Deep inside the sprawling campus acreage of Michigan State University, leftist political pundit and streamer Hasan Piker stood before a packed lecture hall, taking in a rapturous welcome.
The crowd of about 400 people, many wearing hoodies and headphones, plus the occasional kaffiyeh scarf, had waited hours outside on a frigid Tuesday afternoon to see Piker and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Muslim candidate running for U.S. Senate in Michigan’s tightly contested Democratic primary.
“For the last two and a half years they smeared people like myself and people like yourselves,” Piker said, pointing a finger toward his listeners. “They claimed we were radical, said that we were wrong, and yet we persevered because we understood the violence that was taking place.”
The implied “they” here wasn’t Piker’s normal opposition on the right, but instead his critics within the Democratic Party. In recent weeks, they have dredged up the streamer’s past comments about the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel (which he has called the “direct consequence” of Israeli and U.S. actions) and the Sept. 11 attacks (which he once said America “deserved,” though he later apologized).
It’s a charge amplified by the founders of the center-left think tank Third Way, which wrote a Wall Street Journal opinion piece last month, urging the Democratic Party to break ties with Piker for his “Jew hate.”
Onstage, the avowed socialist had but one short response to his detractors.
Screw ’em, Piker said — though he opted for a four-letter word that shattered the crowd’s attentive silence into a roar of defiant approval.
This anti-establishment rebel, who has a professed love for things like streetwear, anti-imperialist politics and marathon streaming sessions, is now at the center of white-hot debate among some in the Democratic Party during his professional turn on the stump. In recent months, Piker’s stream has featured a number of prominent Democratic politicians, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York; Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; and Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive candidate running to fill Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s seat.
With the approaching midterm primary elections, Democrats seem to want what Piker has — a devoted audience of young voters, mostly male — yet will not embrace the 34-year-old commentator. Despite the party’s well-documented struggles with winning over highly online young voters, some Democrats representing the party’s establishment, pro-Israel flank are making a coordinated push to drive Piker out of their coalition.
CNN and Fox News have made Piker the subject of round tables; Politico has surveyed Democratic politicians about the so-called Piker pickle.
And now, Piker’s primary antagonist, Third Way, has begun to circulate a letter demanding that El-Sayed disavow Piker over his past comments. The website Jewish Insider has imitated this tactic to pressure Democrats who have received even a whiff of support from Piker, as in the case of Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, to publicly condemn the streamer. (Ossoff’s Senate reelection campaign has so far ignored the group’s inquiry.)
Ahead of the rally, Piker’s planned appearance had also drawn attacks from El-Sayed’s primary rivals.
It’s a debate that many of the students at the Michigan State rally found laughable. “I just don’t think Hasan’s antisemitic at all,” said Colin Smith, 20, who was taking a selfie with the stage in view as Piker was introduced.
Smith, a student at nearby Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, like many at the event, first came to watch Piker’s stream as a teenager during the pandemic years. He is also a supporter of El-Sayed, whom he discovered through Sen. Bernie Sanders during a Fighting Oligarchy event in the state.
Smith felt that much of the criticism was motivated by religious bias, given Piker’s Muslim identity.
“He’s done so much for the Jewish community, constantly pushing back against actual antisemites like Nick Fuentes,” Smith said, referring to the 27-year-old white nationalist streamer.
Piker likes to describe himself as a “megaphone” for his ability to call out the failures of the Democratic establishment and, in turn, lure back disaffected young men, some of whom have drifted to the right or dropped out of the political process entirely.
Nick Seraphinoff, a 29-year-old project manager who had traveled from Detroit to attend the rally, described himself as one of those disillusioned young men. After Sanders’ exit from the presidential primary in 2016, he stopped voting, a decision he now regrets. He credits Piker for bringing him back into the fold after learning about El-Sayed on the nightly stream.
Like many of the young voters who listen to Piker, Seraphinoff is frustrated by Democratic Party’s refusal to condemn the war in the Gaza Strip.
“There has to be a willingness to meet the people where they are,” he said.
Earlier that day, Piker, in an interview with The New York Times, described the criticism of him as “boomer desperation.”
During the conversation, Piker said his opponents in the Democratic Party had little understanding of the “new media landscape.”
He then began the day’s livestream, commenting on President Donald Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s entire “civilization.” For the next nine hours, Piker’s every move could be followed on Twitch as he traversed green rooms and campaign vans, press gaggles and auditorium stages, accompanied all the while by a shaggy-haired cameraman named Mauricio Miranda.
The stream, which held steady at about 35,000 viewers throughout the day, seemed to exist as a parallel universe. The chat furiously commented on Piker’s surroundings in a thread that moved too fast to follow. Students thronged around Piker asking the streamer for selfies. At Michigan State, one student asked Piker to autograph a copy of the labor manifesto “Secrets of Successful Organizing.”
“Obviously, he’s tapped a nerve for a lot of folks who do not trust traditional media to sift through our politics,” El-Sayed said in an interview.
While speaking with the Times, El-Sayed, who is a practicing Muslim, stopped short of describing himself as “anti-Zionist,” as Piker does.
“Do I believe that Palestinians deserve equal rights to things like dignity, self-determination and peace?” he said. “Yes, I do. And if that makes me anti-something, I don’t know. I guess I’m just more pro-something.”
For Muslim Americans like El-Sayed, the memories of the 2024 presidential election are still “painful,” he said, partly because of what he sees as the Democratic Party’s refusal to engage with pro-Palestinian activists.
At the time, El-Sayed supported the “uncommitted” movement, an Arab American-led push for Democratic candidates to back a ceasefire in Gaza.
In a brightly lit classroom, Piker and El-Sayed wrapped up their final interviews of the day as weary campaign staff members collapsed onto chairs.
“It’s different,” Piker said of his experience on a campaign trail. His livestream, after nine consecutive hours, had finally come to an end. “You’re thinking about how the things you say might negatively impact the candidate. It’s hard to dial it back for me. But I think I did it.”