Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

it’s in the subscriber feed

See also the black wolf feed subreddit

thx

lol Peterson/Zizek is a $15 PPV.

Jesus. Fuck that.

Very happy no to be on twitter anymore so I'm no hearing all about that fucken garbage

if I wasn’t about to head out I’d find the pirate feed because

he's stammering about "the crazy idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat" that somehow peterson "stumbled across" - he's started to make that dry mouth lip smacking sound and im thinking its possible he is gonna faint

— 6X Debate Champ (@gunsmoslem) April 20, 2019

My friend who's at the debate claimed he could make out Matt's chuckle

who won?

hegel

still the champ!!

Nathan J Robinson... OTM

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4j4KeMVUAEjmP0.jpg

yup

If we’re making a list of embarrassments to the left I think Robinson would rank quite a bit higher than Zizek.

makes u think

I like Robinson but I think he's a little too summarily dismissive of Zizek in that excerpt (though I'm hardly a superfan myself). Has he written one of his 15k word takedowns on him yet?

wait for it

why is Zizek an "embarrassment"

refuses to stop dressing so sexily despite being 70 years old iirc

we all know he's sexual dynamite, but what about his praxis? I saw more criticisms of him than I expected last night, some even said he was barely better than Peterson, which seems insane to me. why do some leftists dislike Zizek?

Old Zizek was pretty good, but he has done a lot of embarrassing things, and he has mostly been repeating himself for the last decade?
The stupidest story I've heard about him was the time he was asked to write an essay on Avatar, and wrote a pretty good essay, so could that this company wanted to anthologize it, but when they asked Zizek he told them he'd rather write a new one, as he'd actually seen the film now, and had a lot of new thoughts on it...

but he has done a lot of embarrassing things,

like what?

Like writing about films he hasn't seen, repeating himself, writing complete nonsense about Trump, being a troll about Stalinism, etc. Also, he has the worst taste in movies in the world. He had Pirates of the Caribean 3 on his Sight & Sounds list, iirc.

I don't care about his taste in movies. what's the Trump nonsense and Stalin trolling

and yea obv writing about a movie you haven't seen is journalistic malpractice, but in what universe is he like JP

the only Stalin trolling I'm aware of is his keeping a portrait of him in his apartment to be edgy

Pretty terrible on open borders, Islam and the Roma. Flirts with pretty unseemly ideas just because it'll own the libs - think he even wrote an article against punching nazis just because he saw majority opinion went the other way.

Zizek said he would vote for Trump in 2016, because Clinton was 'the true danger'. His stalinist trolling is stuff like in his book on violence, where he makes fun of Russian émigrés who didn't think they had did anything wrong, which is ok, but then in a footnote underlines that he agrees with anything that happened to them, which is a bit much. I read a lot of his books back when I was younger, but a lot of them are collections of the same anecdotes. That fucking wheel-barrow, I get it. But when he gets a good idea, like the contrast between 'passive' and 'active' violence in On Violence, or his focus on why Kieslowski wanted to get away from documentary realism in The Fright of Real Tears, he is very good. And then the next ten pages will be that wheel-barrow anecdote all over again.

Oh, lol, no, forgot, the reason I read so much Zizek was because I took a course called 'The Hysterics Guide to Pixar', where we mostly read Zizek's explanations of Lacan - because, believe it or not, they are more coherently written... - and then saw a new Pixar film each week. You'll never get what the rat symbolizes in Ratatouille.

Virigl's intro to the latest was hilarious.

imagine spending your entire career claiming chaos is feminine and then meeting slavoj zizek

— sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) April 21, 2019

If you can’t see the scam these centrist Warren boosters are running you’re a farm-fresh rube and I’ve got some prime Florida swampland to sell you. https://t.co/gZLWkU9UgL

— Matt Christman (@cushbomb) April 23, 2019

his dumbness is boundless

also Bernie.. did answer it?

What Democratic socialism means to me is we expand Medicare, we provide educational opportunity to all Americans, we rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. In other words, the government serves the needs of all people rather than just wealthy campaign contributors. That’s what it means to me

Yeah, nobody in their right mind could think a woman is smarter than St Bernie. Must be a scam.

