I get what you’re saying, but I can’t help it, I have to be pedantic here because words matter. How radical a person is is not dependent on how big their platform or loud their voice is, how many people they’ve exposed to leftist thought, or even how much material change they can affect or may have brought about. How radical a person is really is dependent on their positions and convictions, that’s simply what the word means. The “leftists” of the acceptable US political spectrum (aka liberals) may consider Hasan as the most radical extremist they can imagine, but he is absolutely not anywhere near as radical as the majority of people posting on this site.
If you want to say that Hasan has furthered the cause of leftism more than anyone here because of his reach, that he has done more to bring awareness and ultimately some form of material support for Palestine, then I’m inclined to agree, that’s very likely true. But no one who advocates for voting for Democratic presidential candidates is genuinely a radical leftist.
Wtf is the point of radicalism if you have no power to utilize it? Having some REALLY COOL THOUGHTS is meaningless if you can’t actualize them and instead are talking to yourself in a dark room
And frankly every time I see these parasocial whines concerning Hasan, all I hear are calls for more dark rooms, more sophistry, and more idealism
You think I’d care about that obnoxious dude-bro himbo if he didn’t have the audience and platform? He’s a vector for radicaliztion and the normalization of pro-Palestinian politics, that’s all I care about
The combination of radicalism and reach is the metric we need to judge by, without either one the commentary and presentation is meaningless
And judging by the combination Hasan wields, his annoying ass gets an A-
What are you even arguing with me here about? (Or am I misinterpreting your tone and you’re not arguing?)
The combination of radicalism and reach is the metric we need to judge by, without either one the commentary and presentation is meaningless
Ok, then don’t conflate those two very different things. I likewise do not care for Hasan as a person. I don’t enjoy watching him and find myself getting more annoyed with the stuff he gets wrong than cheering the stuff he gets right, like a case of “so close yet so far away” that it rubs me the wrong way. Still, unlike some here, I think he is ultimately a positive (that is to say a leftist) force in the world and one I’m grateful is out there, despite not caring for him and despite the other ways I think he can hold some people back from genuine leftism. The good he does materially I would say outweighs the bad. And the good that he does do, which you have pointed out, is a direct result of the resources he has to be able to do that good. But that does not make him radical. Which is the only part of what you’ve been saying above that I took issue with.
As for the so-called idealism of having radical positions without the material action to back it up… There are people working in volunteer soup kitchens and spending their free time organizing their community as best they can and supporting the vulnerable within it, and they do this because of the radical ML or even anarchist convictions that they hold. Their material conditions don’t allow them to sit in their million dollar homes commenting on the news and media all day to x-thousands of people paying them to do so like Hasan which is what allows him the ability to do the good that he does. These actually radical people lack his resources and his reach, but they are still devoting as much or more of their time and labor to materially benefit others and spread class consciousness. People who struggle daily, hourly, and risk their livelihood and sometimes their lives to do so. Many of these people are minorities of all kinds too. (There are even people like that who have commented on hexbear). They are inarguably more radical both in terms of their actions and their beliefs than Hasan is.
Hasan is not radical and no matter how many kudos he deserves for the very real good he has done for leftist causes changes that.
Ok, then don’t conflate those two very different things.
HOLY SHIT, we have to conflate them, because ONE, is useless, without the OTHER, hence my use of the word COM-BIN-NATION, I swear this site sometimes
As for the so-called idealism of having radical positions without the material action to back it up… There are people working in volunteer soup kitchens and spending their free time organizing their community as best they can and supporting the vulnerable within it, and they do this because of the radical ML or even anarchist convictions that they hold.
God have mercy, everyone’s a liberal at the end of the day…HEY, you know what would really help those people struggling in their soup kitchens? POWER, actualized POWER WITH REACH, the ability to have your politics normalized whether it be anarchist or ML, and you know what’s a powerful vector of actualization and normalization? That’s right, THE MEDIA, and you know who we have on our side who can normalize our politics despite his “so close yet so far away” takes? That’s right, Hasan Piker, a piped piper handed to you on a silver platter, who through his advocacy can inspire and send streams of newly radicalized people to those soups kitchens of yours
But that’s all meaningless because “nice house”? Well how austere and noble, didn’t know the poverty cult had real adherents
They are inarguably more radical both in terms of their actions and their beliefs than Hasan is.
Confidence, normalization, scalability, inspiration, popularity, cultural buy-in, POWER, are these concepts poisonous to your radicalism? Are we in a struggle to change systems or glorify band-aids?
You’re going off the rails here comrade. I don’t know if it’s because you can’t handle it being pointed out that a word you were using doesn’t mean the thing you were using it to mean or if you really just hate the fact that Hasan on his best days barely crosses the line from liberal to leftist and is simply in no way considered a radical by anyone who is versed in genuinely radical (such as Marxist Leninist) theory, that is making you feel the need to pick nonsensical fights with everyone, but have at it I guess.
