Hogg Says Media Obsession With Hasan Piker “Weird” as Jeffries Joins Attacks

Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news — make a quick donation to Truthout today! Progressive Democratic activist David Hogg has called the media and establishment Democrats’ obsession with Hasan Piker “weird” as influential figures ignore “incredibly horrible” remarks and actions by far right figures in order to attack the left-wing streamer. “To be honest with you, I find it kind of weird,” Hogg said in an interview Sunday with MeidasTouch commentator Jack Cocchiarella. “He’s a streamer. This guy is not an elected official, and there’s a lot of elected officials out there that are saying incredibly horrible things.” “It’s fascinating that people are so obsessed with a streamer that the median voter knows nothing about,” Hogg went on. “I think it speaks to the fact that a lot of moderates in [the Democratic] Party don’t have an actual vision that they are fighting for other than the center.” Piker is a left-wing streamer on Twitch who discusses politics and speaks to political figures. Piker, for his part, has repeatedly said throughout the election cycle that candidates and the media should talk about campaign issues that affect Americans, rather than drumming up round after round of discourse about him and groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Indeed, amid the midterm election season, the corporate media and establishment Democrats have brought up Piker for months as influential figures such as Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden have tried to drum up fear and opposition to the progressive wave of candidates winning their primaries. This has involved a full-court press by corporate news outlets, from CNN to Fox News, and major Democratic figures focused on attacking Piker and the candidates who have gotten his support — despite major issues like the U.S.’s war on Iran and the Trump administration’s brazen corruption looming over this election cycle. The focus on Piker is seemingly all-encompassing: A recent analysis of archived clips, for instance, found that Fox News mentioned Piker’s name hundreds of times this month alone. In a clip shared as an attack by Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, Piker espoused his belief that the insistence of pro-Israel figures to equate Judaism with support for Israel may actually fuel antisemitism and danger for Jewish people. He said that the “idea that Jews are monolithic” is “dangerous” for the community. This is an opinion shared by many others in the Jewish community including centrist commentators like Ezra Klein. However, Rogers distorted Piker’s words to say that he was calling for violence against Jewish people. “More calls for violence coming out of the El-Sayed campaign,” Rogers said in a post on X, despite Piker having no role in the El-Sayed campaign other than a couple of appearances at campaign stops. Bizarrely, many establishment Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), picked up a similar line of attack — seemingly siding with Rogers over their own party’s candidate. “The malicious claim that American Jews are inviting violence against themselves is dangerous and antisemitic. There is zero justification for threats against the safety of our Jewish brothers and sisters at a moment of rising hate,” said Jeffries in a statement that he later confirmed was about Piker, despite Piker not having called for any form of violence against Jewish people. “We will fight the cancer of antisemitism with the fierce urgency of now.” Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Michigan’s other senator, also joined in. “This shouldn’t be hard: no community should face the threat violence[sic] for their political views,” Slotkin said in a post on X, where many users pointed out that the responses to Piker’s statements did not even match what he said at all. Hogg said something similar this week on social media — pointing out, for instance, that major Trump ally and adviser Laura Loomer’s calls for all Muslims to be deported from the U.S. have been met with silence from the corporate media. In a post on X on Monday, Hogg expressed his disbelief that “DSA discourse gets 10 times the coverage that a senior advisor to the President of the United States is getting despite the fact she is doubling down on deporting millions of Americans purely on the basis of their religion.” Media that fights fascism Truthout is funded almost entirely by readers — that’s why we can speak truth to power and cut against the mainstream narrative. But independent journalists at Truthout face mounting political repression under Trump. We rely on your support to survive McCarthyist censorship. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation.