Key takeaways:
- Mainstream outlets are celebrating figures like Hasan Piker, among others, despite their antisemitic or pro-terror rhetoric. It’s a troubling trend that normalizes extremism as “progressivism.”
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Audiences and media seem quick to condemn minor scandals, while ignoring far more dangerous behavior, including rhetoric that excuses terrorism or promotes hate. It’s a moral blind spot in public and journalistic priorities.
- With massive online followings, these types of figures are shaping political and moral perspectives for millions of young people.
America, Where’s the Outrage for a Terror Sympathizer?
“Wow wtf New Yorker? Do your research. This dude abuses his dog.” That’s just one of many comments under The New Yorker’s mini-interview with online video streamer Hasan Piker.
For context, Piker reaches millions of followers across online platforms (3 million on the Twitch streaming platform alone) and is popular among Gen-Z and millennials. It’s fair to say that his reach surpasses traditional media’s reach.
The majority of viewers who commented on the clip were fixated on one scandal: Piker’s suspected use of an electric collar on his dog, Kaya, during one of his livestreams.
Not that animal abuse doesn’t warrant backlash, but being a socialist, terror-sympathizing antisemite with plenty of hate in your heart seems like an “off-the-bat” reason to get cancelled. Yet somehow, most of the “unfollow” threats in the comments had nothing to do with his hateful, dangerous rhetoric.
In the video, Turkish-native Piker shares his thoughts on listening to music, reveals his celebrity crush, and discusses his childhood “obsession” with America. One can’t help but wonder how a self-proclaimed “Ameriboo” (described as someone who is obsessed with American culture) would be so enamored with the Land of the Free, while saying the U.S. deserved the September 11 attacks and pushing American youth to normalize terror groups with anti-West values?
Even more puzzling: how did a publication like The New Yorker fail to connect these dots?
Related Reading: Hasan Piker: How a Jew-Hating, Hamas-Loving Streamer Seduced The New York Times
This is a pattern that is being normalized online and in other traditional publications like The New Yorker. He wasn’t questioned about the horrible things he says, nor was he blacklisted for them. They weren’t even acknowledged in this interview.
It’s not just with Piker, though — he is merely a symptom of a much bigger problem. People like Piker, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, columnist Owen Jones, and Palestinian “photojournalist” and Hamas supporter Motaz Azaiza would once have been ousted as fringe outsiders. Now, they are being celebrated in the mainstream.
Cult of Hasan Piker: From Streaming to Shaping the Far-Left
The glorification of Hasan Piker online isn’t slowing down – it’s accelerating. So is his visibility.
He’s receiving more honors, more glowing media profiles, and more legitimacy as a serious political figure — from the likes of The New York Times, GQ, among others.
You should care about this because millions of young people across the U.S. are soaking up his influence.
Piker is now recognized as a full-fledged political commentator, even nabbing the privilege to be a nominator for New York Magazine’s “25 Young(ish) New Democrats to Watch” and was nominated for TIME 100’s Creators List in 2025.
In August, he was a featured speaker at the hate-filled People’s Conference for Palestine, where he urged attendees to “find the anger in [their] heart” to continue the Palestinian “resistance” movement “out of spite.”
The Zohran Effect
He’s also a vocal supporter of new New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani – another politically controversial, deeply anti-Zionist, and arguably antisemitic figure who dominated headlines this summer.
Mamdani, known for repeatedly saying that Israel should not exist as a Jewish State, that boots of the NYPD were “laced by the IDF” and that he would not denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada”, among other troubling statements, has managed to garner mainstream public support.
Here is Piker at Mamdani’s victory party, shortly after his win early Wednesday morning:
Erasing Motaz Azaiza’s support for the October 7 Attacks
You’ll remember Azaiza, who has nearly 16 million followers on Instagram, most recently in the news after collaborating with YouTube and Netflix toddler and children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel in a video. She boasts more than 16 million subscribers on YouTube herself.
While sharing clips of the October 7, 2023 massacres, Azaiza urged his followers to join the “resistance” and expressed praise for the eliminated Hamas leader and orchestrator of October 7, Yahya Sinwar. He refuses to condemn the butchering of Israelis or hostage-taking by Hamas.
He was most notably named one of TIME Magazine’s Most Influential People in 2024 and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2024.
The Mainstream Columnist, Owen Jones
Jones, who has one million followers on X and hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube, is still welcome to write for The Guardian, despite reprehensible comments about Israel, especially following October 7. He consistently whitewashes terror, rewrites history, and seeks to delegitimize Israel’s sovereignty.
When Jones visited the West Bank to make a mini docu-series for his YouTube channel, he lied, distorted facts, omitted context, and interviewed Palestinians with terror links — portraying a narrative completely devoid of nuance.
But some of his most egregious offenses started in the early days of the Israel-Hamas war, after he attended a media screening of the Hamas atrocities in the UK. Jones published a video titled “I Watched The Hamas Massacre Film. Here Are My Thoughts” to his YouTube channel. In it, he went on to deny that Hamas raped women and intentionally murdered children on October 7.
As the legitimacy of Piker and those like him grows, influence will too.
When will the media wake up and stop sprinkling stardust on people who use their platform to normalize extremism, vilify Israel, and amplify hate under the guise of “progressive” politics?
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