Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

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

but how many lives do they save

I was about to start a post with “I’m about as pro-union as it gets, but”

then stopped myself and laughed a little

lefties moving onto the newest controversy - Hasan Piker buying a house

I doubt any of these people, who afaict generally have “good” politics, make even a thiertieth of what a Rachel Maddow (who has very bad politics) or a Thomas Friedman (atrocious) make.

It sucks, but certainly isn’t surprising that people who are critical of empire, natsec buffoonery, and capitalism (even the ridiculous “woke” versions of each that are very in vogue rn) will never ever get a megaphone on cable news or the op ed page of the Times or Post. Possibly the demand really isn’t there and these niche audiences have topped out. But I really dngaf if these slackers make some $$$.

and honestly I’d bet the Citations Needed or QAA guys work harder than any of the on-air talent at MSNBC

lol yeah maybe(?) that Hassan dudes makes real money. which, fucking lol. and good. wgaf.

*Hasan dude

because owning capital obviously changes people's political never mind fuck it

Wait does owning 50% of my condo (which is my only home) make me a capitalist. shit.

aiui, it depends how you want to define it. A narrow definition would say no: you're only a capitalist if you purchase someone else's labor power in order to accrue surplus value. However, you could also define "capital" as any commodity you purchase that increases in value, which generally does apply to property such as condos, in which case yes: you are a capitalist in the sense that you are an owner of capital.

a more interesting question is how your interests might differ from those who own nothing, those who own 100%, those who own multiple condos, etc

capitalist isn't (necessarily) an insult in this case, it's not "this makes you a bad person" it's just that (relations to) material things like this are more politically relevant than what political label you identify with, what aesthetic you find most appealing, etc

i don't mean to be overly deterministic here, people don't always follow what their interests should be according to some theory, but it's not irrelevant

xp - If there's one thing the last 18 months should put an end to, it's the idea that most people act according to their interests.

I don't even think it's bad they make money. Or that homeownership means you should be beheaded or whatever. I just think that it's not a coincidence if they slip out of left politics into sort quippy fucking around nihilism a lot of the times it's because most of the shit they are talking about only matters in theory to them, they are wealthy and generally get to do whatever the fuck they want to do with their time. so i'm not saying they don't believe in things but a lot of those things don't seriously impact them on a day to day basis.

(also for flopson - the average american household income is $61,000 a year)

That's the median, right? The mean seems to be* at least 10 grand higher.

*after 2 minutes on wikipedia lol

dunno actually seems like a distinction w/o a difference in the context of this convo

I think there are times when it’s worth debating how these left-wing principles should apply to specific small movements - like, the thing with Morales’s mayoral campaign imploding over their staff trying to unionize, which brought up the legitimate point of, what is this potential union going to do for a campaign that hasn’t even gotten through the primary, and will exist for 6 months at best? Should the practical concerns about winning an election in the first place be subservient to the principle that unions should be supported at all costs?

I think the Current Affairs takes are more reflective of Nathan J Robinson being a fundamentally ridiculous person and some people deciding that “actually the little fancylad is right” is a funny take to have.

Hasan being a large house and actually filling it with people is good, hopefully they’ll all take turns running the stream so he doesn’t go insane as the leftist schoolbus driver/camp counselor/Brand from the Goonies for thousands of Gen Zed kids for 16 hours a day.

Good interview with Matt that covers both Hell of Presidents-type history but also talking about how they do view the show as entertainment

https://soundcloud.com/upstreampodcast/matt-christman-of-chapo-trap-house-in-conversation

capitalist isn't (necessarily) an insult in this case, it's not "this makes you a bad person" it's just that (relations to) material things like this are more politically relevant than what political label you identify with, what aesthetic you find most appealing, etc

Acting according to your relations to material things when you know this damages a majority of ppl p much does make you a bad person tho?

i mean maybe but my point wasn't supposed to be a moral one, i was trying to avoid that kind of thing

pretty much anyone who is part of the global north could be accused of this though, to varying degrees. are they/we all bad people? i don't know but i also don't find it a very interesting or useful question here. the moral angle feels like a different thing than the structural/material one to me

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