Mostly talking about stuff like breadtubers, chapo, and media personalities like that, I can kind of tell why people like Bernie and Jezza where they're at. Is it the added wealth being a popular media personality gives you, the need to give a consistent product, the need to appeal to a wide breadth of people, and so on?
edit: also props to Brett at RevLeft for continuing to radicalise himself as the show has gone on
Pretty sure this is survivor bias kinda
We are here because we outgrew the talking heads, the majority of their followers don't outgrow them but they don't make it to chapo chat
It's just where they're at politically, not everyone radicalizes
We're just the ones who did
Yes I think this explains why all of us here have this experience and that is not universal, but what I think I'm trying to understand why there is at least a segment of their listeners that move on, and they (and I guess the majority of their other fans) don't. Makes sense that all of their listeners have not moved on because then they would either be forced to shift as well or disappear.
maybe it just means i'm an asshole too, but I still haven't gotten that riled up by the shit amber says. Makes the Amber memes extra funny.
The “cops are workers” one was horrendously bad
I listened to episode 435 after people here were denouncing Amber and Matt Taibbi for it, expecting the worst, but I found the attacks on them horribly misguided. Like, trigger-happy witch hunt misguided. They were discussing difficult issues, bringing up valid points, but their critics ascribed the worst motives to them for no reason.
Unless I missed some line, Amber actually said there're "non-White cops" and Taibbi said that working-class people become cops. (Not that "cops are workers"!) They were saying that condemning all cops as White supremacist thugs is a bad argument, one that resonates badly with racial minorities and the poor. Because the experience of those groups with police is contradictory, not black-and-white, no pun intended. While many experiences with police are extremely negative, those groups are also disproportionately affected by violent crime and want police attention on violent crime - not simply no police. And they're also the demographics from which cops are hired - becoming a cop is a way to earn a living for many poor families. You won't win hearts by shitting on people's relatives.
Taibbi, Will, and Amber repeatedly acknowledge that the police is an anti-proletarian institution at its roots, and American police is corrupt and bloody etc. in the episode. Their argument is that the movement for racial equality and against police brutality will not attract mainstream support (and thus political success) if it leads with "All Cops Are the KKK"-type rhetoric. (This rhetoric is good for mobilizing radicals, but not for mobilizing regular people.)
Yeah I listened to the most recent episode that was getting shit on because of Amber and I thought she was good in it, outside of the one crummy take the others shot down. She's fine, really.
I found the attacks on them horribly misguided. Like, trigger-happy witch hunt misguided. They were discussing difficult issues, bringing up valid points, but their critics ascribed the worst motives to them for no reason.
These types of attacks on fellow leftist who are putting forward good-faith opinions absolutely have to stop if we want to get anything done. Dunk on chuds like this all you want, but treat comrades with a bit more honesty.
Your recollection and analysis of that episode is spot on, too.
I kinda think i get where she was coming from on that, maybe?
Specifically, I was listening to a recent episode of trillbillies, and there was a segment where they were reading some police union guy's letter to other cops in the union or some shit (I'm hazy on the context). Anyway, the hosts noted that throughout the letter, in the way they talked about themselves and to each other, there was a clear sort of quasi-working class solidarity and recognition of themselves as workers (at least relative to the administrative figures they shit-talk throughout the letter).
Now, the trillbillies made a more more plainly useful point with that observation, specifically that their solidarity helps makes their police union strong, and god fucking damn look at the shit they can get away with because of that power. Amber seemingly wanted to... ... ... suggest that they have some inner hint of genuine working class sentiment? or some shit? I dunno, that same letter they read on trillbillies had tons of talk re-affirming the occupier perspective cops have towards other people they're supposed to serve. So, yeah... I forget if I had some fucking point here, done typing this bitch, post
I view it as more of a comedy podcast than actual political education.
I mean, that's the only correct take on it. It was never anything more than light entertainment, and that's ok.
Bold take considering Matt and Felix are on the same show
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
Breadtubers/podcasters/other media types got into it for attention, and for money. And frankly the pursuit of money+attention kinda overrides everything else. As an example from the Chapos perspective, why rock the boat, why change yourself, why push yourself to be better when you're making buttloads of money making fun of op-eds?
Yes why would they do extra work and learning just to make less money (as they alienate their more lib listeners)?
The grift holds them in place, it sometimes even shifts them to the right.
I haven't really outgrown Matt's acid Marxism stuff, Felix's takes on dumb culture, Will's takes on general culture, Amber's penchant for activism, or Virgil's leftist wonkery. I think more than anything I've come to realize that those are the things that drew me to them in the first place but I've noticed things about each of them that bug me. I also think they play it safe because they're successful and don't want to fuck it up, which is easy to rationalize since they're a legitimate part of the leftist pipeline.
