BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
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LUSE: All right, y'all, if you are a regular listener to this show, you know that for the past couple of years, I have been very interested in the state of masculinity. We've talked about the rise of bro podcasting, the male loneliness crisis. We've talked about male body image. And there's one man that I think embodies all of these conversations, Hasan Piker. He's a hugely popular Twitch streamer who talks about progressive politics with his more than 2.9 million followers. He's covered topics ranging from the war in Gaza to immigration and even the New York City mayoral race. He also has hugely loyal fans.
Here's just some of the things that they say about him. Swepttheleg from Reddit says he is a himbo gateway drug to leftist thought. Shaka143 (ph) from TikTok says, tell him, Habibi (ph). And Lilgayray (ph) or Lil.gay.ray on Instagram says, not to be dramatic, but I'd die for this man LOL. The LOL, I think, is to take down the drama.
HASAN PIKER: Yeah.
LUSE: So Hasan is sitting here with me. You know, Hasan, I don't know if I've ever heard the term himbo gateway drug before. Is that something that you feel accurately describes you?
PIKER: Yeah, I think that nails it, I guess.
LUSE: (Laughter).
PIKER: Just gateway drug to empathy.
LUSE: OK, OK. I do think that this is, like, a super useful example to get into something else. Like, you haven't just gotten attention for your politics. There's also been a lot of talk about your specific brand of masculinity. Earlier this year, you were profiled by The New York Times, and that headline was really something.
PIKER: I think the original headline was "Progressive Mind In A MAGA Body." That's what it was.
LUSE: Yes, you are correct. The headline was "Hasan Piker: A Progressive Mind In A MAGA Body." Which you know, I have to ask, like, what is a MAGA body? Like, do you know what that is?
PIKER: I believe that they were trying to say that there's a lot of content creators in the manosphere that, like, work out. And when you invoke the MAGA body, I don't think most people, New York Times readers or not, are going to look at that and think, like, a very brolic guy. They're going to think of, I don't know, someone like a normal American, the average American.
LUSE: And yet, it sounds like that headline kind of tied masculinity to a certain type of physique or masculinity to MAGA...
PIKER: Yeah.
LUSE: ...In a really specific way.
PIKER: For sure. I think that's deliberate, and I think it's wrong. I don't think masculinity is associated with MAGA. I don't even think masculinity is necessarily associated with working out. I think what we consider to be masculine is just confidence and, like, I guess, a demonstration of leadership skills. That's what most of these people are pointing to when they talk about being alpha or being masculine in general, like, a lot of these people online.
LUSE: We've also spent a lot of time talking about sort of different gateways and pathways to more conservative thinking or MAGA politics. You talk a lot about working out in all your various social media, and, you know, you also like video games. And on top of all of that, you talk about politics on the internet, like on the face. These are very much right now activities associated with bro culture. And right now, bros, I think, are often stereotypically considered to be conservative. Why do you think, like, these activities, like working out, video games, etc., why do you think they are conservative coded?
PIKER: I mean, I wouldn't say they're necessarily conservative coded. I would just simply say that they are easier to be branded as apolitical. I mean, there's a very funny, long-standing joke or meme in the gaming sphere where people will say, oh, why do you have politics in my video games? Like, get politics out of my video games. There's like this rallying cry from Gamergate onward. And it usually is deployed at any video game that has, like, a Black female protagonist. And then immediately, that's, like, being considered as political. It's like the two genders, you know, white man and political. And these guys will unironically say things like, Call of Duty is not political, or Call of Duty wasn't political until there was, like, a Black woman in it.
And, like, Call of Duty has, of course, always been political. It's, you know, sometimes making a criticism of American imperialism. In other instances, it's quite literally defending American imperialism, but it's never not political. It's just that a lot of guys don't read it as politics when it's something that they agree with or aren't putting much thought into. And I think that's what happens in a lot of these spaces for a lot of these hobbies is that we cede territory to right-wing actors because they get to angle it as though they're above the interests of politics, as though they're totally above the realm of politics. Like, they're not doing any political analysis. Don't try to read too much into this thing, just enjoy it.
LUSE: I get the sense that even if you weren't a Twitch streamer, you would still be, like, doing a lot of - you'd still be playing a lot of video games. You'd still be working out. And a lot of young guys have the same interests and end up going down another political pipeline, and you came out progressive. I'm wondering, like, what do you think caused things to turn out differently for you than they have for a lot of other young guys?
