1. Hasan Piker was born to Turkish parents in New Brunswick, New Jersey, but grew up in Istanbul and was raised as a Muslim.
27 Facts About Hasan Piker
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Hasan Piker's mother, Ulker Sedef Piker, is an art and architectural historian teaching at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
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Hasan Piker's uncle Cenk Uygur is a political commentator and co-founder of The Young Turks news network.
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Hasan Piker says he was bullied in public school in Turkey for his lack of physical fitness and for questioning Islam.
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Hasan Piker asked to host the show when a fill-in was needed and later became a host and producer.
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In 2016, Hasan Piker created and hosted The Breakdown, a TYT Network video series which aired on Facebook and presented left-leaning political analyses targeted, at the time, at millennial supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
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Hasan Piker contributed political content to HuffPost from 2016 to 2018.
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Hasan Piker started streaming on Twitch in March 2018 while working at TYT.
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Hasan Piker has said he shifted his attention from Facebook to Twitch in order to reach a younger audience and because of what he felt was a preponderance of right-wing commentators on YouTube and a lack of leftist representation among streamers.
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Hasan Piker became a popular left-wing political commentator, and was invited to appear on KTTV's The Issue Is and the political podcast Chapo Trap House.
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Hasan Piker was the most watched Twitch streamer during the election week; his 80 hours of streams were viewed for a cumulative 6.8 million hours by an average of 75,000 concurrent viewers.
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On December 13,2021, Hasan Piker was banned from Twitch for one week for using the racial epithet "cracker" repeatedly on stream.
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Hasan Piker has regularly spoken about the Gaza war by advocating for Palestinians and criticizing the Israeli government.
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In January 2024, Hasan Piker interviewed a Yemeni self-proclaimed "pirate" who had filmed himself on board the Galaxy Leader, a Bahamas-flagged ship that has been held captive by Houthi militants since November 2023.
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Hasan Piker defended himself, arguing that he did not criticize Jewish people as a whole and was only anti-Zionist.
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Hasan Piker refuted the charge, arguing the clips were taken out of context.
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From September 26,2021, to October 12,2023, Hasan Piker co-hosted the left-leaning political podcast Leftovers with co-host Ethan Klein.
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On November 8,2021, Hasan Piker released a line of union-made merchandise called Ideologie and donated a portion of the proceedings to strike funds in which he raised over $180,000.
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Hasan Piker's content has been identified as a progressive, leftist, and socialist.
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Hasan Piker has advocated in favor of workplace democracy, universal health care, intersectional feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, anti-Zionism and gun control.
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Hasan Piker has cited his upbringing in Turkey under the Premiership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an influence on both his left-wing views and willingness to speak out about them.
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Hasan Piker supported the presidential primary campaigns of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, and has been an outspoken critic of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
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Hasan Piker has been described as Twitch's "de facto political commentator" who uses an unabashedly ideological framing.
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In 2021, Hasan Piker purchased a $2.7 million house in West Hollywood, California.
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Hasan Piker won a Streamy in the News category at the 10th annual awards in 2020 and was nominated again in the same category for the 2021 event.
26.
In 2022, Hasan Piker was nominated in the categories News, Just Chatting, and Streamer of the Year, winning the News award for the second time and being nominated for three consecutive years.
27.
At the 2023 Streamer Awards, Hasan Piker was nominated for Best Just Chatting Streamer and Streamer of the Year, winning the former.