But no, we don’t have to conflate two words (use them as if they mean the same thing) that have completely different meanings in order to be effective. A close example: we need to have principles and we need to take action if we want to make positive material change. That doesn’t mean principles and action are the same thing and is sure as hell doesn’t mean we need to pretend they are the same thing in order to be effective leftists.
Confidence, normalization, scalability, inspiration, popularity, cultural buy-in, POWER, are these concepts poisonous to your radicalism?
Well, let’s take one of those: normalization. What is being normalized? If what’s being normalized is the idea that leftists need to vote for Democrat presidential candidates in order to stop those dastardly Republicans at any cost (especially when those Democrats are actively conducting genocide) then yes, that concept is poisonous to my radicalism. I would say similar things about the rest of your word list.
I’m not going off any rails, I’m growing increasingly annoyed at obtuse parasocial nonsense employed for the purposes of trashing the largest leftist voice in the country and for what? To pretend you (a forum user) has more motion than the largest funder of the Amazon labor union or the most popular pro-Palestine advocate in the US?
I don’t know if it’s because you can’t handle it being pointed out that a word you were using doesn’t mean the thing you were using it to mean or if you really just hate the fact that Hasan on his best days barely crosses the line from liberal to leftist and is simply in no way considered a radical by anyone who is versed in genuinely radical (such as Marxist Leninist) theory
Well, let’s take one of those: normalization. What is being normalized?
SOCIALISM, MARXISM, PRO-PALESTINE POLITICS, yes I’ll take all of that, think I give a fuck about his electoral takes, I need him to radicalize people toward socialism and he’s doing his job well
I would say similar things about the rest of your word list.
Of course you would, you want the left to stay motionless
Alright, let’s look at this honestly because I’ve read many of your comments over the years and know you’re better than this. Right now you are grossly misrepresenting the things people (in this case me) are saying. I sincerely don’t know if you’re aware you’re doing this and just want to score points or if you are in an emotional state that is distorting what you think I’m saying. It seems like the latter, and that is what I mean by going off the rails.
I’m growing increasingly annoyed at obtuse parasocial nonsense
What parasocial nonsense have I expressed in this conversation, from your perspective?
for the purposes of trashing the largest leftist voice in the country
In what way am I trashing Hasan? I literally said I am grateful he is out there and that while I don’t like everything he does, I think he is a force for good in the world. I agreed with you that as far as outreach and spreading and popularizing leftism, that he almost certainly has done more than people here have done.
To pretend you (a forum user) has more motion than the largest funder of the Amazon labor union
What is motion? Where did I pretend I had more of it than Hasan?
If you’re gonna talk shit, the least you could do is know something about the person you’re trashing
I haven’t been doing anything that could remotely be called “talking shit” unless saying “Hasan is not radical” by the standards of nearly anyone on this website is “talking shit.” To the contrary, I’ve been saying that Hasan is undeniably a net good. As for what I know about him, everything I’ve said is well within reason to say given what I do know about Hasan. I have said nothing about him that is not perfectly commensurate with my non-expert but more than average person on the street’s knowledge of who he is.
[your link]
I’m glad he is talking to and is friends with someone else who I will take your word is a well-read Marxist Leninist. It doesn’t matter though, I contend that someone who endorses Democrats, especially genocidal presidential candidates, someone who is as concerned and supportive of one half of the uni-party posing as a two-party state kayfabe politics as I’ve personally seen him to be, that person is simply not a radical leftist and that no actual radical leftist would claim him as one.
Of course you would, you want the left to stay motionless
Great. Nice little jab of meaningless nonsense, accusing me of something that doesn’t even parse, let alone related in any way to anything I said. That’s the way to stick it to your opponents! Come on, what is the point of doing that, really?
The combination of radicalism and reach is the metric we need to judge by, without either one the commentary and presentation is meaningless
But that still doesn’t mean that he is more radical just for having larger reach. This is a separate argument. Conflating the two is how people end up thinking Obama is radical for Obamacare being a thing. Ability to impact things is important as is reach but that still doesn’t mean saying having more reach makes one more radical.
Conflation doesn’t mean equally important it means one and the same. Edit: Your argument is better suited if your initial sentence is that he is more effective, not more radical.
Would you consider Obama more radical as well then since he normalized the idea of single payer healthcare? Sure his ideas are lesser but he’s definitely had a larger reach than just about anyone here ever will and the healthcare system is one of the most damaging ones within the country to the working class.
Single-payer healthcare (radicalism) + reach (hundreds of millions of viewers) = more radical than forum users.