PIKER: I mean, growing up in Turkey, I always had a much more liberal slant, I would say, especially because I saw the formation of the Erdogan coalition, the Erdogan government and I saw the repressive nature of conservatism. One of my first interactions with this, with government repression in general, was when Recep Tayyip Erdogan sued one of the cartoon newspapers that I used to read, a political satire. And that's when I was like, whoa, this is messed up (laughter). I don't really like this guy.
Outside of that, I, growing up in Turkey, always had an anti-imperialist slant, which is a given usually for people on that side of the planet, who are privy to the negative consequences of American empire, who get to experience it firsthand or at least secondhand. But when I came to the United States of America, I think that's what was, like, such a radicalizing moment for me - it was health care. It was the ambulance bill that I got when I was in college. I was like, I can't believe it.
LUSE: What was that like? What happened? If you can share.
PIKER: I just blacked out. I didn't call the ambulance myself. I just woke up at the hospital. And then I saw the bill, and I was like, this is insane (laughter). And I already had this attitude that a social democracy is perhaps the best possible way to go about things 'cause I came from Turkey. I saw the importance of public education...
LUSE: Sure.
PIKER: ...Free public college and a nationalized health care system. Even if it's not the best funded, it's still really good that it exists, right?
LUSE: Yeah, I could see how that would be, like, a complete shock if it's something you never had to think about before.
PIKER: Yeah.
LUSE: And you call an ambulance to pick you up in an emergency, in a time of need, and then suddenly...
PIKER: Yeah.
LUSE: ...You're like, oh, this costs money.
PIKER: Yeah. And also, I'll admit, like, I think I was too well-educated at that point to be duped by some dude online being like, that's because of Mexicans that you have to pay for this ambulance (laughter). But I do think that in that moment, in that moment of weakness, in that moment of anger and resentment, if there was someone out there who was charismatic and I wasn't very well-read and I did not know that there was an alternative readily available, like a public health care system was readily available that I had seen work in a much poorer country like Turkey, I probably would be like, I'm really pissed off. Who else is pissed off with me? And if you got a dude on YouTube saying, yeah, I'm pissed off, too. You know why we're pissed off, though? 'Cause the Democrats care about Mexicans and Guatemalans and trans people. And you should be pissed off about that. That's weird, right? And then you just go, oh, I guess you're right.
And, you know, all of that combined, I think, creates this perfect powder keg where young men who are already predisposed to reactionary tendencies find themselves swept away. Desperate for a sense of community, desperate for an identity, they find themselves in right-wing circles. And they unironically wear it as a brand where they think that being politically right wing is a way to demonstrate your machismo, is a way to demonstrate how masculine you are.
LUSE: We were talking about sort of how your progressive politics had developed over time. And speaking of your politics, like, you have done interviews with AOC, Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani. But also, you've sat down with figures like Theo Von, and most recently, at least at the time of this conversation, the Nelk Brothers.
PIKER: (Laughter) The Nelk Boys.
LUSE: Or the Nelk Boys...
PIKER: (Laughter) The Nelk Brothers.
LUSE: ...Right after they had interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu.
PIKER: Yeah, that was crazy.
LUSE: It was something. What's your thought process behind engaging both progressive politicians and people who share similar politics to you, as well as, you know, more conservative or questioning figures like the Nelk Boys and Theo Von?
PIKER: So I bracket those guys off as like, I guess, apolitical.
LUSE: You mean you bracket someone like Theo Von more as apolitical? Or you consider the Nelk Boys apolitical as well?
PIKER: I'm saying that they're conservative, but they're not a mouthpiece for the party in the same way that, like, the Daily Wire is or the same way that Charlie Kirk is.
LUSE: Gotcha.
PIKER: Nelk is probably at the tail end of this. Like, that's the closest to the Daily Wire...
LUSE: Sure.
PIKER: ...And the PragerU's of the world. Whereas, like, the Theo Vons and, you know, Andrew Schulz, they just kind of go along with the wind. And they will find themselves swept away with, like, right-wing sentiment. I mean, to a certain degree, one might even consider it to be grifting, I guess. But I think it's more so just, like, someone who doesn't have a well-defined political world view.
