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Can anyone help me understand why Hasan Piker is so popular in leftist political spaces despite his immense privilege?

This guy's dad is the former VP of a multibillion dollar Turkish conglomerate, as well as the secretary of a government department. Mom and Dad were able to fly to their other home in NJ to give birth so he'd get US citizenship. His uncle is the founder and owner of TYT Media and gave him his media career. He went to Rutgers. He lives in a multimillion dollar mansion in the Hollywood Hills. This is by definition not the kind of person who can be a voice of the People. Saying "I recognize my privilege" over and over, while living his lifestyle, doesn't negate his privilege and complete lack of real-life experience outside of the curated garden of the wealthy. He gets paid obscene amounts of cash to sit in his bedroom and word-vomit for 9 hours a day. Why are his unending opinions taken so seriously? He gives me strong controlled opposition vibes.

Edit: Thank you all for this discussion. I learned a lot.

144 comments
  • Hasan occupies a niche within the broad "leftist" umbrella niche within the West. Unlike many breadtubers, he actually doesn't serve as much of a barrier for further leftist movement (see: Vaush, Destiny, etc.). He is privledged, but so was Engels. Hasan certainly is no Engels, but he does serve a useful role in radicalizing liberals towards the Left, like how he vocally combats the nonsense usage of the word "tankie" trendy among liberals these days.

    Hasan is a pundit at the end of the day, and isn't bringing about the revolution, and he is definitely more of a USophile than he should be, but he is better than most leftist commentators and helps serve as a conveyor to the left of himself.

  • My partner watches him a lot and while personally dislike Hasans loud yelly bro style I've never heard an opinion from him that I disagreed with.

  • As long as you don't exploit workers there nothing wrong in having money. You probably know that Engels was rich - and to be honest he did exploit workers (owned a textile factory or something). Was he, by your definition, the kind of person who can be a voice of the people?

  • So what? A class traitor is a class traitor, and we only have to win with this. What's next, you gonna say Engels wasn't a communist because he was a part of the bourgeoisie?

    You do not need some sort of vow of poverty to be a true leftist.

    • You do not need some sort of vow of poverty to be a true leftist.

      helps though

      • The more stable, self-sufficient, and financially solvent I became, the more I found myself ostracized by the left

        I'm also in the tech sector and I've been part of local leftist organization. From direct mutual aid to anarchist crust punks to soup kitchens to PSL, I've literally never had a problem. Not to turn this into Blind dot com, but my net worth is ~3x the US median.

        The difference between Hasan and I, is that Hasan is a poster boy for the left that is making money off of being a poster boy for the left. Nobody is "pocket watching" you as a rando online or in person. Nobody is putting you on trial for your success. That argument is literally the same argument that Elon Musk and other Billionaires make about being punished for their success.

        If you're attempting to show your class traitor bona fides and defending Hasan as one at the same time, but it's sounding a lot more like solidarity with the moneyed class. Your resentment is showing.

        Wearing decent clothes would get me side-eyed by those who insist on black bloc.

        Also wtf does this even mean? People don't dress black bloc for every day dude.

        If you want to be lauded for your material success in a capitalist system perhaps you should just be a capitalist?

      • I totally get your frustration. Any leftist person, group or organization that ostracize people for being a little bit better materially than other people is completely wrong and shouldn't be taken seriously. The tech field is full of techbro ancaps, having a leftists there is already a step forward. We can't just confine ourselves to a few spaces and gatekeep who can and who cannot be a part of it.

        It's like you said, you're orders of magnitude closer to the homeless than to the rich. You are not the enemy, and even if you were, you're still a leftist and any help is welcomed.

        That all being said, I don't think it's right to say that this is the reason the left will always lose. First because the left is not an unified mass that thinks the same. There's a lot of different leftist ideologies and they all clash in some way of another, be it for a disagreement in how to organize or in how to achieve communism. And second, because this type of thing tends to be something you would see more on the imperial core where actual leftist thinking have been thwarted and made into a boogeyman, I don't know where you're from, but I honestly suggest you try looking for Marxist-Leninist groups and organizations.

    • Lol this is a misuse of statistics to make it look like Hasan isn't rich. The median US net worth is roughly $200,000. That means 50% of people have less than $200k of net worth, and remember it's not real money. It means liquidating all of your assets.

      Hasan makes the median net worth of an American in one month on Twitch subs alone (from the Twitch leaks where he was the 13th most paid on the site at ~$200k and that's just one of his income streams). Which means he makes the average US net worth in 5. Using just his house price as his "net worth" is laughable.

      Using the Twitch leaks numbers, Hasan bought his house in 2021. Twitch leaks were about 2019-2022. If he makes $200k since 2019 (which is a low estimate because his line go up), he's made $12,000,000 off of Twitch alone. He can arguably buy 4 of that same house cash and carry.

      I get it, he's a cool guy, but are we really gonna pretend here that he's living some life comparable to normal people when he's made $12 million in 5 years? He's certainly better than most of his peers (other rich people) since you could argue there's minimal direct exploitation (indirect exploitation is a whole other argument, and given that people hate nuance I'm not gonna bother to make it), but let's not pretend he's living the same type of life.

    • Do you believe everything they tell you without applying mind ?

144 comments