Hasan Piker explains himself

0:00Last week we at Today Explained brought you an episode titled The Joe Rogan of the left. The Joe Rogan of the left was in quotations. It was mostly about a guy named Hassan Piker, who some say is the Joe Rogan of the left. But enough about Joe. We made an episode about Hassan because the Democrats are really courting this dude. So Hassan Piker is really the only major prominent leftist on Twitch, at least the only one who talks about politics all day. What's going on everybody? I hope everyone's having a fantastic evening, afternoon, prenew, no matter where you want. They want his cosign, they want his endorsement, because he's young, and he reaches millions of young people streaming on YouTube, TikTok, and especially Twitch.

0:41But last week, he was streaming us. Yeah, I was listening on stream, and you guys were like, hey, you should come on the show if you're listening. And I was like, oops, caught. You're a listener. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I am. Yeah. Thank you for listening. Hassan Piker, coming up on the show today.

1:00Hello, I have something huge I wanted to tell you. My name is Sean Ramos-Vurm. I host Today Explained along with Noel King. You know us. We have seen, we have heard the comments about the ads. You don't love the ads or there's too many ads. Well, this one's for you guys. This ad is to tell you, you can now get this show without ads. I repeat, we now have an ad-free version of Today Explained. If you would like it in your life, go to vox.com slash members right now. Vox.com slash members. You're going to support Vox. We're going to give you the show without ads. Enjoy.

1:57This is Today Explained.

2:23and try to hit that same time frame. And yeah, I'm a political commentator. People call me many different things. Radical, sometimes even a terrorism lover. Just, you know, slander to, I think, designations that I would not see fit for myself, such as like activist, organizer, or even journalist, really. You are doing a lot of stuff and spending an enormous part of your day making yourself available to people on live streams, on social media. What do you think? Like, what's your sense of what people come to you for? I think a lot of people see me as talk radio that's always on. but with a zoomer slash millennial focus rather than um rather than anything else like it's just it's it's not that unique i'm not like necessarily reinventing the wheel here i think it's just like a a guy that you can have in the background while you're doing your chores and uh you stay up to date maybe also sharing the feeling of of catharsis or uh anger that you feel as well that is being channeled from, channeled by the guy that you're getting your news from.

3:49And the guy they're getting their news from has some strong political opinions, beliefs, and he talks about them often, but not exclusively. Yeah. What would you say are your politics? How would you describe them? I mean, I call myself a leftist, definitely an anti-imperialist. uh i think uh i am i mean i'm anti-war i believe that we should not spend so much money on 800 military bases overseas and constantly bombing some of the poorest countries on the planet and we should instead spend it on infrastructure jobs programs and expansion of the welfare state with the ultimate goal of creating a new way of organizing our economy and our society in general, an evolution from the existing form that is more egalitarian and has more benefits for as many people as possible.

4:50Because I think we're the wealthiest country on the planet. We are in the post-abundance universe and i don't mean that in esler klein way i mean like we literally have a surplus of food supply for example like 10 million people should not be dying due to famine related diseases around the globe at this point it's a it's a matter of supply chains like it's a matter of not wanting to feed people but saying that right now saying that in in 2025 when the federal government the trump administration right now is is cutting back aid to some of the poorest people on earth, that's like inherently a left-right question.

5:26Do you consider yourself as a leftist a Democrat? No, I don't consider myself a Democrat. I think just like Bernie Sanders says, he finds himself coxing with the Democrats quite frequently because that's the only game in town. But I wouldn't necessarily say I'm a Democrat. I mean, it is a duopoly. They're the only game in town. They're the only counterbalance towards the growing rightward shift in this country. And I oftentimes find myself at odds with the Democrats because I feel that they also make way for this growing rightward shift in this country rather than oppose it. Whether it be under the Trump administration, as we've seen so far, with Chuck Schumer refusing to fight back against the the quote-unquote clean continued resolution bill, and maybe even pushing for a government shutdown in an effort to use the only minority party power position that they have, or whether it be completely caving and capitulating to right-wing framing when the Democrats were in charge, when it came down to accelerating America's foreign policy, like the continuation of the Abraham Accords from the Trump administration, refusing to go back to the table with Iran, which was Obama's signature foreign policy accomplishment that Biden did not revert back to when he came into power, or most significantly, I think, the rhetoric around immigration and immigrant crime, a concept that is entirely made up.

