He Volunteered on Mamdani’s Campaign and Produced for Hasan Piker. Then Chinese State Media Made Him a Star.
Eric Hovagim is not a politician, not a public official, and not accused of any crime. He is a video producer with roughly 150,000 followers across four platforms, a Patreon page that labels his own output “geopolitical propaganda,” and an apartment in Shanghai.
Before he moved there in September 2025, he was an unpaid volunteer on Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign — the one that won. Since then he has produced a mini-documentary distributed through Hasan Piker’s three-million-follower channels, told Chinese state media that Beijing has done “an incredible job” in Xinjiang, and, as quoted by Manhattan Institute fellow Stu Smith, described himself as a friend of Neville Roy Singham.
None of that is a crime. All of it is on the record.
- ~150,000 followers and subscribers Hovagim reaches across YouTube, X, Instagram and TikTok — roughly 35,000 on YouTube and 30,000 on X as of November 2025 — The Free Press / Daily Caller News Foundation
- Dec. 23, 2025 the date Xinjiang Daily's English-language outlet published a favorable profile of Hovagim quoting his praise for Beijing's handling of the region — Tianshannet / Xinjiang Daily
- $0 what Hovagim says the campaign, any PAC, or anyone around it paid him for the three volunteer videos — no city campaign-finance record contradicts him — Hovagim statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation
Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NYC) — a member of the Democratic Socialists of America — won the Democratic primary, won the general election, and took office in January 2026. The campaign’s video operation ran through a paid agency, Melted Solids, founded by Debbie Saslaw and Anthony DiMieri. Hovagim was not part of it. He was a volunteer, and by every account available he was one of many.
He described the role himself in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation, whose reporter Anthony Iafrate broke the story on November 16, 2025: “I volunteered to help film and/or edit 3 videos about Zohran’s plan to make NYC more affordable. I was NEVER paid by the campaign, any PAC, or anyone at all around him.” No New York City Campaign Finance Board disclosure shows a vendor payment to him, and in the nine months since, no outlet has produced one. The campaign did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
That distinction is the whole frame of this story. There is no evidence anyone on the campaign knew Hovagim’s views on China, no evidence he held any policy role, and no evidence a dollar of public or campaign money reached him. What follows is about what one private citizen with a large audience says — not about what a mayor’s office did.
In September 2025, about two months before the general election he had volunteered for, Hovagim left Brooklyn for Shanghai and posted a video about it titled “Why I Left America for Good.” He has lived in China since, describing himself as a geopolitical commentator and video producer and building an audience on the contrast between the two countries.
“It's official, I left the U.S. I caught the last chopper out of the great American century of humiliation.”
Eric Hovagim · YouTube, September 2025
Much of the output is lifestyle content built around cost comparisons — a genre that plays well with young American audiences and, not incidentally, flatters his host country. His September 27, 2025 post below is the format in miniature.
This was $45 (I live in China)
On December 23, 2025, Tianshannet — the English-language arm of Xinjiang Daily, a Chinese state outlet — published a profile of Hovagim. He told it that “Xinjiang is a prosperous region where people have a stable living and a meaningful future,” that “I feel incredibly safe all throughout China. It is by far and away the safest I have felt,” and, on the Chinese government’s handling of the region, that “I think they have done an incredible job.”
A month earlier he had gone further in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation, and it is the single most consequential thing he has said.
“Calling the situation a genocide makes a mockery of real genocides happening in places like Palestine.”
Eric Hovagim · statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation, November 2025
The United States government does not treat this as an open question. The State Department has formally designated the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of the Uyghurs a genocide — a determination made under a Republican administration, reaffirmed under a Democratic one, and never withdrawn.
Hovagim did not carry out any of that conduct and bears no responsibility for it. What he did is deny that it meets the definition his own government has formally applied — and then say so to the state press of the country doing it.
The reach question is what separates this from a niche YouTube channel. In April 2026, Hovagim produced a mini-documentary on Cuba that went out through the channels of streamer Hasan Piker, whose combined Twitch and YouTube audience exceeds three million. Hovagim promoted it himself.
I had to pleasure [sic] of producing this mini doc to highlight Cuba's resilience in the face of American imperialist aggression, go check it out!
Piker and Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin have since received administrative subpoenas from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control over a March 2026 convoy to Cuba, as City Journal reported on July 30, 2026. Administrative subpoenas are demands for records. They are not criminal charges, and neither Piker nor Benjamin has been charged with anything.
The name that keeps recurring around that orbit is Neville Roy Singham, the tech entrepreneur who sold Thoughtworks for roughly $785 million in 2017 and is married to Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans. Fox News has reported that $22.44 million flowed from Singham to the New York nonprofit The People’s Forum. Singham is under a Southern District of New York federal grand-jury investigation over possible Foreign Agents Registration Act and tax violations. He has not been charged.
What an excellent segment by @robbysoave on Hasan Piker's interview producer, Eric Hovagim, and his ties to Neville Roy Singham! I wholeheartedly share Robby's concern that so many of the loudest anti-AI and anti–data center activists appear to be part of the Singham network.
Smith, a Manhattan Institute fellow, is also the source for the only Hovagim quote on Singham anyone has published: “I’m friends with Roy Singham. He’s dope.” No primary recording of that remark has surfaced, and it is quoted here as Smith relayed it. It is a description of a friendship. It is not evidence of employment, funding, or direction — and no source alleges any of those. The Hill’s Robby Soave named the two men together in an opinion column on July 31, 2026; The Free Press published Tanner Nau’s account today.
Two House chairmen are pulling on the funding thread. On April 8, 2026, Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) and Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) asked the IRS to examine whether CCP-linked tax-exempt organizations are violating the terms of their exemptions. On July 22, 2026, Smith’s committee subpoenaed nonprofits tied to Singham outright.
None of that touches Hovagim. He is not named in a subpoena, not a party to any investigation, and not an officer, employee, or grantee of any organization in that inquiry. Mamdani’s politics have drawn national attention on their own terms, entirely separate from one volunteer.
Zohran Mamdani, a 100% Communist Lunatic, has just won the Dem Primary, and is on his way to becoming Mayor. We've had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous.
On Mamdani's primary win — not about Eric Hovagim
America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!
On the New York City mayoral race generally
Strip away everything that cannot be proven and a fully documented record remains: a DSA-aligned videographer volunteered on a winning mayoral campaign, moved to Shanghai, became the subject of favorable coverage in Chinese state media, publicly denied a genocide his own government has formally designated, produced content distributed to millions through a streamer now under Treasury subpoena, and calls a man under federal grand-jury investigation a friend. Every clause is sourced. None of it requires an accusation to be interesting.
Eric Hovagim broke no law and took no money. He is a private citizen with an audience of 150,000, a Patreon that calls its own product propaganda, and a byline in the state press of a government the United States has formally accused of genocide. The story is not what he was paid. It is that a volunteer for the mayor of America’s largest city became a useful voice for Beijing entirely for free.
