Hasan Piker: Charlie Kirk and His Political Ideology Deserve an "Honest Assessment"

The progressive streamer, who had been scheduled to debate Kirk this month at an event put on by a college political group, discusses why he’s frustrated by the discourse in the wake of Kirk’s killing.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/hasan-piker-charlie-kirk

https://archive.ph/KPVAQ


Hasan Piker at home in West Hollywood - Adali Schell/The New York Times/Redux.

Progressive influencer and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker was live on the platform on Wednesday afternoon when a viewer wrote into the chat that Charlie Kirk had been shot. Piker didn’t believe it initially, saying, “If that was the case, there’d be fucking video footage of it.” Seconds later, he was sent a link to a video from the scene. As he watched the clip, Piker sat back from the microphone, covering his mouth in shock.

He then watched another video showing the attack from a close-up angle. “Oh, he’s dead. Oh my God, he’s definitely dead,” Piker said, pushing up his glasses to cover his eyes in horror. “I can’t believe I just saw that.” He then urged his audience to not seek out the footage themselves. “That was fucking devastating. Holy shit. I really–I don’t know what to say,” Piker said, immediately traumatized by what he had watched. “Holy fuck. America is so absolutely fucked.”

Piker had debated Kirk before, and he was eager to do it again. The two men had planned to square off at an event hosted by a Dartmouth political organization in about two weeks. The pairing made sense; Piker has been considered something of a peer of Kirk’s in the online commentary space, though the two were ideologically opposed. “This is a tragedy,” Piker told me this week, condemning the shooting in the strongest of terms. “Political violence is completely unacceptable. The video that I saw was traumatizing.”

But since Kirk’s passing, Piker has felt that some of the eulogizing has failed to “make an honest assessment of his political contributions.” He argued that there is still a need to acknowledge some of the more extreme views Kirk held. “These are positions that he defended vociferously,” Piker said. “I think it’s a disservice to the public, especially many who were not familiar with Charlie Kirk’s ideology or his worldview,” Piker said. “It’s a disservice even to his own legacy, to just launder his reputation in a way where he is just simply brought up like some activist.”

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