Yesterday, Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker, the biggest leftist political streamer and one of the few progressive voices to rival the right’s small army of endlessly-aggrieved attack dogs, was suspended from Twitch. The cause? During a broadcast last week, Piker suggested that if House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans were as serious about Medicare and Medicaid fraud as they claim, they would “kill Rick Scott,” a current senator and former CEO who oversaw what the Department of Justice called “the largest health care fraud case in US history,” instead of elevating him to the upper echelons of the party. This is notable not because of Piker’s suspension, but because of how people – especially other content creators – ended up framing the larger issue.
Not long after Piker made his incendiary statement last week, the outrage machine kicked into overdrive, with the likes of actual-violence-encourager Libs of TikTok and rebranded WoW streamer Asmongold – who unsurprisingly did not turn over a new leaf following his own suspension for a 2024 racist rant against Palestinians – clutching their pearls at what they suggested was a violent threat against Scott. Numerous others across Twitter and YouTube – some connected to a longer-term effort to deplatform Piker and other pro-Palestine streamers, others not – took up their cause, and Twitch suspended Piker a few days later.
After just one day, Piker’s suspension has concluded, and other usual suspects like Tim Pool are acting like Twitch is turning a blind eye to murder. Never mind that even Piker did not suggest viewers should harm Scott. He remarked that Johnson and other high-ranking Republicans would do it if they stood by their stated principles, an idea so far outside the realm of possibility as to be on its face absurd.
"My statement was hyperbolic,” Piker said in a YouTube video addressing the suspension today. “But the intention of it was not a call to violence directly against a sitting senator, but instead was to show the hypocrisy of the Republican party in terms of how little they truly care about Medicare and Medicaid fraud – because that happens at the point of the provider and not necessarily at the point of the recipients. They want to cut Medicare and Medicaid for the recipients to the tune of $800 billion, and in order to justify that they will do everything in their power to lie and claim that it's actually your grandparents that are stealing from Medicare, and not people like Rick Scott."
Piker, who back in 2019 found himself in hot water over a similarly de-contextualized remark that America “deserved 9/11,” resolved to use “more deliberate and more careful language” in the future. Probably a smart move, though as Piker observed in his video, nobody is going to be perfect 100 percent of the time when they’re live day in and day out, going back and forth with a contentious chat. All the while, creators espousing right-wing viewpoints – which often explicitly or implicitly advocate for violence against immigrants and trans people – are held to vastly different standards.
Also, more importantly, the streamer drama portion of this story barely matters! The problem Piker pointed to during the stream that got him suspended – a former CEO of a healthcare company that copped a record $1.7 billion in fines going on to dodge material consequences, walk away with $10 million in severance and $300 million in stock options, and become a US senator – is an issue of so much more consequence than Piker's word choice that these things are not remotely comparable. It is deranged that millions of people are getting their news from creators who act like a damn Twitch streamer using harsh language to state documented facts is where this story starts and ends, rather than in the halls of actual power.
We’re all being robbed. It’s as clear as day. There was an (alleged) murder about it, and many people sided with the (alleged) murderer. Think about why political pundits and content creators might now be incentivized to muddy the waters, especially where healthcare is concerned. Think about how they might stand to benefit from your distraction, even as normal people’s material circumstances degrade by the day. Think about how platforms make themselves complicit by algorithmically favoring outrage and drama dogpiles over discussion that threatens the status quo. Anybody who frames this conflict in any other way – who suggests different stakes or a different central cast of characters – is either deeply unserious or outright lying to you. Do not listen to them. Odds are, they’re trying to rob you too.
