Hasan Piker will not see London this June. The American political commentator and Twitch streamer has been prevented from entering the United Kingdom after the Home Office recently revoked his Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA). News of the decision emerged just days before Piker was due to appear at the SXSW London festival and other speaking engagements in Britain. New Jersey-born Piker has built a large online audience through daily political commentary and live broadcasts. According to festival organisers, his streams attract more than 30,000 daily viewers, while he has over three million followers on Twitch and more than 1.6 million followers on X.

“The UK has revoked my visa as well. All at the behest of Israel. The west is betraying “liberal values” for a genocidal fascist foreign government. Soon we will all become Israel,” Hasan replied to a post of another US citizen banned from entering the United Kingdom.

SXSW London appearance cancelled after ETA revocation

Piker had been scheduled to appear at SXSW London, the UK version of the technology, culture and media conference. Festival materials listed him as a participant in a session titled “How the American Left Learned to Speak the Internet”, a discussion examining the rise of digital-first political movements and online activism scheduled for June 4.

The cancellation came after increasing political pressure in recent weeks. Labour MP David Taylor had publicly urged the Home Office to revoke Piker’s permission to enter the country, arguing that his presence would not be “conducive to the public good”. Critics highlighted several controversial remarks made by the streamer over recent years, including comments about the September 11 attacks and statements regarding the Israel–Hamas conflict. Piker has repeatedly rejected accusations of antisemitism.

Cenk Uygur also denied entry to Britain

Piker was not the only American commentator affected. Cenk Uygur, founder and host of the online political programme The Young Turks, also announced that he had been barred from entering the UK. Uygur said he was due to attend SXSW London and speak at an event organised by students at the University of Oxford. Both men claimed that British authorities linked the decision to comments they had made regarding Israel and the wider Middle East conflict.

“I’ve been banned from the UK. I tried to get on a flight to London to attend SXSW London and give a speech at Oxford. I’ve been banned for criticizing Israel. Are we free anymore? This is oppression of Western citizens by our own governments on behalf of a different country!,” Uygur share on social media over the weekend.

The Home Office confirmed that the ETAs of the individuals concerned had been cancelled because their presence in the UK “may not be conducive to the public good”. Officials stated that such decisions are made following assessments of potential risks posed to UK society and that affected individuals may still apply for a visa if they wish to travel to Britain.

Content Warning: This article discusses [sexual abuse/sexual assault]. Reader discretion is advised

On a warm March 8, a southern Maine community gathered for a political town hall rally to support a veteran running for a contested federal seat. As hundreds settled into the large auditorium, a woman stepped onto the stage.

“My name is Rebecca Hartwell, and I am a local… nobody.” The crowd cheered and then fell silent as she introduced herself as a survivor of serial rape and domestic abuse.

A woman and activist “foot soldier” taking the stage on International Women’s Day to speak in support of a political first-timer whose campaign is centered on the “everyman” was impactful.

Hartwell later said her introduction was partly inspired by Shakespeare’s “Brutus is an honest man” wordplay in Julius Cesar. “A simple, straightforward phrase, a bit unexpected from the speaker within that context, the first time it is said, which radically changes meaning by its last utterance. I’ve been absolutely thrilled by how many people latched onto that choice of phrase. It did exactly what I hoped it would in locking in people’s attention and bringing them into the collective identity the candidate [Graham Platner] speaks so well and authentically about,” says Hartwell.

Intimate Partner Abuse

Between 2023 and 2024, 6.7 million women nationwide experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner. But Hartwell’s story shouldn’t be reserved for women’s health and mental health observance month, the same way that the horrid violations of the Epstein class should not be normalized.

Hartwell was 20 when she started dating a 35-year-old man. The “drips of abuse” set the brainwashing groundwork six months after she moved in with him, a year into dating, and escalated. The extreme power imbalance, with him earning a six-figure salary while she was working minimum wage jobs, paved the way for subtle, slow abuse and blame, flipping from extending care to threatening to kick her out.

“He would make himself the victim in everything, excuse the abuse with therapy-speak, and make me feel crazy and too sensitive,” Hartwell says her polyamorous partner accused her of being “bigoted, closed-minded, unhealthily jealous, or lacking compassion,” who misunderstood their agreed-upon boundaries when he’d openly violate them.

This type of psychological and systematic response in intimate partner abuse is what Dr. Jennifer Freyd coined as DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender).

