This August 9, 2026, Op-Ed by CAMERA’s Shay Khatiri appeared in Jerusalem News Syndicate.
“After the 2024 election, Democratic strategists argued that what the anti-Trump coalition needed was a ‘Joe Rogan of the left,’” wrote Andrew Marantz for The New Yorker on March 17, 2025. The piece was neither an examination of the candidates nor an autopsy of the 2024 presidential race. It was a profile of streamer Hasan Piker.
Born in New Jersey to Turkish immigrants, Piker spent his childhood in Istanbul. His uncle, Cenc Uyghur, has been a far-left activist and the founder of The Young Turks network, where Piker first made a name for himself. His success since then erases any accusations of nepotism. Certainly, Piker is talented, and that is the problem—or, at least, one of the problems.
Once upon a time, the far-left was apologetic about its abhorrent views. It would debate the role that American foreign policy played in radicalizing a segment of the global Muslim population, resulting in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in academic language, sympathetic with the victims.
Piker is authentic and transgressive, which is his appeal. “America deserved 9/11,” he once declared with total certitude. His favorite flag is Hezbollah’s. He calls Crimea “a part of the Russian territory, b*tch,” adding, “Cry me a river” over its annexation. He is not in favor of date rape, but he said that it is “better if it happens to rich women.” He also thinks that blacks should “shut the f**k up” about border security.
Piker is also a socialist, Marxist, communist, Maoist—pick your term. He is an advocate of the Cuban regime, an apologist for the Chinese Communist Party and nostalgic for the Soviet Union, whose collapse he declared as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century—also making him a plagiarist and a contender for the Harvard presidency. In a recent College Democrats convention, Piker showed up in a Mao Zedong costume—only his second-most objectionable attire—and gave a speech partially echoing Joseph Stalin with Benito Mussolini’s mannerism. Elsewhere, he once said:
I wouldn’t say I’m a communist, but when people call me that, I don’t really care because I’m, like, I think that’s pretty cool. It’s ‘Star Trek.’ It’s the ‘Star Trek’ universe. They have a moneyless society. I feel as though that is definitely an honorable end goal to reach where we have all of our needs met.
There is one argument in defense of Piker’s denial that he is a communist. The Soviet and Chinese systems are quite different, both of which he likes. He is a multimillionaire with an estimated annual income in seven figures. He is also extremely progressive socially, and communist regimes have historically been the opposite. He has a soft spot for Islamist groups (he is not a practicing Muslim) while Marxists are anti-religion.
Piker has certainly read the Cliff Notes of Marx’s works (if not the whole thing), but his convictions are not affirmative. His starting point is a deep hatred of America and the Western world order it upholds, and he works backwards to find justification in the conduct of rival regimes and systems. He is a hater, and as is the rule, haters eventually become Jew-haters.
(Read the rest of CAMERA’s August 9, 2026, JNS article here.)