“You dumb cracker b*tch”: The legitimizing of White supremacy during a Twitch ban of HasanAbi

Abstract

Despite newer media technologies alleviating barriers of entry for marginalized groups, media still fails to address White supremacy at large. The live-streaming service Twitch banned one of its top streamers Hasan Piker in December 2021 for using the word “cracker” during a stream. Despite the myriad of complaints from women, people of color, LGBT +, and people with physical disabilities about targeted harassment they received on the platform, Twitch has taken little to no action on to ban those attacks. Utilizing critical whiteness and white framing theory, this study reviewed the discourse of Twitch influencers, who created YouTube reaction videos about the ban. All three of the influencers used rhetoric that sustained White supremacy like downplaying the impact of systemic racism, victimizing White men, and calling for freedom of hate speech. The implications of this study outline how the policing of hate speech can facilitate White supremacy on platforms.