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Hasan Piker detained at the border and questioned for hours over politics (www.usermag.co)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hasan Piker, the biggest progressive political streamer in America, was detained by Customs and Border Protection for hours of questioning upon returning to the U.S. from a trip to France this weekend. Piker posted about the incident on X and later talked about it on stream.

He was detained in Chiago and questioned for two hours about protected journalistic activities like who he’s interviewed and his political beliefs. He was asked whether or not he’d interviewed Hamas, Houthis, or Hezbollah members. He was questioned about his opinions on Trump and Israel and asked about his history of bans on Twitch. His phone and laptop were not confiscated.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 day ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (3 children)

I'm starting to feel like a lot of the takes against Hasan are in bad faith. I watched a little recap and I felt it was both clear and obvious that YOU (normal person) shouldn't do what he did.

But being a notable person of interest who was already (questionably?) illegally caught up in a bad system, there's reason to believe things wouldn't take a turn for the better just because he asked to lawyer up. So he took a calculated risk and engaged with the situation enough to gather a first hand experience he could report on. Concrete evidence, there's value in that. It was his decision to make.

To reiterate, obvious YOU don't do that. Stay silent, lawyer up.

EDIT: Timestamped.

EDIT: Timestamped, again. Same video.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Yeah you don't have to watch Hasan for too long to realize that most objections against him are empty / bad faith. If he's guilty of anything at all it's getting distracted by / yelling at his chat too much. But I chalk that up to general Twitch culture. The reality is that he's politically activating and engaging tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who wouldn't be otherwise, or would have been watching slop / right wing pipeline content instead. I wish there were more people like him in streaming, but obviously it's a difficult niche to exist in.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago

They are in bad faith. If you watch a full argument from Hasan, it’s really difficult to not agree with him. The American centric view of the world is distorting everything. Step back, watch events from a different prospective, many things will be clearer.