Amazon, Twitch, & Antisemitism

It’s an extremely somber feeling being othered because of your physical identity. As a white, liberal Jew growing up in America it’s a feeling I never had to deal with personally, and never thought I would have to. I was raised with liberal, western values of tolerance and acceptance. I was taught to speak up when I witnessed what I thought were injustices to other minorities. I believe in standing up for what was right, equality, anti-discrimination, and that all people are truly created equal, regardless of where they come from, what color their skin is, what religion they believe in, who they choose to love and where they live. I suppose part of my naivety stemmed from the innocent hope that if my people were ever discriminated against, the masses would stand up for me, just as they had stood up in the past.

It’s 2020, Cancel Culture is in full-swing. Far-right conservatives and full-on white supremacists like Nick Fuentes and his Groypers are no longer able to blast their antisemitic dribble and holocaust denial on social media platforms like Twitter anymore. I was on the frontlines of this internet Activism because I believed with all my heart, and still do, that the alt-right was causing irreparable harm to minorities. I am by all-means a free speech advocate, however I draw the line at hate-speech. Thought-leaders, influencers & brands suddenly were being held accountable. Irresponsible platforming of dangerous rhetoric would be faced with repercussions. You were no longer able to signal boost harmful individuals to impressionable audiences, and I was all for it. Little did I realize how much of a double-standard would later be allowed on these same platforms I championed for their so-called “progressivism”.

October 7th was in every shape and form an earth-shattering moment for Jews across the globe. But I really want to focus on the subsection of Jews I hail from, Liberal American Jews. I’m fairly certain it’s common knowledge at this point, but just in case it’s not, about 70-90% (polling varies) of Jews living in America support the Democratic Party. No matter how you swing it, Jews in America are by in-fact liberal leaning in terms of politics. Around the same percentage of Jews living in America strongly support Israel, feel connected to the state, identify as Zionists, and believe it is important for the US to support Israel. These Jews, including myself, are highly involved in social issues, support progressive policy in the United States, and want to live in a more equal and just society. Pre-October 7, Leftist and Liberal communities I was a part of accepted me as equal, sure their were fringe outliers as their are in every community who conflated being Jewish with being supportive of every action of this Israeli Government (Which I am extremely critical of), but for the most part I was an equal among equals.

After October 7th something changed in many a liberal communities across the States. All of a sudden we saw thought leaders of communities we were previously a part of out-right support the most atrocious, abhorrent terrorist attack of our time. Calling the murder of innocent civilians and babies a justified military operation because they’re supposedly settlers (in proper Israel), calling it a “revolution” and perhaps even most abhorrent, denying well documented and confirmed rapes which occurred on October 7th, not once, not twice, but three times, but three times! Content creators who I used to agree with in terms of cancel culture, and some social policy are not outright stating that I could be justifiably murdered on a mainstream platform. Now, think what you will about Israel’s military actions, criticize the state of Israel if you will, but something the progressive community absolutely needs to denounce is the abhorrent antisemitism rife that has been growing in its ranks.

Twitch, one of the largest live-streaming services which focuses mainly on video game live streaming, is an incredibly popular website and as of 2023 was the 37th most visited website on the internet. Politics has always been around on Twitch in one form or another, but one thing is glaringly obvious about politics on Twitch, it is incredibly left-leaning. I don’t mean it’s kind of a liberal space, I mean the largest political live-streamer, Hasan Piker is a self-described socialist who has stated in the past that America deserved 9/11 and advocated for the very graphic killing of landlords in the United States. Hasan was also recently placed on the media bias chart, where his content was deemed to be spreading misinformation. He is very popular among a worrying increasing number of young American leftists who are being radicalized into thinking anything American is bad, as exemplified by the famous Zoomers for Osama Bin Laden case study. Funnily enough, Twitch is owned by Amazon and is powered by their corporate sponsors who run ads on the platform. Companies like Chevron, Capcom, and Samsung, who I’m sure will be thrilled to know are sponsoring antisemitic events where Jews are deemed inferior to Arabs which I guess Twitch is just sort of okay, seeing as this was at Twitch-Con.

Perhaps the most shocking examples of rules for thee but not for me was when progressive content maker, Hasan Piker, brought a Houthi terrorist onto his stream to interview. Maybe you’re thinking oh, that’s not so bad, maybe he just wants to pushback against some of the terrorism the Iranian proxy terrorist group has been committing in the Gulf of Aiden. Or perhaps about the famine they helped cause which led to the death of 85,000 Yemini children by stealing humanitarian aid. Or maybe he wanted to ask him about their interesting flag which states “Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews”. Or what he meant by this tweet about the Execution of all Zionists. Nope, instead he affectionately nicknamed the terrorist pirate, Tim-Houthi Chalamet, and likened him to “Luffy” from the hit anime, “One Piece”, and basically commended him on the good work. Oh yeah, he also compared this terrorist to Anne Frank.

Hasan Piker, and other progressive, socialists on Twitch and Twitter are no different than the Alt-Right threat we dealt with in 2020, the difference is this strain of hate-speech is deemed okay. I have no idea why other than the fact that it seems to be targeting Jews. Similar to the reason why it was deemed justifiable to cancel alt-right influencers, the damage doesn’t come from the creator themselves, but from the influence they have on others. Hasan streams to tens of thousands of impressionable young Americans and radicalizes them. It’s how you end up with communities with chat logs like this (Hasan’s Communities Chat). In these communities Zionist has become a dog-whistle for Jew, considering the statistic mentioned earlier. Antisemitism is no different whether it comes from Communists or Fascists, you see all the same kind of dehumanizing, genocidal language. Imagine the outrage from the left if you replaced the word Zionist with any other dog whistle for any other minority.

Large Jewish creators such as Ethan Klein of H3H3 have begun to take notice of Twitch’s abhorrent antisemitism tolerance on their platform and have begun to speak out. Now that liberal policies have become more mainstream and commonplace for large corporations to adopt, we hear things like listen to women voices to know when something is not okay to say because it may be deemed sexist, listen to black creators to know when something is unacceptable because it may be racist, listen to Arabs to avoid islamophobia to avoid offending them. All of these I wholeheartedly agree with, however it seems nobody wants to listen to the Jewish voices when things are becoming obviously antisemitic, from the so-called tolerant side who was always critical of the conservative’s offensive rhetoric. So far the Jewish cries to be treated equally have fallen on deaf ears.