This guy’s dad is the former VP of a multibillion dollar Turkish conglomerate, as well as the secretary of a government department. Mom and Dad were able to fly to their other home in NJ to give birth so he’d get US citizenship. His uncle is the founder and owner of TYT Media and gave him his media career. He went to Rutgers. He lives in a multimillion dollar mansion in the Hollywood Hills. This is by definition not the kind of person who can be a voice of the People. Saying “I recognize my privilege” over and over, while living his lifestyle, doesn’t negate his privilege and complete lack of real-life experience outside of the curated garden of the wealthy. He gets paid obscene amounts of cash to sit in his bedroom and word-vomit for 9 hours a day. Why are his unending opinions taken so seriously? He gives me strong controlled opposition vibes.
Edit: Thank you all for this discussion. I learned a lot.
A person’s class is defined by their relation to labor, not their wealth. He’s not exploiting labor. I’m not sure the people claiming he’s a hypocrite for having money understand anything about communist/socialist theory. Engels was famously in a very similar situation.
Plus as far as I know socialists have always been fine with class traitors who join them.
A person’s class is defined by their relation to labor, not their wealth.
This is literally not true. Like quite literally, even in socialist history this is not a true statement. Leninism particularly had some very funny hijinks about linking wealth to class.
He’s not exploiting labor.
I don’t want to really get into it, but Hasan like every other content creator indirectly exploits the labor that provides the platform that he makes money off of.
Twitch.TV is a stage that is built and maintained by workers working for a Twitch. Those workers are exploited. The stage is a means of production. The artists that use the stage also exploit those workers, because they procure use of the stage. The cool thing about Hasans typical response to this which is the thought terminating cliche of “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is that it by definition has a corollary. If there can be no ethical consumption, there can be no ethical production.
Engels was famously in a very similar situation.
Engels’ factories were all unionized.
Hasan has literally in 2019 after all the “podcasters don’t pay guests drama” that he very well knows of given his friends, had exploited people that did free work for him. There’s controversy about whether Hasan actually pays his mods. Most online personalities are not very forthcoming about how they get help with their content/community management and whether that is properly compensated, Hasan included. For a venture that’s made $12m over 5 years Hasan 100% should be paying every single person that touches anything related to his work without them having to ask, whether it’s hourly, piece work, or full time employment.
Hasan is nowhere near Engels in his understanding and treatment of labor.
I’m not sure the people claiming he’s a hypocrite for having money understand anything about communist/socialist theory.
Most of Hasan’s fans and Hasan himself don’t have understand anything about communist / socialist theory or history. This thread at large is a perfect encapsulation of this where the history and theory is bent entirely in the defense of one online entertainer in 2024. I say this as a person who occasionally watches (e.g. election night since I dind’t want to watch broadcast cable and nobody else good had election live streams).
The real problem here is the deification of Hasan and the comparison of him to Marx or Engels that’s done up and down this thread is indicative of the seriousness of the commenters in their understanding of socialism. A lot of these arguments are vibes + socialist bromides, they don’t actually do anything beyond surface level reflexive defense. Nobody actually wants to open the Pandora’s box here because as the famous tweet said “some of our faves might be implicated”.
This is literally not true. Like quite literally, even in socialist history this is not a true statement. Leninism particularly had some very funny hijinks about linking wealth to class.
That’s weird, because the class = relation to labor stuff is literally in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels
I’m not deifying Hasan, I don’t really care about Hasan. I was just correcting an incorrect sentiment in this post that having wealth means you can’t be on the side of the working class.
Everything else you said is weird too online gossip so I’ll just move on.
That’s weird, because the class = relation to labor stuff is literally in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels
I would challenge you to actually find such a quote, because such a claim doesn’t make a lot of sense in the language of Marxism. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is effectively a literary review of “how we got here” and such a definition of class excludes classes of feudalism which are covered in that work. Not only that but a peasant’s relation to labor is vastly different within the peasant class. Some peasants have a relation to labor in the same way as the bourgeoisie, some the same as the petite bourgeoisie, and some without any real relation to labor at all. And yet peasants are a distinct class according to all modern Marxists.