The reason why I say, like, the Nelk Boys or Theo Von or Bradley Martyn, or any number of these different people that, like, have openly said that they voted for Trump. The reason why I consider them in a separate category than, like, the Daily Wires of the world and the Charlie Kirks of the world, the Fox News of the world is because, like, those guys are deliberately doing right-wing political propaganda. And their entire job relies on them being a consistent defender of the Republican Party and reactionary thought. Whereas a lot of these other podcasters, they will change their attitude. While they command influence and attention within the base of support for the Republican Party, they'll jump ship, I guess, far before any Republican commentator ever would. They're easier to convince, and therefore their audiences are easier to convince.
LUSE: Is that something you take into account, then, when sort of, like, debating these guys or having - or, like, you know, streaming with them or talking to them?
PIKER: Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely something I take into account. I know for a fact that Charlie Kirk's audience is coming in specifically to watch him dominate someone, like a liberal, you know? Whereas, like, I don't think Theo Von's audience is that invested in politics at all. They're just mostly looking at it as, like, weird or, you know, on moral terms. Like Israel. Theo Von is very obviously very open about his distaste for what Israel has done in Gaza. He's called it a genocide. He'll still go and interview JD Vance, but even in that interview, he'll bring that up. He'll call into question. And I think, like, he is a better demonstration of what the average American feels like.
LUSE: That makes me wonder how you think about, you know, this sort of mass audience of guys who think of themselves as apolitical, right? Like, I don't know. Who do you think your audience is, and what do you think they see in you?
PIKER: My audience is pretty diverse, I would say. It's like a quarter female, 75% male, which is definitely a much higher percentage of female fans than most of the other content creators in the space that I occupy. 'Cause Twitch is, like, very male-dominated, white male-dominated in particular. That's what my audience profile is as well. It's 18- to 35-year-old men for the most part. And a lot of them are white. A lot of them are atheist or agnostic. A lot of them are in college, in education or, you know, have just started their jobs.
And they want a sense of community because - at least this is what I think that I serve the purpose of. They see all of this stuff happening in the news and they're like, this makes me angry. Why is no one communicating the anger that I'm experiencing? And I think they see me as someone who has shared values to a lot of these people, where they go, oh, I get it. This guy gets me. This guy gets exactly what I'm upset about. I've never heard someone verbalize my anger in this way. I've never heard someone communicate exactly my desires in this way. I felt lonely before. I didn't realize that there were other people who also felt this exact same way. That's my job.
And my job is also to obviously inform people. So I think a lot of people see what I have to do as almost like zoomer NPR, where they just tune in while they're, you know, doing chores or at work. And I'm just kind of speaking and walking them through the day's news in a way that is, I think, probably easier to digest, in a way that is more personable, in a way where I am angry a lot of times. And I think that anger is something that they also share. That feeling is something that they also share. So they're there for that.
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LUSE: Coming up...
Do you think that the Joe Rogan of the left is, like, the right solution to push for?
PIKER: No. And I keep repeating to people that the Joe Rogan of the left is a silly thing to look for.
LUSE: Hasan Piker on the Joe Rogan of the left and our current political landscape.
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LUSE: Do you think that the Joe Rogan of the left is, like, the right solution to push for?
PIKER: No. And I keep repeating to people that the Joe Rogan of the left is a silly thing to look for.
LUSE: Like, after the election last year, there was a lot of talk about political influence and manosphere and bro podcasters. And, you know, some political commentators have been calling for a Joe Rogan of the left. And some people have pointed to you as someone who could possibly be that person or who is that person.
PIKER: OK. People keep asking me about whether or not we need a Joe Rogan of the left, or whether or not I am the Joe Rogan of the left. And I keep repeating to the Democrats at least that, like, a Joe Rogan is not going to solve their problems. They need to change their policies. They need to actually, you know, do real politics. There was a guy out there who actually was organically doing exactly the things that I was saying, and he had tremendous success in the Democratic primary in the New York mayoral race. His name is Zohran Mamdani.
LUSE: Zohran Mamdani, yeah.
PIKER: Yeah. And he did that. He went out, he asked people, why did you vote for Trump? Like, or he asked people, like, what are some of your biggest concerns? And he identified five of them, and he said, these are my five policies. I'm running on this. I'm going to do a rent freeze. It's been done before. I'm going to make the buses fast and free. He's already worked with Eric Adams and, like, pushed Eric Adams to do that on at least one of the routes. I'm going to increase the housing supply. I'm also going to tax the super-rich to the best of my ability. I will work with Albany. I'm going to do that. And people looked at him and were like, OK, that sounds great. That's exactly what I'm looking for.
