Antisemitism is one hell of a drug. It makes the user act out in violent and irrational ways, and against their better interests and judgments. Faces of meth? Try faces of antisemitism instead. It may not destroy all your teeth, thin your hair, turn your body into a skeleton, and give you gaping open sores all over your face, but it will melt your brain and destroy your ability to make rational decisions. Antisemitism can make incredibly intelligent people dull and stupid and turn empathetic souls into apathetic monsters.
But on the flip side it apparently will give you cultural cache and make you look cool. Everyone is doing it–just ask new progressive media darling Hasan Piker, a man who unfortunately for me is a dead ringer for the first person I ever “dated” (the quotations are necessary) who gave me the worst case of strep throat I have ever had. Therefore, I already had an irrational dislike of Piker prior to his Jews are inbred comment, or his Zionists should be treated like Neo-Nazis comment, or his platforming of a literal Houthi terrorist…did the New York Times cover any of these stories in their recent ridiculously thirsty puff piece you may be asking? Of course not! But if you are still reading the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Guardian (also who still reads the Guardian?) and anticipating accurate journalism and ethical values…have I got news for you…
While people above the age of 35 have probably never heard of Hasan Piker or Twitch, the social media streaming service that has made him rich and famous, Piker is arguably one of the most important political “influencers” in America among the “Gen Z” demographic. The hyper online “youths” hang on to Hasan’s every word, from “tax the rich” to “free Palestine” to comparing a literal Houthi terrorist to Anne Frank…who later got mad at Hasan for comparing the Yemen based terror operative to a Jew (because ew Jews, Jews…I mean Zios are gross).
Hasan-according to Hasan, came out of the school of Hard Knocks. That’s totally why Hasan is a “socialist,” because Piker most definitely knows what a hard day’s work entails. Heck not too long ago Piker landed in hot water with the streaming community for lamenting about the woes of being a full time streamer on air. Piker wanted his audience to know that life isn’t easy for the millionaire Twitch streamer. Working an honest 8 hour day from his home studio can be draining and equivalent to a minimum wage job in the service industry…at least in terms of social exhaustion.
Piker got his start in the realm of political commentary from his uncle, Cenk Uyger, another hothead who likes blowing smoke up other people’s asses. Uyger’s other hobbies include commenting on global affairs on “feeling” alone rather than facts (I thoroughly enjoy watching Douglas Murray wipe the floor with Cenk’s uninformed ass every couple of months) which is another quality he has in common with his nephew. Cenk Uyger’s media company called the Young Turks, was named after a faction of young upstart reformers in the Ottoman Empire who also happened to be the main perpetrators of the Armenian genocide—but very few people seem to ever comment on this, which is also interesting to me.
It also doesn’t seem to matter to Piker’s audience that Hasan is the 33-year-old nepo baby of Greek-Turkish political scientist and businessman Mehmet Behçet Piker. A proponent of a neo-colonialist project called “Neo Ottomanism,” Mehmet Behçet Piker was a founding member of Turkey’s Future (Gelecek) Party along with former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
Davutoglu, was formerly the closest political ally of current Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan before having a public falling out and forming the Future Party in 2019 as a response to their fracturing relationship. Davutoglu’s Future Party has sought to poach Erdogan’s supporters by being even more right wing and extreme than the current Turkish government. The Future Party is pan-Islamist, Armenian Genocide denying, and affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Speaking of the Armenian Genocide, Piker senior is also the former Vice President and Board Member of Istanbul based company Sabanci Holding, an industrial and financial conglomerate that operates in 17 countries and 5 continents. The original progenitor of the Sabanci family’s wealth, was not from the energy or financial industries, but from confiscating Armenian homes and properties during the genocide. A genocide that Turkish nationalists like Piker’s father and uncle Cenk Uygur argue never happened.
While Hasan Piker has denied that his father Mehmet is a billionaire (although I found one article stating he’s worth 5 billion), what is clear is that the Piker family has close ties to both extreme wealth and power. In addition, it’s also evident that the family has connections to Turkish political factions and spheres of influence that push pan Islamic ideologies and Neo-Ottoman expansionist rhetoric.