Kulaks were literally a class according to the Bolsheviks, which was at its clearest defined as a class based more-so on wealth than relation to labor. It wasn’t really until Maoism that a more complete understanding of socialist class was developed especially in relation to peasants since communism was mostly developed as a collaboration between educated urban intelligentsia and urban workers.
The difference between the proletarian class and the lumpen proletarian class is generally accepted in modern times not as their relation to labor but their relation to communism(or more specifically class consciousness) itself. Like the problems around the peasants most communism between 1840 ~ 1970 had trouble working through the entirety of the urban landscape, so “normal people” that were difficult to qualify or deemed morally degenerate by various authors were just put into the lumpen space. It wasn’t until the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords took a look around and said the normal people around us don’t fit into pure “proletarian” definitions. That begged the question of “does this mean that communism is doomed?”. As a natural consequence of this these groups that lead the way in the theory and practical organizing spaces to start speaking about working with and activating the lumpen proletariat in earnest rather than casting them off as dregs that could only be useful to counter revolutionary forces.
The last reason this doesn’t make sense is that wealth is capital which under a capitalist system is the means of production in and of itself. Marx himself even goes further to say that accumulation of wealth is systemic and has an equilibrium with the accumulation of misery.
"The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus- population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital (Marx’s Capital, p. 661)
Hasan has accumulated much capital, therefore according to Marx has also accumulated much misery because he is not exempt from the systemic nature of capitalism. Hasan very often in response to house gate says “There’s no ethical consumption”. The corollary here is that there’s no ethical production, and there is no ethical accumulation.
Whether your faves are implicated or not Marxism is a sociological system of the poorest, those among us who are wealthy communists should have much more personal sin to grapple with than those who are poor, that is our privilege.
Everything else you said is weird too online gossip so I’ll just move on.
This whole thread is weird too online gossip if you haven’t noticed.
I was just correcting an incorrect sentiment in this post that having wealth means you can’t be on the side of the working class.
This is true, however this is actually hard to prove, and denying Hasan’s implication in the capitalist system and his accumulation of wealth simply because Hasan is popular is a willful misunderstanding of Marxism. Having in-house conversations is literally how people advance their understandings of Marxism, what’s happening in much of this thread is denying those conversations via thought terminating cliches but from the left, because many see this as a “grand posting battle”. I’m not advocating that we have to game out a percentage of Hasan good or Hasan bad, I’m arguing that we have to understand Hasan as Marxists warts and all. That understanding is not happening because in this circumstance stan culture is at odds with Marxism.
Lastly it’s my view that if Hasan is indeed a “fellow traveler” and someone who people learn “the left”/Marxism/whatever from, he should be showing us this journey himself, instead of steeling himself because of his constant battles with H3 or Destiny or whoever. Otherwise this is just kayfabe.
I have no idea who this guy is but Fidel was the child of a plantation owner.
Hasan occupies a niche within the broad “leftist” umbrella niche within the West. Unlike many breadtubers, he actually doesn’t serve as much of a barrier for further leftist movement (see: Vaush, Destiny, etc.). He is privledged, but so was Engels. Hasan certainly is no Engels, but he does serve a useful role in radicalizing liberals towards the Left, like how he vocally combats the nonsense usage of the word “tankie” trendy among liberals these days.
Hasan is a pundit at the end of the day, and isn’t bringing about the revolution, and he is definitely more of a USophile than he should be, but he is better than most leftist commentators and helps serve as a conveyor to the left of himself.
He sometimes tells his audience to log off and join an org, we get a handful of new recruits occasionally due to the guy.
So he actually is successfully moving people from being socialist sympathizers to actual socialists (you need to be part of an org to be a socialist)
That’s all I really know about him, besides some people being thirsty about him.
Crazy that Marx and Engels weren’t socialists.
Marx was part of the Young Hegelians. Marx and Engles were part of the Communist League (if not it’s literal sun around whom the League revolved), and Marx and Engels were also the founders of the German Workers’ Society.
The idea that Marx was a recluse internet style poster with no attachment to real society is a 21st century invention to make vaguely left people feel better about their alienation and a strawman for the right to attack.
