Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

chapo housetrap

Help me convince D-40 to listen to the Woodstock 99 episode

It's got an actual attendee in Bryan from Street Fight, what more do you need?

It's totally enjoyable although they probably could have cut off the discussion a little earlier as it got a bit repetitive. One of the more fun episodes in a while.

white lotus girl doesn’t even need to say what podcast she listened to to prepare for the role... we already know pic.twitter.com/uvXnWNAKHi

— kelly (@kickinson) August 11, 2021

oh no

I am grieved to tell you that @nathanjrobinson has effectively fired me & most of the @curaffairs staff because we were trying to organize into a worker’s co-op. This isn’t a bit. I wish it was. https://t.co/0lmnJlzAEX pic.twitter.com/5P6U88d4VR

— lyta gold, fired for doing socialism (@lyta_gold) August 18, 2021

really living up to his outward appearance

*pretends to be shocked*

is it true that current affairs is funded by his parents? where does the money come from?

i don't know. didn't his mom make fun of him on facebook for using that fake accent?

Mom roasts are the most painful roasts.

idk the guy has published multiple books and will seemingly send anyone a review copy. it doesn’t seem like CA makes any money other than through subscriptions to its print edition. and it runs no ads

it's definitely parent money

same with jacobin tbh

whose parents fund jacobin??

I would read a group blog by the parents of celebrity internet leftists

bhaskar sunkara’s parents immigrated to america from trinidad in 1988, i’m not sure they’re wealthy? doesn’t sound like it from this new left review interview

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii90/articles/bhaskar-sunkara-project-jacobin

My parents had come to the us from Trinidad about a year before I was born. My mother’s family, originally indentured labourers from Punjab and Bihar, had been on the island since the 19th century, but my father had arrived there from Andhra Pradesh as a young man, training as a doctor. In the us, though, his medical qualifications didn’t count for anything, so he became a clerical worker; my mother worked as a telemarketer. So I had a typical immigrant lower-middle class background. We were some of the least wealthy people in the particular town in Westchester County where I went to school, but it was a pretty affluent suburb.

jacobin started as mostly print and at least at one point had p significant subscription base. they publish books with verso. current affairs started out as just his personal blog but right out the gate he was printing thousands of copies of books

hmm, i had just assumed. like jacobin seems to have a lot of money and like he also funds a journal that doesn't seem like it would make much money but originally had bob brenner as editor

i do apologize for my assumptions being shitty sometimes. i have lived in vancouver too long, everyone's parents have money here haha

to be fair to nathan robinson current affairs is clearly funded by his parents' money, doesnt make money, and the employees trying to turn it into a "workers coop" essentially were trying to dip into his trust fund

"labour is entitled to all that it creates" doesnt work when the funding comes from mum and dad and you arent making a profit

“You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,but still like air I’ll rise.”

Dr. Natey J https://t.co/pGOpo5yrI2 pic.twitter.com/nto5gDhhtf

— deng joeping (@sloweboi) August 18, 2021

"the employees trying to turn it into a "workers coop" essentially were trying to dip into his trust fund"

wait is this supposed to sound like a bad thing?

and what's the relevance of sunkara's background here, does it make him any less of a capitalist

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/09/i-support-unions-just-not-this-one

xp. the relevance is that it contradicts a statement i made about him

"the employees trying to turn it into a "workers coop" essentially were trying to dip into his trust fund"

wait is this supposed to sound like a bad thing?

not necessarily a bad thing but not a "workers cooperative" in any meaningful sense

This is not a good statement, and I’m pessimistic that Robinson will ever understand why https://t.co/0IAFO1752b

— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) August 18, 2021

and what's the relevance of sunkara's background here, does it make him any less of a capitalist

― Left, Wednesday, August 18, 2021 6:33 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

why is he a capitalist? because he runs a magazine company?

yes

"labour is entitled to all that it creates" doesnt work when the funding comes from mum and dad and you arent making a profit

True, but tons of companies don't make a profit. I've never worked for a company that makes a profit

I hadn’t seen the pro-NJR takes on twitter until just now but wow, these things really do bring out just how much contempt so many of these “class-first” types have for the idea of taking class seriously (as, you know, class, instead of as some kind of dogwhistle). a truly fascinating and understudied phenomenon - the usual complaints about class-reductionism seem to miss the mark entirely in that regard

(afaik NJR hasn’t been as deeply into that stuff as some of his defenders are, but it might be his best career option now - has he been on tucker yet?)

why is he a capitalist? because he runs a magazine company?