LUSE: I mean, a lot of the public, a lot of political commentators have interpreted Zohran Mamdani's win as, like, some sort of grand surprise. But it sounds like what you're saying is, like, these are kinds of the things that you think that the Democratic Party should've been embracing for a long time...
PIKER: Yeah.
LUSE: ...Anyway.
PIKER: I've been saying it. Bernie's been saying it. People say - I don't think they're unpacking it correctly, by the way. No disrespect to your colleagues, or no disrespect to the members of traditional media. I see all of this commentary, and I think they only identify Zohran's victory with, like, he's young, he's charismatic and he did good social media.
LUSE: Yeah.
PIKER: All three of those things are true, right? But they only played a role in highlighting the platform policies that he had. It's actually the policies that caused people to pay attention to him. It's not like people were Young Cardamom fans ahead of time and they were like, oh, my God, that's my favorite rapper.
LUSE: (Laughter).
PIKER: Like, I'm so glad he's running for mayor.
LUSE: When I think about Zohran Mamdani's, like, specific brand of masculinity, it's so not like bro anything. It's like, he's a guy, he's walking the streets, he's in a suit. And he also is a young man himself who is not embodying this idea of what a lot of, you know, both political commentators and armchair theorists alike think that the left should be embracing.
PIKER: Yeah, I think he was just being himself. And that's what's important. Here's another guy who's always being himself uncompromisingly, in an unyielding manner. His name is Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is not this incredibly beloved figure in American politics and has, like, a broad appeal across political ideologies because he's super sexy or because he's just really good at social media, he's, like, incredibly charismatic. Like, no disrespect to unc, but Bernie is very old.
But the reason why people like him is because he is an earnest communicator, and he has been an incredibly stubborn guy for all of his life, for his entire life. And he's always been antiestablishment. He's always advocated for select policies that you can very easily identify. He is defined by what he is advocating for. And I think politicians need to remember that. That's what they need to do 'cause ultimately that's what we want.
LUSE: It makes me think about the fact that, like, since Trump's been in office, like, we've seen immigration enforcement, cuts to federal disaster aid, cuts to Medicaid. And if you're online as much as I am, then you've seen the gamut of reaction from Americans all across the political spectrum. A lot of people are not happy. But I wonder, how has this moment maybe influenced how you want to speak and who you're trying to reach?
PIKER: Oh, it hasn't changed my rhetoric or strategy even remotely because I literally said that this was going to happen. As a matter of fact, I said that this was going to happen after Trump wins before Trump even won. I mean, I've been saying this for the past 10 years. I've seen this cycle play itself out every single time. Republicans think they like a policy because Republican politicians whip up hysteria surrounding a thing that they claim is happening. And the most common example of this is migrant crime. Or before, it was always white supremacist versions of that specifically that was, like, anti-Black, right?
LUSE: I mean, it makes you think of that Lyndon B. Johnson quote. You know, if you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you.
PIKER: Yeah, and that's true. I mean, white supremacy is a fairly important motivating principle. But I think that the most adequate solution against that is not simply to say, like, oh, this person is a white supremacist, and these people can never change their positions or whatever. I come at this from a place of understanding that we are all victim to social conditioning. And that if we are to understand as leftists, as progressives that America is a racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted country, then it's understandable that there's going to be expressions of said bigotry that is left dormant in a lot of people who have not explored or gone on a political journey and kind of just, like, take all of these preexisting social constructs for granted, as though it is the norm, right?
And therefore, I think I'm a lot more - and possibly because, you know, I am a privileged person. I'm a straight, white man. I guess, like, the only line of attack in that regard is usually the fact that I'm Muslim, you know, and Turkish. But from my position of privilege, I recognize and can be a little bit more forgiving of people's, I guess, microaggressions. And I can take on this emotional labor because it's not as exhausting for someone like myself because it doesn't directly impact me in that way.
And I do it because I understand that everyone has what I like to call privilege blind spots. There's an intersectionality to oppression. There's an intersectionality to privilege. Everyone has, like, some kind of a blind spot, and it's not because they're truly evil people. And I don't subscribe to good-bad dynamics when it comes to politics. I understand that people are just simply victim to their social conditioning, or just kind of going along and trying to survive every single day without really reading too much into how sociopolitical constructs might impact them and others around them.
LUSE: Getting outside of the current new cycle, what are you seeing or noticing right now that, you know, maybe the everyday person isn't familiar with that you think that they should be paying attention to because it might become extremely politically or culturally relevant, you know, very, very soon in ways that they might not be thinking about?
