America’s left-wing Joe Rogan has the audience Democrats crave

Welcome to Power Players, The i Paper’s opinion series in which our writers and experts take an in-depth look at the key figures in American politics as the US reshapes itself and the world. • The “swamp creature” eclipsing JD Vance in the race to succeed Trump• Netanyahu’s to blame for his American nightmare – and it spells his doom• The Democrat who has finally worked out how to beat Trump When Donald Trump was elected in 2024 on a tidal wave of support from young men, political pundits credited his success to the rise of right-wing podcasters and influencers. When would the Democrats have a Joe Rogan of their own, they wondered? Two years on, the answer is pretty clear: it’s Hasan Piker. Born in New Jersey, Hasan Doğan Piker, also known by his online moniker HasanAbi, has arguably become one of the most prominent political figures on the American left – and one of its most divisive, thanks to comments like “America deserved 9/11”. (He has since repeatedly apologised and clarified that he did not support terrorism.) The political commentator and self-described Marxist has been called a “socialist saviour” and the “AOC of Twitch” – the streaming platform where he built his 3.1 million-strong following (plus around two million on YouTube). “AOC” is a comparison with left-wing Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has also built a huge public profile. During the US midterm results, 240,000 people were tuning into Piker’s livestream at its peak, second only to NBC’s own livestream and ahead of other traditional broadcasters like CNN and ABC News. But his history of incendiary comments – particularly on Israel – has created a conundrum for progressive Democrats: How far should they embrace their movement’s unofficial conduit to young men? Once regarded as an “edgelord” livestreamer on the political margins – a provocateur who says and does things for effect – the former Rutgers University frat bro is now becoming something of an anti-establishment kingmaker for the left flank of the Democratic Party. Over the midterms, he campaigned for progressive challengers Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, and Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar – all of whom sailed to victory in November, despite concerns that their association with Piker would torpedo their chances. Earlier this year, Vanity Fair named the 35-year-old one of the 50 most influential people in America, noting: “At a moment when the Democratic Party is desperate for, if not its own Joe Rogan, at least one even minorly cool spokesperson, Piker’s success is both instructive and rare.” Raised in Turkey – his father is an economist and his mother an art and architecture historian – Piker returned to the US for university. On graduating, he took a job at his uncle Cenk Uygur’s left-wing media company, The Young Turks (TYT), where he grew increasingly concerned that young men on streaming platforms were being radicalised into right-wing politics. In 2020, he left TYT to become a full-time Twitch streamer, where his mix of gaming and firebrand political commentary quickly drew thousands of fans. In one recent conversation, he noted: “I’m pro stealing from big corporations, because they steal quite a bit more from their own workers.” Piker, who frequently critiques corporate greed and supports Medicare for All, is also not one to back down from a fight, having confronted Andrew Tate in a livestream debate, and gleefully running Hogwatch, a long-standing part of his streams, in which he mercilessly roasts Republican meltdowns and drama. “For a long time in the Obama era, being a progressive meant that you listened to NPR podcasts and were constantly upset about not having enough representation in the media,” he told New York Magazine. “I want to show people that you can be a progressive and not be a total f**king scold.” That freewheeling approach to commentary can, on occasion, come off as deeply unserious and sometimes downright offensive, depending on where you land on the political spectrum. For his legions of young male fans, Piker’s meme-heavy shock-jock style is nothing out of the ordinary for the febrile, unfiltered land of Twitch gaming, where outrageous statements like “[Zohran Mamdani] is going to implement woke sharia in New York” don’t tend to raise an eyebrow. “I think you win a lot more people over if you’re just a normal chill guy to hang out with than by trying to constantly do HR-style lectures on how to build socialism,” Piker said. But as he becomes increasingly popular and well known, so has scrutiny of his past remarks and his uncompromising anti-Zionism and opposition to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Republicans and moderate Democrats alike have accused him of antisemitism thanks to remarks such as how he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every single time” as a “lesser evil” – comments that appear to minimise the sexual violence that occurred during the 7 October attacks (he says the comments were taken out of context) – and claims that Jewish-American support of Israel is “making antisemitism worse”. Earlier this year, Piker was banned from entering the UK on the grounds that his presence might not be “conducive to the public good”. He says that he rejects antisemitism and told The New York Times: “I find the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism to be very dangerous.” In the run-up to the midterm elections, the Republican Party turned Piker into a left-wing bogeyman, with Trump describing him as a “communist” and a “terrible liability”. An image of Piker in his underwear was aired on the jumbotron as part of a montage to criticise the Democrats for being anti-American. (Unfortunately, this backfired: Piker, who is 6ft 4ins and works out every day, looks more like an all-American quarterback – not for nothing has he been called the “himbo gateway” to progressive left-wing policies.) On the campaign trail, Abdul El-Sayed eventually distanced himself from Piker in the wake of the comments on antisemitism, perhaps wary about the dangers of tying himself too closely to the livestreamer. Others like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have said that engaging with streamers like him is part of building a “winning coalition”, particularly when it comes to reaching out to young people. Piker himself points to the always-on demands on his job – he livestreams up to seven to eight hours a day – as partial context for his inflammatory comments: “It is virtually impossible to be perfect in this medium… It’s Twitch.” For Democrats continuing to align with Piker, expecting him to toe the line and be on-message is a losing game. In fact, his unceasing ability to stoke controversy and outrage à la Joe Rogan may be exactly part of his appeal to young, disenfranchised voters. Piker, on his part, sees it in much more black-and-white terms. “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, so there’s this weird inconsistency in their messaging,” he told NPR. “Who I am is very simple: I’m a socialist. I’m an anti-imperialist. I want what’s best for Americans, and I want what’s best for everyone from all around the world.”