I thought you were talking about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for a second, but yeah this also definitely applies to most of the breadtubers and the chapo boys.
I feel like he put a lot of emotional energy into making fun of Trump. He fell for the classic blunder of thinking that all the illegal shit matters to anybody who's not already sold on it being bad. As a result, shit stagnated and the emotional energy didn't pay any dividends. So his act is worse for wear.
I'd say these people kind of count to, although I feel like saying that any of them "radicalised" people is a bit of a stretch
For those of us who grew up in conservative hell before the internet really took off, this was the only mainstream defiance, or at least questioning of, American hegemony
I don't think we can understate to those too young to remember just how batshit the mainstream discourse in US politics was from the initial post-9/11 hysteria to around early 2006 when the implications of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and the new surveillance/national-security infrastructure started sinking in. Snarky content like the Daily Show and Michael Moore documentaries and fucking Rachel Maddow really were the leftmost political content that reached a broad audience during this period.
These two David Cross albums were the most radical shit I had heard from anyone and he said it at the height of Bush hysteria. He's pretty whatever now but, holy shit, he went fucking hard against Bush.
Random scroller, if you haven't listened to It's Not Funny and Shut Up You Fucking Baby, both are masterpieces and deserve your attention
https://open.spotify.com/album/6nCQTVTV0ddomS5j6zGGHs?si=DpLlXLVkT02z2pbJ_jZxUQ
https://open.spotify.com/album/2BUTMTp9DkLPVynnylixMm?si=MIsvZ9kPQLa5Wqi5nwm1rw
Well, in what meaningful sense have we outgrown them? We post memes about Stalin? Like I basically understand the politics of the chapos and I disagree with some of their takes but it's not like chapo.chat has some radical vision of the future that will burn past all the roadblocks leftism has faced in the past few years.
If you're simply speaking in terms of tactics and that the chapos don't push for more radical forms of political action I'd agree, but at the same time it's not like any combination of leftist political action is going to change the next two months. We're not in the driver's seat, we're not even close. It's completely useless to be saying which breed of leftism is the most righteous one, they're all on the sidelines right now.
If you like the show, you like it. If you don't, you don't. But we're all basically on the same team, this isn't a time to be drawing battle lines and pushing people away. We should be trying to bring people in, bringing them in on the most radical terms possible, while also not pushing them off if they don't meet some arbitrary threshold of leftyness. To this end chapo, breadtube, and left media people all continue to serve their purpose. There isn't really a reason for them to change so long as there is an audience to listen, and that isn't a bad thing.
I still like Chapo despite the doomer. Amber continues her 50/50 amazing/terrible take record and Matt is halfway down creating a form of Catholic Mysticism/Buddhism that comes from a Dialectical Materialist base.
And a number of the Breadtubers have radicalised. Ollie basically just called Libs pointless idealists in his latest video and is pretty clearly a RevSoc now. ContraPoints is one bad day from finally snapping and becoming a Posadist-Transhumanist (Party line: "I say we take of and nuke the entire site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure").
The John Olivers etc can't radicalise because they'd no longer be talking heads then. But even he is becoming increasingly critical of the system and the current attempts to resolve the political crisis.
creating a form of Catholic Mysticism/Buddhism that comes from a Dialectical Materialist base
is pretty clearly a RevSoc
becoming a Posadist-Transhumanist
Jesus Christ, mate...
Matt is halfway down creating a form of Catholic Mysticism/Buddhism that comes from a Dialectical Materialist base.
Will Elizabeth Bruenig and Michael Brooks be saints in this new religion?
Bernie is actually hiding his power level. He's a trotskyist, and probably the most successful one since Leon himself. Successful meaning he came kinda almost close to power but still didn't get it lmao.
Where's the evidence that Bernie is a Trot? My understanding was that he was an FDR lib commonly mistaken for a social democrat, and hasn't been a real Marxist since before 1990.
Bernie came out of the New Left in the 60s and basically anyone labeling themselves a socialist at the time were either Trotskyists, MLs or Maoists. Trots have been known to try entryism in left-liberal political parties by watering down their views to basic social democracy and trying to push left from there. Militant Tendency in the Labour Party UK was a very prominent example of this, and people like Corbyn and John McDonnell came out of that era. Bernie is a part of that same tradition just in the US.
A good hint is his choice of "Our Revolution" for his book and org. Our Revolution was the name of a book by Leon Trotsky where he develops there concept of Permanent Revolution.
