By Frank Chung

Copyright news

Twitch streamer Hasan Piker appeared on the ABC’s flagship current affairs program 730 on Wednesday night to discuss the fallout from last week’s shooting of the prominent conservative activist in Utah.

Host Sarah Ferguson did not ask Piker about “your own rhetoric” until towards the end of the nearly nine-minute interview, citing one example where he called for landlords to be murdered but adding she did not “know the context of these particular statements”.

Piker, 34, a popular political commentator with three million followers on Twitch, is one of the most high-profile figures on the left whose rhetoric has been criticised, including by the likes of billionaire Elon Musk who called for him to be banned from the Amazon-owned platform.

In one viral compilation of Piker’s previous comments, he declares that “left-wingers, liberals, you need to be f**king showing your opponents’ guts on there, you need to be gutting them”.

“You need to be shanking these motherf**kers and letting their f**king intestines writhe on-stage,” he says. “Slice them up. Slice ‘em and f**king dice ’em.”

In another clip, Piker jokes approvingly in front of a crowd about a politician being left threatening letters with his address that stated “I’m going to kill you with my AR15”.

Ranting about landlords, Piker said in separate video, “Kill them. Kill those motherf**kers. Murder those motherf**kers in the street. Let the streets soak in their f**king red capitalist blood, dude.”

President Donald Trump and senior administration officials have vowed to crack down on “left-wing terror networks” in the aftermath of Kirk’s death, and right-wing activists have set their sights on those publicly celebrating the killing and political violence more broadly.

Earlier in the 730 interview, Ferguson asked Piker, “What are you expecting, or what do you fear, from them?”

Piker said he was concerned about “political persecution”, before the host then turned to Kirk, claiming the Turning Point USA founder’s language “included offensive statements about Muslims, about black and brown people, about immigrants, about transgender people”.

“Since his death, he’s been praised for his openness to debate,” she said. “What do you think about that praise from people … who say he was doing politics the right way?”

Piker said it was “dishonest”, even though he had debated Kirk himself.

“Technically, it’s not incorrect to say that he is willing to debate people, but to state that he was doing politics the right way, without actually reflecting on his political output, I think, is dishonest,” he said.

“The medium itself obviously was utilised for putting propaganda for the Trump administration.”

Ferguson asked, “But for you, those extreme statements didn’t make you want to stop doing public debates with him?”

Piker replied that it was “not necessarily debating someone whose ideas are beyond the pale but, instead, it’s more so about trying to stop the bleeding in terms of letting these kinds of dangerous ideas spread … without any sort of pushback whatsoever”.

“Once a person gets to a level of notoriety and a level of legitimacy, it’s impossible to avoid them,” he said.

“I think closing your eyes and plugging your ears and just hoping they go away simply is not going to work. So, at that point, I think it’s valid no matter how strange or horrifying or dehumanising their rhetoric might be.”

Ferguson finally turned to Piker’s own comments about landlords.

“Doesn’t that make you part of the problem with violent discourse?” she asked.

Piker claimed the comments were “hyperbolic” and “not meant to be sincere”.

“It’s not a real policy that I would ever advocate for,” he said.

“And that’s precisely the reason why, when Republicans were desperately looking for any sort of incisive language that they could present, they went back to a very obvious instance of LARPing — an insincere statement that is obviously hyperbolic from, I believe, 2018.”

“My question stands nonetheless — doesn’t that kind of language contribute to the atmosphere of violent, even lethal violence, in the United States?” Ferguson said.

“I don’t believe that my insincere statements that don’t reflect on any of my beliefs whatsoever … has led to any sort of real-world violence whatsoever,” Piker said.

In the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s shooting, Piker expressed horror but also partly blamed the 31-year-old for his own death.

“He has played a formative role in his own demise by playing a part in a media landscape, in a media environment, that normalises this death and destruction,” he said on a livestream shortly after the shooting, per MSNBC.

Kirk, a top conservative organiser well known for travelling the US holding open-mic debate sessions with college students, was shot in the neck while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University on September 10.

Alleged killer Tyler Robinson, 22, has been described by authorities as being “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology”.