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Telling me that I’m not a Socialist because I’m not a registered member of a Socialist organization doesn’t encourage me to join any organization. It encourages me to dump you and find an actual mutual ally.
“Saying I’m only sympathetic to abolition if I’m not doing abolitionist work doesn’t make me want to do abolitionist work”
Okay what will then, do you want a headpat or a handjob or what?
The dumped metaphor is great because in this metaphor you weren’t dating to begin with. You were just admiring.
But seriously if someone questioning your commitment when you aren’t committed makes you react with fleeing somewhere else that is on you.
Stop saying stupid exclusionary things about your left-wing allies if you want to actually have a movement capable of change.
If you’re not in the movement you are not a socialist. The movement is a real, organized thing, not just vibes.
Let’s start with asking the question: how exactly are you an ally? what are the actual parameters of ally ship here? Do you do mutual aid? Do you voulunteer consistently in your community? Do you do organizing? Do you read theory?
Or do you just nod your head when someone says medicare for all or living wage? If so, why do you think you deserve any kind of accolades for simply vaguely agreeing with (and possibly also parroting) sloganeering?
Or do you post on vaguely leftist sites? If so why do you think you deserve any kind of accolades simply for posting, a recreational activity?
What is it that you’ve done besides call yourself a socialist that practically means something? And why is that worthy of praise?
Also, class is not defined by wealth, but by relation to labor. He is doing the work he is getting paid for, regardless of whether someone thinks its too much. He’s not exploiting others to make that money as far as I know.
Exactly!
Moving to LA to buy a multi-million dollar house and be close to your other rich content creator friends is the same as setting yourself on fire for the proles.
Got it.
Fwiw, the picture doesn’t show someone setting themselves on fire, it shows someone having lit a Molotov cocktail.
Damn you’re right, that’s drawn by someone who’s never seen a molotov in real life lmao.
I understand where you’re coming from, honestly. But I think this is a sort of trauma response on our end (myself included) at this point. I’m not trying to pin mental illnesses on you, I’m nowhere near a licensed head doctor of any kind, I’m saying that we’ve been kicked and abused so much by the rich, that it’s only natural for those of us who broke free of the brainwashing to be on high alert, at least for a while. The continued unfolding of things surely can’t help this situation, either.
That being said, as long as he acts in good faith and is sincere and logical in his approach, which so far seems to be true, I’d say we should embrace his participation! As I see it, we need all the voices we can get. We’re already arguing semantics amongst ourselves all day long, I think it’d be a shame to let mistrust shatter “our side” without concrete proof of malicious intent.
At the end of the day, the greatest weapon the Right has is the fact that they yell united at everyone else. Let our chorus rival theirs!
Thank you for being one of the only commenters to understand my question.
This is very dismissive of the other commenters you’ve responded to who also appear to have understood you quite well. The difference is just that you like this one better.
You rail against someone for their privileges, but can’t seem to see past your own biases. We all have biases. It’s important to be able to recognize them and try to see past them. Including against privileged allies.
“One of” the only ones, not “the” only one. The difference is exactly what I stated, the respondant clearly understood my question. Would you like me to edit each of my other replies, to acknowledge the ones who also understood my question, for consistency’s sake? I should probably then reply to each of the ones who didn’t understand my question, to make sure and point it out, right? Otherwise I’m being very dismissive?
I’ve been learning from this discussion, so I’m not sure why you think I’m incapable of seeing my biases.
Here’s a question: Is it cool to hoard wealth if you’re saying leftist-sounding stuff while you do it?
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Lol this is a misuse of statistics to make it look like Hasan isn’t rich. The median US net worth is roughly $200,000. That means 50% of people have less than $200k of net worth, and remember it’s not real money. It means liquidating all of your assets.
Hasan makes the median net worth of an American in one month on Twitch subs alone (from the Twitch leaks where he was the 13th most paid on the site at ~$200k and that’s just one of his income streams). Which means he makes the average US net worth in 5. Using just his house price as his “net worth” is laughable.
Using the Twitch leaks numbers, Hasan bought his house in 2021. Twitch leaks were about 2019-2022. If he makes $200k since 2019 (which is a low estimate because his line go up), he’s made $12,000,000 off of Twitch alone. He can arguably buy 4 of that same house cash and carry.