7:08This isn't to say that immigrants are not, immigrants are never doing any crimes. Of course, everyone does crime. But when you look at the data, immigrants are responsible for a far smaller share, both in per capita and also in totality of crime than natural born US citizens are. So the notion that undocumented migrants are doing tens of thousands of murders a year in the way that Trump has suggested is ridiculous. It's just completely made up. And the fact that the Democrats did not actually actively combat this very dangerous, very right wing, very scary narrative that was built around lying was very frustrating for someone like myself.

7:54You make sense in that tent, which is, as you've heard a million times, a very big tent with Dick cheney all the way to aoc all the way to you do you think that tent has grown too big and and that might be part of the problem the party's having right now no i i think that there's a difference between like growing your tent and then uh i guess like what kind of like what kind of message you're putting out because the Democrats didn't really need to do too much to get Liz Cheney on board because they were basically regurgitating neocon policies in general, right? Both Biden and also Kamala Harris with her interest in continuing the Biden agenda.

8:45So you don't really need to court Dick Cheney in that regard. He just came on board because it makes sense. You're following you know you're you're following his dreams and his agenda to begin with especially in terms of foreign policy um what i want is for the democrats to actually expand its tent to the american working class i don't care about dick cheney dick cheney can say he wants to vote for the democratic party the democrats should probably say yeah we don't care um fuck you you're a terrorist or you're a war criminal um your hands are bloody uh of course they're not going to say that but actually dick cheney is the one person that you could probably say that about and like most people would be like yeah that's fine like even you might not even be able to get away with that with like gw but you could get away with that with dick cheney like he is a he is a monster and and also deeply deeply dislike like there is no constituency for this man just like there's no constituency for Liz Cheney like the they just tried to make it happen they tried to make fetch happen with Liz Cheney so hard when they're just like yeah no see you know the country's over party that's what we're doing you know me and Liz Cheney hand in hand and it just like doesn't make any sense because no one is a Liz Cheney head yeah like even the MSNBC watchers are like I guess this is good because someone else might like it.

10:14That's always the marketing for the Democrats. Someone else is going to like this. I promise. I asked Tim Walls how many votes he thought Liz Cheney won the Democrats or won Kamala Harris, and he dodged the question. Yeah. I wish Tim was a little bit more of a fighter. That's the problem with a lot of these Democrats who I think are much better politicians in general than the ones that get highlighted. the fighters are so technocratic and so invested in this uh third-way neoliberalism agenda like they're zealots but then the actual good like left populist or left populist adjacent democratic party politicians are unfortunately too soft like bernie bernie is way too soft i love him i have so much respect for him but this was my criticism of him in uh both 2016 and 2020 it's just like he was way too soft he loved well in 2020 he also loves joe biden personally that's another issue but soft how like like how do you how do you mean you think his policies aren't no no no no no that that more his policies i mean yeah his policies are great i think for the time they are you know fairly normal demands that every american would agree to uh it's just that you know the entire media apparatus and i i would say that the uh the party apparatus considers it to be like a maoist third world disposition or something when they're like hey can we get like social democracy nordic style and they're like you you want to kill every landlord i think like it's insane the way they treat the most basic stuff that every other competent oecd nation offers unconditionally to all of uh all their citizens but no i mean he needs to be more of a fighter as like he needs to be more adversarial with the media he needs to be more adversarial with, um, with, with the other establishing Democrats in a way that's not dissimilar to, uh, in a way that's not dissimilar to Donald Trump.

