Hasan Piker, the California-based streamer who describes himself as a socialist, has become the GOP's political boogeyman ahead of the midterm elections.
President Trump recently called him a "terrible liability" and a "communist." And in Michigan, political advertisements play the progressive firebrand's most incendiary comments on repeat — including "America deserved 9/11," language he said he regretted.
The ads tie the leftist influencer and his words to Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is in a tight race with Republican Rep. Mike Rogers. During the Democratic primary in Michigan, Piker campaigned with El-Sayed, who has since distanced himself from the Twitch streamer.
Despite this, Piker doesn't think he'll be a drag on Democrats this November.
"I think guilt-by-association politics is not as successful as people think they are," Pike said on NPR's Newsmakers podcast. "Republicans have had rabble rousers and firebrands that have played a formative role in galvanizing their base for the last couple of decades … but I think even Democrats understood that it's largely ineffective."
He added that the attempts to link his most controversial comments to Democratic candidates is a Republican strategy to distract from Trump policies that have upset voters and made life less affordable.
"At the end of the day, I'm a Twitch streamer," Piker said. "I hold no political office. I have no real political power. So getting people to be upset at a Twitch streamer and their affiliation as a, if you want to call it a surrogate, in the primary is going to be very difficult."
Piker told NPR that he has walked back some of his most controversial comments. He has repeatedly apologized for his "America deserved 9/11" comment — saying he used imprecise language during a 2019 livestream.
"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," Piker said. "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."
When pressed on why he continues to make incendiary and at times offensive political comments, he said it comes with the terrain of live streaming multiple hours a day.
"It is virtually impossible to be perfect in this medium," Piker said. "It's Twitch."
But Piker also said some groups he considers groups that embrace supremacist ideologies deserve his rhetorical wrath.
"I have a policy to be ruthless to those who are bullying others," Piker said. "To those who abide by certain ideologies that are conducting great harm."
Twitch has banned Piker at least seven times for his inflammatory remarks, but he still mostly stands by his words.
"As far as the language that I deploy that is considered dehumanizing, like inbred, it's one that I use quite commonly as pejorative towards right-wing reactionary ideology," Piker said. "I find it to be an apt pejorative to deploy, considering that these supremacist ideologies oftentimes revolve around ethnic purity, racial purity."
Hear Piker address his past comments, loneliness among young men and his critique of Tucker Carlson on NPR's Newsmakers.
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