LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Hasan Piker is one of the most important political influences among young people today, especially among young men on the far left. That's not lost on Republicans. In recent weeks, they've crafted attack ads against the 35-year-old commentator and candidates he aligns with.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Unhinged podcaster Hasan Piker said America deserved 9/11. Campaigning right beside him is Michigan socialist Abdul El-Sayed.
FADEL: Piker does not believe this messaging will work.
HASAN PIKER: At the end of the day, I'm a Twitch streamer. I hold no political office. I have no real political power. So getting people to be upset at a Twitch streamer and their affiliation is going to be very difficult, especially when there are real crises going on in the country.
FADEL: Through daily livestreams on Twitch, Piker regularly calls out Democrats, lambasts conservatives, dissects whatever's in the zeitgeist. His unfiltered and at times vulgar and incendiary style has generated fans and fury. Piker has talked a lot recently about his political views, but we wanted to talk about the backlash, his audience reach and the gap between how critics portray him versus who he says he is.
PIKER: The way that I'm portrayed in the media is an America-hating communist, Islamist fundamentalist who wants to secretly do jihad, and then also at the same time, very woke and gay. But who I am is very simple. I'm a socialist. I'm an anti-imperialist. I want what's best for everyone all around the world. I feel like we live in the wealthiest nation on the planet, and I find it unconscionable that we do not have a public healthcare system in this country. I find it morally repugnant that we use so much of our resources on waging wars overseas instead of using all of that wealth on ourselves.
FADEL: The first time you really came on scene nationally, you were really spoken about as, like, is he the Joe Rogan of the left?
PIKER: Yeah.
FADEL: Can he appeal to the young men that Democrats just cannot appeal to? And that really has morphed now to, is he a liability, somebody that Democrats must disavow?
PIKER: Well, it's pretty simple. You can't podcast your way out of this problem. The problems are with the party. The problems are with a lack of clear, definable policies that the party represents at the national level. And that's part of the reason why the Democrats are still largely very unpopular, even though Trump is the least popular political figure, perhaps in history. And the other thing I always brought up was that I'm an independent media figure that is also not a party apparatchik in the way that, for example, Charlie Kirk was. I have my own political ideology, and I have policies that I want to see get implemented and I'm always going to push for that.
FADEL: You do say incendiary things. Do you feel a responsibility, maybe, to dial back some of that language, especially language that you've in the past been like, I shouldn't have said it?
PIKER: Yes. I think about not saying incendiary things all the time. I think the issue here is the medium. Think about what it means to speak about politics every single day for eight hours a day to an entire arena full of people. Some of those people are tuning in with the express purpose of trying to get a rise out of you so they can clip it and then post it on the internet.
FADEL: Do you think that the statements you make as a streamer are the sole reason that they cause such controversy or that you make them while being named Hasan?
PIKER: I absolutely do think that a big part of the problem is that, yes, my name is Hasan. I'm - you know, I'm a Turkish American dual citizen. I say incendiary things. But it's not reflected on in the same way when someone who's white, Christian, born and raised in America is saying incendiary things.
FADEL: As somebody who knows what it's like to feel dehumanized for your ethnic background, for your - I know you're not religious, but being from a Muslim background. When you hear people say, why would you use dehumanizing language like inbred for some ultra-Orthodox Jews or Zionist pig, what do you say to them as somebody who has felt that as well?
PIKER: I have a policy to be ruthless to those who are bullying others, to be ruthless to those who abide by certain ideologies that are conducting great harm. As far as the language that I deploy that is considered dehumanizing, like inbred, I find it to be an apt pejorative to deploy, considering that these supremacist ideologies oftentimes revolve around ethnic purity, racial purity. It's never directed at someone for their actual background. It's usually the actions or their belief system.
FADEL: There's another very online person, Tucker Carlson, who you couldn't be more different politically, right?
PIKER: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
FADEL: But you do come to the same conclusions on certain issues when it comes to Israel, Palestine, the continued killings in Gaza. Make that make sense for me. How do you guys agree on a lot of U.S. foreign policy issues and yet you're completely different politically?
PIKER: Yeah. I think about that a lot. And, you know, I'm still very critical of Tucker Carlson because I find his worldview to be not dissimilar to the ideology that he criticizes in Israel, Zionism being an ethno-supremacist, religious supremacist ideology that...
FADEL: That's how you see it.
PIKER: ...Accepts the extermination - yes, that's how I see it. And that...
FADEL: Not everybody sees it that way.
PIKER: No, I understand. The Tucker Carlsons of the world, on the one hand, will criticize the actions of Israel, but then also simultaneously want to turn America into Israel, but for Christian nationalists or for WASPs, right? And that I find to be very frustrating. I'm an anti-fascist. That is the reason why I oppose Israel. I do not oppose Israel because it's the, quote-unquote, "Jewish state." As far as Tucker Carlson's analysis of Israel, do I believe that he legitimately has seen this bloodshed and finds it to be horrifying? It's tough to assume that he's being insincere. Having said that, I would assume that the reason why he's doing this is because he understands that there's a sea change happening, especially in the next generation of Republicans, and he wants to get ahead of that wave shift and play a role in a broad coalition that we need to form in the post-Trump universe.
FADEL: In my full video interview with Piker, he responds to criticisms of his anti-imperialist views and talks about whether he sees himself as a kingmaker. The video is on the NPR app, YouTube, Spotify and elsewhere. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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