Also, come on, Ezra is right. He went directly to the talking points:

I happen to believe that in the United States there is something fundamentally wrong when we have three families owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society, 160 million people. Something wrong when the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 92 percent. Something very wrong when 49 percent of all new income today is going to the top 1 percent.

And something is equally wrong when we have a corrupt political system made even worse by this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision which allows billionaires to spend unlimited sums of money to elect candidates who represent the wealthy and the powerful.

So answer number one, to your question. This is a radical idea. Maybe not everybody agrees. But I happen to believe we should have a government that represents working families and not just the 1 percent and powerful corporations. All right? That's point number one.

Etc.

And, btw, that is why he will win easily over Trump, I think.

Bernie is Trump's kryptonite, his messaging is concise and effective, and his consistency a strength too. He's good at keeping the focus where he wants it (as we've seen, forcing even establishment democrats to pay lip service to his platform). He's entirely predictable, and thats a strength

Yeah, in an election context, that's a strength.

ennhhh I'm sure Matt is right that there's a class of canny centrists who are happy to have Warren around not for the policies she supports (which they abhor or don't care about) but as a policy-wonk cudgel to beat Bernie with / divide the left flank. whether Ezra is one of those or not would require a knowledge of Ezra's inner life I don't care to have.

also Bernie's answer was fine/typically on-message but the question was another lame gotcha variant on "Venezuela!!" in that a serious, thorough answer would require a significantly longer discussion the asker is never, ever interested in actually having

ennhhh but I'm also sure there's a class of sexist leftists who just can't stand the idea of a woman being better at policy than a man. whether Matt is one of those or not would require a knowledge of Matt's inner life I don't care to have. And also arguments like these are useless.

AFAICT the Chapos (except Amber, lol) don't have anything against Warren. they certainly haven't spent 20+ minutes tearing apart her record like they have w. Biden, Harris, Beto, Klobuchar, etc

I think that tweet is dumb but Will said on the show there's Bernie...Warren, a grand canyon sized gap and everyone else

also I was *sure* the Harvard Centrists Society was a joke left twitter came up with but apparently not

I'm also sure there's a class of sexist leftists who just can't stand the idea of a woman being better at policy than a man.

yes, they do the "Red Scare" pod if you wanna check it out

yup

Matt also looked askance at this one

Yes! @ewarren has been setting the pace for serious progressive proposals. Everyone else is either following or insisting on things that have no chance of actually happening (cough Sanders cough). https://t.co/v8dEUd0YcA

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) April 24, 2019

again, liking Warren better than Sanders is a more than defensible position, but I don't get Krugman's line here at all, especially in the absence of the mass movement EW has yet to build. her proposals are just as (in some cases more!) radical; those who oppose her reforms won't care how reasoned-out they are

"Warren has been more serious about policy" is a reasonable (and I think broadly correct) take; "Warren is proposing things we can actually do vs. Sanders' cRaZy talk!" isn't

Well, at least some of it can be done by executive orders, but yeah, stuff like the numbers in Warrens free college plan adding up a bit better than in Sanders doesn't mean any of it will happen.

the delusion is that, as Simon says, pundits want to act like the GOP isn't some warped white power death cult bent on destroying the social safety net

they opposed Obama's lukewarm remix of Mitt Romney's healthcare plan like it was literally imposing Soviet rule, it's not like presenting facts and figures matters to them

I think Warren is doing an excellent job and she's my number one by far

Amber screenshotted a diatribe from Red Scare Anna for Instagram stories this week and it was like a half step off of Jordan Peterson in assessing relationships between men and women. The continued existence of Red Scare confuses me.

when contrarianism and lib-dunking goes wrong, basically

some economist at harvard policy school tweeted his ranked list of candidates and had Liz at number 1 and Bernie at 8 (lowest), when i said ‘your #8 is most similar to your #1 on policy, thought that would be a more salient dimension to you’ he replied ‘I find Warren more thoughtful about most policy issues, agree with her more on the balance between regulation and free markets, and think her record of accomplishments is more compelling (CFPB, for example). Also, less cagey about tax returns.’