Single-payer healthcare isn’t radical, pro-Palestine politics is, especially in the US
So, YES, Hasan being the loudest anti-genocide voice in American media and becoming the number one target of aipac and Bibi’s lawyer does in fact make him more radical than a collection of ML forum users, who by the way were still debating a burning Israeli flag two years into the genocide, meanwhile Hasan is interviewing genocide survivors and Flotilla members
It’s genuinely wild I have to spell this shit out, material reality trumps your hypotheticals, the streamer has you beat, take the L, it’s not a contest anyway
Single payer healthcare is radical, both in the fact that it is an extreme divergence from current policy and thus would constitute an extreme change as well as it aims at a problem close to the source.
Those are the conditions in material reality and that is what radical means.
Also, where did I say that Hasan isn’t more radical than people here? you’re putting words in my mouth. I just have problems with the work you’ve shown, not necessarily your conclusion. My hypothetical is because according to the work you’ve given, Obama would also have to be more radical as well as Hasan as what you’ve said repeatedly has batted away the idea that the ratio of conviction to reach matters in any way.
If you had just kept it pithy and said “Hasan is more radical than the people on this site,” I likely would’ve snorted, liked it, and moved on.
Edit: I actually hadn’t said anything about him yet so far, would you feel better about me questioning the formation of your argument if I say something nice about Hasan during each comment? I have no issues doing that if you cut out the weird snideness in your comments.
It’s genuinely wild I have to spell this shit out,
It’s genuinely wild people have to spell out the definition including common use of the word radical to you, but instead of listen you insist on making up some bullshit argument in your head between materialism and idealism. True Anon also interviewed Sumud Flotilla survivors before and after their attempt to bring aid. Where do Brace Belden and Liz Franczak fit on your little “true radicals have reach while fake idealist not-radicals only house and feed a few homeless people at a time” spectrum?
Funny how you didn’t have the confidence to name names
But yeah sure, one of aipacs number one targets hangs out with zionists on the regular
Also he didn’t encourage people to vote for or against Harris and trashed her for her pro-genocide position, so frankly I couldn’t care less how he personally voted
It is reductionist to say that he “endorses a lot of liberal zionists and encourages people to vote for genocide”. I do not watch him with any regularity these days, but my SO does, and we did watch a significant portion of his coverage in the run-up to the elections. Watching him get kicked out of the DNC for his positions on Palestine and his live critique of the event was the final nail in the coffin for my SO to break from the Democrats to vote with me for PSL. He still will fluff up people like AOC and Sanders, but he also regularly expresses criticism of Sanders and AOC on the grounds of their liberal zionism. [edit] In addition, just this week while talking about Zohran, expressed his concern for the comments Zohran made in this Free Press article. The man talks for 8+ hours a day; do you have clips of him expressing this “sqishy-ness” about the West Bank? Because I recall him being pretty clear that Palestinians have a right to return and that it should be enforced.
He never expressed that criticism to their face, nor did he platform PSL during election season. I’d be curious to see him talking about enforcing the right of return, i recall him talking about two states being impossible because of the settlements, so you need one state in order to not violently evict the settlers from their homes. In this clip around 5 min, he says he’s against decolonization for “practical” reasons, misrepresenting actual decolonization as “native people doing 9/11 to New York.” He says he doesn’t want to displace the settlers who settled there during the Aliyahs and afterwards. I’m not sure how you square that circle, saying that you want the right of return without displacing settlers. He calls decolonization something “that is never going to happen” around 6:40.
No, he never does; I’m aware of this. However, it would be worse if he never criticized them at all. I don’t share his optimism about “the squad” and their adjacent cast of characters. He believes they can be reformed. I do not.
That sums up everything you need to know about his position. He clearly has a base understanding of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism. However, Leninism at no point enters into his operational framework in the context of America. He exposes people to Marx’s ideas but doesn’t engage with them directly and explicitly isn’t interested in discussing theory at all with his audience.
I brought up PSL because I was the one who was advocating we vote for them, not Hasan, if that wasn’t clear. I have, for a while not, grown out of the positions he holds into ones to the left of his.
The gold standard that sits at the center of his position is always South Africa. I think there is something to be said about the distinct difference between a place like South Africa and, say, Vietnam. When French Indochina fell in the 1950s many of the French settlers fled, to my understanding, and concurrently, they constituted a much smaller portion of the population compared to the native population. (in scratching this out because I need to do more reading on both of these events.) Often I feel like Hasan is taking a “realpolitik” approach to these topics, rather than an ideological one, because again, I don’t think Marxism or Marxism-Leninism is a primary guiding worldview for him.
I won’t “square this circle” (I don’t mean this antagonistically, just that, I’m willing to accept critique of Hasan, because obviously, I have my own) because I haven’t seen this video, but I don’t agree with him based on what I’m seeing through skimming the transcript. I also don’t take his hyperbolic rhetoric at face value either, but that doesn’t change my thoughts on his actual position.
