Leftist streamer Hasan Piker to have Philly congressional candidate Chris Rabb on his show

State Rep. Chris Rabb, a Philadelphia progressive currently locked in a three-way battle for an open seat in Congress, will appear next week on a show hosted by Hasan Piker, a leftist political commentator and streamer who has a global platform.

Rabb’s campaign said Wednesday that Piker will be in Philadelphia on April 30, and a spokesperson praised the streamer for “taking on corporate greed and the billionaires raising our prices to opposing genocide and forever wars.”

“He has energized so many young voters who have become disillusioned with our political system, who don’t see this party fighting with the urgency this moment demands,” Rabb’s campaign said in a statement. “We are glad our campaign’s platform is giving a voice to the majority of Democratic voters looking to send a fighter to Congress.”

Piker’s stream, which reaches millions of viewers every day, is one of the largest platforms to host any of the candidates running for the 3rd Congressional District seat so far. The interview with Rabb will take place fewer than three weeks before Election Day on May 19.

The announcement comes as Piker, who streams on the gaming platform Twitch, has become increasingly involved in electoral politics in recent months and has landed at the center of a national debate over whether the Democratic establishment should embrace leftist influencers as the party tries to regain power.

Driving that conversation are past comments Piker made that are critical of Israel and of U.S. foreign policy, including saying in 2019 that America “deserved” the Sept. 11 attacks, a comment he later said was poorly worded.

Piker is a strident anti-Zionist and recently stood by a past comment that Hamas — the militant group that perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel — “is a thousand times better than the fascist settler colonial apartheid state of Israel.”

However, Piker has rejected critics who have labeled him as antisemitic, saying his views about the Israeli government are not directed at Jewish people broadly.

And he draws a large audience among young people who feel disconnected from both political parties.

Some of the nation’s most prominent progressives have appeared on his channel, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Zohran Mamdani, the recently elected mayor of New York City, went on Piker’s broadcast during the mayoral campaign, and Piker recently campaigned with Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive U.S. Senate candidate in Michigan.

U.S. Rep. Summer Lee — a progressive from Pittsburgh who has endorsed Rabb — hosted Piker at the U.S. Capitol in November.

Appearing on Piker’s show is something of a natural fit for Rabb, an anti-establishment five-term state representative from Northwest Philadelphia who considers himself a democratic socialist. He is running for the 3rd Congressional District seat — one of the bluest in the nation — which is composed of about half of Philadelphia and is currently held by retiring U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans.

The other two frontrunners for the Democratic nomination are State Sen. Sharif Street, who has the support of the Democratic City Committee, and physician Ala Stanford, a first-time political candidate who was endorsed by Evans.

Rabb has made much of his campaign about the war in Gaza, which he considers a genocide perpetrated by Israel, and he has frequently attacked his two top rivals in the race for refusing to use the term.

» READ MORE: Ala Stanford and Chris Rabb are trading accusations as AIPAC becomes a flash point in Philly’s U.S. House race

He has also harshly criticized the pro-Israel lobby in America, most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). During a candidates forum in January, when asked whether he would ever meet with the group, Rabb said “f— AIPAC” and referred to the organization as “racist.”

The comment resurfaced last week and drew admiration from Piker, who called Rabb “my GOAT,” an acronym for “greatest of all time.”

Staff writer Sam Janesch contributed to this article.