It’s only 9am and the latest media shitstorm is well under way. Hasan Piker scrolls through his social media feeds as he comes down the stairs of his home in West Hollywood.

An interview with Axios, in which Piker said the US had committed more atrocities than al-Qaida, is blowing up his phone. Requests from reporters are streaming in. Comments on the interview flood his replies.

Just another day, and just another news cycle, for a 35-year-old socialist streamer who has no elected or appointed power.

Never mind that many voters don’t know who Piker is – and haven’t heard of Twitch, his streaming platform of choice – despite months of concerted efforts by political opponents to elevate his profile, and tie Democratic candidates to his most incendiary comments.

Facing an uphill battle to retain control of Congress in November’s US midterm elections, and struggling to land on a coherent message to rally support, Republicans have fixated on Piker – and held him up as a representative of their political targets, from socialists and leftists to Muslims.

Voters, so far, don’t seem to care about Piker – at least not more than the cost of gas, or the war in Iran, or healthcare, or artificial intelligence, or immigration, or corruption. Around the country, many told the Guardian they hadn’t heard of Piker, or they knew who he was and sometimes had opinions, but those opinions didn’t factor into their voting decisions.

Still, Piker features in Republican campaign ads. A photo of him nearly nude, inexplicably, appeared on the jumbotron at the party’s midterm convention. And Republicans have tried hard to tie Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in the critical swing state of Michigan, to Piker after El-Sayed campaigned with him in the primary. (The candidate has since distanced himself from Piker.)

Fielding questions in quick pockets of time around his hours of streaming, podcasts and media appearances, Piker says he is not overly troubled by such attacks. “Republicans believe this is an incredible narrative, for the record,” he says. “They truly believe that this is successful. I’m willing to bet it’s because they’re fucking brain-poisoned by the internet.”

But the spotlight is glaringly bright. He was even called out from the stage of this week’s United Nations general assembly, as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, singled out one of Piker’s most controversial remarks.

Moderate Democrats have also used Piker as a proxy in their battle against their party’s ascendant left, which notched key upsets in primaries this year, challenging the centrist establishment.

And Piker won’t shut up. He streams for seven hours nonstop each day, with hundreds of thousands of followers tuning in each hour. And even then, he’s not done.

Depicted on the right as an extremist, Piker is trying to be tame, he says. “For the election season, I have tried to be as serious as possible,” he says in his signature suit and tie.

Unlike the Democratic primaries, where he appeared alongside his chosen candidates from El-Sayed in Michigan to Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, Piker isn’t campaigning for anyone in the general election.

It has not escaped Piker’s notice that Republicans continue to target Democrats over their ties with him, and his more controversial statements. “It’s not necessarily my affiliation that’s so negative,” he suggests. But more questions about him mean fewer questions about policy and their opponents. It’s a missed opportunity when they constantly have to answer “What about Hasan Piker?” Piker says.

News cycles focused on Piker are driven by a push to attack progressive candidates, according to him, while news outlets carry negative stories about him in a bid to chase clicks and protect their own relevance in the media ecosystem.

But in the longer term, Piker also sees the focus on him as a wider test, for a potential 2028 presidential run from the left by candidate like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman.

“Most people on the left are in some way, shape or form connected back to my community, or myself, or organizations that I work with,” he says. “This is an active way to try and eliminate a political opponent before it becomes too big of a problem for them.”

Who is this guy?

Piker was born in New Jersey and grew up mostly in Turkey; his parents – his father a political scientist and his mother an architectural and art historian – are Turkish immigrants. While a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, he got his start as an intern at the progressive outlet The Young Turks, which was co-founded by his uncle, Cenk Uygur. He went on to host a show on the network and started streaming on Twitch in 2018, eventually leaving The Young Turks to focus on his own platform.

He now has more than 3 million followers on Twitch, nearly 2 million on YouTube and nearly 2 million on X.

From the start, he made controversial comments – comments that now appear in political ads attacking candidates that Piker has supported. Perhaps the most notable, when in 2019 he said “America deserved 9/11,” features prominently in an ad by Mike Rogers, the Republican contender for US Senate in Michigan, to attack El-Sayed. (Piker has since said the comment was “inappropriate”.)

A stream in August led to another round of condemnations. Piker, a frequent critic of Israel, said while talking about Democratic Michigan congressional candidate Jeremy Moss: “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action – not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.” His anti-Israel views, in particular, took center stage in the Michigan Senate primary, where El-Sayed faced pro-Israel congresswoman Haley Stevens. El-Sayed has worked since his primary win to bring in Jewish voters in the state.