While the Gray Lady marketed Piker as a left wing answer to Joe Rogan, I think the closer comparison would be Andrew Tate. When Hasan started his streaming career way back in 2012, the wunderkind was marketing himself as a “pickup artist” and giving his audience “bro tips.” I’m sure the New York Times is falling over themselves at this point countering my findings by yelling into the void that this is why Piker is an important leftwing voice—because he can appeal to the “bros” also known in social justice speak as “young straight white men.”
Which is once again interesting since Piker also appears to be somewhat of an ethnic chameleon, calling himself white when it suits the narrative and Turkish/Middle Eastern when it counters his arguments. Just like when arguing geopolitics in Turkey and the Levant, Piker never addresses the history of colonialism from his family’s country of origin-Turkey but is quick to attack European and “Zionist” entities for “exploiting” the land and resources of the MENA region.
But really, what were you expecting? Please don’t tell me you thought you’d get journalism or hard hitting questions about “Hamas” Piker’s familial ties and associations? it’s the New York Times dummy, the paper of record! Accuracy? A simple google search!? Why bother!? Hasan is hot. And hot people can have terrible opinions–as long as they are progressive and pushing the right kind of antisemitic grift.
KKK masks and ‘Hitler was right’ slogans are the crack cocaine of Jew-Hatred, it’s bigotry for the poors, the less educated, the riff raff. I prefer my antisemitism sparkling, with a side of champagne socialism–the pink cocaine kind of antisemitism that they pass out at a P Diddy party and snort off the back of possibly trafficked high class sex workers. Did I mention Hasan Piker has also allegedly been to Sean “P Diddy” Combs parties over the years too!? NEW YORK TIMES hellooooooooo.
Anyway.
Piker was of course portrayed as a hard hitting intellectually sophisticated media pundit with lots of good thoughts and ideas in his big beautiful 6 foot 4 MAGA shaped body. The title of the piece was “A Progressive Mind in a MAGA Body1” in case you’re wondering. Which was also hilarious because they literally fat shamed their audience and called lefty voters ugly…but who knows if any New York Times readers actually caught that part. The relevant information from the article is that Hasan likes blue nail polish and wearing pearl necklaces while he weight lifts and generally acts exactly like all the toxic males on the right side of the aisle we are told we must revile. He is even quoted in the piece acknowledging he “knows” what he looks like but no one can hate a “frat bro.” I am going to obviously point out once again that this was a profile written in THE NEW YORK TIMES.
Hasan might be a “frat bro” but it’s ok because his fashion sense apparently shields him from saying things like “of course rapes happened on October 7th the resistance isn’t perfect!.” And while the Diddy allegations are still “alleged” he has openly bragged about paying for sex in Germany at a brothel that is linked to the sex trafficking of minors. But it’s fine because “sex work is work” and Hasan runs fundraisers for AOC. You see! he’s a feminist! Hasan is (say this in Zoolander voice) “really really good looking,” and hot people can be antisemitic all they want–as long as they play video games with AOC and promote Marxism to minors from their 3-million-dollar Beverly Hills mansion.
Piker has literally called himself a “propagandist” which means Piker is aware that the statements he makes online have real world consequences. So when Piker calls for violence against a sitting politician—something he did two months ago to Florida Senator Rick Scott, Piker must also be aware that there are people in his audience that will take his call to action seriously. It truly boggles my mind that media personalities like Andrew Tate can be seen as toxic role models for young men—which they rightly are, but people like Piker get a pass? Why? Because his misogyny is left wing versus right wing coded? Because while Tate may say “Jew” Piker says “Zionist” instead? It’s the same shit from a different anus.
To platform a man like Piker in the Times, or to put him on MSNBC, is to give him mainstream social credibility—which is just like Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson hosting Andrew Tate on their media platforms. To have a profile of Piker in the New York Times is to endorse his message. Which in turn sanitizes his rape apologia and antisemitic propaganda pushing.
I don’t know what media outlet will hold the New York Times responsible for literally showering a bigot with praise in a piece of yellow journalism that was better suited for Seventeen Magazine or Teen Vogue; but to add to all this frustration, a week earlier, prior to the Gray Lady’s hard-on for Hasan, the “13-year-old trapped in a 33-year-old man’s body” appeared on stage at Coachella with three more man-children.