Hartwell’s abuser used “cheating, jealousy-baiting, and ghosting to spend days with other women without warning,” as emotional manipulation and coercion toward premeditated sexual abuse. At times, she was drugged with sleep aids, or her abuser put a gun on the nightstand for “safety” immediately before initiating sexual context as a form of intimidation.

“Across the board, he used the vocabulary and social pressure dynamics of polyamory, pop-psychology, and run-of-the-mill charm, manipulation, breadcrumbing, and many other hallmarks of narcissistic abuse, to talk me out of admitting, for a long time and even to myself, that it was abuse in the first place,” Hartwell kept the realities of her relationship secret. “It took months of therapy even to convince me I should leave at all. I wasn’t able to truly open up and admit any of it to anyone. I felt ashamed that I’d stayed, despite, like most women, swearing I’d leave at the first sign.”

With encouragement and emotional facilitation of her therapist, who “never pushed” but validated what Hartwell was ready to acknowledge, she planned her final departure. Her family provided “the literal means to leave” by buying her a used car and providing financial and emotional support.  Hartwell’s multi-layered breaking point was compounded by the tragic death of her best friend, which shook “everything loose.”

The Void in the MeToo Movement

As the MeToo movement empowered women to speak up about sexual abuse, it left a support system void for the next phase. The “surge actually contributed” to Hartwell’s falling into abuse, as her partner “publicly, loudly, and passionately” championed the movement and she, in turn, joined the “just leave” mantra, which didn’t match reality.

“It’s very much the same mindset of a honeypot trap: ‘You slept with me once, and I’ll use that to blackmail you if you don’t sleep with me again, giving me more blackmail.’  The variation I fell for was, essentially: ‘I got you to NOT leave after the first few small signs of abuse, and I’ll use that to pressure you into shifting the goalposts for what is and isn’t forgivable, so you’ll stay while I escalate,” Hartwell says the MeToo movement’s resurgence in 2019 was a “definite factor” in her escape, and in publicly revealing her experiences six months after escaping.

The supportive safety net of friends and family facilitated her journey to Maine. But after having “raised my hand and said my piece,” she found no further purposeful place in the movement. Healing didn’t happen immediately; PTSD was a process of working through past experiences to regain her sense of self.

“What was I supposed to do about those experiences six months, a year, two years down the road? How was I supposed to actually put my mind, heart, and soul back together? What were my options for what my future self could look like as it slowly dawned on me that the person I had been before the abuse was gone for good? That was the void. And I came closer to not surviving that gap than not surviving the abuse itself.” Hartwell’s situation mirrors 81% of survivors whose recovery remains an ongoing process.

Gray Rocking: Groundwork for Final Departure

Fearing the consequences of a total breakup, Hartwell “Laid some groundwork of hinting at an itch for another adventure,” in another part of the country, while assuring her abusive partner of an uninterrupted long-distance relationship. She credits this to the ‘gray rocking’ methods of disengaging from emotionally toxic interactions.

The joy or triumph in her survival was “stolen by depression, anxiety, and C-PTSD.” She had difficulty overcoming the habits, fears, and impulse to flee, weeks after landing in Maine.  Finding a job and an apartment “almost felt like a trap as much as freedom.” Her legal name made her traceable. A “horrific moment” of mistakenly having her new return address labels shipped to his address snowballed into a panic attack, pushing her over the edge.

“I was unprotected and vulnerable. And I realized I needed to develop claws and a spine of steel to survive,” Hartwell says. “Finding the purpose, bravery, and everything else I needed to move forward emotionally required embracing my newfound freedom in meaningful ways.”

A combination of offline and online groups facilitated her next phases. Hartwell delved into “trauma therapy and healing” by writing a romantic fantasy novel, A Heart of Flame, which centered on “magic stemming from trauma,” exploring her experiences of “coming out the other side of abuse.”

“Every single magic user in that world is processing deep trauma of some kind. And, spoiler alert, the idea of demons as personal burdens and the ways we can all choose to deal with them is heavily explored throughout my books,” Hartwell says her writing attempted to empower others needing to fill the ‘what happens now?’ gap.

Three years after the book’s publication, her raw feelings still flare up when rereading her own books, even if “surface-level details, particularly in the raw scenes,” are no longer autobiographical, centering instead on fulfilling the “core goal of helping others.”