In the Axios interview that sparked the shitstorm earlier this month, Piker was asked whether he thought America was worse than al-Qaida, the terrorist group. “Pound for pound, as far as the number of deaths, yes,” he responded. “We have caused tremendous terror all around the world.”

Earlier this year, the UK would not allow Piker or Uygur to enter the country to do speaking events, with the Home Office saying their visit “may not be conducive to the public good”. And in Australia in August, a program on the ABC that featured an interview with Piker led to a round of complaints to the national broadcaster.

Trump this month called Piker a “terrible liability” who has “a power over some of these Democrats”. The Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, said some of Piker’s comments are “absolutely disgusting and deplorable” and that he “does not represent the Democratic party” or its candidates.

After 13 years on camera, Piker concedes that his sheer volume of talking means he is not always considered in his comments. After some 22,000 hours of extemporaneous commentary on hot-button issues, some of his remarks almost inevitably test what people find acceptable. His stream, he notes, is not prepackaged or scripted like the conventional programs of other political commentators.

His audience is dedicated, albeit niche. Members of Congress have appeared on his streams, including Ocasio-Cortez in 2020. In 2025, he stepped more into campaigning for democratic socialist and progressive candidates, first with the then future New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. In the 2026 cycle, he lent his name recognition to El-Sayed, Pennsylvania congressional candidate Rabb, Colorado’s Milat Kiros, Adam Hamawy in New Jersey and others.

After Democrats lost the presidential race in 2024, their soul-searching included a quest for a “Joe Rogan of the left” who could counter the influence the right had on podcasts. Rogan, for what it’s worth, has more than 21 million followers on YouTube alone. This elevated Piker’s profile further, but misunderstood the realm of nonstop speaking to camera online. It is inherently not polished, and the potential for controversy exceeds the tolerance of most Democratic politicians.

Piker has said that he isn’t the Joe Rogan of the left, that really there could be no such thing. Democrats were looking for someone with a platform like Rogan’s that would be a “lackey for the party”. “I’m not that person,” he says.

He could elect to not answer a question posed like the al-Qaida one. He could soft-pedal or redirect or say something he doesn’t really believe. But instead, he takes the opportunity to be in front of larger audiences as a chance to find other people who will resonate with what he’s saying, even if it’s “intentionally provocative”.

Candidates reached out to him, he says. It hasn’t brought him more money but has increased viewership on YouTube. If he were truly irrelevant, no candidate would risk associating with him, he says. They’ve made a calculation – and sometimes campaigns are open with him about that, saying they’ve tested him in their districts to see if he will help or hurt, he says.

“This is bad content. It sucks to admit,” he says. “From my perspective, it’s much easier for me to stay the hell away from real campaigns, and I think part of the reason for why I’m getting attacked so much is so that that is what I do, I sit it out next time, or it’s a lesson for even progressive candidates that they shy away from entertaining my platform at all.”

Voters don’t care

For voters, Piker is mostly a distraction.

“I kind of liken it to following Kim Kardashian,” Phil Verges, a farmer in Spring Valley, Wisconsin, said of Piker. “Now, I don’t – excuse my language – I don’t give a shit.”

Verges, who votes mostly for Democrats, said he only started to hear Piker’s name while following El-Sayed’s campaign. The stream is “totally meaningless to me”, he added, “as Joe Rogan is to me”.

Two things can be true at once. Piker has sway over a set of dedicated leftwing, often younger, people who can help increase a candidate’s profile in a Democratic primary. But many Americans do not care, or even know, about him.

Despite the countless news cycles, a New York Times/Siena poll from mid-September found 62% of likely voters across three US Senate battleground states did not know who Piker was. Even in Michigan, where ads are running about Piker, 54% of voters didn’t know him.

Guardian reporters who approached voters across the country encountered the same reality. Some said his name sounded familiar, or that they’d only heard it in recent weeks in the media.

Rabb, the Democratic congressional candidate in Pennsylvania’s solidly blue third congressional district, was the oldest candidate, at 56, in a crowded primary this year. He credits Piker with having brought awareness to his campaign among a demographic that would have otherwise been hard, and expensive, to reach.

Whether Piker’s support won him the primary is “unknowable”, Rabb said, but it “significantly increased” his capacity to reach more people – and bring on more volunteers to talk about his candidacy. “What he could do in one stream could have taken me months to cultivate,” he said.

