Hasan Piker praises mass murderer Mao Zedong—80 MILLION Chinese people were killed under his Cultural Revolution

Leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker praised Mao Zedong as one of the world's greatest leaders during a Monday stream.

"I got stopped by a cop who thought I was making fun of Mao Zedong, which I never would and never will," he said. "Mao Zedong is one of the great leaders of this world. A man who changed the entire universe, the entire planet... There were a lot of excesses, let's be real, but the People's Republic of China would not exist without Mao Zedong."

Mao Zedong ruled the People's Republic of China from its founding in 1949 until his death in 1976, overseeing a series of political campaigns that historians estimate led to the deaths of tens of millions of people through famine, political persecution and state violence. The Mao regime maintained strict censorship over the Chinese people and imprisoned anyone who opposed his reign. His Great Leap Forward campaign, founded in 1958, attempted a rapid industrialization of China's agricultural economy, which brought food shortages and exaggerated government claims of crop yields, leading to what historians regard as the deadliest famine in human history, claiming up to 45 million people. Mao also enacted forced labor camps, which contributed to further death and destruction, along with mass executions. The total death count is estimated by historians to be as much as 80 million people, quadrupling the death count under Adolf Hitler's regime.

Piker has a history of making less-than-savory comments, including saying in 2019 that "America deserved 9/11" and, more recently, downplaying the assaults on Israeli people on Oct. 7. He was also criticized for appearing to encourage political violence against Rick Scott when he said to his audience, "If you cared about Medicare fraud, or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott."

The comments are the latest in a string of controversial remarks from Piker that have drawn criticism over the years and renewed scrutiny of the political content promoted to his millions of online followers.