He sees “abolition of apartheid” as a more realistic alternative than the destruction of Israel
Yup, South Africa is his gold standard. In the previous video he mocks “settlers” readers, which again shows you that he is at a minimum aware of these critical works, but he doesn’t believe that they contribute to any sort of real solutions. He is an incredibly mixed bag, and I think every day there is a Hasan watcher who grows beyond his limitations in the way that I did.
Pretty sure the crucial element is the pro-Palestine thing, which is why I mentioned the pro-Palestine thing, you know, that thing he uses his big ass platform to boost despite the hate and backlash he receives for it
i house a homeless person in my own apartment, im not rich. and its ridiculous to act like 500k is how much you need for a 2 bedroom (where are you housing people, downtown manhattan??), in fact housing homeless people is incredibly cheap to do, many are even on disability and can pay for their own food, just not housing.
so yeah i do have a standard, to do at least what i do when youre that rich. and i know people that have less money than me that do this too! and yes, i have housed homeless people that i knew for a total of 5 hours prior
edit:
for the audience, it should be noted that homeless people are systemically segregated and considered untouchable. its basically impossible for them to get housing even when they have a job and money due to bad credit. opening your home to them can often save you money because you can buy in bulk together and prepare food together. this is the essence of mutual aid. it is the individualist mindset that considers these people a burden for not living up to the capitalist system’s standards.
While you may be a valiant person, it is the height of libshit to demand people open their homes up the minute they catch a purse
Individualistic and burdensome solutions to systemic problems is libshit and demanding this standard of other people (even millionaire lefists) is unreasonable
Also 500,000 is what two bedrooms are going for in large parts of LA, you’re not American so maybe you forgot how ridiculous US home prices are
While you may be a valiant person, it is the height of libshit to demand people open their homes up the minute they catch a purse
i get it, you see other people as a burden
Individualistic and burdensome solutions to systemic problems is libshit and demanding this standard of other people (even millionaire lefists) is unreasonable
its not the complete solution but to have that much money and not to help people in the most effective way that you can just shows a lack of humanity and a refusal to truly decompile your supremacist thinking. housing people directly is cheap, easy, and the basis for mutual aid (handing people money is not mutual aid).
calling the real foundation for mutual aid individualistic… YOU are individualistic for thinking someone suffering outside is ‘burdensome’.
Also 500,000 is what two bedrooms are going in large parts of LA, you’re not American so maybe you forgot how ridiculous US home prices are
im a dual citizen, i live in an apartment in america. there are plenty of places, that while theyre boring, are walkable and affordable in america. its just not in a big city like LA. given his wealth he could easily afford a property outside the city to help people with or house someone in his own house. ive done this even when i was living with my own family. you can make excuses (oh i dont have enough bedrooms, oh i dont have enough space, oh it would be awkward), these are all individualist. if someone is in danger they do not give a fuck about any of that, they will sleep on your couch or in your fucking closet they dont care. this is a you problem, not a them problem.
its not the complete solution but to have that much money and not to help people in the most effective way that you can just shows a lack of humanity and a refusal to truly decompile your supremacist thinking.
Except Hasan has helped people using his purse, the man has raised millions for mutual aid orgs and charities, so your premise is just dead wrong
You simply don’t like the way he’s done it and apparently think mutual COHABITATION (which apparently is also the “foundation of mutual aid”) is the only meaningful way someone with money can individually demonstrate praxis, which again is the height of unreasonableness
YOU are individualistic for thinking someone suffering outside is ‘burdensome’.
I didn’t say homeless people suffering is burdensome, I said the expectation that you as an individual is obligated to solve homelessness the minute you acquire any money IS burdensome and individualistic, that may not be the case for you, but pretending that’s a reasonable expectation for other people is unreasonable and you know it
Except Hasan has helped people usimg his purse, the man has raised millions for mutual aid orgs and charities, so your premise is just dead wrong
Plenty of billionaires and millionaires do this, and 99 times out of 100 its a highly ineffective way to help people that is mostly a good way to get their taxes reduced and to make themselves feel better. I’m curious what specific orgs he donated to, even. I bet you the directors take 100-200k/yr cuts.
You simply don’t like the way he’s done it and apparently think mutual COHABITATION (which apparently is also the “foundation of mutual aid”) is the only meaningful way someone with money can individually demonstrate praxis, which again is the height of unreasonableness
It fundamentally is the foundation, have you ever read Kropotkin, the guy that popularized the term? A family unit is often seen as the core fucking example of mutual aid. To have effective mutual aid, cohabitation (or living in proximity in a different housing area, which is difficult to do in American society outside of chance) is necessary. Just sending cash to someone is charity (albeit the most effective form of charity, which afaik Hasan does not partake in). You also have a reduplication of efforts if you become too spread out, making the mutual aid highly inefficient.
