The New York Times (NYT) wrote a glowing Sunday profile of internet star Hasan Piker, a left-wing content creator who has claimed that America deserved 9/11 and praised Houthi rebels and Hezbollah.
The NYT’s profile focused heavily on Piker’s physical qualities, touching only on his 9/11 controversy and allegations of antisemitism 28 paragraphs into the story, after lengthy descriptions of his fitness routine, fashion choices and his “masculine gender capital.”
“Mr. Piker’s success on camera, in some part, has been aided by the fact that he is, by conventional standards, a very handsome man. He is 6 feet 4 inches tall and built like a professional athlete, with a square jaw, a beard and a head of thick dark hair,” the Grey Lady fawned.
Only near the bottom of the profile did the Times acknowledge “Mr. Piker has been labeled anti-American by people across the political spectrum for saying the country ‘deserved’ the Sept. 11 attacks.”
His rhetoric on Israel has divided many of the left’s most prominent spokesmen. A recent debate between Sam Seder of “The Majority Report” and left-wing American-Israeli content creator Ethan Klein highlighted the polarizing nature of the massively popular streaming star.
Sam Seder confronts Ethan Klein on the dangers of conflating criticism of zionism with anti-Semitism pic.twitter.com/N3mRcb12Rr
— The Serfs (youtube.com/theserftimes) (@theserfstv) April 30, 2025
Klein pressed Seder on Piker’s comparisons of Zionism to neo-nazis. “Any kind of fucking Zionist tendencies should be treated in the same way as being a fucking rabid neo-Nazi. You shouldn’t even let someone be the fucking local dogcatcher … if they’ve ever exhibited any sort of positive feelings about the state of Israel,” Piker said in a livestream.
Seder dismissed Piker’s comments as hyperbole despite Piker’s insistence that “I’m so serious about this.”
Sam Seder confronts Ethan Klein on the dangers of conflating criticism of zionism with anti-Semitism pic.twitter.com/N3mRcb12Rr
— The Serfs (youtube.com/theserftimes) (@theserfstv) April 30, 2025
Piker also interviewed a Yemeni influencer who calls himself Rashid al-Haddad.
al-Haddad has gone viral on social media for posting footage of himself aboard the Bahamas-flagged Galaxy Leader commercial ship after Houthi pirates boarded it and took the crew hostage.
The Houthis, labeled terrorists by the U.S. government, are based in Yemen. Since 2023, they have attacked U.S. warships over 170 times and commercial vessels over 140 times, according to the White House.
Piker told the man, who the internet has dubbed TimHouthi Chalamet, that the Houthis are doing the work of a hero, comparing them to the protagonist of his favorite Japanese anime show.
The NYT is far from the only mainstream outlet to highlight Piker’s fitness routine while glossing over his controversies. (RELATED: Young Turks Contributor Hasan Piker Mocks ISIS Victim Kayla Mueller Then Takes It Back)
“During a recent streaming session, Piker bantered about his squat form and riffed on Andy Samberg’s face, before pivoting to a long interview with New York Times politics reporter Astead Herndon,” Vox wrote in an article highlighting their interview with Piker. The interviewer asked Piker at length about his protein intake and fitness activities but did not mention any criticisms of him.
WBUR, Boston’s public radio station, and the New Yorker also published lengthy interviews with the creator.
Piker maintained that he opposes antisemitism, but added the caveat that he draws a distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. “I find antisemitism to be completely unacceptable,” he told the Times, adding “I find the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism to be very dangerous.” Not everybody is convinced.
Democratic New York Congressman Ritchie Torres, a fierce advocate for Israel and American Jews, has officially petitioned Amazon, who owns the Twitch platform which Piker primarily broadcasts on, to take action against him for what Torres alleged was antisemitism.
A Congressional letter has been sent to the leadership of both Amazon and Twitch to sound the alarm about the amplification of antisemitism on Twitch. Hasan Piker, who has described Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and a Jewish man as a “bloodthirsty pig,” is the antisemitic voice of… pic.twitter.com/h95QXZ78AJ
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) October 30, 2024
“Hasan Piker has emerged as the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism in America,” Torres wrote in a 2024 letter to Twitch and Amazon executives.
“Mr. Piker has demonized Orthodox Jews as ‘inbred’ and has dehumanized a Jewish man as a ‘bloodthirsty pig dog’: the association of Jews with pigs and blood-thirst is textbook antisemitism,” Torres continued.
Torres also pointed to Piker’s comments about how alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7 did not change how he felt about the incident.
“Mr. Piker has all but exposed himself as an apologist for the sexual violence and savage rapes of October 7th. ‘It doesn’t matter if rape happened on October 7th. It doesn’t change the dynamic for me,’ Mr. Piker declares before finally admitting that ‘Palestinian resistance’ (his euphemism for terrorism) is not perfect,” Torres wrote.
Piker told NBC that the congressman took many of his videos out of context when quoting them in the letter, saying that he was criticizing the government of Israel, not Jews.
Piker, the nephew to Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur, got his start at his uncle’s company before breaking out on his own, the NYT noted in its profile. Other statements of his include praise for Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party and paramilitary group which the U.S. Department of National Intelligence (DNI) calls a terrorist organization.
“Hezbollah is a paramilitary organization that is also a part of the Lebanese parliament,” Piker said. “I think as a resistance group, they’re pretty successful against Israel.”
“I don’t have an issue with them,” he added moments later.
He has been uplifted by left-wing politicians as well, scoring multiple virtual appearances with figures such as Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar.
The Daily Caller has reached out to Hasan Piker for comment but has not yet received a reply.
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