― flopson, Thursday, August 19, 2021 1:33 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes

― Left, Thursday, August 19, 2021 5:23 AM (two hours ago)

I don't have any inside information about its financial structure, but afaict the magazine is funded by the Jacobin Foundation which is a 501c nonprofit

https://paydayreport.com/jacobin-publisher-accused-of-reneging-on-wage-deal-in-takeover-of-british-magazine-the-tribune/

interesting, I hadn't heard about that

tbh the economics of publishing are so always already fucked that genuinely committed socialists should keep a wide berth

what do these people stand for exactly

pic.twitter.com/L1QcR26Vdt

— All Cats Are Beautiful (@acatonmydesk) August 19, 2021

do they still call themselves socialists at this point because this is like socialism 101 they’re wilfully shitting all over

Yeah, it's a cliche I resist, but I really sometimes don't get what they are actually for, so many of their shows are just like "you idiots, we're fucked"

They are all rich guys

cool how you can just buy yourself these little micro cults of personality on the left for such nice returns

there is some furore now over a bunch of “left wing influencers” from the next generation who i’d never heard of turning out to be super rich capitalists and they have loads of young stans defending their wealth as being necessary for spreading socialism while using all the familar lefty memes and what about engels and so on. I thought the kids were OK and now I’m just sad

never think that the 'kids are okay'. fatal mistake

Is there are a furor or have you just wound up in a dark corner of Twitter?

I don’t really know much about these ppl or their personal lives or finances but I get the vibe that most are socdem/radlib at heart. but hey I guess that’s better than a bunch of 35 year old Reaganite psychopaths (which, let’s be real, has been pretty much everyone Dems included for my entire life) making every single cultural product and running every facet of our lives

nb I’m also a “rich” socdem so maybe I’m not to be listened to

if “the kids” have a healthy mistrust of corporations and billionaires that their idiotic parents never seemed to manage then that’s… something?

Their finances are pretty public, they take in 1.9 million a year on Patreon and that's not counting live events, books, other podcast they are doing

i'm not sure they even exist politically when bernie isn't running, they seem to abandon any sort of passion for socialist organizing in favor of movie reviews and reacting to dumb twitter shit. they're entertainers making content for their audience and their audience doesn't mind if they just do that all the time.

if i'm being extra cynical, their corner of "left" twitter has been dominated by glib doomers who stopped believing a better world was possible and i guess they'd rather appeal to the cool kids than the DSA dorks

neither the chapo guys nor the jacobin guy are that rich. if you’re gonna catch cooties from successful leftist media people becoming “capitalists” you should raise the threshold imo. based on the number m@tt gave above the chapo guys each make about as much as a mid-career physician

anyways i always thought part of the appeal of chapo was the relatability of the dirtbag louche persona, a podcast by the haranguing bores who quote tweet them disapprovingly or some earnest leftist organizer would be bad

They should stick to doing movie recaps with Gangsta Boo and reading series anyway, they're actually good at that. They're pretty bad when it's time for an interview that should go to one of the aforementioned earnest leftist organizers.

The lesson of the Daily Show should be to not mistake your funny show for serious political action but I don't foresee them doing a Rally to Restore Sanity.

it's not about capitalist cooties it just becomes increasingly apparent that some people have different interests than the bulk of whatever movements they attach themselves to to build their brands

and that they can constitute part of the "elite capture" of these movements

m@tt gave above the chapo guys each make about as much as a mid-career physician

So...rich

Also they literally work probably like 6 hours a week