The Doomed Project to Cancel Hasan Piker
Even if the Democratic establishment takes him down - they still lose.
As the Democrats face down a midterm election cycle and the start of the 2028 presidential race, an unlikely name has emerged as a powerbroker (or litmus test): Hasan Piker.
The streamer, influencer and left-wing commentator serves as a growing political gatekeeper for young voters, specifically young males. As Democrats contend with a far-Right online “manosphere” pulling those young males toward the darkest sectors of the Republican Party, Hasan Piker has emerged as a singular figure.
The problem for establishment Democrats is that Hasan Piker has no interest in putting differences aside to stop Republicans. His political perspective holds both parties accountable for the state of the U.S. and its impact on the world. To Piker, contemporary U.S. politics represent a ping-ponging between awful political parties with more in common than either would care to admit as the country spirals deeper and deeper into oligarchy. It’s the Bernie Sanders critique on steroids.
“The Democrats are smug and condescending, and everything they say sounds fake as shit,” Piker told The New Yorker with his characteristically combative tone. Piker is also a fierce critic of Israel and the Iran war. He never shies away from words like “genocide” to describe U.S.-funded Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
The Democratic establishment’s doomed solution is to cancel Piker as an antisemite before he has a chance to influence the direction of the entire Democratic Party in 2028. But this operation ignores a key problem: Piker is popular because his audience already holds his views. Even if Democrats manage to cancel the streamer, he’ll just be replaced by another figure, perhaps his Oklahoma City mom compatriot Jennifer Welch.
Whether or not one agrees in part or whole with the allegations of antisemitism against Piker, his views on Israel and Iran are mainstream among the U.S. population at large. American sympathies in 2026 have reversed from the historic trendline, with the largest plurality sympathizing with Palestinians. Don’t take my word for it - ask Gallup. Americans reject the war in Iran with an outright majority (61 percent), according to Pew Research.
This presents a conundrum for Democrats who face a revolt from their own voters against what was once a near-universal cross-party commitment to neoconservative politics, and Piker is the last person they wish to have interrogating them.
Politico asked 13 Democrats who have not yet appeared with Piker whether they’d be willing to do so in the context of his livestream interviews. Only three said yes: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rahm Emanuel. The outright majority wouldn’t answer the question on the record. This weakness plays directly into the Republican narrative that Democrats are triangulating wimps.
While Piker lives in West Hollywood, he’s become a fixture of left-wing political life in New York City, which serves as the epicenter of democratic socialism in the U.S. following the improbable rise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. From Mamdani’s election night party to the recent No Kings protest in Midtown Manhattan (about as mainstream a protest as one could find in the U.S.) to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Tax the Rich rally in the Bronx just today, Piker is an inescapable figure across the boroughs.
So I asked New York City’s preeminent journalist of the Democratic socialist movement and the reporter who first broke the news that Mamdani was considering a run for mayor, Peter Sterne of City and State New York, about Piker and the Democratic Party.
Sterne explained, “Polls show that the next generation of Democrats is much more open to socialist and anti-Zionist politics. Pressuring candidates not to appear on Piker’s show won’t reverse that trend, and I think the politicians who recognize the contours of this new Democratic coalition are the ones who will have success in the future.”
Sen. Sanders would agree, telling YouTuber Keith Edwards, “I’ve talked to Hasan. In many respects, he’s doing a very good job. The bottom line is we’ve got to communicate with people.”
That said, even Piker’s defenders would often agree that he’s engaged in inflammatory and controversial speech throughout his career, especially before becoming a mainstream figure. Among the most frequently cited examples are his infamous declaration that “America deserved 9/11,” seeming dismissiveness of human rights abuses in China and shock-jock style comments that straddle a line between crude polemic political speech and antisemitism. In the context of online discourse, especially the virulently antisemitic, violent and misogynistic “manosphere,” young people are so desensitized to extreme language that Piker’s remarks feel mild by comparison.
“People have criticized Piker for antisemitism. Now, Piker has repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism, but he is an outspoken and even crass anti-Zionist – so I understand why people might feel that some of his language crosses the line,” Sterne told me. “But the fact that Piker actually opposes antisemitism means that he is one of the best streamers for disillusioned, anti-Israel voters to listen to. Because the alternative isn’t that young voters will go back to loving Israel; it’s that they’ll start listening to outright antisemites who also criticize Israel – like Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes.”
This is the political reality in the Trump era. Dark, shocking and violent language is not a deal-breaker for the youngest voters who have no memory of pre-Trump American political discourse. Many see a degree of menace behind the forced niceties of earlier eras, a compliant populace that sleepwalked its way into our current political hellscape. Far-right figures, including neo-Nazis like Fuentes, prey on the disaffection and moral outrage of American youth, echoing their anger to pull them into the extremist pipeline.
Whether or not establishment Democrats succeed in their efforts to end the rise of Hasan Piker, they will not change the fundamental realignment occurring across the consciousness of an American people who cannot stomach watching children be bombed with their tax dollars, to say nothing of American material life getting worse under economic inequity and a failing social safety net.
Democrats can start listening to the voices of the American people or concede the future to forces that will make the Trump era look like the good old days.