I get it, he’s a cool guy, but are we really gonna pretend here that he’s living some life comparable to normal people when he’s made $12 million in 5 years? He’s certainly better than most of his peers (other rich people) since you could argue there’s minimal direct exploitation (indirect exploitation is a whole other argument, and given that people hate nuance I’m not gonna bother to make it), but let’s not pretend he’s living the same type of life.
I think you have an extremely online view of “leftist political spaces” because I have never even heard this guy’s name mentioned in any real life context, and I’ve been a very politically active communist since I was a teenager.
Yeah the problem with living in capitalist hellworld at the heart of the empire is that you have two separated insular communities of leftists that are knife fighting rings. One in meetings and one on message boards, and they frequently know nothing about each other.
While the meetings communists sometimes eke out wins like Kshama Sawant, they often struggle to connect to the message board communists who really should be their base. Meanwhile both struggle to connect to society at large.
What’s really funny is that most meetings communists I know locally essentially think of him in essentially the same way message board communists think of AOC. Most meetings communists cannot stand his level of yadda yadda when pressed on any specifics he often just goes more general and says things like ‘I just want everyone to have healthcare bro’.
What’s your cut off? At what financial point is someone allowed to take part in trying to fix a broken system?
If it’s only people who don’t benefit from the system who are allowed to fight against it, should white people not try to fight the system? Cis? Straight? Able bodied? Able minded? Are only poor trans lesbians with two types of disabilities allowed to try to fight the system?
I don’t know the guy from Adam and I’m not gonna say he’s not well off, and I get that it seems sketch, but he’s at least doing something with his money other than sitting on it trying to get richer.
I can give you my two cents. Currently, there aren’t many left leaning pundits, and I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. His privilege means nothing if he’s actually being a good progressive advocate. Also, he’s actually talking about the things the left populace actually care about. Controlled opposition wouldn’t look like him to me. They’d be more like the Democrat party, trying to copitulate with the right. He’s been fairly consistent with his messaging of workers rights, lgbtq rights, womens rights, and the atrocities happening in Gaza. His income from streaming is incidental, and isn’t a problem in and of itself. In fact, it lets him be independent and not beholden to corporate media. It’s hard enough to afford bills working a regular job. The vast majority of regular jobs take all your time, leaving none for anything else, much less being a left leaning advocate online. I’m assuming you’d rather a full-time employee take his place, but how would someone like that be able to be effective in their advocacy?
Maybe I’m just an old fart annoyed by the loudmouthed sarcastic child of immense privilege preaching about things he’ll never understand. As long as he’s saying what the people want to hear, I guess. A new leftist Rush Limbaugh for 2024, great. I’m on the left and I’m just exhausted. IDK.
I get the sentiment. But I don’t need to be lgbtq to be an advocate for their rights. I just want people to be able to be who/what they want and thrive. Compared to them I’m privileged (white cishet male), but I doubt they’d complain about me being an ally.
Who is forcing you to be LGBTQ?
No one? Not sure where you got that from.
I disagree that it’s impossible for someone coming from a place of privilege to understand working-class politics. Of course, people with privilege do have a tendency to create or buy into justifications for the system that upholds their position, but at the same time privilege grants people the freedom to do what those without cannot. It’s admirable for someone with that background to use their privilege for the good of all, potentially even to their own detriment.
It seems your distaste for Hasan is based on surface-level appearances and vibes, but those same traits that put you off of Hasan are very appealing to a large number of young men who are otherwise susceptible to right-wing cultural framing. I also used to avoid Hasan because he just didn’t seem like someone I would identify with, and I was put off by the react content that made me associate him with shameless react streamers who leech off other people’s work. After actually listening to him I realized he is very knowledgeable and is actually adding value to the content he reacts to. He used his privilege to study political science and become a political commentator, and he has genuine passion for his work and a commitment to progressive values.
Edit: If you’re looking for someone with a similar perspective but without the aesthetic baggage try The Majority Report with Sam Seder
I realized he is very knowledgeable
Citation needed.
