Apologies in advance for further inundating everybody’s headspace with celebrity slop, but I wanted to blab about this:
I generally have no faith in public personalities to hold any convictions at all, so it has been refreshing for Hasan to adhere to his position against voting for Gruesome Newscum. I don’t at all mean to imply that he’s perfect, or that people should look to him as a leader in any respect, it’s just nice to see something like that happening and getting broad exposure. Feels good.
In 2040 he will finally see the value in the immortal science and we will achieve communism within a year.
I know this is a joke, but he is literally the face of “chinamaxxing” in the US and fully believes in the immortal science. He also recognizes his position as someone who has the largest left of liberal platform in the US and intends to preserve it while offering clear outlets to his left (such as “no, there is no reason to commit to voting for Gavin newsom 2 years ahead of the election cycle” as a veryyy basic starting point).
He does get stuck in “there is no alternative to the democrats and I can’t even imagine one”-land though, that’s the biggest flaw. Even in that case its along the lines of “even if I’m stuck with them, I don’t need to be nice to them or promote them uncritically”. For those wondering, he has also offered criticism of Zohran on stream as well for many of the things you see on Hexbear, although he is less incisive with it.
I am offering this not as a “Stan” or anything, but to inform others who (rightfully) ignore streamer content but may be curious about where a prominent American socialist media figure stands.
I don’t think he believes in the immortal science but he does adhere to defending AES (and the global south in general) and that is better than like 80% of Western leftists. He’s about as good as you could expect from a streamer with any significant following.
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He is not a Leninist theoretician, he is a Lenin hypebeast.
He tells democrats (who would otherwise reject him if he advocated for nonparticipation in bourgeois elections) that you can still vote for “the lesser evil” while understanding that Marxism and overthrowing the bourgeois state is the only path forward if they want to achieve their goals.
His whole schtick is torturing ML thought into something disillusioned Bernie fans can accept, knowing that many of these people will eventually seek real ML theory once their anti-communist programming has been reversed. You cannot accept Lenin’s theoretical contributions until you have accepted that Lenin is someone worth listening to.
He is the direct counterpart to the fascists that are “just asking questions” in order to lead you to their desired conclusion that ethnic cleansing is in fact very cool and absolutely necessary. These are the most effective fascists precisely because they don’t open with “Nazi Germany was based, and the holocaust was righteous” while reciting Adolf Hitlerisms. Doing roman salutes on stream hinders their ability to pass along their audience to the guy who is openly sieg heiling.
I thought I had deleted it quickly enough because I realized how tedious it would be to argue about this.
This was not Lenin’s position, and it’s the same bullshit false dichotomy I’ve seen him bring up before (Marxist icon Contra also did this). Lenin very explicitly argued against the main socialist faction that held this position (the Otzovists), maintaining that the vanguard must do both legal and illegal work, with running as a distinct communist party being an element of the legal work.
I would also say that he is torturing ML thought, but the problem is that there is no building a socialist movement on false pretenses, and I have repeatedly seen the contempt with which he treats people representing the actual revolutionary nature of Marxism. You can see in his chat in any such instance that he has trained his community very well to go “based” “chad” at whatever image of select revolutionaries but to reject the substance of their thought and call people with a basic understanding “ultras.”
Using quote-mining to misrepresent Lenin while sneering at his actual positions is not the way to accomplish this. There are many things that you can do, of which probably the easiest pitch is to simply explain in plain English some of theoretical basis of Marxist political philosophy, which I know sounds scary because I used big words at the same time as talking about popular communication, but you can explain to any functionally-illiterate high school dropout what (for example) class antagonism is and why it is irreconcilable, I’m just counting on not needing to use small words in order to mention it to you in order to demonstrate this point. Nonetheless, I will if you need me to.
Disillusionment is an incredibly valuable thing, and he should be exploiting it by deepening the disillusionment rather than being slightly to the left of the other berniecrats while continuing to punch left.
Not claiming this, just voicing what I think Hasan is trying to do. Obviously, Hasan is not well read on Lenin.
Right, but is Hasan actually involved with building any sort of socialist movement? No serious Marxist claims him as a thought leader, nor is he trying to lead a vanguard party. He’s essentially talking out his ass while trying to kill off common brainworms about Marxism that didn’t exist in earlier revolutionaries’ times.
He’s conditioning people’s first reaction upon seeing references to Marxist leaders to be “hell yeah!” Unsure if that was supposed to be an example of contempt, but I wouldn’t call it that, maybe disregard or ignorance. I would not characterize him as training people to reject the substance of Marxist thought, given he tells people to read theory all the time (despite not having done so himself)
My point is that even empty, positive references to Lenin, AES countries, etc. are net beneficial because his value does not come from education, it comes from debunking obvious slander and destigmatizing Marxist words, countries, leaders.
Trust me, you and I both wish he would present actual theory on stream. Despite my defense of him, I do not think his streams are good place to go for serious political education, but that is very much not his audience. His audience wants to casually consume the news with leftish commentary and humor.
I think this is where our fundamental disagreement comes from. You are looking for him to be more serious, but that is not what his audience is there for. Hasan’s streams are entertainment, and he is closer to Bill Burr or Dan Carlin than even the Citations Needed guys, let alone any real leader. As far as entertainment goes, I cannot find any contemporary figure that has a more positive impact given how much he has done to destigmatize AES and Marxism.
You seem to evaluate him as if he intends to be as serious as you want him to be, which I think lends itself to seeing him in an uncharitable light. His job is to make the masses more receptive to us. Our job is to educate. His popularity is doing us a huge favor.
Is this a jab at me? No need to insult me because I don’t think a twitch streamer is the heir apparent to Lenin.