Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

milo's gonna love that

Left have you looked at any of BLM's local demands? do you consider them a "pro-cop" centrist sellout movement?

for example

https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/06/09/872859084/here-s-what-black-lives-matter-d-c-is-calling-for-and-where-the-city-stands

idk a lot of ppl do consider various “official” organs of the movement to be that, those demands seem pretty modest, I agree w the unspecified “some activists”

there are always tensions w any movement esp when elements want to work w media & state to translate things into legible terms for bargaining, which means reformism is often overrepresented. I don’t blame them for this mostly, I blame media people who are clearly drawn to particular positions due to their own class & racial interests, which in this case have been repeatedly demonstrated

damn how can all those activists tolerate being associated with fascists, you'd better go set them straight

maybe, just maybe, if it walks like a liberal org and it talks like a liberal org it's mostly an org made up of some flavor of liberals

Tried to listen, made it to Taibbi’s intro and bailed to listen to an interview with Squarepusher instead.

solid choice

xxp not wrong

Black radicals all over the country put so much work into dismantling BLM because they/are were nonprofit grifters that took money, attention, and got niggas killed in the process.
Now a new crop of random mfers claiming to be BLM are popping up and we ain't having it

— Salish Sea Black Autonomists (@black_autonomy) June 3, 2020

I thought the episode was fine. I don't remember anyone sounding dismissive about police brutality.

not a terribly engaging listen (Taibbi kinda boring) but I’m ultimately glad I did. couple of points that I disagreed with but do have merit and I’ll probably chew on,,, and a couple of (minor?) points that I disagreed with and are utter horseshit.

im woefully ignorant of the 1619 thing so probably should dig into that before making any grand judgments

it's so weird that they keep harping on 1619 Project. Like "the academic historian empathizers have logged on"

as a history bro I definitely balked at some of the glaring inaccuracies of the 1619 project but of course it's just catnip anti lib id politics from the gray lady/bête noire for chapo to harp on it

bête misogynoire

lol

acknowledging the difficulty of the task at hand at the current time, and talking strategy isn't the same as "being dismissive" even if you don't agree with the prescription

(ghost of Elizabeth Warren laughing)

lmao “oh shit, now even the filthy libs are saying ACAB, and since I don’t actually have any principles other than opposing whatever the mainstream left is for, I guess that means I love cops now”

There’s nothing here but a reactionary impulse, and there never was.

Jaw dropping moment of Amber calling out Mariame Kaba for not really caring about prison abolition. Rough ep.

— ACAB for cutie (@Party_Richter) July 10, 2020

Also Amber saying a rape victim doesn’t know much about rapists

this seems like a fair judgment (tho some hosts are uh worse than others)

Most tankies already disagree with them (me included lol). I don't see how any of what they said has to do with any coherent ideology. I think they're plainly just in a NYC DSA intellegenista/celeb bubble and are out of touch on some issues.

— Tony Hawk's COINTELPRO Skater (@randymiscavige) July 10, 2020

its really glaring when you compare the "what do you know about the reality of prison abolition" stance with their "who cares if we'll ever get medicare for all, vote for the world you want to see"

That said, it might just be saying shit to say shit, which I've certainly been guilty of

left and esby are the ying and yang of ilx

― Temporary Erogenous Zone (jim in vancouver), Friday, July 10, 2020 3:41 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

seems obvious to me gabbneb runs both

...on abolition. this and the “not all cops” and basically everything she says... people are right to be upset or angry pic.twitter.com/tx1JDXYBO1

— Cat Dad Human Dad (@catdad9eleven) July 10, 2020

Amber's line (because I'm still not going to listen to the episode because Taibbi's voice is nails on a chalkboard)

classic amber: a tactical disagreement with one person turns into "you and your movement/positions are worthless and irrelevant"

as usual there's a little kernel of truth in there, sorta (it can be frustrating when people on a relative vanguard of an issue aren't willing to explain positions) but amber turns that little grievance into a whole-ass way of life

its really glaring when you compare the "what do you know about the reality of prison abolition" stance with their "who cares if we'll ever get medicare for all, vote for the world you want to see"

That said, it might just be saying shit to say shit, which I've certainly been guilty of

― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, July 11, 2020 1:14 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

no youre onto it ... it's the same issue Coates brought up w/r/t bernie, where his political imagination is boundless for a raceless left but suddenly comes up against the intractability of race. It's especially odd to see in the wake of the recent uprisings, where public sentiment has moved more radically than on any recent issue i can even think of, and not just among "latte liberals" but enough to provoke divisive arguments within NASCAR

*but suddenly stops short when it comes up against the intractability of race

I’ll concede that for a large swath of liberals platitudes about prison abolition and especially “defunding” cops could be low stakes and abstract and and whoa turns out not all that popular once that damn Cheeto is out of the White House,


But! I *still* think it’s dope bc 1) it’s a good rallying cry (blame or credit social media or whatever but shit gets traction); 2) it’s def horizon-broadening and a (ostensibly) popular, and legit radical place to start negotiations, rather than the usual timid obsequious boot-licking bullshit that Dems are typically slinging

btw is the grey wolf thing supposed to be funny or cool bc it’s seriously not

idk what that is

Turkish fascist militia, name adopted by/for these guys and/or their fans as a hilarious meme or something idk

isn't the whole point of the show that they say "politically incorrect" / inflammatory shit on purpose to get a rise out of people ? why single out this one thing ?

Bc a rise has been gotten

it's like getting mad that GG allin's band were called the texas nazis

focus

it’s particularly egregious

idc if they’re making fun of biden shitting himself in public again but lol irony fascism is extremely punchable shit

but I know US leftists basically see foreign lives as memes or props or thought experiments so what do I expect really

Felix is a rabid Turkish nationalist.

And an Assadist.

Probably a Putinite.

“lol triggered” but make it socialist: the podcast

White people stay getting paid to blithely joke about the struggles, misery, and death of oppressed people. And folks who are supposedly progressives or leftists support it.

It's no wonder shit is very fucking bad.

— William C. (@williamcson) March 21, 2018

you know what, it's terrible when (just about) anyone dies but these people are not little helpless kids. They are capable of making decisions in the face of all reason and have insisted on making selfish ones that impact the rest of us. Fuck them for enabling their leaders and protracting this nightmare for the rest of us.

gonna start skipping amber episodes by default tnh. thankfully they're rare these days.

anyway this was the best thing any of them were involved with this week

but I know US leftists basically see foreign lives as memes or props or thought experiments so what do I expect really

I will not stand for this calumny against (checks notes) Chapo Trap House.

(I think I made my point clearly, now to etc etc coffee and read that thread buy @williamcson)

Holy SHIT the Taibbi episode is fucking foul

The more distance I gain from them the more I start to agree with a lot of the criticisms. At the same time I wish there was a more nuanced way to approach than “I listened to part of one episode, they are bad and white supremacist the end.”

I feel like that kind of summary dismissal is ultimately counterproductive since you will find areas of uh problematicness among many segments of the left who are largely on the right side of things.

you don't say

i don’t know why they need such charitable close reading (that they never give to anything outside their experience), give them one if you like but it’s fine when people who get the gist of where they’re coming from decline to do so. this is just the purity criticism they hate so much but applied to their critics

the US/European left is pretty terrible & largely on the right side doesn’t mean shit if you’re not part of the largely, which is already an overstatement