Peacekeeping and Assault Advocacy

BLM protests in Portland, Maine, sparked Hartwell’s radicalization into “a much more involved activism” as her fictional and real world “split apart in the first draft” of her book. Political protests, aligned with the abuser/victim dynamic, honed her strength and ability to face and handle conflict, danger, and to speak out about injustice “despite potential punishment.”

“It’s a role, slowly donned for domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy, which translates nicely over to decrying fascism,” Harwell says her “irreparably damaged nervous system” handles what others can’t.

As a buffer peacekeeper between protestors and the police or counterprotesters who may want to hurt them, she fulfills her “life’s purpose”–standing between potential victims and “a monster.”

“C-PTSD, depression, and anxiety are no joke. I barely noticed as I started giving away my possessions and speaking to friends, one last time, as my subconscious was framing it at the time. By the time I started writing and scheduling suicide letter emails, picking a method and date to follow through, and other clues that were unmistakable, I was too far gone to meaningfully argue with the ‘I might as well follow through at this point’ mentality,” Hartwell explains.

Amidst the pandemic, and while in therapy, Hartwell “hit rock bottom,” attempted suicide, and got on an antidepressant that lifted her burdens “quite physically, in real-time.” Crying for days with relief from the emotional numbness of suicidal ideation, surviving through the social isolation and the “deepest part of that gap of not knowing how to complete the healing and feeling like a failure,” and unable to retain her pre-abuse self, finally helped her gain a firm footing.

“I thought, if I take risks and they don’t pay off, I can’t end up worse off than dead. If things head in that direction, I’ll just kill myself for real this time,” Hartwell changed her name, and built a new self-identity, “mourned and let go of the version” of herself who died in the abuse “and resulting suicide attempt.”

She bought a house, changed careers, delved deeper into writing, and through “critique swaps,” discovered a love for the editing process. In 2023, she launched Hart Bound Editing for developmental (a.k.a. structural, story, or macro) editing services “to feed her soul” through helping “writers make their book even more of whatever it is they want it to be.”

“No one warned me that for a time, self-doubt, cognitive dissonance, shame, and grief over the version of myself I could never get back would hurt as much as the abuse did. No one told me how to cope with mourning the future lives, imagined loves, and hopeful innocence I had to abandon pursuing in the face of my new reality,” Hartwell leaned on her family, friends, therapist, and online groups to forge a “new, necessary framework” within herself and built systems to catch suicidal ideation sooner as a form of self-love and processing.

The healing journey

Rebecca Hartwell’s advice to others starting the healing journey is: “Start as small as you need, but don’t keep your experiences a secret: that will fester like you wouldn’t believe. Understand that it takes time—often 3-10 years—before you and your life feel baseline okay again. So be patient with yourself. Let yourself rest, heal, and recover, and give yourself grace.”

Following the political rally, a woman told her she’d never been able to speak publicly about her own experiences as Harwell had.

“The guilt and vulnerability in how she talked to me about it broke my heart.”

While knowing there’s “no way of surviving rape and abuse that should be put on a pedestal,” support and validation of other victims inspire Hartwell to continue speaking “loudly, publicly, and as often as possible.”  

“There are a lot of other ways to help bring about good change in the world, help people escape, rebuild, and everything else that goes into a societal movement against rape culture and domestic violence. In reality, I do very few of them. But I’m not alone. I do what I can within my capacity and aligned with my personality and strengths. And if each person who reads this does the same, in all your unique complexity, it will all get done. Only through that collective effort, where we all step up where others can’t, will we fix what is broken for good.”

Hartwell regrets not having sought help from related organizations, and still struggles to ask for help.

“My entreaty to anyone who reads this is: please ask for help. Find the organizations and reach out to them. Even if you don’t need financial support, reach out anyway. There are amazing resources out there that I wish I’d been humbled enough to seek out seven years ago.”

“It’s not easy to live in Gaza. I’m trying my best. Everything is closed. No one in the world can live this life: money doesn’t work, nothing works, even life doesn’t work because every day more people are dying, and there are more strikes. Ceasefire? There’s no real ceasefire. We are exhausted. We are tired. I don’t know what else to say,” sighs the 43-year-old Ahmed Muin Abu Amsha, whose face has become synonymous with social media reels of his Gaza Birds Singing children’s musical support group, “born during displacement in Gaza.”

