A great many young women are Democrats, and some of the leftist stars of the current day or recent past seem designed to appeal to that demographic. For example, there have been a couple of violent murderers of a supposedly dreamboat mien and terrorist or leftist disposition: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Luigi Mangione. Then we have the smiley-face Communist mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani. And now the much-watched Communist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.

It’s not an accident that three of the four are Muslims, either born or partly raised abroad, and thought to be good-looking. For the first two their violence is winked at by their admirers (or in the case of Mangione, admired), and for the second their utterly stupid and destructive ideas are considered smart or at least trendy.

Hasan Piker is the most recent; all of a sudden I see his name and photo in a lot of places. Apparently Democrats are having an argument about whether to engage and embrace him or denounce him. In some ways, the Piker dilemma on the left is a bit like the Tucker dilemma on the right.

Like Mamdani (for whom he campaigned), Piker is 34 years old. Mamdani was born of Indian parents in Uganda and raised Muslim, coming to this country at the age of seven and raised in a wealthy family. Piker was born in New Brunswick, NJ, but grew up in Istanbul. There is no information on why he was born here but grew up there, but his mother had relatives in New Brunswick and it’s certainly possible that they were visiting the relatives and that Hasan was a so-called “anchor baby.” Not only do the two men share having grown up in significant wealth and yet becoming Communists, but each has an academic father (in Piker’s case, also a businessman) and an artistic mother – Mamdani’s mother being a successful film director and Piker’s being a professor of art and architectural history. Piker’s maternal uncle is the leftist TV commentator Cenk Uygur, who gave him his start in the communications field.

Piker is featured here in a fawningly giggly interview with the NY Times (the women in the middle is from the Times; the other woman is apparently a writer for The New Yorker):

A couple of comments at the video:

Nepo baby from a rich, oligarch Turkish family wants poor people to steal, but not from him.

Remember to buy his $90 plain white T-shirts from his online store.

We need to get this man’s address out. I bet he’s got some cool shit.

Piker also spoke up when United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered. This video is from even before Mangione was identified, but Piker presciently notes that the murderer (who is wearing a mask) is “hot” and is already being lauded and Thompson’s murder applauded. Piker himself walks a fine line, mentioning at the outset that the act is criminal, but then mocking and reviling Thompson and gleefully discussing how many people think Thompson deserved it (I’ve cued up about 10 minutes; it’s really quite a glimpse into the mind of today’s young leftists, as is the comment section):

I find this phenomenon very chilling – leftist chic. Nihilist chic.

And come to think of it, perhaps the first example – at least that I can recall – was Che Guevara, another good-looking rich kid playing with Communist fire (in his case not just with “mere words”) and sporting that oh-so-stylish black beret.