writing all critics off as "haters" is extremely parasocial behavior.
detractors, people who dont like him, overzealous critics, whatever you want to call it. "haters" is succinct.
Communists disdain to hide their aims and your idea about how left-radicalization works
When you read the letter and not the spirit of the text. Indeed, we do not hide our aims: to build a stateless, classless, moneyless society. One of my aims is not to get myself socially ostracized for giving my real opinions on the DPRK before I've had time to let people understand that I am a kind, rational, well-adjusted person. The rapport you lose is more valuable than being honest for honesty's sake. You do not have exclusive control over the conversation, nor are people required to hear you out or talk to you again. These are basic social skills, you speak to your audience, present phrasing favorable to their ideals, and find common ground.
Seriously, have you actually talked to your reactionary or turbolib peers IRL about this stuff? You out here quoting one line from a pamphlet released in 1848 and treating it like scripture. Oppose book worship.
I don't give a shit about him not cheerleading for whichever country hard enough, that's such a terminally online view of what politics is, I care about him misrepresenting Marxist theory and thereby hampering people's political education beyond receiving a laundry list of berniecrat and antizionist talking points.
I don't know where you live, but here in the imperial core, people's political education is that Stalin killed a quadrillion people and that you get immediately executed for watching western movies in the DPRK. This is inseparable in their minds from your ideology. But yeah, these people would most certainly engage meaningfully with Marxist theory without addressing that...unless you plan on peanut butter pilling them by not naming what belief system your ideas originate from?
Clearing the minefields that come up in every conversation about socialism is a major assist in us being able to proliferate our views. Again, Hasan is not an expert in Marxism, why do you expect him to do your work for you? Do you really think him giving an overview of demcent or the mass line with these brainworms still intact would have any utility?
You are the one who comes across as terminally online. What if we had all entertainers recite our holy scripture in their performances? Surely, that would result in socialism being built and not cause people to watch other shit.
Then what are you even complaining about? I'm helping him, right?
I'm trying to have a polite discussion about a popular media figure's effect on the public consciousness. Did I say something to set you off? I have no idea why you are being so antagonistic.
Problem is that posting online is easy and organizing is hard. Online, everyone wants to show off how smart, righteous, and correct they are for what they believe.
The truth of the matter is, what you believe does not matter so much as what you do.
Quite frankly, I do not believe there is any such thing as a cohesive left. We will have momentary alignment in struggles, which we will need to organize to meet the challenges of. Through the practice of struggle, practices will reveal themselves to be more effective than others, and certain theoretical ideas will prove themselves more useful for engaging in struggle. When operational considerations force your hand, rigid ideology will take a back seat to pragmatism.
I don't think anyone here is getting any fraction of their opinion from that douchebag. People here don't like Hasan because he's not a good representation of MList thought.
This was not Lenin's position, and it's the same bullshit false dichotomy I've seen him bring up before
Not claiming this, just voicing what I think Hasan is trying to do. Obviously, Hasan is not well read on Lenin.
but the problem is that there is no building a socialist movement on false pretenses
Right, but is Hasan actually involved with building any sort of socialist movement? No serious Marxist claims him as a thought leader, nor is he trying to lead a vanguard party. He's essentially talking out his ass while trying to kill off common brainworms about Marxism that didn't exist in earlier revolutionaries' times.
and I have repeatedly seen the contempt with which he treats people representing the actual revolutionary nature of Marxism. You can see in his chat in any such instance that he has trained his community very well to go "based" "chad" at whatever image of select revolutionaries but to reject the substance of their thought and call people with a basic understanding "ultras."
He's conditioning people's first reaction upon seeing references to Marxist leaders to be "hell yeah!" Unsure if that was supposed to be an example of contempt, but I wouldn't call it that, maybe disregard or ignorance. I would not characterize him as training people to reject the substance of Marxist thought, given he tells people to read theory all the time (despite not having done so himself)
Using quote-mining to misrepresent Lenin while sneering at his actual positions is not the way to accomplish this.
