On Wednesday, the centrist Democratic candidate Haley Stevens narrowly lost a hotly contested primary in Michigan to a rank outsider, socialist politician Abdul El-Sayed, despite the fact that she ran the most expensive primary campaign in the party’s history.
Stevens’ $60m versus El-Sayed’s $5m was not enough to tip the scales in her favor. Now the Democratic candidate for the Senate, El-Sayed ran a successful populist campaign on the ground and, almost as significantly these days, online.
One of his key supporters was Hasan Piker, a streamer and influencer with more than three million followers on his Twitch account – and a history of outrageous and inflammatory comments regarding Jews, terrorism and China’s former communist leader Chairman Mao.
While El-Sayed distanced himself somewhat from Piker, the far-left commentator – who is particularly popular with men under 30 – was confident that he played a significant role in winning the youth vote for the Democratic hopeful.
This is the second time this year a Piker-backed candidate has successfully contested a Democratic primary, while the self-described Marxist has also thrown his weight behind a number of failed contenders.
From Young Turk to Twitch Streamer
Piker has been described by some as the American left’s Joe Rogan due to the popularity of his channel on social media platform Twitch and his platforming of left-wing political voices.
For instance, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the darlings of the Democratic left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Bernie Sanders, have all featured on his channel, as has El-Sayed.
The 35-year-old son of Turkish immigrants, who was born in New Jersey but grew up in Istanbul, first came to prominence while working at left-wing American news outlet The Young Turks (TYT), which is run by his uncle Cenk Uygur.
The communications and political science graduate hosted a TYT video series on Facebook presenting left-leaning political analysis that targeted millennial voters. However, he left TYT in order to focus on his career as a Twitch streamer, in a desire to reach a younger audience in what he argues is a medium dominated by right-wing voices.
Pro-Mao, Anti-Israel
While Piker’s supporters compare him to Rogan, his deliberately inflammatory style is closer to the tactics of the popular far-right streamer and Hitler sympathizer Nick Fuentes.
A self-described Marxist, Piker has gone out of his way to defend the legacy of China’s infamous communist leader, Chairman Mao Zedong. Despite estimates that put the death toll associated with Mao’s policies at around 65 million, Piker wore a Maoist-style outfit during a trip around China and gave an address in which he berated moderate Democrats and praised Mao’s Little Red Book.
His attitude toward terrorism – particularly by Muslim-backed groups – has also stoked controversy. During Mamdani’s election campaign, Piker was forced to apologize for comments he made in 2019 claiming that America deserved 9/11. In the same diatribe, he suggested that American veteran and Republican politician Dan Crenshaw lost his eye when “some mujahideen – a brave f–ing soldier – f–ed his eye hole with their d–”.
However, it is his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that have stoked the most controversy. As well as saying he does not support the existence of the state of Israel, he claimed that Hamas is “a thousand times better than the fascist settler colonial apartheid state”.
Piker also labeled some Orthodox Jews in Israel as “inbred”, but claimed in The Guardian it “has nothing to do with Judaism” and is a pejorative he applies to all “ethnoreligious and racial supremacists of all different varieties”.
Democrats Divided
Despite his espousal of extreme views – which have got him into trouble with Twitch over breaches of its code of conduct – Piker has exercised increasing sway in the Democratic Party. But support for him is far from uniform, with many centrist party members criticizing the streamer and distancing themselves from events he is involved in.
So, on the one hand, he has been supported by party insiders on the left, such as Bernie Sanders and AOC. Sanders has defended Piker’s tendency to make inflammatory comments, arguing that the party needs a big tent and that the controversial streamer must be a part of it. The respect appears to be mutual, with Piker supporting Sanders’ efforts to push the Democrats further to the left.
At the same time, the backlash against Piker’s involvement in El-Sayed’s campaign demonstrates the divide within the party. Democratic State Representative Carrie Rheingans decided not to participate in the event with Piker, even while continuing to support El-Sayed. Former Democratic State Senator Mallory McMorrow compared Piker to Fuentes and criticized his practice of saying “extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks”.
Backing Democratic Socialist Candidates
But whatever the misgivings of the likes of Rheingans, Carville and other self-described moderate Democrats, it appears that Piker’s star is rising and his influence only growing.
Earlier this year, Adam Hamawy, a progressive candidate backed by Piker – as well as Bernie Sanders – won the crowded Democratic congressional primary in New Jersey, with Hamawy’s work volunteering at a Gaza hospital during the war earning him support.
El-Sayed can now be added to the list, while debate is already beginning about Piker’s possible influence on the Democrats’ chances in the 2028 presidential election.
His popularity among young men – a voter group the party is struggling with – makes him especially hard to ignore, and he appears to distill something of the zeitgeist among Democratic voters, particularly their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Although he claims he does not want or expect to be a kingmaker for the Democrats’ progressive wing, the signs are already there that he is exerting an influence on the party, raising the prospect that his divisive brand of left-wing politics will have increasing sway over American political life.