12:14You have a lot of young people, 18 to 35, watching you, streaming you, engaging with you. What do you think their politics are? I mean, it depends. It's a broad variety. But I would say that a lot of young people are devoid of hope. They recognize that they probably will never retire, they will never be able to own a home, and that most of their salary, if they're lucky enough to get a job, that they hate regardless is going to go back to their rent and these are the issues that are are i think creating incredible amounts of pressure and uh and pain in in the minds of a lot of young people in this country they just don't feel hopeful and i understand it i mean how could you how could you feel hopeful when looking around at your your prospects and you're like shit looks dire and what do you say to them i tell them to not feel not cave to nihilism and to maintain revolutionary optimism and to remind themselves that uh there are things that are in their control, self-improvement being one of those things, and that they should remember that their cause is just and their demands are perfectly rational, and that they should continue trying to marginally improve both their personal standing, but also organize in their communities and unionize in their workplaces so that they can see some immediate benefits to that through collective bargaining.

14:26Hassan will return to tell us more about self-improvement in a minute on Today Explained.

14:52Today, Explained is back with Hasan Piker. If you've never seen him, he is jacked. And we don't usually ask our guests about their appearance, but we kind of felt like we had to with Hasan because it's a big part of his persona. So here we go. You're like a bigger dude. I'm like a skinny dude. Do you look at me and be like, why is this guy self-improving more? Why isn't he fully actualized himself? No, not at all. I mean, first of all, self-improvement doesn't mean reaching a final stage or anything. It means improving yourself in both invisible and visible ways and bettering yourself from where you were the day prior.

15:34it has nothing to do with like where you have gotten to i mean it's great it's it's definitely fantastic for your confidence if you do improve yourself and then you start seeing those benefits but um you know it has nothing to do with like the way you look right now there's nothing wrong with the way you look you look great thank you so much you're very handsome you look great too you're very handsome as well what's your protein intake is there a lot of protein going on uh yes i I consume about 200 and at a minimum 220 grams of protein every day. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, it's all right. I eat a lot of chicken.

16:10I love chicken. So it's just fine. Just straight white chicken breasts every day. How much do you feel like being kind of yoked is like part of your draw and your persona? I think it, I think initially in leftist circles, it's a negative. people people look at me and immediately assume that i am a right-wing dude i mean at this point it's like hard to say that because obviously most people know what my politics are but if you don't know who i am from afar you think like oh that's like a alpha bro uh potentially right-wing kind a guy. What is your read on why this male optimization getting, you know, really beefed up has like a left right divide?

17:00And what is that divide about? I mean, I think there's, there's a bunch of different reasons for it. But I mean, I think like a lot of these guys, they don't think too hard about politics and then they find themselves trapped in this right wing bubble and then uh i think that they they just like associate that with uh they associate like self-improvement and self-help with that in general it's not self-help inherently is not like a like a leftist or a right-wing thing i don't think um but but it does seem like a lot of the content creators that are promoting that and presenting themselves as that are definitely uh the very least right wing but i i think part of it is because um that's just the domineering attitude in general if you don't really think about things too much and you just you kind of find yourself susceptible to social conditioning and that does have a right wing slant you know the whole common sense narrative it's like oh this is just common sense i don't understand two genders common sense like you didn't put a lot of thought into it that's just what you learned your entire life so of course like you know you you kind of slot yourself into the right wing in that regard um i guess the other reason is because self-improvement can turn into hyper individualism very quickly which is also another incredibly american attitude uh in general but like uh That's what it is.

18:40Those are the two main factors, I think. And you try to couple self-improvement with helping others, which feels really critical in this moment where a lot of people feel lost, but that leads to them becoming more inward, introverted, even angry. how do you feel how do you feel like you're faring in that in that battle right now to not just you know improve yourself inside and out but to be more considerate of those around you I don't know I mean I'm just I'm a stubborn dude and I also I'm not like you know doing deliberate gym content specifically because like I want to penetrate like the alpha bro fitness this space it's just like something that i have always liked to do organically and and you know the content creators uh that i watch from this space uh are people that i end up collaborating with or have at least like some um some mutual interests with like mutual shared interests with so that's what it is it's not it's not me just being like oh if i work out and like present myself as this guy, then, you know, more, uh, alpha bros will listen to me.