I didn’t say homeless people suffering is burdensome, I said the expectation that you as an individual is obligated to solve homelessness the minute you acquire any money IS burdensome and individualistic, that may not be the case for you, but pretending that’s a reasonable expectation for other people is unreasonable and you know it
It isn’t unreasonable, what is unreasonable is the individualism-to-a-fault in American culture, even among supposed ‘leftists’. To solve homelessness you must by definition fight for homeless people and see them as important as yourself, which you are clearly incapable of doing or even comprehending.
Voted for Holocaust Harris, constantly is trying to save the Democratic Party from itself, etc
And the loudest and most visible pro-Palestine voice in the country
Which automatically makes him more radical than anyone who’s ever used this site
I get what you’re saying, but I can’t help it, I have to be pedantic here because words matter. How radical a person is is not dependent on how big their platform or loud their voice is, how many people they’ve exposed to leftist thought, or even how much material change they can affect or may have brought about. How radical a person is really is dependent on their positions and convictions, that’s simply what the word means. The “leftists” of the acceptable US political spectrum (aka liberals) may consider Hasan as the most radical extremist they can imagine, but he is absolutely not anywhere near as radical as the majority of people posting on this site.
If you want to say that Hasan has furthered the cause of leftism more than anyone here because of his reach, that he has done more to bring awareness and ultimately some form of material support for Palestine, then I’m inclined to agree, that’s very likely true. But no one who advocates for voting for Democratic presidential candidates is genuinely a radical leftist.
Wtf is the point of radicalism if you have no power to utilize it? Having some REALLY COOL THOUGHTS is meaningless if you can’t actualize them and instead are talking to yourself in a dark room
And frankly every time I see these parasocial whines concerning Hasan, all I hear are calls for more dark rooms, more sophistry, and more idealism
You think I’d care about that obnoxious dude-bro himbo if he didn’t have the audience and platform? He’s a vector for radicaliztion and the normalization of pro-Palestinian politics, that’s all I care about
The combination of radicalism and reach is the metric we need to judge by, without either one the commentary and presentation is meaningless
And judging by the combination Hasan wields, his annoying ass gets an A-
What are you even arguing with me here about? (Or am I misinterpreting your tone and you’re not arguing?)
Ok, then don’t conflate those two very different things. I likewise do not care for Hasan as a person. I don’t enjoy watching him and find myself getting more annoyed with the stuff he gets wrong than cheering the stuff he gets right, like a case of “so close yet so far away” that it rubs me the wrong way. Still, unlike some here, I think he is ultimately a positive (that is to say a leftist) force in the world and one I’m grateful is out there, despite not caring for him and despite the other ways I think he can hold some people back from genuine leftism. The good he does materially I would say outweighs the bad. And the good that he does do, which you have pointed out, is a direct result of the resources he has to be able to do that good. But that does not make him radical. Which is the only part of what you’ve been saying above that I took issue with.
As for the so-called idealism of having radical positions without the material action to back it up… There are people working in volunteer soup kitchens and spending their free time organizing their community as best they can and supporting the vulnerable within it, and they do this because of the radical ML or even anarchist convictions that they hold. Their material conditions don’t allow them to sit in their million dollar homes commenting on the news and media all day to x-thousands of people paying them to do so like Hasan which is what allows him the ability to do the good that he does. These actually radical people lack his resources and his reach, but they are still devoting as much or more of their time and labor to materially benefit others and spread class consciousness. People who struggle daily, hourly, and risk their livelihood and sometimes their lives to do so. Many of these people are minorities of all kinds too. (There are even people like that who have commented on hexbear). They are inarguably more radical both in terms of their actions and their beliefs than Hasan is.
Hasan is not radical and no matter how many kudos he deserves for the very real good he has done for leftist causes changes that.
HOLY SHIT, we have to conflate them, because ONE, is useless, without the OTHER, hence my use of the word COM-BIN-NATION, I swear this site sometimes
God have mercy, everyone’s a liberal at the end of the day…HEY, you know what would really help those people struggling in their soup kitchens? POWER, actualized POWER WITH REACH, the ability to have your politics normalized whether it be anarchist or ML, and you know what’s a powerful vector of actualization and normalization? That’s right, THE MEDIA, and you know who we have on our side who can normalize our politics despite his “so close yet so far away” takes? That’s right, Hasan Piker, a piped piper handed to you on a silver platter, who through his advocacy can inspire and send streams of newly radicalized people to those soups kitchens of yours
But that’s all meaningless because “nice house”? Well how austere and noble, didn’t know the poverty cult had real adherents
Confidence, normalization, scalability, inspiration, popularity, cultural buy-in, POWER, are these concepts poisonous to your radicalism? Are we in a struggle to change systems or glorify band-aids?
You’re going off the rails here comrade. I don’t know if it’s because you can’t handle it being pointed out that a word you were using doesn’t mean the thing you were using it to mean or if you really just hate the fact that Hasan on his best days barely crosses the line from liberal to leftist and is simply in no way considered a radical by anyone who is versed in genuinely radical (such as Marxist Leninist) theory, that is making you feel the need to pick nonsensical fights with everyone, but have at it I guess.
