“He’s hot. He’s ‘dangerous.’ Young men actually listen to him. Is he what Democrats are looking for?”
That’s how the left-wing media outlet Slate recently described leftist Twitch streamer and YouTube star Hasan Piker. Turns out, it got one part right: He’s dangerous, for sure.
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Piker went viral this week for repeatedly suggesting on-air that Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, should be “killed.” This remark came in the context of coverage of Republicans expressing a desire to crack down on Medicaid fraud. Piker cited the fact that Scott’s for-profit hospital company, Columbia/HCA, was fined $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud and argued that “if you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott.” (Piker then had to Google what office Scott currently holds because he is clearly well-informed.)
It’s pretty unhinged and irresponsible when you have a platform as large as Piker’s to call for the death of your political opponents. But it’s even more so at a time when President Donald Trump just faced two assassination attempts, coming within an inch of losing his life, and when millions of young people, many of whom are certainly Hasan Piker fans, are lionizing an accused murderer, Luigi Mangione. All it takes is one deranged young person out there to listen to Piker’s calls for violence and take action for something horrible to happen, and he should know better.
Thankfully, Piker issued an apology and seems to have learned his lesson. Just kidding.
Instead, the internet star posted a smug YouTube video mocking his “cancellation” and invoking the supposed hypocrisy of “free speech warriors” who criticized his comments. He mockingly “apologized” for his “hyperbolic language,” saying he should have instead said that Scott should “get capital punishment,” which is different from his original remarks, but not that different.
At least the streaming platform where Piker is a partner, Twitch, took serious action against him after his comments. Kidding again. He was suspended for just 24 hours. That’s right: Call for the death of a sitting U.S. senator, and you get taken off-air for a day. That’s it.
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This is all the more glaring, given how quick the platform is to ban other people for far less. Streamer “Destiny” was permanently banned from Twitch after calling some transgender activists “subhuman.” Meanwhile, streamer Adin Ross was permanently banned for allowing other people to make “hateful” comments in his chat without appropriate moderation. You get the idea: Twitch has notoriously strict terms of service and is heavily censorious toward those who violate them, except Hasan Piker.
The real problem here isn’t that one left-wing influencer got away basically unscathed after making horrific comments. It’s that he will remain in good standing among much of the progressive left, including the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and continue to be cheered on by liberal media. When you have the “right” politics, there are no standards limiting how far you can go in fighting Republicans because decency is dead, and the only standards that remain are double standards.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.