Popular Twitch streamer Zack ‘Asmongold’ Hoyt has found himself in hot water after ranting about Palestinians during a recent live stream.
Asmongold’s Controversial Comments
Amidst a larger discussion with his chat on the ongoing war between Israel’s government and various groups of militant and Hamas-led Palestinians, Asmongold revealed that in terms of whose side he was on, his flag was firmly planted in the former’s camp.
“If you want to consider a genocide as a systematic killing of a group of people, [Muslims] have genocide built into Sharia law right now,” he said. “So no, I’m not going to cry a f–king river when people who have genocide that’s baked into their laws are getting genocided.”
“I don’t give a f–k,” he added. “They’re terrible people. It’s not even a question. It’s crazy that people don’t see it that way.”
Further pushing back against the humanitarian-based criticisms of Israel’s ongoing escalation of their military operations, the streamer argued, “[The Palestinians would] be doing the same thing.”
“How much did they kill?” he questioned. “As many as they can. They’re not able to kill as many people as Israel because they don’t have as many bombs and as many weapons. But if they did they’d be doing the same thing. That’s it. It just takes enough.”
“These people are not your allies,” Asmongold then declared. “They are not the same as us. They come from an inferior culture that is horrible. It kills people for their identity and it is directly antithetical to everything Western values stand for. And it is an inferior culture in all ways. It is that simple.”
Backlash and Twitch Suspension
As one would figure, Asmongold swiftly received a wave of backlash, with everyone from his fellow streamers, to content creators, to social media users pouring out to condemn his comments.
Meanwhile, due ostensibly to his breaking of their guidelines regarding Hateful Conduct, Twitch swiftly took action and hit his ‘zackrawr’ account, which boasts over 1.9 million followers, with a 14-day ban.
Interestingly, while a majority of social media users debated over the content Asmongold’s rant, a number of individuals took the opportunity to highlight Twitch’s hypocrisy in the matter, as while they were lightning fast to ban the streamer for his take, they continue to allow others on their platform to flagrantly get away with worse violations.
“Twitchs biggest political streamers is unironically a full throated supporter of extremist Islamist terrorists lol,” said @OmniIcarus in reference to Hasan Piker’s regular promotion of pro-Houti Rebel and pro-Hamas rhetoric. “Asmond is comparably far more tame.”
Likewise, @Chankksaotome mocked, “Reasonable position no one want’s to say out loud: 14 days. Being Cartoon woman: 7 days. Having actual sex on camera: 3 days. Promoting literal terrorists and praising the deaths of American citizens: Published right to front page Twitch everybody.”
Another user, @KirscheVerstahl opined, “I find this amusing, not just because people like Hassan are able to talk to terrorists, but because what [Asmongold] said is what the average normie thinks about the situation, but won’t say outloud.
“I’m kinda surprised he said it, even,” they added. “Whole situation is just fascinating to watch”
Asmongold Articulates Apology
Shortly after the comments were made, Asmongold issued an apology for his rant, writing to his personal X account, “Looking back on it, I was way too much of an a–hole about the Palestine thing.”
“My bad,” he added. “Of course no one deserves to have their life destroyed, even if they do things or have views I find regressive. You guys deserve more than me saying stupid s–t like that, I’ll do better.”
The streamer would go on to provide further information regarding his future in an October 17th video uploaded to his YouTube channel.
Titled “My Plans Moving Forward”, the video sees Asmongold offer a more direct statement on the entire situation.
“A couple of days ago I made some comments about Palestine and also about Hamas and you know some just general opinions that were trivializing the genocide that’s happening there,” he began. “And I don’t really want to mince words or try to be like, ‘Oh I wasn’t justifying or you know promoting it’. I said something about it that was disgusting. I said that I didn’t care about innocent people getting killed by another force, by anything, and I think that that’s a horrible disgusting mean-spirited thing to say.
“I don’t necessarily think that it was really racist, but when I’m using like language like ‘Palestinians’ or ‘the people there’ rather than what my real language was,” he continued. “I’ve always been very outspoken and very against religious extremism, and I still am. I think that any religion, and any way of thinking that’s going to cause you to put other people in positions below – like gay people, women, people with disabilities, anything like that – I think that that’s a really bad position to have. And I really don’t like that.”
He further told his viewers, “I think that my problem, and my fault here, was that I was making a criticism of religious extremism and I made no effort – and I’ve rewatched the clip, or a number of the clips – and it’s like I’ve almost made an effort not to draw a distinction between the two things. I think that a lot of us here can easily say that we’re against religious extremism, and I am, but whenever I categorize everybody in the area as this like, group, uh then I’m the a–hole. And I was the a–hole. I had a lot of you guys tell me that.”
From there, Asmongold then admitted. “What’s so crazy about it is that I think this has been going on now for like, two years. I think that I’ve been slowly devolving into the most mean-spirited – I don’t really even know what the word is for it – just like, the most mean-spirited, rude, nasty, callous, psychopathic version of myself. I think that I’ve been devolving into this, and a lot of my friends have told me this. My dad has told me this. He said, “You’ve got to chill out. You’ve got to calm down.” I’ve been like, “Oh, that old man doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” and I’ve finally had some level of accountability for that.”
“Thank God,” he declared. “I look back at some of the things that I’ve said and done over the past two years and I don’t think that I’ve been wrong about everything, obviously, but there have been ways that I’ve communicated and ways that I’ve acted that are indefensible and I think it’s looking back on it it’s just disgusting.”
He next announced that he would be stepping back from his leadership positions at both the OTK Media company and the custom PC building company Starforge Systems to focus on his mental health, asserting, “this whole situation has made me realize that I need to get myself in check. I need to get my mind under control. I need to like, I need to fix my f—king life.”
“It’s insane,” he added. “I think about it – it’s just in shambles. Everything about my life is basically f–ked. I’m going to step away from my leadership position at OTK and Starforge and everything. They’re fine with that – they respect that, and I want to do this. I want to do this not only for them but mainly for myself so I can be a better version of myself.”
As his video drew to a close, the streamer admitted, “I think that you guys deserve a much better version of me than what you’ve been getting and I hope that I can live up to that in the future.”
“I’m going to try to just take this time off to, you know, really kind of fix my s–t,” he concluded. “So, yeah, anyways, guys, that’s about it. I’ll see you later. Bye.”
At the time of writing, Twitch has not released an official statement regarding the suspension. Hoyt’s main Twitch account, “Asmongold,” remains active, though it’s unclear if further action will be taken. His brief suspension serves as a reminder that, even in the world of gaming and live streaming, comments with racist undertones will not go unnoticed.
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