But no, we don’t have to conflate two words (use them as if they mean the same thing) that have completely different meanings in order to be effective. A close example: we need to have principles and we need to take action if we want to make positive material change. That doesn’t mean principles and action are the same thing and is sure as hell doesn’t mean we need to pretend they are the same thing in order to be effective leftists.
Well, let’s take one of those: normalization. What is being normalized? If what’s being normalized is the idea that leftists need to vote for Democrat presidential candidates in order to stop those dastardly Republicans at any cost (especially when those Democrats are actively conducting genocide) then yes, that concept is poisonous to my radicalism. I would say similar things about the rest of your word list.
I’m not going off any rails, I’m growing increasingly annoyed at obtuse parasocial nonsense employed for the purposes of trashing the largest leftist voice in the country and for what? To pretend you (a forum user) has more motion than the largest funder of the Amazon labor union or the most popular pro-Palestine advocate in the US?
If you’re gonna talk shit, the least you could do is know something about the person you’re trashing
SOCIALISM, MARXISM, PRO-PALESTINE POLITICS, yes I’ll take all of that, think I give a fuck about his electoral takes, I need him to radicalize people toward socialism and he’s doing his job well
Of course you would, you want the left to stay motionless
Alright, let’s look at this honestly because I’ve read many of your comments over the years and know you’re better than this. Right now you are grossly misrepresenting the things people (in this case me) are saying. I sincerely don’t know if you’re aware you’re doing this and just want to score points or if you are in an emotional state that is distorting what you think I’m saying. It seems like the latter, and that is what I mean by going off the rails.
What parasocial nonsense have I expressed in this conversation, from your perspective?
In what way am I trashing Hasan? I literally said I am grateful he is out there and that while I don’t like everything he does, I think he is a force for good in the world. I agreed with you that as far as outreach and spreading and popularizing leftism, that he almost certainly has done more than people here have done.
What is motion? Where did I pretend I had more of it than Hasan?
I haven’t been doing anything that could remotely be called “talking shit” unless saying “Hasan is not radical” by the standards of nearly anyone on this website is “talking shit.” To the contrary, I’ve been saying that Hasan is undeniably a net good. As for what I know about him, everything I’ve said is well within reason to say given what I do know about Hasan. I have said nothing about him that is not perfectly commensurate with my non-expert but more than average person on the street’s knowledge of who he is.
I’m glad he is talking to and is friends with someone else who I will take your word is a well-read Marxist Leninist. It doesn’t matter though, I contend that someone who endorses Democrats, especially genocidal presidential candidates, someone who is as concerned and supportive of one half of the uni-party posing as a two-party state kayfabe politics as I’ve personally seen him to be, that person is simply not a radical leftist and that no actual radical leftist would claim him as one.
Great. Nice little jab of meaningless nonsense, accusing me of something that doesn’t even parse, let alone related in any way to anything I said. That’s the way to stick it to your opponents! Come on, what is the point of doing that, really?
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Jesus fuck get over yourself
Jesus fuck learn how to read
But that still doesn’t mean that he is more radical just for having larger reach. This is a separate argument. Conflating the two is how people end up thinking Obama is radical for Obamacare being a thing. Ability to impact things is important as is reach but that still doesn’t mean saying having more reach makes one more radical.
Conflation doesn’t mean equally important it means one and the same. Edit: Your argument is better suited if your initial sentence is that he is more effective, not more radical.
“The combination of radicalism AND reach…without either one…is meaningless”
Pro-Palestine (radicalism) + Reach (millions of viewers) = More radical than forum users
Would you consider Obama more radical as well then since he normalized the idea of single payer healthcare? Sure his ideas are lesser but he’s definitely had a larger reach than just about anyone here ever will and the healthcare system is one of the most damaging ones within the country to the working class.
Single-payer healthcare (radicalism) + reach (hundreds of millions of viewers) = more radical than forum users.
Single-payer healthcare isn’t radical, pro-Palestine politics is, especially in the US
So, YES, Hasan being the loudest anti-genocide voice in American media and becoming the number one target of aipac and Bibi’s lawyer does in fact make him more radical than a collection of ML forum users, who by the way were still debating a burning Israeli flag two years into the genocide, meanwhile Hasan is interviewing genocide survivors and Flotilla members
It’s genuinely wild I have to spell this shit out, material reality trumps your hypotheticals, the streamer has you beat, take the L, it’s not a contest anyway
Single payer healthcare is radical, both in the fact that it is an extreme divergence from current policy and thus would constitute an extreme change as well as it aims at a problem close to the source.
Those are the conditions in material reality and that is what radical means.
Also, where did I say that Hasan isn’t more radical than people here? you’re putting words in my mouth. I just have problems with the work you’ve shown, not necessarily your conclusion. My hypothetical is because according to the work you’ve given, Obama would also have to be more radical as well as Hasan as what you’ve said repeatedly has batted away the idea that the ratio of conviction to reach matters in any way.
