In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American streamer and millionaire. He’s best known for his champagne socialism, rabid criticism of the US and Israel, support for the Soviet Union and for Chinese and Russian invasions, and for mistreating his dog. 1/20
Born in 1991, Piker grew up in a privileged and well-connected environment. His father held senior roles at big corporations and his uncle, Cenk Uygur, is the founder of The Young Turks media network. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers, a top-tier university in New Jersey. 2/20
His main activity and primary source of income consists of hours-long livestreams on Twitch where he comments on news and yells at videos. He also keeps his dog in place the whole time with a shock collar. 3/20
Despite presenting himself as anti-capitalist, Hasan drives a $200,000 Porsche Taycan and bought a $2.7 million house in West Hollywood, which is where he does most of his “revolutionary” activities. He also wears high-end, expensive clothes and fashion items. 4/20
Hasan’s kind of “communism” or Marxism-Leninism somehow always includes Cartier rings and Gucci stores for privileged kids like him. To each according to his needs, as they say. 5/20
This ridiculous “champagne socialism” or “cava communism” culminated in a “humanitarian” propaganda trip to Cuba, parading around in clothes worth a decade of local salary and staying in 5-star hotels with fellow “left-wing” supporters of Russian imperialism like Codepink. 6/20
Now to be fair, Hasan did actually collect money for some humanitarian causes through his platform, in particular for Gaza soon after October 7. 7/20
But most of his appeals to his massive audience are the complete opposite: angry, uninformed and simplistic rants, calls for direct violence and support for dictatorships, often with striking hypocrisy given his wealthy family background: 8/20
“Kill those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood.” Hasan’s mother as well as Hasan’s grandfather Dogan (from whom he got his middle name) are or were both real estate owners and managers. 9/20
Hasan has attacked US foreign policy and the US in general, justifying the September 11 terrorist attacks with “America deserved it.” He’s also crossed the line from legitimate criticism of Israel into support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and antisemitism: 10/20
He’s called Jews “inbred” and downplayed the October 7 atrocities, called Hamas “a thousand times better than Israel” and justified the Nova music festival massacre of teenagers with “context”. As is tankie tradition, he’s also endorsed… 11/20
…the totalitarian North Korean regime helping Russia with their war on Ukraine, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and an invasion of Taiwan. He violently insulted a Vietnamese refugee who supported Trump the moment she mentioned the damage communism has done to her country. 12/20
He was much nicer to even a Houthi pirate, whose terrorist activities he conveniently ignored. Then again, he’s also interviewed infamous vatnik liar Jeffrey Sachs. Just like Putin, word for word, Hasan is nostalgic for the Soviet Union. 13/20
Like many of his fellow vatniks, Hasan insisted throughout February 2022 that Russia would not invade, laughing one week before that “It was gonna be like next week, dude”. Instead of revising his assessment of the Russian threat, he then switched to blaming the West: 14/20
He’s called NATO the aggressor — while Russia is the one bombing Ukraine — completely denying Ukraine’s sovereignty and thereby endorsing Russian imperialism. The usual Kremlin narratives spread by vatniks, whose main purpose is to help Putin invade, occupy and murder more people. 15/20
It makes no difference whatsoever if the vatniks claim to be against Putin or “anti-war” or “left-wing”. And indeed Hasan took it a step further by declaring that “Ukrainian sovereignty is insignificant” and fully endorsing Russia’s invasions: 16/20 youtu.be
He’s proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk Russian and the invasion and annexation of Crimea a “completely justifiable fucking act”. He doubled down on this with “Crimea? Cry me a river. A Russian river.” It got even worse with… 17/20
…an insane rant on “talk to me when Putin is throwing Ukrainians into concentration camps” (which he is, whether it’s “filtration camps” or civilians held as POWs, starved and tortured). At which point Hasan gets very angry and downplays Hitler’s invasions as no big deal. 18/20
Speaking of whom, Hasan’s been dubbed the “Nick Fuentes of the left”. They’re both wealthy, aggressive streamers encouraging hatred, violence, and wars. Both should get much more condemnation from their sides of the spectrum, which get upset at the comparison instead. 19/20 bsky.app
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American far-right social media personality, Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes). He’s best-known for his white supremacist, misogynistic and antisemitic rhetoric, and for being the poster boy for the so-called incel movement. 1/17
Russia spends $5 billion a year on propaganda to manufacture support for its invasions through vatniks, bot farms and false narratives such as those spread by Hasan Piker. Fact-based research to counter it takes time and effort — please support our work: 20/20 vatniksoup.com
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