Hasan has the same knowledge as an average poster on this website. The average poster doesn’t know the differences between Mao and Lenin or China and USSR. Half the posters on this site don’t even understand the disagreements between the movements they claim to like.
Hasan literally would tell you this is nerd shit as a deflection when asked (same thing that Felix from Chapo does cuz it’s cool not to know basic history about the thing you claim to be). Hasan literally doesn’t know how to employ the basics of journalism. When pinned against the wall Hasan will admit that he’s entertainment. What you’re mistaking for knowledge is the fact that he reads leftist news aggregators all day and his chat is literally one. That’s not knowledge that’s chattering.
Hasan’s strength is that he can understand what vaguely center-to-center-leftish normies vibe with and find convincing, he’s a filter, but there’s no real depth there.
Half the responses in here are like “he’s organizing the working class” which is the lulziest shit ever because for some reason y’all think organizing is posting memes and streaming.
Make your point by insulting the intelligence of the people you’re trying to make your point to
Very smart move
You seem to believe that I think I can convince others.
I think I cannot because the love and defense of Hasan doesn’t come from an objective place at all. I’m merely shitposting. There are people deifying him in this thread and all over the internet.
There’s no alternative to Hasan right now in the left online space. Look at the top streamers on election day. They’re all right-wing except for him. We’re going to have to start with people like him, AOC, or Bernie if we want to move the needle in this country. Organizing 20 people in your local communist book club doesn’t matter if your movement is constantly demonized in the media and never grows. I don’t think some in the left seem to understand how important propaganda is, and yes, even online. Even Lenin worked on newspapers.
Not saying he’s anything close to Lenin, but no one else is in the position to step up right now. It’s going to take someone with enough money to not have to rely on mainstream media companies to say the shit he does, and the aesthetic to reach the Gen Z people and normies all the other guys are reaching. Other people can’t afford to be kicked out of the DNC for talking to Palestine protestors like he was. Right now the only people I can think of on the left with any outreach are a couple niche podcasters and academics doing a couple YouTube vids.
Fun fact I watched Hasan’s election day stream so keep that in mind as you read my reply!
There’s no alternative to Hasan right now in the left online space.
The beginning of this argument reeks of “there is no alternative to capitalism”. We do not have to accept things simply because there is no “better” popular alternative. This is the argument that Democrats use to bully and denigrate voters.
Organizing 20 people in your local communist book club doesn’t matter if your movement is constantly demonized in the media and never grows. I don’t think some in the left seem to understand how important propaganda is, and yes, even online. Even Lenin worked on newspapers.
Firstly, Lenin and Hasan are worlds apart. Lenin’s propaganda was hard theory. Hasan is vague “I want things to be better”. Lenin never shied away from putting his chips down on the table in tough intra-left questions. Hasan doesn’t even address any tough intra-left questions, he’s not even at that level. Lenin literally lead the 1905 Revolution after being out of prison for 5 years. Hasan has been posting for more than 5 years and hasn’t really moved the political needle in this country appreciably.
Hasan is the Jon Stewart of anyone that’s left of “progressives”. The same non-ideological criticisms of Stewart apply directly to Hasan. Jon Stewart hasn’t done very much to move that needle either. Popular entertainment is important to have people be open to ideas, but it does not equal political activity. Hasan is actually worse than Jon Stewart in this regard because Hasan hasn’t even made his own brand of political rally unlike the lib Jon Stewart.
Organizing history in the US shows you don’t even need propaganda, you just need to meet people where their at and talk to them about what their problems are. “Winning Gen Z” is such a Democrat beltway insider tactic that’s consistently a loser. Charging those with the least experience in the world to change it is quite literally the best way to fail, it’s not a surprise that “youngism” has been the call of the Democratic party on the ground despite having a gerontocracy that controls the party. There is simply no real durable through line from Hasan to making socialism. He’s just a guy people watch.
. Other people can’t afford to be kicked out of the DNC for talking to Palestine protestors like he was.
There is no theory of change or path to power here. You have literally foreclosed that yourself by pointing this out. Hasan is an entertainer, and he softens views but it literally does not translate into power because in our system the left is structurally disenfranchised.