The Irish band Kneecap had Hasan pumping his fist in the air draped in a keffiyeh while blasting the words “Israel is Committing genocide” and “Free Palestine Fuck Israel” on the big screen behind their Irish Limp Bisket-esque rap-rock revival concert set at one of the biggest outdoor music festivals in the world. At previous Kneecap “shows” they have led crowds in chants glorifying Hamas and Hezbollah and promote terror apologia and propaganda on their social media pages. So edgy…if only the music was better.2
Antisemitism can make terrible music good–if the medium is the message. Catchy beats with interesting lyrics? Why try when projecting fuck Zios on a screen will get you the same response as actually playing instruments well or being able to carry a tune. Macklemore, who I have written about previously, understands the assignment, and so does Kneecap.
For the last 19 months, us American, Australian, British, and Canadian Jews have seen our worlds turned upside down by this opiate of the masses. We have watched helplessly as this social contagion expedited by social media echo chambers and neo-yellow journalism has taken hold of our former friends, family members, and colleagues as they have gotten drunk on the juice of the new Jew hated.
I know people personally—or should say “knew” who watch Hasan Piker’s content. They are therapists, artists, and lab technicians. People who are so critical of the influence of Joe Rogan, and right wing Fox News commentators but will gladly grab a drink and watch an hour of Hasan owning the Zionists. It scares me—and should scare you too, regardless of where your political leanings lie. A propagandist like Hasan Piker is a dangerous peddler of political lies and half truths with a captive audience.
None of us wanted to be in this fight—but none of us really had a choice either. Twenty years from now, I want to be able to look in the mirror and know that I did something worthwhile to combat this new scourge on society; and I know I’m not alone in feeling this sense of duty and urgency. Just say no to drugs? Try just say no to antisemitism…doesn’t have the same ring yet, probably have to work on it–but Jews were never known for their cool catch phrases so…
But all joking aside, what we are doing to combat this scourge isn’t working.
We can–and I have written essay after essay regarding the history of the origins of the new Jew hatred in the futile hopes someone on the other side of the debate will read it and internalize its lessons. We can go through the whole historical timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and explore in depth the nuances of Jewish-Arab relations and the influence of Hitler’s ideologies on the modern Middle East with the hopes that the opposition will read our writing—and in turn, make the indoctrinated “sober” with facts.
But I think this is futile, because Hasan Piker exists. He’s a pusher, a drug dealer to the masses of a young impressionable hyper online generation that drinks up everything he says. A week after he called Jews inbred on livestream, students on college campuses started calling their Jewish peers inbred on the encampments in the quads. Like I said several paragraphs ago, Hasan’s words have real world consequences, and he’s well aware of his influence over his younger audience.
You may be asking how do we know college students were calling their Jewish peers inbred? And the answer is, Hasan showed his audiences recordings of this vile behavior and laughed hysterically while openly bragging that the students probably heard him say this ugly rhetoric on his very own livestreams. “I taught them that!” is a direct quote from the recording.
Unfortunately, our Jewish “nerdiness,” and the need to educate the world with facts, stats, and graphs is working against us right now because our enemies have Hasan Piker.
We desperately need some sort of cultural cache to combat these characters. And while I wish having a conscience and a set of ethical values carried as much weight in these trying times as beauty and brawn (and below the surface I still think what matters on the inside matters the most) in order to fight a figure like Piker—Jews need to go on the cultural offensive.
Where is the millennial Mel Brooks, Gen Z Leonard Cohen, or the modern-day Hedy Lamarr?3 Enough of the weak-ass mildly talented Jewish celebrities who will become culturally irrelevant in the decades to come (looking at you Seth Rogan). Where is this new Jewish cultural underbelly? I want artists writers comedians and musicians with cojones who can take on meatheads like Hasan Piker because they are funnier, more charismatic and most importantly—cooler.
Coolness is cultural cache. Unfortunately.
You ask why is antisemitism spreading? Because it’s cool–it’s sexy, Hasan Piker and his buddies are literally making it cool and sexy. This is what we need to combat. The ADL and Johnathon Greenblatt? Not cool, and definitely not sexy.
And while I feel a lot like that one scene in the movie the Hebrew Hammer (if you know you know) at the headquarters of the JJL (Jewish Justice League)…I’ll say it:
To my fellow Jews, we need a new marketing strategy here.
