This guy’s dad is the former VP of a multibillion dollar Turkish conglomerate, as well as the secretary of a government department. Mom and Dad were able to fly to their other home in NJ to give birth so he’d get US citizenship. His uncle is the founder and owner of TYT Media and gave him his media career. He went to Rutgers. He lives in a multimillion dollar mansion in the Hollywood Hills. This is by definition not the kind of person who can be a voice of the People. Saying “I recognize my privilege” over and over, while living his lifestyle, doesn’t negate his privilege and complete lack of real-life experience outside of the curated garden of the wealthy. He gets paid obscene amounts of cash to sit in his bedroom and word-vomit for 9 hours a day. Why are his unending opinions taken so seriously? He gives me strong controlled opposition vibes.
Edit: Thank you all for this discussion. I learned a lot.
Hes good at breaking down media. Gets involved on community organizing. Does good propaganda.
People are free to like who they like and make up their own minds. Why you hating? Who made you thought police?
I guess his ubiquity annoys me when he strikes me as hypocritical. Thought police? That’s just a weird thing to say. Why am I “hating?” Nobody hates the Left more than the Left.
I like that he’s focusing on the relationship between labor and the means of production and its not about being poor or rich per se.
Exactly why the infighting when we have bigger fish to fry.
Fair enough. Guess I’ll delete before the hive attacks in full.
Anyone who doesn’t agree with you is a sheep right?
Let’s not do that… Its good to talk as long as you’re also open to listening
No, lmfao. But it’s clear from the overall response that the assumption is that I must be some kind of rightwing troll, just because I’m sick of the guy. Leftist =/= Hasan fan.
I only see one person who questioned if you were trolling. And the response you’ve largely gotten are because people don’t agree with your point of view.
It’s good to have advocates in positions of privilege. If we were all to rely on someone like yourself to try and change hearts and minds, how quickly and widespread can you move that message and get people to understand the plight of workers? Not as quickly as someone with privilege and influence who can help with that.
I don’t know this guy or his politics, just examining this discussion and (as with the other responses you’ve gotten) not really sure where you’re coming from with this. You said yourself your co-workers listen to this guy all day, you can see that kind of thing is important right? (If it’s the right message he is pushing of course)
No… Its a good discussion… Maybe add an edit or a caveat… I do feel there are a few people out there who don’t like him for the reasons you stated. But end of the day bigger fish to fry. As long as we keep that in mind it’s all good to me.
Don’t delete. There is no hive. Let the opinions and discussion happen, read them all, see if anything sways you. If not that’s fine, if it does that’s fine too. You asked, hear the answers
You right
I think you have an extremely online view of “leftist political spaces” because I have never even heard this guy’s name mentioned in any real life context, and I’ve been a very politically active communist since I was a teenager.
Yeah the problem with living in capitalist hellworld at the heart of the empire is that you have two separated insular communities of leftists that are knife fighting rings. One in meetings and one on message boards, and they frequently know nothing about each other.
While the meetings communists sometimes eke out wins like Kshama Sawant, they often struggle to connect to the message board communists who really should be their base. Meanwhile both struggle to connect to society at large.
What’s really funny is that most meetings communists I know locally essentially think of him in essentially the same way message board communists think of AOC. Most meetings communists cannot stand his level of yadda yadda when pressed on any specifics he often just goes more general and says things like ‘I just want everyone to have healthcare bro’.
The thing is, also, from the lefts perspective, the right seems united, meanwhile the left is constantly arguing about the right type of left or not being left enough or whatever. Someone had a go at me once cause I said I learned something off AOC.
As a political force in the United States there is no left. The left is structurally shut out of power.
If you don’t think the right has message board arguments about what flavor of right wing is better, calling eachother RINO, saying that SS style Nazi guys should be Deus Vult style Nazi guys, or how frens and groypers are cringe or how parroting Mitch McConnell makes someone dumb you just haven’t talked to or seen right wingers talk to each other.
Comparing apples and oranges is the most common thing that happens when this kind of shit pops off because it helps diffuse the actual conversations we could have. You see it all in this thread about how for some people Hasan is a large portion of “the left” simply because he’s popular and that’s all they know. These people don’t have real world experience, they get their ideas from online. They’re no different than Kamala Redditors who thought that everyone was going to vote for Kamala because they were too online and instead there was a red wave.
The reality of these types of conversations is that most online leftists don’t have the theoretical backing to grapple with these types of questions and when the accusations are levied against a popular leftist that makes money off of their popularity it’s in their self interest to shut that shit down in any way possible and that’s what you end up seeing.
Bang on.
I was speaking generally, I’m not American so things are different to me.