You aren't based in the US, are you? I can understand why a British socialist would make this mistake - Bernie does superficially resemble this sort of socialist entryist, and he does superficially resemble succdems like Corbyn, which is why Socialist Alternative critically endorsed Bernie in 2015-2016 and then "critically" endorsed him in 2019-2020. The problem is that this strategy stems from an incorrect analysis of the class character of the Democratic Party, which superficially resembles Blairite Labour but policywise is somewhere between the Lib Dems and the Tories. Labour is supposed to be a social-democratic party, based among the organized working class, but has since been infiltrated and taken over by bourgie libs. Militant's entryism, as short-lived as it was, were much more organized than Sanders or the DSA/Justice Dem entryists could have dreamed of and led Labour to defeat Thatcher before the Blairites seized control and purged them from the party.
The Democrats have always been a 100% bourgeois liberal party, with no internal democratic structure through which working-class membership could push back against the party establishment, or subject their candidates to recall. Since the 1930s the Democrats have functioned as a fail-safe for the ruling class, acting as a fucking black hole sucking away the lion's share of the energy poured into potentially socialist movements. Any initially-socialist politician who's attempted entryism into the Democratic Party, going all the way back to Upton Sinclair, either gets ratfucked and spit out by the party or sells out and turns into a liberal.
If Bernie Sanders was a Trotskyist in the 1970s or even the 1980s, he sure as shit wasn't one by the time he announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2015. Adherence to the principles laid out in Permanent Revolution requires mindfulness of one's loyalty to the international working class, instead of falling prey to the social-imperialist pressures that killed the 2nd International. Since becoming a senator, Sanders has consistently bowed to imperialist pressure from the military-industrial complex in order to protect jobs in his home state of Vermont. He dodged the bullet of voting for the Iraq invasion in 2003 but he signed off on multiple other highly questionable military actions like bombing Kosovo in the 1990s.
Trots don't hide their power level by voting for imperialist policies and hiding the fact that they're (trying to be) revolutionary Marxists, only leaving subtle clues for people looking to validate their perception of them as actual socialists. They don't water down their programs by repeating demands that are already popular with the working class, without fomulating transitional versions of them that point towards the necessity to organize for a revolutionary transition to socialism. They don't get out of the way of the lesser-evil candidate for fear of the spoiler effect when the greater evil is just another reactionary liberal.
Those who call themselves Trots - hell, those who call themselves Marxists or Leninists, for that matter - who flirt with hiding their power level are succumbing to opportunist pressures, like SA started to when they endorsed Sanders and a bunch of DSA entryists. That's the same doomed road that eventually turned the CPUSA into a front for the Democratic Party and an FBI/CIA honeypot after they couldn't take marching orders from the degenerated Kremlin anymore.
I still like chapo. Except now they're doing the cynical nothing matters thing and I do enough of that on my own
I don’t listen to Chapo as much as I used to, but I’ve been watching Matt’s livestreams a couple times a week and his commentary and conversations help make sense of the world. That dude really knows his stuff, and he’s funny af. Best Chapo, in my opinion.
Matt is the only one I actually like for anything beyond cheap laughs.
Still worth a listen for their descriptive segments, which continue to be good. But yeah, they don't have a clear path forward and that kind of sucks, although who does at this point, especially with whatever the hell is going to happen with the election?
So much can happen between now and the end of the year that we have no idea what the world is going to look like next year lol. So many balls are in the air right now.
I still respect people like Chris Hedges, who spent their whole lives in warzones giving voice to the marginalized and oppressed, and even had the courage to speak out against the Iraq War in 2003/4 and quit their job rather than be silenced. People like Abby Martin, etc. It's hard to lose respect or claim to outgrow them since they are quite marginalized or demonized for their work. (Even if they do have some bad takes/positions)
Also, there are liberals who spend their time and wealth giving to others through charities, soup kitchens, clothing drives, etc, who do more or equal to other leftist activities. We are all essentially anarchists in our praxis because of a lack of large scale coherent movements and organization that can make those institutions of charity redundant or unnecessary. We aren't better or more mature people.
As a segway to add to your point though:
Felix, in a jestful flirtation to Hope Hicks on the recent episode, was calling himself a small business owner, a soon-to-be homeowner, etc.
Point is, that a lot - but not all - of these Breadtubers, podcasters, and new left media personalities might be true believers in leftism/anti-capitalism, but their prospects in advancing a career, cloutchasing, and financial aspiration will arrest their development into social activism not far beyond what most people can do. There's not much money in the left-grift, but they can make a living from it.
https://soundcloud.com/moderaterebels/bernie-sanders-brooklyn-media-left-part-2 - worth a listen.
it's crucial to build a brand that appeals to both baby anarchists and marxists, lest you pigeonhole yourself into poverty.
A lib is more likely to get into a vaguely leftist or radlib talking head than a full-blown ML or something. Conversely, as most people are libs, those people get the largest audiences. Once they have a large enough audience, they would risk a lot of material well-being by changing their views. But people who get into those talking heads do so because of a contradiction they can not completely solve, and the audiences move past them to their left.
