Hasan Piker is a streamer and a self-described leftist Marxist and anti-Zionist. He used to work as a host for “The Young Turks” but now streams independently on Twitch and YouTube where he has gathered over 3 million and 1.75 million subscribers respectively.
Calling this column part of our holy crusade against influencers who degrade our minds with their dubious ideologies would be too literal given Piker’s Levantine origins.
Nevertheless, Piker states, “A big part of what I do, especially in this age on the internet, is sift through the misinformation. So I go through all of that in real time and try to instill some sense of media literacy in the audience, and I explain it as I’m holding your hand through the journey of reading the news.”
So who is this person who thinks highly enough of himself to hold our hand as he teaches us what to think about what’s going on in the world? Again, he’s a Marxist – a maligned title that many find instantly objectionable.
Still, there are more and less sophisticated versions of Marxism and I wanted to find out what kind he is, since he’s holding our hand and teaching us his wise ways. Fortunately he put out a video where he explains to us what Marxism is.
There are many academic critiques of Marxism, particularly targeting its economic theory – classical Marxism in its original form suffers from catastrophic objections relating to its central critique of capitalism, in that its thesis depends on the demonstrably false Labor Theory of Value (LTV), which states that the value of commodities is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor required to create them.
These criticisms have led philosophers and economists who still find some merit in Marxism to produce variations that do not depend on such flimsy economic foundations.
I had hoped that at the very least Piker subscribed to some version of Marxism that had been modified enough to require stronger means to dismiss it but according to his own explanation, that’s not the case. His video included graphics and statements that clearly commit him to the LTV and to the Theory of Surplus Value (TSV) that it supports (he used the TSV to promote worker collectives).
This isn’t to say that Piker couldn’t adopt a stronger version of Marxism, but I expected a bit more sophistication from someone who sees themselves as taking on the responsibility of guiding young minds to the truth.
This has been a common theme while we’ve scrutinized all of these influencers with millions of followers and wide reach – their views are often backed by the simplest and least robust forms of the underlying political and economic theories. My suspicion is that Marxism is more a part of his identity rather than a theory that he has adequately grasped as the most worthy of being implemented in society, but who knows.
We get another example of this from what he is perhaps best known for – his takes on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The historical conflict between Israel and Palestine is one of the more tragic within public discourse. It’s a deeply complex conflict and yet opinions on it often admit none of that critical nuance, instead sitting at one extreme.
Either Israel is completely innocent of any wrongdoing and merely defending themselves from terrorists or Palestinians are forlorn victims of the imperialist Zionists looking to exterminate and oppress them. Why are these the two most common opinions on it? Well, perhaps it’s that the outcome of the conflict represents very real consequences.
When you fall on one side of the debate, admitting nuance would mean weakening your position, in which case your desired outcome might be less likely to occur as opposed to stating unambiguous support for your camp – in this case, lives are at stake so people might not be as willing to soften their stance. Or it could be none of this and some people are simply incapable of being objective about matters that they’re emotional about.
Which brings us to Piker. Piker has gone as far as to deny that there were mass rapes committed by Hamas during the October 7th attacks stating that, “Yes, I do … Because there is no evidence … At that point, I personally took a position where I said very carefully and very deliberately that mass r**es that are directed by Hamas did not happen. There was no evidence for this whatsoever.”
While Piker may be attempting to hide behind the “directed by Hamas” bit, the reality is that there are numerous credible accounts of sexual violence against women committed during the October 7th attacks and making it about whether it was specifically ordered by Hamas leadership imposes a ridiculous standard to recognizing systematic wrongdoing.
It’s also true that Israel has oftentimes disregarded the presence of women and children when conducting its bombing runs and caused a famine in Gaza.
The inability to condemn obvious wrongs when you identify or sympathize with a particular group hints at the baseline irrationality that people like Piker operate under and it bodes terribly for however many followers of his find his simplistic advocation persuasive.
We may have to make media literacy and logic and reasoning mandatory in grade school.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.