Video game streamers are our most problematic “celebrities.” They get famous for doing something inherently pointless and, invariably, they think their micro-fame means that the rest of us want to hear their opinions about other things. 

With that in mind, meet the latest gamer to land himself in hot water for saying stupid shit: Asmongold, aka Zack Hoyt. He lives in the Austin area and is one of the biggest game streamers on Twitch, with 3.5 million subscribers. 

And recently, he weighed in on the situation in the Middle East, where a devastating, bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas has been raging for the last year — at great cost to civilians. 

During his rant, the self-appointed foreign policy expert told his audience that he wasn’t concerned about the massive death toll in Gaza, which the United Nation estimates at about  42,000 lives, most of them women and children. No big deal for Asmongold, though, who referred to more than 16,000 dead kids as  “terrible people” from “an inferior culture.”

Hoo boy. But Henry Kissinger Jr. wasn’t done. 

“If you want to consider it genocide as a systematic killing of a group of people, they have genocide built into Sharia law right now,” he said. “So no, I’m not going to cry a fucking river when people who have genocide that’s baked into their laws are getting genocided. I don’t give a fuck. They’re terrible people. It’s not even a question. It’s crazy that people don’t see it that way. They’d be doing the same thing.”

Of course, this rant is not just racist and Islamaphobic — it’s also woefully inaccurate.

He added: “These people are not your allies. They’re 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. No, I don’t feel bad for them, I don’t feel sorry for them. I don’t care.”

A clip of Asmongold’s idiocy was posted online, prompting outrage from people who possess more than two brain cells. 

Gaming industry analyst Daniel Ahmad replied to Asmongold’s stupidity, writing: “What’s sad is millions of Americans actually believe this about Black and brown people outside of the global north.”

Others also chimed in. 

Twitch also wasn’t pleased and banned Asmongold’s channel for violating the service’s community guidelines.

And while his other, main channel wasn’t affected, he won’t be able to use that either for the time being. According to Twitch’s rules: “Any attempt to circumvent an account suspension or chat ban by using other accounts or identities will also result in an additional enforcement against your accounts, up to an indefinite suspension.”

As the backlash grew, Asmongold later apologized, posting on X: “Looking back on it, I was way too much of an asshole about the Palestine thing. My bad. 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 shit like that, I’ll do better.”

Sounds like somebody’s sponsors weren’t pleased! 

Sadly, it looks like the ban won’t be permanent. Industry insider Rod “Slasher” Breslau posted that the Twitch ban will only last for 14 days.

So basically he got a two-week vacation for being racist. Maybe our parents were right about video games. (Except for “Portal 2.” That game rules.)  

Brian Gaar is a senior editor for The Barbed Wire. A longtime Texas journalist, he has written for the Austin American-Statesman, the Waco Tribune-Herald, Texas Monthly, and many other publications. He...