Hasan Piker was detained by border patrol for his politics. Now the progressive bro whisperer is begging Democrats to ‘get angry’ | EUROtoday

Hasan Piker yaps about politics for eight hours a day, day-after-day, along with his 4.4 million largely progressive younger male followers on Twitch and YouTube — a profession as a political commentator that earned him the nickname “Joe Rogan of the Left” and likewise led to him being interrogated by border brokers upon coming back from abroad earlier this week.

“I am unfiltered, and I also have a well-established world view that I’m unafraid of saying out loud and defending,” Piker informed The Independent in an interview lately. A vocal critic of President Donald Trump, his administration, and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza — Piker has additionally scorned the Democratic Party in its present dilapidated state, saying that he believes many Americans are determined for them to offer a real opposition to Trump and his fascist tendencies. “I want these guys to fight, and I think there’s a lot of appetite for these guys to fight for the best of their ability,” he stated.

Piker isn’t alone: approval scores for the Democratic Party sank to their lowest in six years, dropping from 89 % having a good view of the celebration in 2019, to now simply 75 %, in keeping with an April Pew Research Center ballot. “Right now the resistance is aesthetic,” Piker stated, stating Corey Booker’s 25-hour Senate speech, which broke information however didn’t cease any laws.

On Monday, Piker revealed that U.S. customs officers detained him for hours at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport as he tried to enter the nation, subjecting him to questioning about Trump and if he thought of Hamas a terror group or a resistance group.

Piker, a U.S. citizen, later stated he was prepared to reply questions with out a lawyer and put himself “at risk to investigate what their line of inquiry would look like” however warned others to not do the identical.

The 33-year-old millennial initially from Turkey, who double majored in communications and political science at Rutgers University, started working for his uncle, Cenk Uygur, as a commentator for his on-line information present The Young Turks. Piker’s video content material later obtained him branded as “Woke Bae” — a liberal heartthrob for progressive younger ladies again in 2017, in keeping with BuzzFeed. The following March, he launched his Twitch channel, beginning with a couple of sporadic movies earlier than spiraling into day by day streaming and tens of millions of individuals tuning in.

Trump’s efforts to entice the younger male “bro” voter — a low propensity group the place Republicans often fall quick — have been seen as essential to him successful the presidency once more. Piker has his personal model of the manosphere voter: his common viewer is a white man beneath 30, many of their early 20s, in keeping with the streamer’s newest census (though he says extra ladies and LGBTQ-identifying individuals are starting to observe). That viewers has led to loads of comparisons with Joe Rogan, the undisputed king of the male podcast.

Piker stated he understands the Rogan comparability however finds it comical, since he as a substitute sees his job as “directly countering Rogan, as he spreads misinformation.” Regardless, Piker praised the conservative podcaster for being “most likely one of the vital influential individuals, for higher or for worse, within the United States of America proper now, possibly even the world.”

Ahead of the election last November, Trump appeared on Rogan’s podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” — an offer his opponent, Kamala Harris, declined — for a three hour meandering chat about everything from North Korea to aliens and his “unbelievable” health.

“He can get away with saying unhinged things all the time because he’s a guy, he’s a billionaire, he’s a television personality,” Piker explained. “He’s literally destroying global trade for no reason whatsoever, and his cult is still on board. He’s able to dominate TV and constantly open up a barrage of lies.”

As frustrating as Piker finds it to watch Trump, his main complaints are with the Democrats for not doing enough to attract voters.

“They’re so academic, so smug,” Piker said. “The crisis is that they are trying to repackage this identity in a way that appeals to voters. But because they’re so elitist, I think it’s virtually impossible.”

Two of the only progressive politicians actively trying are Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are leading the “Fighting Oligarchy” campaign across the U.S., where tens of thousands have turned up to protest the Trump administration and the corrupt influence of billionaires and technocrats in U.S. politics.

In April, Piker interviewed Sanders, 83, and Ocasio-Cortez, 35, during their record-breaking Los Angeles pit stop, but says that the pair — polling has Ocasio-Cortez as the most likely Democratic nominee for 2028 — need more fire in their belly to revive the struggling movement.

“I would like extra out of AOC and Bernie,” he stated. “I want them to channel the anger and resentment that they have towards issues to chip away and undermine Trump’s agenda.”

One difficulty he believes wants extra consideration is the continued warfare in Gaza, significantly since Biden administration’s unwavering help of Israel’s navy in Gaza turned off many Democratic voters within the 2024 election.

“I use Gaza as a microcosm of the much larger problem within the Democratic Party in terms of their inability to hear the demands of the population and offer them concessions,” Piker stated.

New York Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres even filed a grievance with Twitch in October 2024, accusing Piker of turning into “the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of

Recently, Piker called the far-right Israeli National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, “a porky little nazi pig” on X after Yale University banned a pro-Palestine group for protesting his go to.

He insists that it’s a legitimate criticism of one of many instigators of the Israel-Gaza warfare.

“There is no difference between me calling Itamar Ben-Gvir a ‘porky little nazi pig’ than me calling Trump a ‘porky little nazi pig’,” he stated. “These guys are both fascists, and I think it’s appropriate to call them as such.”

And he doesn’t plan on shying away from the topic anytime soon, naming Louis Theroux, whose latest documentary The Settlers follows Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and Irish-language rappers Kneecap, who made anti-Israel statements at Coachella last month, as his next dream interview guests.

Those plans read similarly to his hopes for the Democratic Party: finding activists who are more about action than posturing. “They can identify the anger and resentment and channel it to more successful avenues, because that’s what the Republicans do,” Piker said. “The Democrats are very weak — they refuse to read the room.”