Left-wing streaming star and self-described socialist Hasan Piker went to China with the explicit goal of showing his millions of impressionable young viewers why they shouldn’t believe the “Western propaganda” about the authoritarian nation. However, just days into his trip, Piker accidentally did the opposite — showing his audience, and the world, the truth about life under the Chinese Communist Party.
It all started when Piker went, while live-streaming, to an event at Tiananmen Square honoring the infamous dictator Mao Zedong. (Some historical estimates suggest that Mao is responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler.) While joking about how much they loved China and Mao, one of Piker’s friends held up his phone to display a meme that depicts Piker as Mao with the text, “Closely follow the great leader Chairman Mao forward in the revolution!”
As Newsweek reports, police approached them “within seconds.”
Officers detained Piker and his friends, confiscated his friend’s phone, and reviewed the image and footage to make sure no one was mocking their hero, Mao. After the Americans explained that they weren’t mocking him, but were instead huge admirers, their devices were returned, and they were free to go.
The logical conclusion here is clear: China is, in fact, the censorious, authoritarian state its Western critics claim. Or, as Hoover Institution research fellow Liu He wrote on X, “Foreigners are finally beginning to see a reality the Chinese are intimately familiar with day in, day out, and have long attained a skin-level understanding of. Not only is there no freedom to criticize the government of China; people don’t even have the freedom to praise China. Whether you support or criticize the state, all speech is subject to political review. You don’t need to expose the system; the system exposes itself.”
Yet this was not, in fact, Piker’s takeaway.
Back in his hotel room, the streamer instead told his audience that China is “not as bad as silly Americans imagine it is.” What’s more, Piker explained the officer’s actions as if they were totally normal and justified, saying, “He thought we were making a mockery. They didn’t realize that we were swagged-out white boys who love China. They were being extra attentive to make sure no one was making fun of Mao or anything like that … it’s a cultural difference.”
“People have this false notion that they will like arrest you for a meme or whatever; it’s not like that at all,” Piker bizarrely concluded, evidently overlooking the fact that his experiences prove the opposite, that he would have been in trouble if they’d been mocking Mao.
MAMDANI RIPS OFF HIS SMILING MASK
Then he claimed, mostly absurdly, that American police are worse than Chinese police! This, of course, ignores the fact that thanks to our First Amendment, Americans are free to criticize and mock even beloved historical figures without fear of arrest or prosecution.
Piker himself is clearly beyond saving, too deeply ensconced in his own cognitive dissonance to perceive the gap between his beliefs and reality, even as it slaps him in the face. But he is, for once, doing a service to his audience by showing them the truth so starkly and in real time. Any young people tuning in who still have a shred of critical thinking skills may finally realize that their “favorite streamer” is just a useful idiot for authoritarian regimes.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.