If you’re from the UK the situation is the same. The entire system came down on Corbyn, but there are very few places in the world right now where there are real leftist politics happening.
Oh, ok. Thank you. Putting it like that makes it easier to picture.
Same. I thought it was cause I was British though.
Never heard of him.
He cute though
Obsessing over “privilege” smells like jealousy
I’ll state this: I know of this person in name only.
He’s a hypocrite. It’s as simple as that. His popularity is probably derived from the novelty of a member of the upper class agreeing with the lower classes and his ability to entertain them. It gives those that belong to the lower class hope of change being enacted by those with capital. The Wikipedia page states he brought a $2.7 million USD mansion. He has access to capital, and what does he do? Asks others to donate to ‘worthy’ causes whilst accruing more capital for his own vested, personal vanity projects?
From what I’ve read he is not an ally. He’s an entertainer. The capitalist system is able to create products that espouse anti-capitalist ideas. This is just another such product. It’s not controlled opposition. It’s just an individual who’s found himself the owner of a sought after product. Just another capitalist.
That’s not very much for a house in LA
Okay let’s do some introspection, why does Hasan Piker need to live in LA?
He could live in La Puente which has a median sale price of $700k, 20 miles from downtown LA, but for some reason he moved to LA.
It’s kind-of odd you know? That basically once a streamer, podcaster, or one of these online personalities makes it big they often move to like LA or NYC. Why is that? Why don’t they move to Nabraska or something? It’s kind of weird that there’s this seeming class of people (new media people making it big) that have an interest in moving to some of the most expensive areas of the country that seemingly have a conglomeration of other people who are part of their class.
What the fuck does any of that matter. How are you about to say someone shouldn’t live where they want because its expensive and they can afford it? Nebraska fucking sucks BTW.
Because this is a plain instance of him not being a class traitor to further his own career and desires.
The reality of the “stop pocket watching” argument that Hasan has successfully deployed on his fans and friends is that it’s the same argument every rich person pulls out when you question how they spend their money and what that practically says about their place and ideas for society at large.
My argument isn’t that “people shouldn’t live in LA” (okay fine maybe it is a little). My argument is that Hasan made the same choice that every influencer makes.
Beyond the very obvious influencer argument, how exactly do you think that upper middle class comes to support capitalism as a whole? They get addicted to their level of consumption like every wealthy class has done for millennia.
So the underlying argument there isn’t “Hasan doesn’t deserve nice things”, it’s that “Hasan’s appetite for nice things is a form of class expression” and there is a point of where that class expression and the addiction to consumption overrides any “do socialism” argument that you say on stream.
This is literally how the nomenklatura got fat in the USSR, they didn’t have streams but they had their local, national, and general assembly soviets. Every post-Soviet person knows an uncle who was a party apparatchik and stopped saying “do socialism” the moment the wall came down, and he was one out of maybe two/three guys in your whole extended family who happened to have a car prior to 1995. I have 3 of such uncles and 2 of them aren’t even blood relatives.
Y’all are getting wrecked by the same attitudes that wrecked the USSR and y’all don’t even have state capitalism with socialist characteristics.
The real problem here is that Hasan doesn’t admit these things. Hasan can’t admit these things because he doesn’t know these things. Hasan is very limited in his knowledge of “socialism”, he’s a guy who just says shit on stream. Being a class traitor is a cool coat he wears along with all his other cool coats.
I struggle to even call myself a class traitor despite the fact that I have Eastern European thrift embedded so deeply in my veins that I live way below my means. Guess what class expression doesn’t stop there. Being thrifty doesn’t stop you from being compromised by your class. That money doesn’t sit under my mattress it’s invested, which means I’m in a class of people who not only will have private money for retirement but I’m invested in the outcomes of the market like every upper middle class person.
So I’m sorry that I don’t buy the whole class traitor shit, because neither the fans giving him that title nor he can actually untangle and explain his place in the world beyond saying “stop pocket watching”. It’s one thing to call yourself a class traitor because you bought a cool eat the rich shirt, it’s another thing to actually take inventory of your life and apply socialist theory to figure that out.
Log the fuck off.
once a streamer, podcaster, or one of these online personalities makes it big they often move to like LA or NYC. Why is that?
That’s not a streamer thing, that’s an almost everyone thing. Tons of people move to cities as soon as they can afford it, tons of those who don’t stay where they are in no small part because it’s less expensive.
Hasan literally told Business Insider that he wanted to move to LA because of fucking Entourage.
Likewise yeah people in their 20s-30s move to cities to chill, but not everyone moves to LA or NY.
