Hasan Piker backs anti-Israel hecklers who accosted Mamdani

Firebrand socialist streamer Hasan Piker backed the anti-Israel protestors who heckled Mayor Zohran Mamdani during an Oct. 7 vigil at a Manhattan park —…

Source: New York Post
3 min read
NRT Commentary · Opinion

The best part of this story isn't even Hasan Piker’s meltdown—it’s that even the varsity left is getting tired of this act. Here you have a socialist millionaire streamer, a guy who makes a living telling young men the system is rigged, suddenly clutching his pearls because a mob of his own ideological kin decided to heckle a local politician at a memorial. He’s shocked.

Commentary is separate from the original publisher's reporting.

Hasan Piker backs anti-Israel hecklers who accosted Mamdani
Image via New York Post

Firebrand socialist streamer Hasan Piker backed the anti-Israel protestors who heckled Mayor Zohran Mamdani during an Oct. 7 vigil at a Manhattan park — prompting critics to chuckle that the left was “eating itself.”

“The f–k? What the hell is going on in New York City, man?” Piker, 35, said on a livestream Wednesday while watching footage of Mamdani attending a memorial in Union Square organized by Isrealis for Peace.

“This was the vigil? I thought it was the pro-Palestine rally… it was an Israeli rally? Israelis for peace? The f–k? a dumbfounded Piker groaned.

“There ain’t no way that Zohran presented that as the pro-Palestine rally,” Piker added, covering his face with his hands and letting out a long groan. “Oh, that’s disastrous.”

His distress came after agigators chanted “We charge you with genocide” at Hizzoner for attending the candlelight vigil that commemorated both Jews murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7, and Palestinians killed in the ensuing war.

And just as the heckling mob — some of whom shouted “You coward!” — weren’t satisfied with Mamdani offering the slightest nod to the roughly 1,200 Israelis killed during the bloody terror attack, Piker lamented the mayor was turning his back on the pro-Palestine movement.

“He’s fallen for the Goldilocks-zone trap, which is if you try to please both sides you’re gonna please neither side,” Piker said. “If Zohran had followed through on at least some of the promises he made I think there’d be less … reaction.”

Piker added that he was especially disappointed with Mamdani because he “did such a good job” with his public statement earlier in that day — which offered a mere few words of consolation for Oct. 7 victims, before focusing the rest of his time on “the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

“Jesus Christ. I knew this was an inevitability,” Piker said.

Clips of Piker’s comments quickly made the rounds online — prompting critics to guffaw over one of the left’s loudest drumbeaters tearing down one of the party’s most prominent leaders.

“The left eating itself is the left’s favorite hobby,” one commenter wrote.

“When you feed extremism, don’t be surprised when it turns on you,” said another.

Mamdani capped off his Wednesday with a meal at a Palestinian restaurant known for anti-Israel sentiments.

The mayor’s choice of dining didn’t placate his new critics from the left.

“Stop being a f–king traitor,” one masked activist shouted at him after he left the restaurant.

One masked activist who had been waiting for the mayor outside ran up to his car and shouted: “Stop being a f—king traitor.”

Original source:

Read at New York Post

How We See It

New Republican Times Editorial Board

The best part of this story isn't even Hasan Piker’s meltdown—it’s that even the varsity left is getting tired of this act. Here you have a socialist millionaire streamer, a guy who makes a living telling young men the system is rigged, suddenly clutching his pearls because a mob of his own ideological kin decided to heckle a local politician at a memorial. He’s shocked. Shocked that the movement he helps feed turned on one of its own. The cognitive dissonance would be funny if it weren’t so predictable.

The heckling of Zohran Mamdani wasn’t a case of the left "eating itself" as a quirky sideshow. It’s the logical endpoint of a movement that has abandoned any pretense of coalition-building for endless purity tests. Mamdani is a progressive Democrat who has made opposing Israel a centerpiece of his platform, and it still wasn’t enough. The mob demands total fealty, and when they don’t get the exact liturgy they want at a vigil for a terrorist attack, they turn on the guy standing next to them. That’s not activism; that’s a circular firing squad. Piker can act confused all he wants, but he’s spent years normalizing the rhetoric that makes this behavior acceptable.

For the rest of us watching from the outside, it’s a gift that keeps on giving. The Democratic coalition in New York is fracturing in real time over a foreign policy issue that most normal Americans care very little about. While they tear each other apart over who is sufficiently anti-Israel for a memorial service, regular New Yorkers are worrying about the subway, the cost of rent, and whether their kids are safe. The left’s civil war is their problem, and they’re handling it with all the grace of a street brawl. We’ll just sit back and enjoy the show.

Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.