I know how dumb and immature I probably sound–but we are a society ruled by the young and uninformed (unfortunately) and we need to accept that right now and find ways to get through to younger people. The changing media landscape means that art is more transient than ever—which means people like Piker carry the same amount of cultural weight and influence as a pop star or teen actress. But pop cultural influence does not dictate staying power, and I also recall a time not so long ago when age didn’t dictate how great a piece of music was or how amazing a movie could be.
Hasan Piker has an audience because politics is now entertainment, and entertainment is now art. Everything now is cultural junk food—which should be more than apparent in our current era, as we have now had a literal reality television star as president not once but twice. But even prior to Trump, the United States has had issues mixing pop culture with politics. For instance Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States was an actor prior to being ruler of the free world.
Hasan may have the jawline of a supermodel, but the only reason he has any eyeballs on him at all is because our cultural landscape has been so thoroughly destroyed by decades of laundering content as artistic composition. Piker is literally using a platform initially marketed to gamers to watch other gamers play video games as his main medium to launder political propaganda into entertainment.
Piker’s main mode of creativity is to make reaction videos to other people’s screen recordings. Therefore nothing Piker creates is truly his own. Piker comments on other people’s comments and reacts to other people’s initial reactions. If you were able to somehow distort Piker’s appearance enough that he were to look “unfortunate” would his videos still get the same number of views? Would he possess enough talent and charisma to take his message beyond a few hundred computer screens? I don’t think so.
I think if we are able to somehow shine a light on Piker’s content for what it is: laundered political puppetry lacking in originality and dripping in bigotry and divisive messaging, we may be able to turn the tide. But in order to counter PIker’s narratives we need to start reaching kids and asking them what content they are consuming online.
Much like the narratives surrounding young boys watching Andrew Tate—I would like a similar campaign going regarding boys who watch Hasan Piker. Students watching Piker and people in his sphere of influence are the ones bullying their peers and blocking them from getting to class on university campuses. Kids and young adults are also the ones whose brains can be molded and reformed-unlike older generations who unfortunately are already set in their Jew hating ways. Millennials and their older cohorts are the lifelong smokers of the antisemitism world, and while it’s not impossible for them to quit–it is a lot harder.
Antisemitism is a drug. And if you have ever been around addicts—and I have, you will know that getting clean is difficult, especially when the drugs are easy to acquire and make you feel so good. Antisemitism is a social party drug; you can do it with friends in large groups and you can make it a night on the town. It’s fun to don the keffiyehs and facemasks and go to protest outings shouting, “free Palestine.” Getting high on perceived moral superiority is a special kind of trip. And the dealers and pushers are all around, all you have to do is click on your Tik Tok app or your Instagram icon or watch a Hasan Piker livestream.
No one is coming to save us. We need to step up and save ourselves. And while Israel may be winning the ground war, it’s not winning the social media war. Jews are not winning the social media war.
I understand the frivolity of talking about art and cultural cache, we are not shallow people, and social media is the center of superficiality. But our enemies are playing the long game–to borrow a vile quote from the days after October 7th, “none of this happened in a vacuum.” What I mean by that is–Hamas was prepared, so were apologists like Piker. Progressive social media pages had been pumping out anti-Zionist propaganda bolstered by influencers with pretty faces for years prior to October 7th. They were ready for the antisemitic social media shitstorm that followed the pogrom, but the Jews were caught off guard. And unfortunately, we are still playing catch up.
We have been on the ropes before—but I have faith we can make a cultural comeback. We can fight this and banish Hasan to the annals of the internet. We can make antisemitism uncool again—but we need new cultural figures who can go toe to toe with Jew hate drug dealers like Piker to guide the way.
Later changed to “A Progressive Mind in a Body Made for the Manosphere” once again…what a title…
I tried to listen to them (I really did) I made it through 30 seconds of sounds. But hey Hasan Piker likes them–so they don’t need to worry about my ears, they already have a built-in audience of musical lemmings.
Who besides being a screen siren also was way smarter than anyone alive today…the woman literally invented WiFi. I would love to see the Hadid sisters attempt to invent something other than a makeup line but I digress.