Left-wing darling Hasan Piker has been booted from the streaming platform Twitch after he suggested that the killing of two Israeli Embassy diplomats in Washington, DC looked like it could be a “false flag” operation.
Piker, 33, claimed his account, which has more than 2.8 million followers, was suspended because of his “critical examination” of the manifesto of suspected terrorist Elias Rodriguez, who was charged with executing embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday night.
He said the attack had all the hallmarks of a “false flag operation,” a term used for an action that is staged to look as if it was carried out by a different group to pin the blame on them.
Sick conspiracy theorists have claimed that the shooting at the Jewish museum was staged to discredit the pro-Palestinian movement, although Piker said he did not explicitly believe Wednesday’s shooting was one.
“I’m not ‘Mr. False Flag’ at all, but, like, every single thing that [Rodriguez] did in the aftermath of the shooting is so f–king crazy that it’s like, you could not have designed a f–king incident like this. You could not have decided a better false flag incident like this,” he said in the live stream, which was also shared to his 1.6 million YouTube followers on Friday.
“I’m not saying it is a false flag incident at all, I’m not saying that, I think this is just one dude who is genuine in his actions and maybe a little bit brain broken,” he added.
Piker announced the temporary ban with a post on social media.
“I believe this is a bad policy for news and press freedom,” he wrote on X, along with a screengrab showing the email he had received temporarily suspending him from the streaming platform on Saturday.
Piker, who streams under the handle HasanAbi, was suspended for “Improper Handling of Terrorist Propaganda,” and “Sharing content related to terrorist or violent extremist groups,” according to the grab of the message from Twitch shared on X.
He claimed he had been examining suspected gunman Rodriguez’s manifesto from a journalistic standpoint.
But the champagne socialist’s high-minded statement was met with disgust by many, who accused the influencer dubbed “the leftist Joe Rogan” of peddling antisemitism.
“You called it a false flag. You hate the Jewish people and you are antisemitic,” one X user wrote in response, something Piker was quick to deny.
“Ironically enough, I was showing his motive to dispel the rumors of a false flag, which is the reason for this suspension but i don’t think you’re capable of critical thought,” he retorted.”Promoting hate will get you banned,” a second X user wrote.
“This should’ve happened way sooner. You’ve been spewing hateful and violent rhetoric for years,” a third added on X.
Twitch did not respond immediately to requests for comment
The suspension comes just weeks after Piker was reportedly questioned by US immigration officials after he flew to Chicago from France.
Piker alleged that he was asked about his past statements critics claim were in support of terror groups such as Hamas and the Houthis.