Hasan does not address this. It’s simply hand waved away.
To put this another way, we don’t have a democracy. There has been consistent popular overwhelming majority grass root support for many social welfare programs in the US over the last 30 years, M4A, rescheduling marijuana, etc.
This doesn’t translate into change, because of the structures of our system. Hasan could make 66% of the country believe n socialism overnight and nothing would change because the theory of change that underpins that assumption is wrong about the structures of the US government.
It’s the same problem that Bernie had. His theory of change did not account for the reality of the political structure. Which is why both of his campaigns failed. There was no answer to that, it was simply hoping for the best and ignoring the possibility of the worst rather than having a contingency for it.
For all the hate that you get for people like Jon Stewart or Voldomir Zelenskyy they are literally the logical ends that Hasan can rise to. That’s pretty much it, and in reality anyone who actually knows Ukranian politics knows that Zelenskyy’s personal political views have almost nothing to do with Zelenskyy’s decisions anymore because he’s so structurally compromised by the Ukranian political arrangement and the geopolitcal arrangement that you could replace him with a random off the street and more or less the same outcomes would occur. So President Hasan would be as libbed up as possible.
Hasan is a great entertainer and but he trafficks in the most basic understandings of shit, that’s what makes him a great entertainer. There’s nothing happening outside of the basics. The idea that “if only people knew” is not powerful in reality, because people know, people feel it, that’s the whole argument of Marxism the sociological philosophy. In this day and age everyone has the tools and materials to educate themselves for this stuff. It’s not the 20th century where you have to figure out how to get your hands on printed materials of Marx or whoever. This shit is freely available at marxists.org, libcom.org, Wikipedia, etc. The amount of people that go through that is minuscule compared to the amount that watch a Hasan stream.
Hasan is the perfect example of Wittigenstien’s Ladder, because the type of person who becomes a “big boy socialist” through Hasan effectively would agree with criticisms of Hasan despite liking him. Once you start to do actual organizing and actual mutual aid you see how fake the online shit is. The majority of his audience are more involved with his beef with H3 than they are involved with actually doing good works.
It’s great that people’s personal journey to leftist organizing might have started with Hasan, but that’s a small percentage of the people in his orbit. Hasan himself would be leery of claiming to be some great leftist guy, his party line is the same as ChapoTrapHouse, this isn’t news, this isn’t organizing, this isn’t leftism, this isn’t real, this is entertainment.
A lot of the defensiveness in this thread is literally based on the personal and not the systemic, it’s incredibly parasocial and incredibly toxic to the growth of the people who are putting themselves in that position. For many Hasan’s worth is a mirror of their own worth, that’s what parasocial relationships are.
For reference, I don’t watch him much at all so you probably know the specifics of his flaws better than me. However, I know people who have who weren’t leftist before, and I appreciate that he’s brought them into the tent and that he says things that they haven’t heard other people say before. We still have tons of room for other people more left of him or more knowledgeable of theory than he is, but he’s still a great intro to the leftist pipeline, or maybe a mid-point after like Jon Stewart or Jon Oliver, and I won’t begrudge him that role. It’s someone else’s job to step up and be that next step. I won’t blame Hasan that someone isn’t more popular and more knowledgeable on theory. Maybe it’s not his specialty, and that’s fine.
Like for me, I started going left with Bernie, and now consider myself more left than him, but I still appreciate the role Sanders had in my life. Now, he’s never going to say any theory and he’s always going to shepherd people back into the capitalist system of the Democratic party. But, I won’t hate him because he didn’t travel left with me, I just shrug and say he did his job, and I appreciate his contributions. In other words, I don’t think the world is better without his existing. Or taking the example of Lenin, he popped up during a sizable, albeit partly exiled, socialist movement in Russia, but still, he built on their work, their philosophies, their organizing, their clubs, with their students, their newspapers, etc. He surpassed many of them in terms of turning theory into action, argued with some vehemently, but it’s not like they didn’t contribute to the movement in the long run.
