Hasan Piker Is Calling UT Austin's Venue Squeeze 'Cancel Culture.' Texas Democrats Would Like to Say Absolutely Nothing About That.
The event stays small, the Fox News cameras show up at Cornell, and the Texas Democratic Party discovers a previously unknown interest in silence. Here are the receipts.
Darlings, we have a new development in the ongoing saga of one left-wing Twitch streamer versus the entire state of Texas: Hasan Piker is going to his UT Austin event. At the smaller venue. And he would like you to know he is very, very aggrieved about it.
Per the Austin American-Statesman, Piker is now publicly accusing the University of Texas of hypocrisy, reportedly claiming that "free speech only goes in one direction" when it comes to his treatment on campus. Yahoo News is running the same story under the framing that Piker considers himself a "victim of Texas Republican cancel culture." The audacity of the pivot.
Let us lay out exactly what we know, attributed to the sources that know it:
- The UT Austin event is confirmed at the original, smaller venue, per two separate KVUE reports from September 28. The expansion to a larger space that the 2,400 RSVPs seemed to demand is not happening. Chron is separately reporting that Piker is still coming to Texas despite all calls to cancel, which, fine, but the venue story is the tell.
- Piker's response to that squeeze, per the Statesman, is to frame it as a free speech issue directed at him specifically. Not a university logistics issue. Not a capacity decision. Republican cancel culture. He went straight there.
- Texas Democrats, per Jewish Insider, are declining to speak out against Piker ahead of the UT event. Jewish Insider describes the situation as "sounds of silence." The outlet notes that Texas Dems are simply not engaging publicly before his appearance in their own state.
- Meanwhile, Fox News dispatched Jesse Watters Primetime to Cornell University to cover Piker's appearance there, per two separate Fox News reports from September 29. One segment asked Cornell students how well they know Piker. A journey. Fox News embedding a primetime show at a streamer event is not a thing that was happening eighteen months ago.
- KOMO is reporting that Young Democratic Socialists were chanting "From the river to the sea" at both Rep. AOC events and Hasan Piker events, per coverage from September 29. The chant is no longer exclusively a Piker story. It is now an AOC-adjacent story. That is a different radius entirely.
And if the free-speech-victim framing feels like a costume change, remember that this is the same streamer who allegedly led that chant at Cornell Sage Chapel four days ago. Calling the university's venue decision censorship while the controversy is still this loud is a choice. A choice.
Texas Dem silence is also a choice. Per Jewish Insider, it is apparently the one they are making right now, right before he lands in Austin.
We wish the Texas Democratic Party clarity in this trying time of their own making, my loves. Our prediction: the silence breaks approximately forty-five minutes after whatever happens at that UT event goes on Twitch.
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