I’ll state this: I know of this person in name only.
surely THIS is a solid base to work off of when forming an opinion of somebody
He has access to capital, and what does he do? Asks others to donate to ‘worthy’ causes whilst accruing more capital for his own vested, personal vanity projects?
a recent donation drive run by his community for Palestinian aid raised $840,000, with at least $75,000 coming directly from his pocket. Another previous donation drive last October raised $1,236,473.25, with another $50,000 coming directly from Hasan.
My sentiment does not change. That’s akin to pocket change if he makes around $200,000 USD a month on twitch…
Consumption of luxury products and the defense of them is not something I support. Buying a mansion is antithetical to my views on socialism. An acceptable use of a mansion is to tear it down and build affordable apartments for the working people. Even then that’d be suspect, as you’d be able to build more dwellings on cheaper land… It would be more of a publicity stunt than an acceptable use of capital.
This character might say “the right things” but he does not do them. Why is he even working for Amazon? He could be streaming on peertube or build infrastructure to stream without binding himself to such an exploitative company.
He’s human. It’s not easy say the right things and do the right things. I don’t give it much thought. He’s not of interest to me, but I think it’s quite obvious why communists might not like him.
There’s nothing “leftist” about Piker, no matter what he chooses to call himself. People need to pay attention to what he does, not what he says.
What does he do
He calls himself a "socialist " a “revolutionary” a “man of the people” despite being born into obscene wealth and having nothing in common with “the people.” This is the guy who said, “America deserved 9/11” and has no problems with “imperialism” if it comes from China.
Of course, you don’t have to take my word on any of this. There are plenty of examples of Hassan on YouTube, being a complete dick.
America deserved 9/11
Yeah TBH I was with him until that point.
People need to pay attention to what he does, not what he says.
…He’s a pundit. What he does is pick opinions and put them in front of his audience. He seems to have much better opinions than most Americans and is pretty good at spreading them. That’s useful.
Also, class is not defined by wealth, but by relation to labor. He is doing the work he is getting paid for, regardless of whether someone thinks its too much. He’s not exploiting others to make that money as far as I know.
Exactly!
Moving to LA to buy a multi-million dollar house and be close to your other rich content creator friends is the same as setting yourself on fire for the proles.
Got it.
Fwiw, the picture doesn’t show someone setting themselves on fire, it shows someone having lit a Molotov cocktail.
Damn you’re right, that’s drawn by someone who’s never seen a molotov in real life lmao.
this is hard as fuck holy
The revolution will not have a channel on youtube.
I was going to comment the same ö
deleted by creator
Do you believe everything they tell you without applying mind ?
Lol this is a misuse of statistics to make it look like Hasan isn’t rich. The median US net worth is roughly $200,000. That means 50% of people have less than $200k of net worth, and remember it’s not real money. It means liquidating all of your assets.
Hasan makes the median net worth of an American in one month on Twitch subs alone (from the Twitch leaks where he was the 13th most paid on the site at ~$200k and that’s just one of his income streams). Which means he makes the average US net worth in 5. Using just his house price as his “net worth” is laughable.
Using the Twitch leaks numbers, Hasan bought his house in 2021. Twitch leaks were about 2019-2022. If he makes $200k since 2019 (which is a low estimate because his line go up), he’s made $12,000,000 off of Twitch alone. He can arguably buy 4 of that same house cash and carry.
I get it, he’s a cool guy, but are we really gonna pretend here that he’s living some life comparable to normal people when he’s made $12 million in 5 years? He’s certainly better than most of his peers (other rich people) since you could argue there’s minimal direct exploitation (indirect exploitation is a whole other argument, and given that people hate nuance I’m not gonna bother to make it), but let’s not pretend he’s living the same type of life.
Embrace petty bourgeouis class traitors and don’t fetishize the working class.
Because he’s funded by russia to split the democratic vote.
Edit to add: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_Piker
As of 2024, Piker is the most subscribed political commentator and has the nineteenth-most subscribed channels of all time on the streaming platform Twitch.
His father Mehmet Behçet Piker is a political scientist and economist who served on the Board of Directors (and as Vice-President) of Sabancı Holding, and who is a founding member of the Future Party in Turkey. His mother Ülker Sedef Piker (née Uygur) is an art and architectural historian teaching at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His uncle Cenk Uygur is a political commentator and co-founder of The Young Turks news network.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Piker, in partnership with CARE, raised over $200,000 for Ukrainian relief funds while playing Elden Ring, with an average of over 70,000 people watching his coverage of the conflict.
Twitch information: Followers: 2.7 million
YouTube information: Subscribers: 1.43 million
So he comes from money and is raking in buttloads from his social media presence. He has no need for Russian funding. Either provide evidence or don’t talk nonsense.
Exhibit A: Jill Stein
bender quote
Mrs. Stein and Principal Putler were at the same table making babies and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me!