If you had just kept it pithy and said “Hasan is more radical than the people on this site,” I likely would’ve snorted, liked it, and moved on.
Edit: I actually hadn’t said anything about him yet so far, would you feel better about me questioning the formation of your argument if I say something nice about Hasan during each comment? I have no issues doing that if you cut out the weird snideness in your comments.
It’s genuinely wild people have to spell out the definition including common use of the word radical to you, but instead of listen you insist on making up some bullshit argument in your head between materialism and idealism. True Anon also interviewed Sumud Flotilla survivors before and after their attempt to bring aid. Where do Brace Belden and Liz Franczak fit on your little “true radicals have reach while fake idealist not-radicals only house and feed a few homeless people at a time” spectrum?
Actually I’m the one true leftist and I use this site
Okay liberal
he hangs out with and endorses a lot of liberal zionists and encouraged people to vote for genocide
like whom? my only interaction with streamers is when they’re on podcasts
Funny how you didn’t have the confidence to name names
But yeah sure, one of aipacs number one targets hangs out with zionists on the regular
Also he didn’t encourage people to vote for or against Harris and trashed her for her pro-genocide position, so frankly I couldn’t care less how he personally voted
sorry for not appending a long list of names to either of my drive by 18 word comments
Oh it’s a “long list” now lmao? Really? How about you just give two
This is pretty reductionist.
Is it reductionist to say he wants a one state solution because he’s too squishy about forcing West Bank settlers out of stolen homes?
It is reductionist to say that he “endorses a lot of liberal zionists and encourages people to vote for genocide”. I do not watch him with any regularity these days, but my SO does, and we did watch a significant portion of his coverage in the run-up to the elections. Watching him get kicked out of the DNC for his positions on Palestine and his live critique of the event was the final nail in the coffin for my SO to break from the Democrats to vote with me for PSL. He still will fluff up people like AOC and Sanders, but he also regularly expresses criticism of Sanders and AOC on the grounds of their liberal zionism. [edit] In addition, just this week while talking about Zohran, expressed his concern for the comments Zohran made in this Free Press article. The man talks for 8+ hours a day; do you have clips of him expressing this “sqishy-ness” about the West Bank? Because I recall him being pretty clear that Palestinians have a right to return and that it should be enforced.
He never expressed that criticism to their face, nor did he platform PSL during election season. I’d be curious to see him talking about enforcing the right of return, i recall him talking about two states being impossible because of the settlements, so you need one state in order to not violently evict the settlers from their homes. In this clip around 5 min, he says he’s against decolonization for “practical” reasons, misrepresenting actual decolonization as “native people doing 9/11 to New York.” He says he doesn’t want to displace the settlers who settled there during the Aliyahs and afterwards. I’m not sure how you square that circle, saying that you want the right of return without displacing settlers. He calls decolonization something “that is never going to happen” around 6:40.
https://youtu.be/lFLj8_KFFTY
He sees “abolition of apartheid” as a more realistic alternative than the destruction of Israel
https://youtu.be/yAv-TDcu5yc
He appears to want to pay off Palestinians who lost their land and homes, and sees that as justice
How does this not come off as him offering ways to preserve Israel through reconstruction?
Why in the world should Palestinians take a bribe and citizenship in non-apartheid Woke Israel over returning stolen land and homes?
No, he never does; I’m aware of this. However, it would be worse if he never criticized them at all. I don’t share his optimism about “the squad” and their adjacent cast of characters. He believes they can be reformed. I do not.
And he never will, because, as GQ describes his “career”, it is a protracted and so far largely unsuccessful effort to “pull the Democrats to be more radical, to be actually progressive.”
That sums up everything you need to know about his position. He clearly has a base understanding of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism. However, Leninism at no point enters into his operational framework in the context of America. He exposes people to Marx’s ideas but doesn’t engage with them directly and explicitly isn’t interested in discussing theory at all with his audience.
I brought up PSL because I was the one who was advocating we vote for them, not Hasan, if that wasn’t clear. I have, for a while not, grown out of the positions he holds into ones to the left of his.
The gold standard that sits at the center of his position is always South Africa.
I think there is something to be said about the distinct difference between a place like South Africa and, say, Vietnam. When French Indochina fell in the 1950s many of the French settlers fled, to my understanding, and concurrently, they constituted a much smaller portion of the population compared to the native population.(in scratching this out because I need to do more reading on both of these events.) Often I feel like Hasan is taking a “realpolitik” approach to these topics, rather than an ideological one, because again, I don’t think Marxism or Marxism-Leninism is a primary guiding worldview for him.I won’t “square this circle” (I don’t mean this antagonistically, just that, I’m willing to accept critique of Hasan, because obviously, I have my own) because I haven’t seen this video, but I don’t agree with him based on what I’m seeing through skimming the transcript. I also don’t take his hyperbolic rhetoric at face value either, but that doesn’t change my thoughts on his actual position.
