Gas has topped $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022. The president’s approval rating just fell below 40%. The war in Iran is entering its sixth week, with thousands dead and no end in sight. The strait of Hormuz is blockaded, food prices are climbing and US households are staring down hundreds of dollars in added living expenses.

So naturally, the Democratic party has found something truly urgent to focus on: a Twitch streamer.

The latest intraparty panic was triggered by Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive running in Michigan’s competitive Democratic Senate primary, who announced that Hasan Piker would appear at two campaign rallies alongside him. The response from the party establishment was swift. Representative Brad Schneider branded Piker “an unapologetic antisemite”. Michigan’s own senator Elissa Slotkin, a former Pentagon official, weighed in with her condemnation, as did Representative Haley Stevens, one of El-Sayed’s primary rivals. Another opponent, Mallory McMorrow, went so far as to liken Piker to Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has enthusiastically praised Adolf Hitler on camera. When Politico came calling, both Cory Booker and Ruben Gallego rushed to declare they would refuse an invitation to appear on Piker’s stream.

It was quite the pile-on. But who is Hasan Piker, and why have some Democratic party elites branded him enemy No 1?

Piker is one of the most-watched political streamers in the country. His audience skews young and male – exactly the demographic that deserted Democrats in historic numbers in 2024. He’s a socialist who talks about class politics, foreign policy and the failures of the American system with a directness that clearly........

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