Popular Twitch Streamer Asmongold Was Banned After a Racist Rant About Palestinians

Zack Hoyt, the popular Twitch streamer known on his channel as Asmongold, had one of his channels banned following drama on it on Oct. 14. When you travel to the channel, which is called Zackrawrr, you see a message that says "This channel is temporarily unavailable due to a violation of Twitch's Community Guidelines or Terms of Service."

That is Zack's primary channel, but the Asmongold channel is still live because he hasn't posted on it since 2023. Following the news that Zack's main channel was banned, many wanted to know what happened to explain that decision. Here's what we know.

Zack was banned after a stream on Oct. 14 in which he discussed the ongoing war in Gaza, which has thus far claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians.

During the stream, Zack didn't offer much sympathy for the Palestinians, suggesting that they may have deserved what's happening to them.

"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 f--king river when people who have genocide that's baked into their laws are getting genocided," he continued. "I don't give a f--k. They're terrible people. It's not even a question. It's crazy that people don't see it that way. They'd [Palestinians] be doing the same thing. 'And how much did they kill?' 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," he continued. "These people are not your allies. 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."

The clip of him saying this quickly spread on social media, and led to a ferocious backlash.

Twitch explained that Zack had been banned by saying: "We take enforcement action when there are violations of our community guidelines, including our hateful conduct policy and other rules."

Given the racist nature of Zack's tirade, it seems pretty clear that that was the reason for his channel being taken down. It's unclear whether it may return, or whether Zack will attempt to continue streaming on a different channel or platform.

In a post on Twitter, Zack attempted to walk back his comments.

"Looking back on it, I was way too much of an asshole about the Palestine thing. My bad," he said. "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."

Zack has not commented on this on any other social media channels yet.