Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

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

bursting blood vessels from rage and 40s

now who's trafficking in low rent stereotypes

It's called hyperbole look it up

but really, I listen to about every fifth episode of this show to catch an interesting guest or topic. is there a particular point where they've just gone full-on into condemning people to camps

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

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), 5. juli 2017 16:44 (forty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How about if someone tries to kill Republican congressmen while they practice baseball?

C-

as in Frederik belongs on MSNBC-

Ok is Keyes trolling or does he really think Chapo are the Khmer Rouge

but really, I listen to about every fifth episode of this show to catch an interesting guest or topic. is there a particular point where they've just gone full-on into condemning people to camps

no, for that you need to go to c*m town

it is a stretch for me to be listening to a podcast
double stretch for one called "chapo trap house"

so not gonna listen to something called cum town

How about if someone tries to kill Republican congressmen while they practice baseball?

― Frederik B, Wednesday, July 5, 2017 3:36 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That dude didn't go far enough imo

Xpost Worse even. Khmer Rouge never mastered podcasting. That's the trouble with killing the intellectual class.

If you're having to fan yourself with dismay re: joking about exiling Jonathan Chait to the center of the sun just accept that Chapo isn't for you and move on.

listen up, i've been to the center of the sun, that shit's hot.

not just Chait iirc but every public intellectual's USELESS FUCKING ASS

oh i get it, president keyes is peggy noonan

I decided to listen to see what the context of the objectionable joke was

now I'm really confused: so random people on twitter discover wikipedia, respond to Chait's anti-marxism article beat with a list of every fact they just learned about Lenin, and then the CTH guys joke in response to one of the outliers that hey, if we had a boat, it'd go to the sun and we'd throw Chait on it

then there's a several minute repudiation of Chait's neoliberalism apologia (or lack thereof) and war mongering

these guys have made bad jokes before, but how this particular instance is vile, when it starts with a joke kicked off from that basis and immediately followed with analysis of the dude's stances, is ?!?

I figured from context earlier in the thread that they just randomly brought up Lenin's philosopher boats and started listing dudes to go on it or something

I mean, throwing that out without the context it's spinning off of a EVILS OF MARXISM list on twitter and was a tossed-off line right before going into a repudiation of the dude in question's previously published views is some bait and switch