Hasan Piker — millionaire, far-left live-streamer, and rising socialist star of the Democratic Party — showed up to the College Democrats of America convention at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. this weekend wearing a full Mao Zedong-style suit. Not as a joke. As a fashion statement while he lectured the room about why mainstream Democrats aren't radical enough.
Piker, who once called Mao "one of the great leaders of this world," used his appearance at the CDA convention to attack moderate Democrats and paint the current government as "fascist." This is a man who bought a $2.7 million home in West Hollywood while preaching communist revolution to college kids. The cognitive dissonance would be impressive if it weren't so predictable.
The reaction was swift, even from the left's own ranks. Shannon R. Watts, a prominent anti-gun rights activist, called Piker a "dangerous, hateful extremist" and noted he was "dressed like Mao and talking about how much he hates the majority of Democrats." When your own side is calling you out for the Mao cosplay, the costume choice may have been a miscalculation. Or maybe it was the point.
Spencer Pratt, former Los Angeles mayoral candidate, didn't mince words either. "They're communists. This was always communism," Pratt said, adding that Piker was "dressed as Mao, brainwashing your kids at college." Meanwhile, Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed appeared alongside Piker at the event, apparently unbothered by the wardrobe choice of his co-panelist.
This isn't Piker's first rodeo with indefensible positions. He's the same commentator who said the United States "deserved" what happened on September 11, 2001. He has been barred from entering the United Kingdom — a country not exactly known for its conservative immigration enforcement.
Piker's defenders will argue he's just an entertainer, a provocateur, a content creator playing a character. But the College Democrats of America didn't book a character. They booked him to speak at their national convention. They gave him a stage, a microphone, and a room full of the party's next generation of activists. That's not entertainment. That's an endorsement.
The Democratic Socialists of America have stopped pretending. The DSA wing isn't hiding behind euphemisms about "democratic" socialism or "Nordic models" anymore. They're putting on the dictator's suit — literally — and daring anyone to object.
A man who lives in a $2.7 million house, praising a dictator responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, at a convention for the youth wing of a major American political party. That's not a fringe movement. That's a pipeline.