Rod “Slasher” Breslau appeared on NewsNation’s show Banfield to discuss the U.S. military’s recruitment tactics, which include going into gaming communities to attract potential members.
In what sounded like a surgically prepared statement condemning what he called an “exploitative” practice by numerous branches of the U.S. armed forces, Slasher did his best to explain to a mainstream audience what many gamers are already well aware of.
“The U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the National Guard, and the U.S. Air Force all have esports teams,” he said. “They all have direct partnerships and sponsorships with the biggest esports leagues in the world, and they have them with even Twitch and YouTube.”
But he didn’t stop there. Slasher, who is known for making inside jokes whenever he gets the opportunity to talk gaming on broadcast television, made sure to reference the despicable actions of a fictitious character that many Hasan Piker fans know intimately.
“I find it exploitative,” he said. “I find it insidious that these streamers, along with other streamers like Hank Pecker, are recruiting gamers and young people on Twitch under the guise of just playing video games.”
For the uninitiated, Hank Pecker is a character that the popular Twitch political commentator Hasan has portrayed when role-playing in video games on stream. Pecker’s personality traits are simple in that they are almost exclusively the antithesis of Hasan’s. That’s right; the leftist commentator’s favorite form of role play is when he gets to portray a gun-loving, self-proclaimed libertarian that holds a plethora of right-wing political beliefs.
Seeing the clip for himself, Hasan could only put his face in his hand before fumbling over his words.
“Bro, stop dude,” he said. “Come on, these guys are going to bring out Hank Pecker into existence. I thought he was joking.”
Because everyone else on the NewsNation show had no clue who Hasan was, much less his alter ego, Slasher’s mention of him was met with no reaction on the broadcast.
