Hasan Piker's History of Offensive Comments Make Him a Polarizing Figure

Polarizing political influencer/streamer Hasan Piker has been a topic of discussion lately in the Democratic Party. After Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed decided to include the controversial political commentator in his campaign, some Democrats denounced the move because of the streamer's history of offensive and inflammatory remarks.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna argued that not engaging with influencers like Hasan "will cost us future elections," according to The Hill. Others argue that El-Sayed's campaign will give Hasan's incendiary rhetoric an even larger platform.

The most common reason people dislike Hasan Piker is likely the offensive remarks he's made while talking about his political opinions. His rhetoric has been labeled as antisemitic on multiple occasions, and he's made insensitive remarks about war and zionism. He allegedly said that America "deserved" 9/11 and later implied that Israel deserved an attack from Hamas, per Distractify.

Jonathan Cowan and Lily Cohen from The Wall Street Journal said, "[Hasan] has referred to ultra-Orthodox Jews as ‘inbred,’ employed antisemetic dog whistles (‘bloodthirsty, violent pig-dog’) against an anti-Hamas viewer of his stream, compared liberal Zionists to ‘liberal Nazis.’ and said ‘Hamas is a thousand times better’ than the Israeli state," per NBC News.

Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow called out Abdul El-Sayed for including Hasan in his campaign during the U.S. Senate race in the swing state. McMorrow, the Anti-Defamation League, the Trump administration, and other pro-Israel figures called Hasan antisemitic, per The Guardian.

McMorrow argued that El-Sayed should not be working with Piker so soon after the Temple Israel synagogue attack in the state. "That is not somebody that you should be campaigning with at a moment when there is clearly a lot of pain and trauma across our state," she told Jewish Insider, per The Guardian.

Hasan's dog, Kaya, sits in the background during most of his Twitch streams. A moment in one of his streams went viral after viewers suspected that Hasan was using a shock collar to force his dog to stay in the shot. In the clip, Kaya gets up from her bed, yelps, and then sits back down. Viewers point out that it appears that Hasan touches a device on his desk just before Kaya yelps.

In a later stream, Hasan denied using a shock collar on Kaya and claimed that Kaya yelped because she clipped her nail on something as she got up. He showed viewers a "behavior modification collar" that he used on Kaya and said that it has a "vibration" setting, not a "shock" setting, per The California Post.