19:55Cause a lot of people, uh, a lot of people will still, especially something I've seen online is that like people would rather hear your output and then make up their minds rather than like, look at you or, or genuinely understand whether you care about certain things or not. Like they, there's this phenomenon online where like ben shapiro says the masculine things so he's more masculine than someone like myself i'm soy i'm gay i'm lame because i i think you shouldn't be mean to trans people yeah ben on the other hand is mean to trans people and that means you're alpha it's like what the fuck are you talking about he's like five foot you know i think that the reason why the right is so successful at capturing the attention of young men in particular is because they are at the uh they're they're they're taking a lot of the the worst aspects of the hopelessness that uh i was just talking about that everyone in in the next generation is is experiencing and right-wing commentary is is like a warm blanket that you can surround yourself with that says you're right to be angry and you should be angry at vulnerable populations you should be angry at people who have no power over you and then if you dominate them a little bit then that gives you a little bit of power right it's a it reminds me of the was it the lbj quote about, you know, telling the lowest white man that he is higher than any black man.

21:36If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you. We see different versions of that even today, more evolved versions of that with like DEI. People will be like, Bill Burr's wife is a DEI wife. And I'm like, what do you mean by that? DEI wife? DEI wife. Hmm. Is it because she's a black woman? Is that why you're saying DEI wife? Yeah. He seems to really love her. But I think what you're getting at here is the vision that the right is selling to young men is very compelling because it doesn't necessarily involve growth or progress.

22:20It just affirms what they already believe or maybe what their fathers and their fathers before them believed. But you seem to do something special, which is you create an alternate vision for young men, for young people. And it bummed me out a little bit when you said the vibe that you get from most young people is that they're losing hope because that's a shitty place to be when you're young. What keeps you hopeful? The one area of hope that I have right now is the momentum that I've seen from AOC and Bernie Sanders, who are going out and speaking in front of tens of thousands of people, people that may have not even voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries, right?

23:10Like people from all different walks of life that are both Democrats and maybe even some not Democrats coming together and being like, yeah, everything is messed up. We need to do something about it. So there's definitely a lot of interest, I think, right now amongst the American working class to change things. Some people have associated that change with Donald Trump. I find that kind of change to be worse because I think Donald Trump is like further breaking the system that was broken previously prior to this. But the fact that some people recognize that there must be a different there must be a different mechanism for change.

23:59And they find Bernie to be a vehicle for that is is somewhat positive. But it entirely depends on where it goes from here. Does the Democratic Party turn around and go, okay, we got to do that. Enough with this third-way neoliberalism. Enough with the zealotry that we've demonstrated constantly talking about. True market centrism hasn't been tried. True neoliberalism hasn't been tried yet. It will happen one day. We will unleash the markets and we will free the people. It will be amazing. true neoliberalism cannot fail it can only be failed like this kind of attitude is is ridiculous and i think it's academic it's smug it's elitist and it's wrong it's demonstrably wrong and i think people don't want to hear it anymore so i hope the democratic party recognizes that and then more and more people run for office and say no i don't want corporate donations i'm done with the billionaires and millionaires.

25:02I'm done with you. I'm done with the rest of the Democratic Party. I'm going to be a Democrat, but I'm done with the Democratic Party. That's what Republicans did over the course of many, many years as well. And they feared their base. They did not worry about the potential political repercussions of pushing for incredibly unfavorable and unpopular policies. and look where they're at now. They got rewarded consistently time and time again for at least doing something. Like that's the attitude that many Americans have. They're just like, yeah, everything is messed up. At least this guy wants to, you know, break the system.

25:43And I don't really like the system anyway. I don't like the institutions anyway. What have they done for me? So let's test this out. Hassan Piker, I know you're a very busy man. I know you got like eight hours of streaming right ahead of you. Thank you for sitting down with us before you got started. Yeah, it's no problem. I love yapping. So it's all I do. I could tell. I appreciate it. All right. Have a good one. All the best to you. Take care.

26:12Hassan Piker, Hassan the Hun on Twitter. Hassan D. Piker on TikTok. Hassanabi on Twitch and YouTube. Not a difficult person to find online. Producer Milos made the show today. Miles Bryan is his government name Laura Bullard coasted, Andrea Christensdottir and Patrick Boyd mixed. Amna Alsadi edited with a little help from Miranda Kennedy. I'm Miranda Kennedy and this is Today Explained.

27:01Thank you.