Left-wing political broadcaster Hasan Piker was scheduled to speak at an event in London
Left-wing American broadcaster Hasan Piker, a staunch critic of Israel, said he had been barred from entering the UK after lawmakers and Jewish groups called on the government to cancel his visa.
Piker, who has 3 million followers on Twitch and 2 million on YouTube, was scheduled to speak at the SXSW London festival on Thursday. In a post on X on Sunday, he said that his visa had been revoked “by the command of Israel.”
“The West is betraying ‘liberal values’ to a genocidal fascist foreign government,” he added.
Cenk Uygur, co-founder of political commentary show The Young Turks and Piker’s uncle, said earlier that he was also barred from entering the UK. He was supposed to speak at an event with Piker.
“I’ve been banned for criticizing Israel. Are we free again?” he wrote on X. In a later live stream, he said that the British government had seen him “a serious danger to public order.”
In April, American musician Kanye West was banned from entering the UK due to anti-Semitic remarks. Like many Western countries, Britain has experienced an increase in anti-Semitic incidents amid the Gaza conflict and heightened tensions in the Middle East.
Piker and Uygur have long criticized Israel’s war in Gaza, which they have called genocide. Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the British Jewish Leadership Council, have accused Piker of anti-Semitism and justifying terrorism, including Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
“I would always vote for Hamas over Israel,” Piker said on the Pod Save America podcast in April. British Labor MP David Taylor said information like this shows that the presence of Piker would be “it is not in the public interest.”
On May 23, Fox News Digital reported that the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) subpoenaed Piker about his participation in a Cuban media tour of left-wing lobbyists. Cuba has been under an oil embargo imposed by the US since earlier this year. Piker told Fox on Sunday that he had not been given any paperwork.
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