Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Digging this:
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Listening to Dead Pundits Society (Ep. 16: What is Class and Why Does It Matter? w/ Vivek Chibber)

Tune in to learn why socialists are obsessed with "Class" and why it makes no sense to position class *against* forms of oppression like racism and sexism in capitalist society. Vivek Chibber, professor of sociology at NYU and co-editor of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, joins me to break down these matters and much more

https://soundcloud.com/deadpundits/ep-16-what-is-class-and-why-does-it-matter-w-vivek-chibber

I like everything about DPS except for the host. the guests are pretty reliably great

def thinking about subscribing to champagne sharks

the thing about cast hosting is that it's actually pretty hard to not suck at it

Lol that reddit post is almost word-for-word how they've described their own fans

Who says they don't respond to constructive criticism:

We taking the pod in a bold new direction 🔄 pic.twitter.com/TLpCrupwyP

— Will 🐋 Menaker (@willmenaker) June 21, 2017

felix might have the biggest mismatch between voice and physique in human history

yeah that's right i'm calling u out mike tyson

Interview with Angela Nagle:
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This Is Hell! | Down with people: How cultural elitism went mainstream.

https://thisishell.com/interviews/956-angela-nagle

Matt's primer on the Sewer Socialists was really neat!

xpost Have you bought her book? I haven’t yet.

I borrowed it from someone. It's good but makes me despair for the lack of copy editing in the independent press.

copy editing is fucked everywhere. i see numerous typos everyday in the NYT, WaPo, P4k, Rolling Stone, SPIN, etc.

I liked her book

seriously, i've never seen more glaring errors in any book than nagle's - there's one chapter in particular where the text keeps misspelling pat buchanan's surname as 'buchannan', including in the chapter title. as someone cursed with an uncanny ability to spot a spelling mistake from 500 yeards, it drove me fucking nuts

still enjoyed it overall, tho. the alarming familiarity of most of the examples she cites was a real warning sign that i need to spend less time hate-reading stuff on the internet, however

and of course there's a typo in my sentence about typos

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BXculuPCIAACaP8.jpg

This is published by Zero isn't it? Lot of their stuff is poorly copy edited.

It is- ha ha ha- Nagl though

I just signed up for the Patreon thing. If I want to listen to all episodes of Trapo, do I need to sign up for their regular, free feed too? Looks like it.

Yeah, the Patreon feed is a separate RSS thing from the regular

Thanks! I’m all set up. :-)

WW review was predictable but satisfying

Listening to one of these eliminastionists call for a return of Lenin's "philosopher ships" to get rid of dissident intellectuals, I find myself losing much respect for anyone who champions Chapo.

dunno what episode you're talking about but p sure most of Chapo's leninist insurrection shit is a goof

it's true the kidding-not-kidding style has lead to a shit ton of poisonous discourse across the political spectrum in recent years but being goof-free makes ppl more insufferable still

Most of what they say is supposedly a "goof" but there's so much bile in their voices,it's pretty plain what they think.

I think the line of thinking that demands the exile to outer space of traitors like Chait in order for the socialist paradise to be born is pretty up its own ass.

Oh, come on. There's bile because their hate for the pundit class is real but that's as far as it goes.

i think it's entirely possible to hate the likes of chait with a sincere and burning passion and y'know not actually seriously believe he and his ilk should be exiled to the phantom zone

And anyway they spend just as much time being fascinated by the individual psychologies of said pundits as anything else, they'd be bored silly without them

UK politics thread talks about purges/heads on pikes like every other day!

ilx has numerous rip threads for public figures who aren't dead but i doubt many of us are actually wishing death on david brooks

well okay maybe david brooks is a bad example now that i think about it but the point still stands

you guys are enablers

away and have a nice lie down

I've been listening to this every so often on Soundcloud -- more out of fascination with the idea of a podcast this hyper-referential and absorbed in Twitternalia than out of any real appreciation for what they do. I agree with their politics, broadly, in that I agree that progressive politics needs to be rooted in the struggle of the working class, but you know, me and every other millennial with a graduate degree working an hourly wage.

Anyway, the "philosopher ships" joke is indefensible and emblematic of why they suck. It's not that they are actual Leninists, it's that they are incredibly smug and flippant and live in a mental world of caricatures, which is convenient because it means you never have to take anyone else's positions seriously. They are a product of social media and an emblem of "what's wrong" -- or at least one of the things that's wrong -- and this is obvious to me even though I'm on "their side" in most things.

fuckin hyperbole, how does it work

idk I think they've been pretty good at taking the arguments worth taking seriously seriously, though this tends to happen moreso on podcasts w/ good guests

I don't like the idea of ceding irreverence to the right. inflammatory language is fun and the pundit class will be fine.

I follow a lot of far-lefties on Twitter, some pro- and some anti- (or indifferent to) Chapo, and I get that the humor turns off a certain segment, but vulgarity is also an effective hook for a lot of people. oppression and the ideologues who espouse it (directly or indirectly) couches its cruelty in polite language and pointing that out in inverse language can be cathartic.

yeah, i don't recognise treesh's characterisation of them at all tbh

i think they take their positions very seriously, and recognise the threat that right-wing policies and to a lesser extent woolly liberal thinking poses to the kind of world they want to see created, but I guess if you don't think mockery of patently ridiculous beliefs in the ruling/pundit classes is an acceptable or necessary response then chapo might not be for you I guess

fwiw there have been plenty of good recommendations here that don't rely on Chapo-y theatrics or vulgarity but are still fun / not completely po-faced

I guess if you don't think mockery of patently ridiculous beliefs in the ruling/pundit classes is an acceptable or necessary response then chapo might not be for you I guess

yeah man, this is totally about wanting to protect the ruling class, and not at all about finding har-dee-har maybe we would be better off if we put killed everyone with glasses- style jokes a bad look for leftist dudes to be rocking.

I can understand the argument for not going overboard with hyperbole, because to an extent repeating that kind of thing internalizes it and not everyone listening is going to take it as pure exaggeration. I think the rebuttal is that while there's bile there, it's also a shot at the rhetoric that right-wing radio has dealt in as a matter of course for decades.

There have always been demagogues and writers who deal in personal jabs, and I think there is a line. In an ideal world, it'd be a lot more civil, but after the Limbaughs of radio and television have been cranking it up notch by notch, the whole "please, don't do that guys!" comes off as some "we take the high road" crap.

That's the issue, here: the people who get most of the bile from CTH and lefty twitter are the establishment liberals who backwheel from actually taking a firm left stance, or throw in these caveats about how we'll never have single payer. Every time. The jabs at conservative figures in the same space, like David Brooks, definitely have this joking "...but is this guy really ok?" angle. Joking about sending a supposed leftist to space to help move things forward is frustration.

If you think it's too harsh and real, go listen to a few hours of AM conservative talk radio.

meanwhile the policies backed by the ruling class are actually killing the poor and the vulnerable, day in day out, but sure feel free to spend your energy on some poor-taste jokes made by some twitter assholes on a podcast xp

lol spend your energy defending them ok

jonathan swift def did want the irish to sell their children to the rich as food tho iirc

you keep turning the same crank

you keep exposing your handle, what else am i to do

can something that's meant to be satire sound kind of messed up when the speaker seems to be bursting blood vessels from rage and 40s? Tell me about Swift the next time some right wing AM dudes talks about putting people in camps as a joke.

t/s: punching up vs punching down

PK if anyone ever shoots up the NYT offices in a baseball crank shirt I will take back everything I've said in support I promise

they go low, we get our ass handed to us over and over lol

hey, the joke cop is here