Hasan doesn’t need to make that last step to power imo. He’s doing his job where he is, helping ease some people out of the red scare mentality of the most propagandized nation on earth. Let’s be honest, even if he couldn’t lead some movement after making 60% of the country believe in socialism, it would be a lot easier for someone else to do so with that support. And that starts with entertainment and culture. Was it Gramsci who had the theory on the structure and super structure that effect each other? I think that’s definitely true. There’s a reason the US is willing to give movies free money for propaganda or let them use their vehicles. It enforces the cultural hegemony that will have to be broken, or at least chipped away.
People feel something is wrong, sure, but that can lead them to fascism as much as Marxism. And they’re not going to read those books you mentioned because people are terrified to read those books or hear those ideas in the US, yet entertainment provides an acceptable way to be exposed to those ideas. People are identifying the wrong solutions or sources of those problems all the time, that’s why Trump was elected.
I don’t think all the push back is all parasocial, i just think some is that you’re under valuing the power of culture and entertainment. The right has a pipeline that’s working pretty damn well to slowly convert people from neocons to fascism, and it often starts with talking about their entertainment or being in the guise of entertainment itself (like with comedians, like Rogan, Crowder, etc). There’s no reason the left can’t have a similar path made up of multiple creators and media personalities, each on a step along the path. I think some are just critical of Hasan because he’s the only one right now and no one else is picking up the slack, but I don’t think that’s his fault.
I think “Hasan exposes people to leftist ideas” is great and all, but your argument has the following lynch pin:
The right has a pipeline that’s working pretty damn well to slowly convert people from neocons to fascism, and it often starts with talking about their entertainment or being in the guise of entertainment itself (like with comedians, like Rogan, Crowder, etc).
This has a couple of parts we need to inspect:
- People need to “hear this stuff” – which fine I agree with.
- “hearing stuff” on the left translates to the same outcomes that “hearing stuff” on the right does. – This is where you lose me.
The Right has it easy. It’s why they can be boring, lazy, stupid and evil. They have it easy because not only are they the status-quo, but their arguments have big salacious things they can point to. Capitalism exists, the US Empire exists, and people’s suffering exist. The right doesn’t actually need people to continue it’s project in the same way the left needs people. The Right can sustain itself on morons running into walls until the whole system collapses under its own weight. There is a pinprick of sunlight between your average neocon and your average fascist. Hell there’s only a 4ft window of sunlight between a liberal and a fascist. The last 2 libs that ran were hard to distinguish from fascists if you understand fascism (most people only understand the aesthetics of fascism and only in particular contexts). Fascism is easy because it’s the logical ends of an already existing system of capitalism. All you have to do is give the morons something to do and let the system run, that’s why culture war is great for the right. Fascism more or less exists as a real and in-power political force in most of the Western World.
The Left needs people to build an alternative, something that doesn’t exist, something that works for everyone, something intelligent and intelligible. The only way to do this is to be armed with the knowledge of the past, cognizant enough to understand the landscape of the present, have enough foresight to visualize the future, planing capacity to deal with the logistics, and the resources to put it into motion.
“Roganism” will never deliver these things. In fact “Roganism” will simply get you a bunch of consumers. The only way that “Roganism” will prevail for the left is if we are already at war and we simply need bodies to take orders and to pull triggers.
Now Hasan isn’t really responsible for any of this, he’s an entertainer. He’s a good entertainer, he has okay politics. But that’s it, there’s no there there beyond that.
Hasan makes $1.4 million a year about probably more now. If we pretend that everyone paying for that is “the left”, we’re doing the same type of spending as we criticize the DNC for. Hasan is our Beyonce concert, our Oprah interview, it’s just spread out over the whole year. That didn’t work for the Democrats. Meanwhile the Democrats also have it easy. 90% of what they want literally just exists as is. They can be losers forever if they wanted to, and they do.
The Democrats might be missing a “message” or “policy” or any desire to help people in any realistic way that isn’t a spreadsheet, and it’s stupid that they paid for Beyonce thinking it will get them over the line. Leftists don’t have a unified platform and don’t even have a machine, but it’s smart that we “pay” for Hasan? That’s really the argument that I’m reading from all this:
- Hasan streams
- Somebody thinks yeah medicare for all
- ???
- ???
- ???