Last August, under Israel’s unrelenting bombardment and high-pitched drones buzzing across Gaza, the veteran composer, music teacher, and sound engineer harmonized the B-flat drone pitch as the background music to his Sheel Sheel Ya Ajmal Sheel song. 

“I remember that day: the children had headaches and couldn’t even hear their own instruments because the drones were so loud. I said, ‘kids, leave your instruments and let’s sing’. The kids laughed at me, ‘How can we sing in this noise?’ They were shouting since we couldn’t hear each other. It took me about 20 minutes to teach them the song, and then I said, ‘What do you think about recording and posting the song as a reel?’ They agreed,” Ahmed Muin posted the video that night.

By the next morning, the video had gone viral worldwide. Beyond thousands of reposts, orchestras in Europe adapted and performed the “drone song.”

Carry, carry, O camel driver, carry

I entrust you to God

The martyr’s blood is perfumed with cardamom

Woe to the oppressor woe, and woe from God

I will stay awake through the stars of the night, calling to him.

“We are changing the sound of the war to something good. We used the drone sound to sing because we don’t have any other choices,” says Ahmed Muin, who for the last 30 years has inspired a generation of young musicians as a performer, sound engineer, and music educator at The American International School of Gaza, The Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, and The Delia Arts Foundation.

Now “nothing remains” of his bombed Awtar Sound Production Studio, where he composed, produced, and engineered children’s songs, commercials, wedding music, popular tracks, and programs for Palestine TV.

Since affording a laptop is “an expensive commodity now,” Ahmed Muin engineered “something beautiful.” He connected his mobile phone to a camera with a built-in microphone that he “found in the rubble” and uses “some apps to record and post reels” of the children’s music sessions.

Despite surviving 15 forced displacements, losing his home and recording studio, the Gaza native and father of five continues to share his musical talents. He is seen performing and singing under a tent, in half-demolished schools, or strumming with his son at the Gaza Strip’s sandy beach, sitting on makeshift seats across a ripped, flapping tent as the Mediterranean waves crash onto the shore behind him at a distance.

Ahmed Muin’s “music as therapy” sessions have become a coping relief for the forcibly displaced children, their families, and the musicians across Gaza’s war-torn territory. Many of the children with “deep-set trauma, who were non-communicative, and suffered from many psychological issues,” began to open-up two weeks into the program.

Regular music video drops feature Gaza children singing in Arabic or English, gathered under a tent, or playing instruments salvaged from the now bombarded Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.

Nearly 97 percent of the schools across Gaza have been destroyed.

“When I see the smile on the children’s faces, it makes me strong,” Ahmed Muin says there are now 200 displaced, orphaned, and amputee children across Gaza who participate in his musical sessions amid destruction and despair, compounded by extreme hunger.

Save the Children reports that, since October 2023, over 20,000 children in Gaza have been killed. Nearly half of Gaza’s two-million population is under 18, facing acute malnutrition, disease, and starvation. Over 42,000 children are injured, 21,000 are missing, separated from parents, or have permanent disabilities. As of late 2025 and early 2026, Gaza has the highest number of child amputees per capita in modern history; UN agencies and human rights organizations say 3,000 to 4,000 children across Gaza have lost one or more limbs–as of early 2025, other reports put the number of pediatric amputees as high as 11,000.

More than the temporary respite, the musical sessions make many “feel safe” and choose to pitch their squalid tents next to Ahmed Muin and his family. His GoFundMe campaign helps ease the daily hardships he and other families face in Gaza’s dismantled infrastructure. Some 50 percent of the funds received, he says, is spent maneuvering money exchange schemes on the ground before receiving the cash to barely afford the high cost of food items that help feed his family, and others in the temporary camps.

Living in a Hollywood Action Movie

Ahmed Muin hopes to “someday spread joy and love for all the kids in the world,” while images of his first displacement still haunt him. He received an emergency evacuation order on his phone at 3:00 am. By 3:05, he watched his entire building block destroyed under Israeli bombs.

“It’s like watching a Hollywood movie where you’re running through the rubble, as the bombs shatter everything: glass from windows are flying at you, everyone is crying, and you are trying your best to cover your kids with your body, saving them from the sharp flying glass and rubble from the buildings. We ran away from our house without shoes, without anything–in 5 minutes, they destroyed a whole block with heavy bombs, nothing remains now,” Ahmed Muin has witnessed strikes on schools, buildings, hospitals, shops, and watched people die.