PIKER: Ooh, I mean, I was just thinking about this the other day. But I feel like young conservatives, especially those who work in politics, are definitely a lot more right-wing, like ideologically invested in, I would say, far-right Nazi stuff or, you know, Catholic nationalism or whatever. Like, Christian dominionism, like, whatever iteration of far-right ideology they've developed for themselves. It's usually a manifestation of fascism. And I think that there's a lot more people, especially in politics, that are under the age of 35 on the Republican side that abide by these principles and live out those desires than we think. So I say watch this space.
There's also another thing that I've been noticing where pure reactionary politics have basically turned into this incredible endeavor where it's so hyperfocused on owning the libs and, like, getting a reaction out of liberals that no matter what the reaction is, like, disgust, revulsion, it's still, I think, considered a positive in, like, conservative circles.
LUSE: Interesting. When you talk about owning the libs, I think, like, about, like, those Jubilee videos where people go on and, like...
PIKER: Oh, God.
LUSE: ...Debate 50 people or something like that. Anything that irritates you...
PIKER: Yes.
LUSE: ...Is a win for me.
PIKER: Yes. And any kind of irritation is a win. It doesn't matter what the punishment is for yourself, what the penalties are for yourself that you're incurring in the process. It's just you made them react. It's like a child. I think we're getting dumber. That's the other thing. I think we're just getting dumber and dumber. We have no interest in the arts. We have no interest in culture. Everything has turned into content.
LUSE: I wonder, what's the alternative?
PIKER: I don't know. I don't know what the alternative is. I think taking a step back, taking a breather, becoming a Luddite, deciding that there is too much technological progress. And it's important...
LUSE: Getting a dumb phone?
PIKER: Yeah, it's important to just, like, kind of scale down your overreliance on tech. Not that I do that. I mean, I don't do that.
LUSE: (Laughter) I was going to say...
PIKER: I'm live every single day. I mean, I kind of do that for AI. Like, I don't use any AI whatsoever.
LUSE: Oh.
PIKER: I just don't like it. I don't like it at all. And maybe it's 'cause I'm old. I'm 33 years old. Maybe I'm a boomer.
LUSE: (Laughter).
PIKER: But I think that...
LUSE: Thirty-three years old. That's funny.
PIKER: In my line of work, that's - you're dead, you know?
LUSE: But I wonder what is like, you know, I don't know, like, Hasan at 60. Like, what are you doing? What is that? Like, are you going to be streaming? I saw, like, I think recently you said on Twitter or something like that, that you realized that you hadn't taken a weekend off from streaming in like, what, 18 months or a year and a half or something like that?
PIKER: Eighteen months? No, since 2018.
LUSE: 2018? That's what it was, since 2018.
PIKER: I had not taken three continuous days off...
LUSE: Right.
PIKER: ...Since 2018.
LUSE: You can't do that at 60, you can't do that at 60. So what is that like, you know, I don't know, 27 years from now?
PIKER: That's what you think.
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LUSE: Sure.
PIKER: I mean, that's the thing. I don't know. I'm going off of vibes for the most part. I love what I do. I'm very fortunate to have such a massive audience of like-minded individuals. I'm out there trying to do my very best to try to pull people away from that radicalization pipeline. But I do think that a lot of the centrist and, dare I say, liberal or self-identified liberal accounts play a formative role in actively pushing young men away from people like myself into the arms of the radical neo-Nazi-style movements because they are so predisposed with, like, attacking someone like myself that they just drop the ball. They forget that, you know, there is a far greater evil, at least from, you know, our shared understanding of the world.
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LUSE: Hasan, it has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate you coming on.
PIKER: Thank you for having me.
LUSE: That was Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.
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LUSE: And I'm going to put on my influencer hat for a second and ask you to please subscribe to this show on Spotify, Apple or wherever you're listening. Click follow so you know the latest in culture while it's still hot. This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by...
ALEXIS WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Alexis Williams.
LUSE: This episode was edited by...
NEENA PATHAK, BYLINE: Neena Pathak.
LUSE: Our supervising producer is...
BARTON GIRDWOOD, BYLINE: Barton Girdwood.
LUSE: Our executive producer is...
VERALYN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Veralyn Williams.
LUSE: Our VP of programming is...
YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.
LUSE: All right. That's all for this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. Talk soon.
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