Last week, CNN political commentator Scott Jennings posted an attack video against leftist streamer Hasan Piker, leveraging it as a way to undermine Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who campaigned with Piker in Michigan. Jennings’ video featured a series of clips taken from Piker’s popular Twitch livestreams, including one where Piker said “Go back to a better time, when lynchings were happening.” 

Sounds pretty bad, right? Jennings certainly thought so. He urged “every Black voter” to listen and consider joining the Republican Party, to fight back against the racist rhetoric Piker was using. Here’s the issue: Piker wasn’t calling for lynchings against Black people. He was sarcastically mocking a clip featuring a Black Republican who was calling for the end of so-called “woke” district attorneys.

This kind of smear tactic has become a relentless cycle for Piker and the progressive candidates he has supported, who have often gone on to great success (just look at Zohran Mamdani). An opponent—from Republicans like Jennings to alt-right Twitch streamers to establishment Democrats—clips Piker out-of-context, recycles his old controversies (like saying America “deserved” 9/11, which he has long since apologized for), and makes bold insinuations about everything from his clothing choices to his occasionally crude language. For well over a year now, mainstream media outlets have been transfixed by Piker. The phrase “Hasan Derangement Syndrome,” which I sadly did not come up with myself, has never been more fitting. 

But this time, Piker has announced plans to fight back. He told his audience and the newsletter Status that his legal team is working on a defamation lawsuit against Jennings. I’m glad to hear it. Unlike most people who get smeared by right-wing media, Piker can absolutely afford a costly suit. And the smear campaign against him has become a liability for progressive politics at large, especially when it comes to those who criticize Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. You don’t even have to like Piker or agree with everything he’s said to acknowledge how dangerous the lies and efforts to censor and deplatform him are. 

I interviewed Piker about this, as well as some of the parallels between his predicament and other cases I’ve covered like Depp v. Heard.