Progressive influencer and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker was live on the platform on Wednesday afternoon when a viewer wrote into the chat that Charlie Kirk had been shot. Piker didn’t believe it initially, saying, “If that was the case, there’d be fucking video footage of it.” Seconds later, he was sent a link to a video from the scene. As he watched the clip, Piker sat back from the microphone, covering his mouth in shock. He then watched another video showing the attack from a close-up angle. “Oh, he’s dead. Oh my God, he’s definitely dead,” Piker said, pushing up his glasses to cover his eyes in horror. “I can’t believe I just saw that.” He then urged his audience to not seek out the footage themselves.

“That was fucking devastating. Holy shit. I really–I don’t know what to say,” Piker said, immediately traumatized by what he had watched. “Holy fuck. America is so absolutely fucked.”

Piker had debated Kirk before, and he was eager to do it again. The two men had planned to square off at an event hosted by a Dartmouth political organization in about two weeks. The pairing made sense; Piker has been considered something of a peer of Kirk’s in the online commentary space, though the two were ideologically opposed.

“This is a tragedy,” Piker told me this week, condemning the shooting in the strongest of terms. “Political violence is completely unacceptable. The video that I saw was traumatizing.”

But since Kirk’s passing, Piker has felt that some of the eulogizing has failed to “make an honest assessment of his political contributions.” He argued that there is still a need to acknowledge some of the more extreme views Kirk held. “These are positions that he defended vociferously,” Piker said.

“I think it’s a disservice to the public, especially many who were not familiar with Charlie Kirk’s ideology or his worldview,” Piker said. “It’s a disservice even to his own legacy, to just launder his reputation in a way where he is just simply brought up like some activist.”

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Vanity Fair: I watched your immediate reaction on your stream. What are your unfiltered thoughts on all of this?

Hasan Piker: It was a very traumatic thing to see. I would say that it was very traumatic, not just on the virtue of, you’re watching someone that you know die in front of your eyes. But I think it was traumatic because we do the same thing on opposing sides and have been doing the same thing on opposing sides for many, many years at this point.

This is a fear that a lot of people in this industry have. I’ve been a recipient of death threats forever. I get a million death threats a year. So watching that turn into reality, especially with the dude you were supposed to debate two weeks from now, it’s a little bit terrifying.

But then I immediately started thinking about, what are going to be the repercussions here? Because obviously, there’s people looking for blood. There’s going to be—I hope I’m wrong on this, but I fear that there are going to be people looking for decentralized forms of violence in retaliation to this. A lot of people are talking about how I should be killed as well, and many others on the left. But then there’s also the political repression that will be born out of this. And Donald Trump has already signaled that he’s interested in doing this. That’s what he talked about last night in his video. He basically said, you know, we’re going to be doing political prosecutions on political dissidents.

How are you looking at this in terms of your own safety? Are you contemplating pulling out of public appearances?

My entire team and all my immediate loved ones, my friends and family, are urging me not to do anything in public. But I think I’ll just wait it out until the temperature cools down a little bit, and then I’ll probably get back to business as usual.

I put myself in the line of fire when it comes to going out and doing protest coverage as well. My job requires me to be outside, sometimes in the line of fire, and certainly around people at all times. That is the reason why, while this is an ever present fear in the back of my mind at all times, it’s just one that I can’t lean into. I can’t let fear dictate my life.

I’m curious about what you said on the stream in terms of urging people to not make light of this situation. Have you been at all surprised that rhetoric has reared its head?

Not at all. I think we live in an increasingly polarized, increasingly angry time, and it makes total sense that people feel that way.

People become more mean and more vicious online. They don’t see one another as human beings. But at the same time, the person they are talking about [Kirk], they are incendiary—they were incendiary in their commentary. They cast aside entire populations as enemies with very violent rhetoric, very dehumanizing language. So it’s not all that surprising to me if someone from that background sees this and can’t find it in themselves to grieve.

What was your personal relationship like with Charlie Kirk?

We debated. I remember talking to him briefly after the debate, and I don’t recall us being as cordial.

I will admit that I was a lot more cordial to him all the way back in 2017, I think this was. I saw some of the stuff that he was saying to me in the DMs, and I actually was shocked at how moderate he was back then as well. We even talked about the dangers of extreme right-wing radicalization that was taking place. He was telling me about how he thinks the conflation between Black Lives Matter and the KKK is dangerous. That’s what he told me.

Now, I’m not saying this to launder the man’s reputation. I think it’s very clear what his political evolution has been since 2017. I was shocked when I looked back at that, and I was like, Wow, this guy comes across like one worthy of the eulogizing that Ezra Klein offered him, if he had kept that tone.

You don’t think that Ezra Klein piece was warranted?

I think that, understandably, we get disturbed and worried when death enters the equation. I think in that process, we end up eulogizing people in a way that whitewashes or launders their reputation. Honesty is much more important in that process. There are a lot of people who are venerating Charlie Kirk as though he was some MLK-style figure, and I think it’s important to make an honest assessment of his political contributions in that process.

I think a lot of people just see that and go, Well, a man died. He was a father. And this is true. This is a tragedy. This is a tragedy. Political violence is completely unacceptable. The video that I saw was traumatizing. I wanted to debate him. I had debated him and I wanted to do it again. That’s my way of dealing with right-wing reactionaries. My point on this is clear, is what I’m saying, as far as political violence goes.

Having said that, there is a lot of back-and-forth going on about people talking about the incendiary, explosive, dehumanizing language that Charlie Kirk regularly adopted. I saw this last night on a New York Times obituary, that people were yelling, like, “How dare you bring up the fact that he advocated for hydroxychloroquine?” or whatever. But that’s his position! These are his positions that he was proud of when he was alive. These are positions that he defended vociferously. So why are you getting upset that people are reflecting on his past positions that he advanced until his last breath? I think it’s a disservice to the public, especially many who were not familiar with Charlie Kirk’s ideology or his worldview. It’s a disservice even to his own legacy, to just launder his reputation in a way where he is just simply brought up like some activist, a youth activist.

There’s certain aspects of disagreement that go far beyond just a reasonable discussion. I think when you’re talking about how the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, when you’re talking about how the Bible says gay people should be stoned, when you’re talking about how you don’t trust a Black pilot over a white pilot—I mean, everything can be up for debate. But my point is, you don’t have to hand it to the guy. And I think a lot of liberals are doing that right now because, I guess, they don’t find this stuff to be as offensive as I do, or maybe not even an offense, but as destabilizing and as destructive as I do. Clearly, if they did, they would reflect on it.

Well, maybe it’s a desensitization too, in that he’s been saying this for however long, and it becomes normalized.

For sure. I think that’s bad. I don’t want that to be the case. That’s part of the reason why I’m saying people need to wake up to the way they talk about certain things.

Anything else on your mind about it all?

I just want to make sure that it doesn’t come across as though I’m saying, “Oh, you shouldn’t eulogize this person.” I’m not saying that at all. Obviously, as I’ve communicated, political violence, especially this kind of political violence—I have a very close and personal association with [it], so of course I am against it. I would be putting myself in the crosshairs, just considering that I was supposed to be sitting on a stage, similar to that one, next to him in two weeks.

It’s just that I think people venerating a person with what I consider to be morally repugnant political ideology is going to have unforeseen secondary consequences, as far as normalization of this ideology. We’re seeing that in every aspect of society already, and it’s very frustrating.