A Labour MP is urging the Home Office to revoke leftwing political commentator Hasan Piker’s visa ahead of his appearance at a festival in London next week.
Piker, perhaps America’s most popular and recognisable leftist influencer, is billed to speak at a SXSW London event called ‘How the American left learned to speak the internet’ in June.
Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead David Taylor has called on the Home Office to revoke Piker’s visa on the grounds that his presence would not be conducive to the public good.
Taylor has a history of opposing pro-Palestinian voices. Last year, he objected to the renewal of Francesca Albanese’s role as the special rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories and labelled her antisemitic.
Piker is an outspoken critic of Israel, and speaks candidly to his approximately three million Twitch followers and nearly two million YouTube subscribers about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, class politics and the consequences of US foreign policy.
He is currently endorsing progressive candidates in a number of primaries, drawing the ire of the Democratic establishment.
The streamer has been criticised for comments he made on an episode of Pod Save America, where Piker said he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every single time”. In the UK, Hamas is proscribed as a terrorist organisation and showing support for it is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
A spokesperson for SXSW told the Times that the festival brings together “a wide range of speakers with different associations, affiliations and perspectives”.
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Pathetic, Hasan Piker explicitly and frequently advocates for non-violence and frequently makes his criticisms of Israel precise by emphasizing that the problem is not Judaism.
Hasan Piker frequently calls out genuine anti-semites such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Marjorie Taylor Greene while refusing to ally himself with them on a cause out of a rejection of their basic principles of hate.
If you don’t like Hasan Piker fine but anyone who says banning Hasan Piker is actually about protecting Jews is an intellectually unserious willful idiot.
This is the thing, at face value nobody is entitled to entry. But by blocking this one guy while allowing thousands of others. The point becomes clear, it’s about chilling criticism of Israel NOT about protecting the UK from extremists
I have watched hours and hours of Hasan Piker, I have never once seen him behave in a way that would warrant being barred from entry to the UK.
Yes you can clip him saying edgey shit, and there is so much footage of him in front of a camera you can absolutely find cringey things that he has said but overall… any read of Hasan Piker other than that he is an imperfect but fairly genuine advocate for progressive leftist politics that elevates the well being of all… is wildly off base just on the basic facts.
The media wants to portray Hasan Piker as some kind of dangerous radical but if you were to point to a single inspiration for the kind of politics Hasan Piker advocates for and is motivated by it would have to be Bernie Sanders even though Hasan isn’t now primarily influenced by him you can still see the influence as clear as day. What Hasan respects about Bernie Sanders is his focus on connecting issues relentlessly to the needs of everyday people, housing, healthcare, human rights, cost of living… it is the boring part of building popular working class support that Hasan is interested in, not whatever the mainstream media lazily and breathlessly accuses him of…
You don’t have to like Hasan Piker, you don’t have to agree with him, but you can’t claim he is a danger to anyone or advocates for xenophobic belief systems.