Hasan Doğan Piker (born July 25, 1991), often referred to mononymously as Hasan, or HasanAbi, is an American Twitch streamer, influencer, and left-wing political commentator. His livestreams usually include discussions on current affairs and lifestyle stories, playing video games, reacting to memes and media clips, and interacting with his viewers.
As of 2026, Piker's Twitch channel ranks among the platform's most-subscribed. Piker has been called one of the biggest voices on the American Left. He began streaming on Twitch in March 2018, while working at The Young Turks (TYT). In January 2020, Piker left TYT to focus on his career as a Twitch streamer. He has regularly spoken about the Gaza war, advocating for Palestinians and criticizing the Israeli government.
Hasan Doğan Piker was born on July 25, 1991, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Turkish parents. He grew up in Istanbul and was raised as a Muslim. His father's family emigrated from Thessaloniki and Crete, Greece, to Turkey. His father, Mehmet Behçet Piker, is a political scientist and economist who was a board member and vice president of the Turkish financial conglomerate Sabancı Holding and is a founding member of Turkey's conservative Future Party. His mother, Ülker Sedef Piker (née Uygur), is an art and architectural historian who teaches at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His uncle, Cenk Uygur, is a political commentator and co-founder of The Young Turks, a left-leaning news network.
Piker returned to the United States and attended the University of Miami, then transferred to Rutgers University, where he joined the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. In 2013, he graduated cum laude from Rutgers with a double major in political science and communication studies. Piker then moved to Los Angeles, California. In 2021, he bought a $2.7 million house in West Hollywood.
During his senior year of college in 2013, Piker interned for The Young Turks. The network's ad sales and business department hired him after he graduated. He asked to host the show when a fill-in was needed and later became a host and producer.
In 2016, Piker created and hosted The Breakdown, a TYT Network video series that aired on Facebook and presented left-leaning political analyses targeted, at the time, at millennial supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Piker also contributed political content to HuffPost from 2016 to 2018.
2018–2020: Early Twitch career and The Young Turks
Piker started streaming on Twitch on March 23, 2018, while working at TYT. In January 2020, he left TYT to focus on his career as a Twitch streamer. Piker said he shifted his attention from Facebook to Twitch to reach a younger audience and because of what he saw as a preponderance of right-wing commentators on YouTube and a lack of leftist representation among streamers. He became a popular left-wing political commentator and was invited to appear on KTTV's The Issue Is and the political podcast Chapo Trap House. His YouTube channel features highlights of his streams, and reached over 1,000,000 subscribers in 2022. Piker also streams gameplay and commentary on video games. Sometimes he role-plays as "Hank Pecker", an ethno-political caricature of a "right-wing redneck".
During a Twitch stream in August 2019, Piker criticized American foreign policy and made controversial comments about the September 11 attacks, including "America deserved 9/11." Piker called his comments satirical and said U.S. foreign policy made an event like 9/11 possible but acknowledged that he should have used "more precise" language. Piker received a short-term ban for his comments.
2020–present: Prominence on Twitch
After leaving TYT, Piker became one of Twitch's most-watched political livestreamers, hosting news commentary, interviews, and gameplay streams.
On October 19, 2020, U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez collaborated with Piker and fellow Twitch streamer Pokimane to organize a stream of Ocasio-Cortez playing the popular multiplayer game Among Us for the "Get out the vote" initiative for the then upcoming presidential election. The stream aired the next day, featuring both Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar playing the game with Piker and other popular Twitch streamers, reaching a total concurrent viewership of almost 700,000.
During the first 2020 United States presidential debate on September 29, over 125,000 viewers watched Piker's commentary on the stream, the highest viewership for the debate on Twitch. Piker's stream covering the results of the 2020 United States presidential election peaked at 230,000 concurrent viewers and was the sixth most-watched source of election coverage on YouTube or Twitch, comprising 4.9% of the market share. He was the most watched Twitch streamer during the election week; his 80 hours of streams were viewed for a cumulative 6.8 million hours by an average of 75,000 concurrent viewers. Piker's stream reached a new high of 231,000 viewers during the January 6 United States Capitol attack.
In 2021, Piker was banned from Twitch for a week after using the slur "cracker" in reference to white people, after two of his chat moderators were banned for using it. He argued the term should not be considered a slur since a person using it is "powerless" and would be "doing it as someone who has been historically oppressed blowing off steam." A paper in New Media & Society criticized Twitch for punishing Piker while epithets aimed at minority groups were prevalent on the platform.
Piker was given credentialed access and livestreamed at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, and his 2024 election night coverage stream had 7.5 million viewers.
On February 28, 2025, Piker said that if Republicans "cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, [they] would kill Rick Scott," in a reference to Scott's involvement in Medicare and Medicaid fraud when he was the CEO of Columbia/HCA. Piker was banned for 24 hours by Twitch on March 3 in relation to the comment. On May 25, Piker received a 24-hour ban from Twitch for "improper handling of terrorist propaganda" after showing an alleged manifesto by Elias Rodriguez, the perpetrator of the 2025 Capital Jewish Museum shooting.
In May 2025, Piker was detained for around two hours by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago after returning from a trip to France. According to Piker, the officials who questioned him during his detention knew who he was and asked him detailed questions about his views on Donald Trump, Israel, Houthi rebels, Hamas, and his Twitch bans. Piker believed he was detained due to his political views and that his detention was part of the Trump administration's intimidation tactics to silence political opposition. Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin accused Piker of "lying for likes" and said it was a routine inspection that any traveler could be subjected to.
In June 2026, Piker was refused entry to the UK alongside Uygur, which he argued was "due to my criticism of Israel." The country's Home Office said the decision was due to Piker's "potential risk" and "may not be conducive to the public good". He had been invited to speak at the Oxford Union and SXSW London. The Oxford Union said Piker would deliver his speech via live-stream. Piker said the decision revealed the "fascist" direction the "Western world" was taking. It was also criticized by free speech activists. Trump and Vice-President JD Vance had themselves raised concerns over free speech infringements in Britain as early as August 2025.