In the past seven days, the name “Hasan Piker” has been uttered more than 180 times on Fox News.

The socialist influencer, who has 3 million followers on the livestreaming platform Twitch, has been a star in progressive circles for years. But in the heat of a high-stakes battle for control of Congress, Republicans and their allies in conservative media have adopted Piker as their latest leftist boogeyman — a harbinger of the Democratic Party’s supposed descent into full-blown communism.

And it isn’t just Republicans picking on Piker. Since winning his primary on Tuesday, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) has seemingly made bashing Piker his top message for the general election, calling the left-wing influencer an unpatriotic admirer of Mao Zedong.

Piker doesn’t think it’s a great electoral strategy, but he gets it. Moskowitz is running in a Republican-leaning district.

“I think most people are going to look at Jared Moskowitz, and go, ‘Why is he talking about this Twitch streamer?’” Piker told HuffPost in an interview. “But then again, it’s a gamble. It might work, right? Every district is different. So I guess good luck to Jared on that.”

Piker had endorsed Moskowitz’s socialist primary opponent, Oliver Larkin, and he said he doesn’t care if Moskowitz wins, though Democratic victory remains a baseline preference.

“It’s always better for a Democrat to win a seat than a Republican in my calculations,” Piker said. “But luckily there’s a lot of other districts where we are much more competitive.”

Piker said he understands his “role” in politics: energizing younger, disillusioned voters. And he seems resigned to his secondary role as a punching bag, especially in right-wing media. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said on Fox this week that it didn’t even matter which Democrat wins a primary. “They’re going to vote the way Piker tells them to vote,” Scott said. “They all support the platform of the democratic socialists because they are scared to death of them.”

Even for someone who rose to prominence speaking extemporaneously on hourslong internet livestreams with thousands and thousands of viewers, politics has brought a whole new level of attention. Piker said it reflects desperation on the part of Republicans.

“It’s insane. These guys are very clearly out of ideas on how to defend the current Trump administration’s madness, so this is their last-ditch effort,” he said.

Top progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have appeared on Piker’s channel, but his notoriety spiked after the progressive Abdul El-Sayed defeated the establishment favorite Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in Michigan’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate earlier this month.

Piker appeared alongside El-Sayed at campaign events, and as soon as he won, Republicans slammed him for the association. Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee, even accused El-Sayed of believing “America deserved 9/11” — a reference to a statement Piker made during a 2019 livestream, which he disavowed within days. (Factcheck.org rated the Rogers statement “false.”)

But Stevens suggested on Fox News last week that El-Sayed still ought to jettison Piker: “It certainly makes sense to get rid of this Hasan Piker affiliation.”

El-Sayed has defended his affiliation, but it’s possible Piker won’t appear on the campaign trail with him now that the Democratic primary is over.

Piker said he doesn’t have any events scheduled with El-Sayed. “I’ll be there in a heartbeat if there’s any need,” he said.

Even in races where Piker played no role, Democratic candidates get asked about him. Angie Nixon, a member of the Florida House of Representatives who won the Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Florida in Tuesday’s biggest upset, this week corrected a broadcaster who said she’d campaigned with Piker. Nixon claimed she didn’t even know who he is, and Piker thought the question was ridiculous.

“Why should Angie Nixon know I am?” Piker said. “Why should she have to be accountable for everything that I’ve said over the 22,000 hours that I’ve done political commentary?”

As for Moskowitz, the Florida Democrat accused Piker of antisemitism for his relentless criticism of Israel and its deadly war in Gaza, suggesting it wasn’t a coincidence Piker endorsed his opponent. Piker pointed out his favorite politician of the last decade, Bernie Sanders, is Jewish.

“The notion that I would oppose someone because of their Jewish faith for political office is a heinous accusation. It couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said.

Piker copped to another Moskowitz accusation, however: that he’s not patriotic. But he’s not a Maoist, he said, and when he witnessed a flag-raising ceremony in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square last year, he thought it was boring.

“I can’t understand Chinese patriotism either,” Piker said.

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