Hasan Piker yaps about politics for eight hours a day, every day, with his 4.4 million mostly progressive young male followers on Twitch and YouTube — a career as a political commentator that earned him the nickname “Joe Rogan of the Left” and also led to him being interrogated by border agents upon returning from overseas 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 told The Independent in an interview recently. A vocal critic of President Donald Trump, his administration, and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza — Piker has also scorned the Democratic Party in its current dilapidated state, saying that he believes many Americans are desperate for them to provide a genuine 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 said.
Piker is not alone: approval ratings for the Democratic Party sank to their lowest in six years, dropping from 89 percent having a favorable view of the party in 2019, to now just 75 percent, according to an April Pew Research Center poll. “Right now the resistance is aesthetic,” Piker said, pointing out Corey Booker’s 25-hour Senate speech, which broke records but didn’t stop any legislation.
On Monday, Piker revealed that U.S. customs officials detained him for hours at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport as he tried to enter the country, subjecting him to questioning about Trump and if he considered Hamas a terror organization or a resistance group.
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Piker, a U.S. citizen, later said he was willing to answer questions without a lawyer and put himself “at risk to investigate what their line of inquiry would look like” but warned others not to do the same.
The 33-year-old millennial originally from Turkey, who double majored in communications and political science at Rutgers University, began working for his uncle, Cenk Uygur, as a commentator for his online news show The Young Turks. Piker’s video content later got him branded as “Woke Bae” — a liberal heartthrob for progressive young women back in 2017, according to BuzzFeed. The following March, he launched his Twitch channel, starting with a few sporadic videos before spiraling into daily streaming and millions of people tuning in.
Trump’s efforts to entice the young male “bro” voter — a low propensity group where Republicans usually fall short — were seen as crucial to him winning the presidency again. Piker has his own version of the manosphere voter: his average viewer is a white man under 30, many in their early 20s, according to the streamer’s latest census (although he says more women and LGBTQ-identifying people are beginning to watch). That audience has led to plenty of comparisons with Joe Rogan, the undisputed king of the male podcast.
Piker said he understands the Rogan comparison but finds it comical, since he instead sees his job as “directly countering Rogan, as he spreads misinformation.” Regardless, Piker praised the conservative podcaster for being “probably one of the most influential people, for better or for worse, in the United States of America right now, maybe 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 want more out of AOC and Bernie,” he said. “I want them to channel the anger and resentment that they have towards issues to chip away and undermine Trump's agenda.”
One issue he believes needs more attention is the ongoing war in Gaza, particularly since Biden administration’s unwavering support of Israel’s military in Gaza turned off many Democratic voters in 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 said.
New York Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres even filed a complaint with Twitch in October 2024, accusing Piker of becoming “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 visit.
The Democrats are very weak — they refuse to read the room.
He insists that it is a valid criticism of one of the instigators of the Israel-Gaza war.
“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 said. “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.”
