83-year-old senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders will join two of Twitch’s biggest stars to talk politics on Tuesday night as the neck-and-neck 2024 presidential race comes to a close. He’ll spar with Vice President Kamala Harris and talk about everything from the minimum wage to climate change Imane “Pokimane” Anys AND Rachell “Valkyra” Hofstetter on the Amazon-owned platform as Democrats try to reach younger voters online. I hope they make him play Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero.
“The far right has made a successful attempt to engage in the Internet space and non-traditional forms of communication” – Sanders he said The Washington Post Office in a statement. “We can’t give up this space. If the Democratic Party wants to retain the support of young Americans, it must address their concerns.” The interview will be broadcast live at 7:30 PM ET and will be co-hosted by Anys and Hofstetter. They have over 20 million followers on Twitch, and the gray-haired democratic socialist with a reputation for not being stupid will be answering their questions.
Sanders he started his own channel on Twitch in 2019, when he ran for the Democratic nomination, but has rarely appeared since then. Meanwhile, Anys has hosted political stars in the past, including a 2020 streaming event with New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during which they played Among us AND reached over 430,000 concurrent viewers.
But today’s event was organized by the Progressive Victory political action committee, so it’s unclear how much of a scripted affair it will be, or whether the offline senator who has been known for decades for his commitment to economic causes like raising the minimum wage and eliminating childhood poverty, will browse internet memes and streamer dramas, or stick to messages approved by the Harris-Walz campaign. Even Meet the press the hosts rarely managed to dissuade him from his standard anti-billionaire arguments.
One of the controversies currently surrounding Twitch is the debate over hate speech standards in discussions about Israel’s war in Gaza and the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including the bombings of hospitals and refugee camps. One sec top streamer Zack “Asmongold” Hoyt recently apologized for a racist tirade about Palestinians that resulted in his account being temporarily banned, Twitch has also moved on a recent series of bans against certain Arab streamers accused of anti-Semitism. Sanders was one of the Harris-Walz campaign’s most vocal critics of Israel’s attack on Gaza.
