What's going on with men these days? This guy may know better than anyone.
For some of you reading this, Hasan Piker needs no introduction. He is one of the leading voices in progressive political content online, boasting a massive 2.9 million followers on Twitch alone. He's polarizing, charismatic, and (kind of) a bro. And his fans love him. Just take this Instagram comment for example: "Not to be dramatic, but I'd die for this man lol."
With all the discourse about young men flocking to the political right because of online commentators like Joe Rogan and Theo Von, some have started asking if Piker is the Joe Rogan of the left? A fan on TikTok did refer to Piker as "the himbo gateway drug to leftist thought."
It's Been A Minute host Brittany Luse sat down with Piker to get into what young men are looking for right now, why he argues 'bro culture' isn't just for the right, and his warning for Democrats.
This It's Been A Minute interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
What is a "Progressive Mind in a MAGA body?"
Brittany Luse: Earlier this year, you were profiled by the New York Times, and that headline was really something. The headline was "Hasan Piker: A Progressive Mind and a MAGA body," which, I have to ask, what is a MAGA body? Do you know what that is?
Hasan Piker: I believe that they were trying to say that there's a lot of content creators in the manosphere that work out. And when you invoke the MAGA body, I don't think most people, New York Times readers or not, are going to think like a very broad, brolic guy. They're going to think of, I don't know, someone like a normal American, the average American.
Brittany Luse: And yet it sounds like that headline kind of tied masculinity to a certain type of physique or masculinity to MAGA in a really specific way.
Hasan Piker: For sure. I think that's deliberate, and I think it's wrong. I don't think masculinity is associated with MAGA. I don't even think masculinity is necessarily associated with working out. I think what we consider to be masculine is just confidence and a demonstration of leadership skills. That's what most of these people are pointing to when they talk about being alpha or being masculine in general.
Brittany Luse: Why do you think these activities, like working out video games, etc, why do you think they are conservative coded?
Hasan Piker: I wouldn't say they're necessarily conservative coded. I would just simply say that they are easier to be branded as apolitical. I mean, there's a very funny, long standing joke or meme in the gaming sphere where people will say, "Oh, why do you have politics in my video games?" "Get politics out of my video games" is this rallying cry from Gamergate onward, and it usually is deployed at any video game that has like a black female protagonist. And these guys will unironically say things like "Call of Duty is not political" or "Call of Duty wasn't political until there was a black woman in it." And Call of Duty has, of course, always been political. It's sometimes making a criticism of American imperialism. In other instances, it's quite literally defending American imperialism. But it's never not political. It's just that a lot of guys don't read it as politics when it's something that they agree with or aren't putting much thought into. And I think that's what happens in a lot of these spaces for a lot of these hobbies is that we cede territory to right wing actors because they get to angle it as though they're above the interests of politics, as though they're totally above the realm of politics, like they're not doing any political analysis. Don't try to read too much into this thing. Just enjoy it.
Is Hasan Piker the Joe Rogan of the left?
Hasan Piker: People keep asking me about whether or not we need a Joe Rogan or a left, or whether or not I am the Joe Rogan of the left. And I keep repeating to the Democrats at least, that a Joe Rogan is not going to solve their problems. They need to change their policies. They need to actually, you know, do real politics. There was a guy out there who actually was organically doing exactly the things that I was saying. And he had tremendous success in the Democratic primary in the New York mayoral race.
Brittany Luse: Zohran Mamdani, yeah.
Hasan Piker: He asked people, why did you vote for Trump? What are some of your biggest concerns? And he identified five of them and he said, "These are my five policies. I'm running on this." I'm going to do a rent freeze. It's been done before. I'm going to make the buses fast and free. I'm going to increase the housing supply. I'm also going to tax the super rich to the best of my ability. And people looked at that and were like, okay, that sounds great. That's exactly what I'm looking for.
Brittany Luse: I mean, a lot of political commentators have interpreted Zohran Mamdani win as like some sort of grand surprise.
Hasan Piker: No disrespect to your colleagues, or no disrespect to the members of traditional media, but they only identify Zohran's victory with like he's young, he's charismatic and he did good social media. Yes. All three of those things are true. But they only played a role in highlighting the platform policies that he had. It's actually the policies that caused people to pay attention to him.
What Hasan Piker sees online that you are missing
Hasan Piker: I was just thinking about this the other day, but I feel like young conservatives, especially those who work in politics, are definitely a lot more ideologically invested in far right Nazi stuff or Catholic Nationalism or Christian dominionism – whatever iteration of far right ideology they've developed for themselves. It's usually a manifestation of fascism. And I think there's a lot more people, especially in politics, that are under the age of 35, on the Republican side, that abide by these principles than we think. So I say watch this space. There's also another thing that I've been noticing where pure reactionary politics have basically turned into this incredible endeavor, where it's so hyper focused on "owning the libs" and getting a reaction out of liberals, no matter what their reaction is. Disgust, revulsion is still, I think, considered a positive in conservative circles.
Brittany Luse: When you talk about owning the libs…Anything that irritates you, is a win for me.
Hasan Piker: Any kind of irritation is a win. It doesn't matter what the punishment is for yourself, the penalties are for yourself that you're incurring in the process. It's like a child.
Host: Brittany Luse
Producers: Alexis Williams, Neena Pathak
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