Remember how libs were rehabbing GWB but then GWB never endorsed, and they got really mad?
We all know why!!! It’s because GWB is a Russian asset, why else would he invite Putin to a high school in Crawford Texas unless Putin had compromat dizinformatsiya on him in 2001. DO NOT LOOK UP WHEN PUTIN BECAME PRESIDENT THAT IS NOT RELEVANT!!! COMPOMAT! DISINFORMATSIYA!
So what? A class traitor is a class traitor, and we only have to win with this. What’s next, you gonna say Engels wasn’t a communist because he was a part of the bourgeoisie?
You do not need some sort of vow of poverty to be a true leftist.
deleted by creator
I totally get your frustration. Any leftist person, group or organization that ostracize people for being a little bit better materially than other people is completely wrong and shouldn’t be taken seriously. The tech field is full of techbro ancaps, having a leftists there is already a step forward. We can’t just confine ourselves to a few spaces and gatekeep who can and who cannot be a part of it.
It’s like you said, you’re orders of magnitude closer to the homeless than to the rich. You are not the enemy, and even if you were, you’re still a leftist and any help is welcomed.
That all being said, I don’t think it’s right to say that this is the reason the left will always lose. First because the left is not an unified mass that thinks the same. There’s a lot of different leftist ideologies and they all clash in some way of another, be it for a disagreement in how to organize or in how to achieve communism. And second, because this type of thing tends to be something you would see more on the imperial core where actual leftist thinking have been thwarted and made into a boogeyman, I don’t know where you’re from, but I honestly suggest you try looking for Marxist-Leninist groups and organizations.
The more stable, self-sufficient, and financially solvent I became, the more I found myself ostracized by the left
I’m also in the tech sector and I’ve been part of local leftist organization. From direct mutual aid to anarchist crust punks to soup kitchens to PSL, I’ve literally never had a problem. Not to turn this into Blind dot com, but my net worth is ~3x the US median.
The difference between Hasan and I, is that Hasan is a poster boy for the left that is making money off of being a poster boy for the left. Nobody is “pocket watching” you as a rando online or in person. Nobody is putting you on trial for your success. That argument is literally the same argument that Elon Musk and other Billionaires make about being punished for their success.
If you’re attempting to show your class traitor bona fides and defending Hasan as one at the same time, but it’s sounding a lot more like solidarity with the moneyed class. Your resentment is showing.
Wearing decent clothes would get me side-eyed by those who insist on black bloc.
Also wtf does this even mean? People don’t dress black bloc for every day dude.
If you want to be lauded for your material success in a capitalist system perhaps you should just be a capitalist?
You do not need some sort of vow of poverty to be a true leftist.
helps though
In case you’re actually, seriously asking and not just trolling, having privilege and success under capitalism does not disqualify a person from being a leftist. You can’t really criticize a person for participating in a system where if you don’t participate, you starve.
He’s using his influence to organize the working class and advocate for collective action, which is the one tool workers have in the fight against their own exploitation. Even if you don’t like him personally or don’t think he’s part of the working class, he is a very strong ally and has undeniably strengthened the movement.
Shame that seriously asking is so hard to distinguish from trolling at this point. For the record, I am a leftist, working a shitty physical job, who has to listen to this guy all day because of my coworkers. I am literally the archetype of the struggling worker class. I don’t need him or any other millionaire to tell me about the working class.
Shame that seriously asking is so hard to distinguish from trolling at this point.
Common-L among left-ish Lemmy instances when you start noticing the paint chipping off of their golden idols.
But there are working class people who like his message (the people you work w/). So clearly, he is saying something of interest. I disagree w/ him on a handful of issues, but don’t think that disqualifies him from being helpful in the fight for equality. The same goes for the likes of JB Pritzker for example. That doesn’t mean they’re my ideal candidates but any port in a storm. Turning away useful allies while we wait for a perfect representation seems like a way to alienate some people because they “aren’t like us” when it comes to their financial situation even if they agree on social and fiscal ideas.
He’s using his influence to organize the working class and advocate for collective action, which is the one tool workers have in the fight against their own exploitation.
Posting and streaming (which is just video posting) is not “organizing the working class and advocating for collective action”. The closest he gets to this is fundraisers, but the buck pretty much stops there.
Money is important sure, but that’s not what organizing is. If fundraising is organizing than the Democratic Party should be Bolsheviks.
Going on stream to tell the people who decompress from their shitty McDonalds shifts that they should organize as they say hell yeah man and go back to the work the next day without doing anything isn’t organizing, it’s not advocacy, it’s entertainment.
What’s with the identity politics man? Does what he says makes sense or not? Don’t tell me you won’t listen to rich white people when they make sense because they’re rich and white.