Piker has all the while become a central focus of Republican attacks. A recent push poll in Georgia attempted to tie Piker to the Democratic US senator Jon Ossoff, a rising star in the party. The pair have not campaigned together once.

At this month’s Republican convention, Piker proved an unlikely star, with speakers frequently citing him as the personification of a supposed communist and anti-Israel takeover of the Democratic party. Most of the 15 attenders interviewed by the Guardian had never heard of him.

Even seasoned convention-goers were in the dark. Chris Daniel, 44, from Houston, Texas, who has attended every Republican convention since 2004, assumed that Piker must be a British political candidate.

But after months of pillorying on the right, the name did resonate with some.

AJ Louderback, a Texas state legislator, dismissed him in stark ideological terms as “just another radical Muslim”, and remarked: “He doesn’t stand for American values.”

Republicans, and rightwing media, are expert at creating a “boogeyman”, Piker notes, from transgender athletes to migrant caravans. But the attack isn’t as salient when it’s a “rabble rouser, Twitch streamer, random entertainer guy”, he says.

“There’s just chaos everywhere, and people are just going about their daily lives, trying to make sense of it all and trying to find some kind of peace and stability and prosperity,” adds Piker. “No one is saying it’s because of a Twitch streamer. I’m not top of mind for anybody.”

A day in Piker’s world

At Piker’s house, the day begins with coffee delivery and checking his friend group’s standings in their fantasy football league. Piker grabs a new Zyn before getting on camera to record a pop culture podcast he does with his friends called Fear&. His dog, a fluffy Tibetan mastiff named Kaya, sits outside the podcast recording room.

After almost two hours of podcasting, Piker moves over to the room where he streams on Twitch for seven hours. Art from fans, mostly of Piker, lines the walls around him. He scrolls through news stories, tweets and an endless chat window.

Today he launches into the interview with Axios, which he calls a “hit job”, and as the circus around the interview spreads, suggests he maybe shouldn’t have done it, or didn’t expect it to become a clip show, or shouldn’t have used the term “pound for pound”, but that it wasn’t the “end of the world”.

Piker spends the majority of each day on camera. He even eats on camera, taking breaks to use the bathroom. He works out and streams – that’s basically it – although he does have friends, who are around much of the time.

At any given time, about 25,000 to 30,000 people are viewing the stream. Most of those do not watch for the duration, according to Piker, who says between 300,000 and 500,000 unique visitors will tune in each hour.

In the chat, viewers lob questions, praise and criticism. “baby wake up, a new hasan bad press tour,” one person writes in the chat. “Rare hasan L shouldn’t have done this interview,” says another. Today’s stream focuses heavily on Piker himself.

After a full streaming shift, he’s not done talking. Piker heads from his home studio to a live taping of Lovett or Leave It, a show from Pod Save America co-host Jon Lovett that broadcasts on MS Now. (At arrival, a security guard asks me if I’m Piker’s publicist. A publicist, the streamer reflects later, would tell him not to do any interviews, even with friendlier outlets, at this point – when his whole job, really, is “dealing with the media”.)

In his opening remarks, Lovett jokes, “If Democrats lose the midterms, we should not have to wonder if it’s because of missing mail-in ballots,” after talking about Trump’s efforts to derail mail voting. “We should know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is because of Hasan Piker.”

“I denounce you,” Lovett declares to Piker as he walks out on stage, a jocular nod to the string of condemnations of Piker’s statements that have featured during this year’s midterm campaigns. Lovett thinks Piker has said some “very stupid and bad” things, but also that a lot of his words have been taken out of context. But, he asks, how does Piker view his responsibility, given his influence and proximity to candidates who he wants to win?

It’s a question Piker seems to wrestle with throughout the day. Still, he tells Lovett at one point, “The idea that a Twitch streamer is supposed to be held to a higher standard than the president is such an insane phenomenon.”

“They’re elevating my status as this super-serious political commentator and then campaign consultant, campaign surrogate, when I’ve never wanted to be that,” he adds.

Afterward, fans approach Piker for photos. One person, he says later, asks how he puts up with so much hatred coming his way for saying what he believes. He is both “very stubborn” and “very mission-oriented”, he explains.

Has he considered talking less?

“No,” he replies. “I mean, I talk less, I say the same stuff. Still going to be a problem.”

David Smith contributed reporting