- politically viable leftism in the US
It’s the same argument:
- Everyone has a brat summer
- Oprah fumbles Kamala thru a question
- Beyonce performs
- ???
- ???
- ???
- Democrats win.
I think one thing a lot of Westerners don’t want to understand is that socialism necessitates the death of American media culture. That includes the Hasan path, because what is Hasan under socialism? The US overproduces media culture to the point where it’s gig work, because of the same exact reason that “Roganism” works. Hasan’s path under socialism is to either go back to an organization where he will be subjected to the same if not worse circumscription he had at TYT, pick another career or at best be the last of a dying breed. No socialist economy is actually going to be able to support the ecology of streamers needed to generate Hasans. Hasan likes what he does, when push comes to shove is he going to give it up for socialism? It’s really easy to say that, it’s another thing to actually do it. Given his personal consumption and what he talks about, I have my doubts that Hasan is going to tighten the Gucci belt for us.
A lot of Western socialists assume that the desired individualized labor mix of the population is a realistic goal. The idea that everyone does what they want to do is not real. Yes people will still want to do certain necessary jobs, but that doesn’t mean enough people will want to do them to ensure social reproduction. We can talk about robots and magical maguffins till the cows come home, but in practice until those maguffins are created and function good enough humans will still have to do those jobs.
Thanks for your response. Yes, it must be a personality thing, combined with a generational difference. Can you see how it comes across as disingenuous as a member of the working class to be spoken down to by a millionaire streamer? Similarly to how some LGBT allyship advocacy from cishet people comes across as blissfully unaware of the actual struggles of LGBT people.
What’s with the identity politics man? Does what he says makes sense or not? Don’t tell me you won’t listen to rich white people when they make sense because they’re rich and white.
You can advocate for hungry people after eating a meal. You can advocate fornsex worker rights even if you are a virgin.
You can’t tell people you are “working class” if you’re rich. You can’t advocate for punishing day people while pretending to be straight.
It is not complicated.
His class shouldn’t matter ultimately.
However, his superficial and putrid understanding of anything regarding politics or the world in infuriating. At one point he was simping hard for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine repeating verbatim rt talking points.
I loathe this man more than I hate Joe Rogan. Joe is an imbecile, through and through. Hasan, on the other hand, supposedly has a poli Sci degree. He knows what he’s doing and it’s disgusting
Edit : I don’t have time to go into every fact check of the mountain of lies he spews. The guy has never opened a book in his life and spends all day reading Twitter. Some great intellectual.
Willymac does a good breakdown on yt:
Ukrainians react to Hasan (yt) :
He’s such a joke
Can you elaborate?
I don’t have time to break down al his lies. Willymac does a decent job:
Because he’s funded by russia to split the democratic vote.
Edit to add: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_Piker
As of 2024, Piker is the most subscribed political commentator and has the nineteenth-most subscribed channels of all time on the streaming platform Twitch.
His father Mehmet Behçet Piker is a political scientist and economist who served on the Board of Directors (and as Vice-President) of Sabancı Holding, and who is a founding member of the Future Party in Turkey. His mother Ülker Sedef Piker (née Uygur) is an art and architectural historian teaching at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His uncle Cenk Uygur is a political commentator and co-founder of The Young Turks news network.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Piker, in partnership with CARE, raised over $200,000 for Ukrainian relief funds while playing Elden Ring, with an average of over 70,000 people watching his coverage of the conflict.
Twitch information: Followers: 2.7 million
YouTube information: Subscribers: 1.43 million
So he comes from money and is raking in buttloads from his social media presence. He has no need for Russian funding. Either provide evidence or don’t talk nonsense.
Exhibit A: Jill Stein
Oh screw off with this bullshit. So pathetic.
Thanks for your contribution to the discussion, very insightful.
These are bot account folks. There’s been a surge of attacks against Hasan by the right and russian propaganda machine. They are opening the flood gates to undermine all the remaining progressive influencers.
That’s a new one, I’ve never been accused of being a bot for having an unpopular viewpoint before! You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?
I’ve never been accused of being a bot for having an unpopular viewpoint before!
Ah, you get used to it pretty quickly.