My point is that even empty, positive references to Lenin, AES countries, etc. are net beneficial because his value does not come from education, it comes from debunking obvious slander and destigmatizing Marxist words, countries, leaders.
There are many things that you can do, of which probably the easiest pitch is to simply explain in plain English some of theoretical basis of Marxist political philosophy,
Trust me, you and I both wish he would present actual theory on stream. Despite my defense of him, I do not think his streams are good place to go for serious political education, but that is very much not his audience. His audience wants to casually consume the news with leftish commentary and humor.
I think this is where our fundamental disagreement comes from. You are looking for him to be more serious, but that is not what his audience is there for. Hasan's streams are entertainment, and he is closer to Bill Burr or Dan Carlin than even the Citations Needed guys, let alone any real leader. As far as entertainment goes, I cannot find any contemporary figure that has a more positive impact given how much he has done to destigmatize AES and Marxism.
You seem to evaluate him as if he intends to be as serious as you want him to be, which I think lends itself to seeing him in an uncharitable light. His job is to make the masses more receptive to us. Our job is to educate. His popularity is doing us a huge favor.
Nonetheless, I will if you need me to.
Is this a jab at me? No need to insult me because I don't think a twitch streamer is the heir apparent to Lenin.
He is not a Leninist theoretician, he is a Lenin hypebeast.
He tells democrats (who would otherwise reject him if he advocated for nonparticipation in bourgeois elections) that you can still vote for "the lesser evil" while understanding that Marxism and overthrowing the bourgeois state is the only path forward if they want to achieve their goals.
His whole schtick is torturing ML thought into something disillusioned Bernie fans can accept, knowing that many of these people will eventually seek real ML theory once their anti-communist programming has been reversed. You cannot accept Lenin's theoretical contributions until you have accepted that Lenin is someone worth listening to.
He is the direct counterpart to the fascists that are "just asking questions" in order to lead you to their desired conclusion that ethnic cleansing is in fact very cool and absolutely necessary. These are the most effective fascists precisely because they don't open with "Nazi Germany was based, and the holocaust was righteous" while reciting Adolf Hitlerisms. Doing roman salutes on stream hinders their ability to pass along their audience to the guy who is openly sieg heiling.
The Hasan hater cohort here wants Hasan to parrot our party line to a T.
If you want Marxist theory explained to you in a video format, Hakim and JT Chapman already do a much better job of that. Does Hasan understand the culture of AES countries well enough to present their history or political systems as effectively as Luna Oi, Lady Izdihar, or Yugopnik? Will he provide a more informed economic analysis than Michael Hudson or Richard Wolff? Is he going to be more detailed than Ben Norton at covering current affairs from an anti-imperialist perspective? Can he put together a news program as good as Breakthrough News?
No!
His niche is covering current events in an interactive and humorous way in order to break normies of their anti-AES and anti-communist brainworms.
His audience is mostly people who have been fed nothing but western propaganda their entire lives, usually cloaked in advocacy for free healthcare, vague anti-warism, and opposition to overt racism.
The bits of idealistic liberalism he often regurgitates serve as the peanut butter required for baby leftists in the west to swallow the pills that end up shattering their naïve worldview.
Hasan understands that if you only run defense for socialist countries, libs will immediately dismiss what you have to say as "shilling for authoritarianism" and never consider the rest of your message.
His content is simply not for us. He is shitposting in a strategic way that lets him build a big audience and walk it down the road towards Marxism. Elevating him to be the voice of the vanguard is artificially caps the pipeline. Us being critical of him supports his role by making him appear relatively nuanced to those libs. Eventually they will outgrow his content and join our ranks.
Cops can get this in a single geofence to wherever the meetings are held. But Palantir or Google probably already serve this info up on a silver platter for feds.
edible shelter