage points according to recent polling. This is why Third Way has tried to jump into the race. The point of their recent anti-Piker memo was to try to force the controversial streamer into being an issue in the race, rather than debate over issues that actually matter to voters, like affordability. Third Way doesn't really want voters thinking about affordability, I bet you can figure out why!
Having written all this, Piker has risen to where he is in large part because of our current media ecosystem. It feels like everything is paywalled these days. You have to pay to watch a cable news station, you have to pay to read the New York Times, if you want the news without right wing bullshit framing (though you will still have this with cable news and the New York Times), you better be ready to pay.
It's the great imbalance in American political media. Everything on the right is free and available to news consumers, everything left of center carries a cost, you better subscribe!
Enter Piker.
He gives his tens of thousands of viewers access to otherwise paid content. He streams 12 hours a day, often watching cable news, or news clips, or reading articles alongside his chat. And you can watch him for free, if you're willing to tolerate his top of the hour ad break. You can skip the ads with a paid subscription or a Prime sub provided from Twitch owner Amazon.
So basically you can leave him on your second screen while you do your computer work and you will get the news, but filtered through him.
It reminds me of old school right wing AM radio stations for folks who spend all day driving.
It's not just Piker doing this. Twitch is littered with politics bro streams, though he is fairly unique in offering a leftist perspective and framing of the daily news.
It's his relative uniqueness that gives centrist Democrats cover to label him extreme, while also kneecapping a valuable exposure point for lefty, non-establishment primary challengers like Mamdani and El-Sayed.
If Andrew Cuomo and Third Way get their way, they will make it politically unviable for lefty candidates to be exposed to the 100,000 viewers (and even more on YouTube) that Piker's stream provides.
Centrists aren't really objecting to Piker's views, they're cherry-picking controversial takes about him in an effort to take away his power platform in this year's primary battles in which leftist candidates are finding increasingly more success.
If Third Way can force leftist candidates away from piker's stream, they will have an easier time finishing their project of turning the Democratic party into a moderate version of the Republican party.
I think we should instead ignore the Third Ways of the world and advocate for better policies that materially meet the needs of voters.