Forcibly displaced from Gaza City, to Nasser, to Al Shifa hospital, to Khan Younis, to Rafah, to Rafah City, and many others along the way, Ahmed Muin and his wife have endured replays of moving five children, and their extended family, “walking long distances, searching for a safe place where there are no shelters, no food, no water.” Since the ceasefire, the family has settled in the middle of the Gaza Strip.

“We’ve lived through horrible days. I remember my mother’s face crying, and my children screaming and afraid, and we can’t hear anything, only the sound of the bombings, and see mouths moving, and we run,” Ahmed Muin says.

Now his daily routine begins with searching for, finding, and carrying many gallons of water from far distances back to his tent “for drinking and washing.” Once water is secured, there are trips to the empty markets to find “anything to eat.” Later, he starts his musical sessions. Spreading “spread joy and love” at times requires him to walk for over an hour to another town. At the end of the day, he settles at a coffee shop to “connect with friends, speak to fans.”

Living under Israeli bombardment has meant enduring unimaginable trauma and loss. But losing Yusef, his “best friends and best students,” has left the deepest of scars. Ahmed Muin’s voice tightens as he remembers how, one early morning, Yusef unexpectedly showed up at his tent. He said he missed his teacher and wanted to have coffee with him.

“I made coffee, and asked Yusef, ‘What’s wrong, you want the guitar to practice?’ He said no ‘I just missed you.’ After we finished our coffee, Yusef told me how much he loved me. I told him I loved him, too. I wondered why he was acting like that, so I asked if there was something wrong. He said he was very happy,” Ahmed Muin remembers Yusef bidding farewell, heading to the local Coffee shop to call his father, whom he “missed” and hadn’t heard from recently.

Yusuf said he wouldn’t be at the musical session later that day. While the morning musical session was going on with the children, there was a huge explosion: smoke was coming from the direction of the coffee shop.

“My heart dropped. I said oh my God, Yusef is dead. I was shaking, very nervous, didn’t know what to do: we are musicians, we can’t see death. I’m afraid of these situations, really, I’m a human. I tried not to show my frightened face to the children. For a few minutes, I lost my hearing. I was sure Yusef was dead because the strike was huge and around the coffee shop. Then I heard screaming; it was Yusef’s mother and sisters. I knew then,” Ahmed Muin cried for “many nights”–for three weeks, he couldn’t sing or play his guitar.

Mapping Trauma of Displacement in His Songs

Now, Yusef’s cousin, Diane, is a regular at the musical sessions. Her charming voice and face are in many of Ahmed Muin’s videos, including Sheel Sheel. Displaced from northern Gaza, Diane makes the daily one-hour trek from Khan Younis to be part of the musical sessions.

Ahmed Muin remembers the New Year’s Day he wrote his We Still Carry Life song – inspired by how the “world welcomed the New Year,” while he and his family remained in the middle of the Gaza Strip, at the beach, stuck “in tents, not able to find good food or water.”  

The world celebrated a new year

We survived another one

We are not asking for celebrations

We are asking for safety

For sleep without fear

For a life that can finally breathe

From beneath the tents,

we sing — because we still carry life

We did not choose this life,

but we chose to stay alive

His song I Have No Address is dedicated to a man Ahmed Muin met while displaced to Al-Mawasi–a narrow coastal strip in southern Gaza, designated a “humanitarian safe zone” while lacking food, water, and sanitation, and overcrowded with nearly a million displaced Palestinians. When he approached the man sitting with his face covered, refusing to pitch his tent, he learned that he had lost his entire family and eight children.

“His story made me cry. Shocked and very sad, I grabbed my pencil and paper and my guitar and tried to get rid of the bad energy by writing and singing. These songs come with these stories that I have seen in this war. My gift to the world is in my language of music,” he says.

Grateful to the people of the world who are aware of the realities on the ground in Gaza and continue the protests, Ahmed Muin has a message for world leaders.

“My message to the leaders of the world is, hey, let’s live in peace. Let’s have a good life. We are innocent people. We deserve and must live like other people in the world. Love and peace are the only ways that can guide us to the right way. Leaders are poisoned. They can’t hear, can’t see. But I think they must search for a solution for what is going on, so we can get back to our normal lives.”