Yup, South Africa is his gold standard. In the previous video he mocks “settlers” readers, which again shows you that he is at a minimum aware of these critical works, but he doesn’t believe that they contribute to any sort of real solutions. He is an incredibly mixed bag, and I think every day there is a Hasan watcher who grows beyond his limitations in the way that I did.
Ok we’re def on the same page. I truly hope you’re right about Hasan watchers growing past him
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
So the bigger the platform, the more radical?
Pretty sure the crucial element is the pro-Palestine thing, which is why I mentioned the pro-Palestine thing, you know, that thing he uses his big ass platform to boost despite the hate and backlash he receives for it
I mean he had people on the stream who were on the sumud flotilla,you can’t just put him in the same pot as vaush
Dudes got a fuckton of money and isn’t housing homeless people, I know people here that are much poorer that are. So idk
The dude gives small fortunes to charities and mutual aid orgs all the time
What do you want him to do? Front 500,000 dollars for a two bedroom and put some random homeless person in it?
His job is to radicalize people, not fix homelessness by his millionaire lonesome
this is libshit
i house a homeless person in my own apartment, im not rich. and its ridiculous to act like 500k is how much you need for a 2 bedroom (where are you housing people, downtown manhattan??), in fact housing homeless people is incredibly cheap to do, many are even on disability and can pay for their own food, just not housing.
so yeah i do have a standard, to do at least what i do when youre that rich. and i know people that have less money than me that do this too! and yes, i have housed homeless people that i knew for a total of 5 hours prior
edit:
for the audience, it should be noted that homeless people are systemically segregated and considered untouchable. its basically impossible for them to get housing even when they have a job and money due to bad credit. opening your home to them can often save you money because you can buy in bulk together and prepare food together. this is the essence of mutual aid. it is the individualist mindset that considers these people a burden for not living up to the capitalist system’s standards.
While you may be a valiant person, it is the height of libshit to demand people open their homes up the minute they catch a purse
Individualistic and burdensome solutions to systemic problems is libshit and demanding this standard of other people (even millionaire lefists) is unreasonable
Also 500,000 is what two bedrooms are going for in large parts of LA, you’re not American so maybe you forgot how ridiculous US home prices are
i get it, you see other people as a burden
its not the complete solution but to have that much money and not to help people in the most effective way that you can just shows a lack of humanity and a refusal to truly decompile your supremacist thinking. housing people directly is cheap, easy, and the basis for mutual aid (handing people money is not mutual aid).
calling the real foundation for mutual aid individualistic…
YOU are individualistic for thinking someone suffering outside is ‘burdensome’.
im a dual citizen, i live in an apartment in america. there are plenty of places, that while theyre boring, are walkable and affordable in america. its just not in a big city like LA. given his wealth he could easily afford a property outside the city to help people with or house someone in his own house. ive done this even when i was living with my own family. you can make excuses (oh i dont have enough bedrooms, oh i dont have enough space, oh it would be awkward), these are all individualist. if someone is in danger they do not give a fuck about any of that, they will sleep on your couch or in your fucking closet they dont care. this is a you problem, not a them problem.
Except Hasan has helped people using his purse, the man has raised millions for mutual aid orgs and charities, so your premise is just dead wrong
You simply don’t like the way he’s done it and apparently think mutual COHABITATION (which apparently is also the “foundation of mutual aid”) is the only meaningful way someone with money can individually demonstrate praxis, which again is the height of unreasonableness
I didn’t say homeless people suffering is burdensome, I said the expectation that you as an individual is obligated to solve homelessness the minute you acquire any money IS burdensome and individualistic, that may not be the case for you, but pretending that’s a reasonable expectation for other people is unreasonable and you know it
Plenty of billionaires and millionaires do this, and 99 times out of 100 its a highly ineffective way to help people that is mostly a good way to get their taxes reduced and to make themselves feel better. I’m curious what specific orgs he donated to, even. I bet you the directors take 100-200k/yr cuts.
It fundamentally is the foundation, have you ever read Kropotkin, the guy that popularized the term? A family unit is often seen as the core fucking example of mutual aid. To have effective mutual aid, cohabitation (or living in proximity in a different housing area, which is difficult to do in American society outside of chance) is necessary. Just sending cash to someone is charity (albeit the most effective form of charity, which afaik Hasan does not partake in). You also have a reduplication of efforts if you become too spread out, making the mutual aid highly inefficient.
It isn’t unreasonable, what is unreasonable is the individualism-to-a-fault in American culture, even among supposed ‘leftists’. To solve homelessness you must by definition fight for homeless people and see them as important as yourself, which you are clearly incapable of doing or even comprehending.