The star driving the American left crazy - and the warning for Israel
He broadcasts from home 7 hours a day, defines Zionism as a racist ideology, and claims that Hamas is better than the Israeli government. Internet star Hasan Piker led a progressive candidate to victory in the Michigan primaries, proving that the battle for the younger generation's public opinion has definitively moved from television to screens.
The victory in a tight race of Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic primaries for the Senate in Michigan last week is much more than just another local election campaign. El-Sayed defeated Congresswoman Haley Stevens by less than a percent after outside groups supporting her spent more than 60 million dollars, including more than 30 million dollars from AIPAC and organizations identified with support for Israel. El-Sayed did this in a state that Donald Trump won in 2024, and now in November he will face the Republican Mike Rogers. But one of the most interesting phenomena in his campaign was not only what he said, but where and with whom he chose to say it.
El-Sayed, who called to stop American military aid to Israel, made the world of new media a central part of his campaign. In the final days before the vote, he walked through Detroit with internet influencers, met with content creators, and even dedicated a significant portion of his time on election day to interviews with streamers before turning to traditional media outlets. One of the most prominent people alongside him was Hasan Piker, one of the most influential political voices today on Twitch.
The connection was not merely symbolic. In April, Piker appeared alongside El-Sayed at the University of Michigan and at Michigan State University. In Ann Arbor, hundreds of young people stood in the cold in a line that stretched outside the hall, and veteran Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who was present at the scene, said she had not seen such a crowd outside a political event that year. This was a demonstration of what American politicians are beginning to understand: the younger generation does not get its news through CNN, NBC, or the printed press. It comes to politics through streamers.
Piker currently has more than three million followers on Twitch, and his daily broadcasts can last seven hours or more. He sits in his home studio, moving between web videos, news, gaming, jokes, and political analysis, and speaks in a language that is light-years away from that of a traditional television commentator. In fact, an entire world of podcasts, streamers, and content creators on the American left is gradually becoming a political infrastructure for progressive candidates, an infrastructure that allows them to bypass the gatekeepers of the Democratic Party, recruit activists, and build a loyal audience. Piker is one of the most prominent examples of the phenomenon.
And in the Israeli context, this is a figure who does not leave much room for ambiguity. Piker defines himself as an anti-Zionist who believes that "Zionism is a racist ideology." Over the years, he has made particularly harsh statements against Israel and even said that Hamas is "a thousand times better" than the Israeli government, a statement he explained by comparing the scale of the killing, not as support for Hamas's internal policy. His critics, including Jewish figures and Democratic politicians, accuse him of crossing the line between criticism of Israel and antisemitic rhetoric; Piker, of course, rejects this and claims that he criticizes the state and Zionism, not Jews.
Even after October 7, he did not soften his line and said that Israel bears, from his perspective, fundamental responsibility also for the events of October 7 due to decades of "occupation and apartheid." This is exactly the worldview that makes him a focal point of controversy within the Democratic Party: for his supporters, he is a voice that says out loud what the establishment refuses to say; for his opponents, he is an example of the radicalization of the discourse toward Israel within the younger generation.
Piker's connection to this world began even before Twitch. His uncle, also anti-Israel, Cenk Uygur (56, born in Istanbul and moved to the USA at age 8), founder of The Young Turks, one of the oldest and most successful progressive news and commentary projects on the web. Piker (35, born in the USA) began his professional career with his uncle at TYT, before gradually moving to the world of streaming and becoming a full-time independent creator in 2020. If Uygur belonged to the first generation that proved it is possible to build a digital alternative to cable news, Piker represents the next generation: less "news program," more of an almost daily relationship between the broadcaster and his community.
And despite all this, it is important not to attribute to the two a power they do not have. They did not create the change in attitude toward Israel on the American left alone, and Piker certainly cannot take credit for El-Sayed's victory. The candidate's campaign in Michigan included more than 500 events, visits to 110 cities, and a network of about 12,000 volunteers, according to campaign data. But the combination between the campaign and influencers like Piker was a conscious part of the strategy, and in the final days before the vote, El-Sayed even deepened it. In fact, the phenomenon is much broader than him: the left-wing new media is becoming a real component in fundraising, mobilizing activists, and bringing new candidates onto the map.
And in Michigan, this connection takes on special meaning. The state holds one of the most significant Arab-American communities in the United States, and the war in the Middle East has become an internal political issue there. Arab-American leaders in the state said during the primaries that attempts by the Democratic establishment to distance candidates and media figures due to their criticism of Israel might actually push voters to stay home, choose a third candidate, or even switch to the Republicans.
And this is perhaps the most important meaning of El-Sayed's victory for Israel. This is not proof that all young Americans have become anti-Zionists, nor that the entire Democratic Party is moving toward Piker; almost half of the voters in the primaries supported Stevens. But it is proof that a candidate who calls for stopping military aid to Israel can win in a key state, and that an openly anti-Zionist content creator with millions of followers is no longer just an internet phenomenon: he can stand on a stage alongside a Senate candidate, bring hundreds of young people to a hall, and become a legitimate part of a national election campaign.
In Israel, they are beginning to realize with a delay - this is an arena that can no longer be treated as marginal. The struggle for American public opinion does not take place only in briefing rooms in Washington or television studios in New York. Part of it is conducted for hours every day in front of a webcam, in a chat that runs rapidly on the side of the screen, and in clips that are cut from a seven-hour broadcast and become political material on TikTok, X, and YouTube within minutes. El-Sayed's victory in Michigan is not Hasan Piker's victory - but it provides strong evidence that the world Piker represents is already inside American politics, not outside it.
