this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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There's no alternative to Hasan right now in the left online space. Look at the top streamers on election day. They're all right-wing except for him. We're going to have to start with people like him, AOC, or Bernie if we want to move the needle in this country. Organizing 20 people in your local communist book club doesn't matter if your movement is constantly demonized in the media and never grows. I don't think some in the left seem to understand how important propaganda is, and yes, even online. Even Lenin worked on newspapers.
Not saying he's anything close to Lenin, but no one else is in the position to step up right now. It's going to take someone with enough money to not have to rely on mainstream media companies to say the shit he does, and the aesthetic to reach the Gen Z people and normies all the other guys are reaching. Other people can't afford to be kicked out of the DNC for talking to Palestine protestors like he was. Right now the only people I can think of on the left with any outreach are a couple niche podcasters and academics doing a couple YouTube vids.
Fun fact I watched Hasan's election day stream so keep that in mind as you read my reply!
The beginning of this argument reeks of "there is no alternative to capitalism". We do not have to accept things simply because there is no "better" popular alternative. This is the argument that Democrats use to bully and denigrate voters.
Firstly, Lenin and Hasan are worlds apart. Lenin's propaganda was hard theory. Hasan is vague "I want things to be better". Lenin never shied away from putting his chips down on the table in tough intra-left questions. Hasan doesn't even address any tough intra-left questions, he's not even at that level. Lenin literally lead the 1905 Revolution after being out of prison for 5 years. Hasan has been posting for more than 5 years and hasn't really moved the political needle in this country appreciably.
Hasan is the Jon Stewart of anyone that's left of "progressives". The same non-ideological criticisms of Stewart apply directly to Hasan. Jon Stewart hasn't done very much to move that needle either. Popular entertainment is important to have people be open to ideas, but it does not equal political activity. Hasan is actually worse than Jon Stewart in this regard because Hasan hasn't even made his own brand of political rally unlike the lib Jon Stewart.
Organizing history in the US shows you don't even need propaganda, you just need to meet people where their at and talk to them about what their problems are. "Winning Gen Z" is such a Democrat beltway insider tactic that's consistently a loser. Charging those with the least experience in the world to change it is quite literally the best way to fail, it's not a surprise that "youngism" has been the call of the Democratic party on the ground despite having a gerontocracy that controls the party. There is simply no real durable through line from Hasan to making socialism. He's just a guy people watch.
There is no theory of change or path to power here. You have literally foreclosed that yourself by pointing this out. Hasan is an entertainer, and he softens views but it literally does not translate into power because in our system the left is structurally disenfranchised.
Hasan does not address this. It's simply hand waved away.
To put this another way, we don't have a democracy. There has been consistent popular overwhelming majority grass root support for many social welfare programs in the US over the last 30 years, M4A, rescheduling marijuana, etc.
This doesn't translate into change, because of the structures of our system. Hasan could make 66% of the country believe n socialism overnight and nothing would change because the theory of change that underpins that assumption is wrong about the structures of the US government.
It's the same problem that Bernie had. His theory of change did not account for the reality of the political structure. Which is why both of his campaigns failed. There was no answer to that, it was simply hoping for the best and ignoring the possibility of the worst rather than having a contingency for it.
For all the hate that you get for people like Jon Stewart or Voldomir Zelenskyy they are literally the logical ends that Hasan can rise to. That's pretty much it, and in reality anyone who actually knows Ukranian politics knows that Zelenskyy's personal political views have almost nothing to do with Zelenskyy's decisions anymore because he's so structurally compromised by the Ukranian political arrangement and the geopolitcal arrangement that you could replace him with a random off the street and more or less the same outcomes would occur. So President Hasan would be as libbed up as possible.
Hasan is a great entertainer and but he trafficks in the most basic understandings of shit, that's what makes him a great entertainer. There's nothing happening outside of the basics. The idea that "if only people knew" is not powerful in reality, because people know, people feel it, that's the whole argument of Marxism the sociological philosophy. In this day and age everyone has the tools and materials to educate themselves for this stuff. It's not the 20th century where you have to figure out how to get your hands on printed materials of Marx or whoever. This shit is freely available at marxists.org, libcom.org, Wikipedia, etc. The amount of people that go through that is minuscule compared to the amount that watch a Hasan stream.
Hasan is the perfect example of Wittigenstien's Ladder, because the type of person who becomes a "big boy socialist" through Hasan effectively would agree with criticisms of Hasan despite liking him. Once you start to do actual organizing and actual mutual aid you see how fake the online shit is. The majority of his audience are more involved with his beef with H3 than they are involved with actually doing good works.
It's great that people's personal journey to leftist organizing might have started with Hasan, but that's a small percentage of the people in his orbit. Hasan himself would be leery of claiming to be some great leftist guy, his party line is the same as ChapoTrapHouse, this isn't news, this isn't organizing, this isn't leftism, this isn't real, this is entertainment.
A lot of the defensiveness in this thread is literally based on the personal and not the systemic, it's incredibly parasocial and incredibly toxic to the growth of the people who are putting themselves in that position. For many Hasan's worth is a mirror of their own worth, that's what parasocial relationships are.
For reference, I don't watch him much at all so you probably know the specifics of his flaws better than me. However, I know people who have who weren't leftist before, and I appreciate that he's brought them into the tent and that he says things that they haven't heard other people say before. We still have tons of room for other people more left of him or more knowledgeable of theory than he is, but he's still a great intro to the leftist pipeline, or maybe a mid-point after like Jon Stewart or Jon Oliver, and I won't begrudge him that role. It's someone else's job to step up and be that next step. I won't blame Hasan that someone isn't more popular and more knowledgeable on theory. Maybe it's not his specialty, and that's fine.
Like for me, I started going left with Bernie, and now consider myself more left than him, but I still appreciate the role Sanders had in my life. Now, he's never going to say any theory and he's always going to shepherd people back into the capitalist system of the Democratic party. But, I won't hate him because he didn't travel left with me, I just shrug and say he did his job, and I appreciate his contributions. In other words, I don't think the world is better without his existing. Or taking the example of Lenin, he popped up during a sizable, albeit partly exiled, socialist movement in Russia, but still, he built on their work, their philosophies, their organizing, their clubs, with their students, their newspapers, etc. He surpassed many of them in terms of turning theory into action, argued with some vehemently, but it's not like they didn't contribute to the movement in the long run.
Hasan doesn't need to make that last step to power imo. He's doing his job where he is, helping ease some people out of the red scare mentality of the most propagandized nation on earth. Let's be honest, even if he couldn't lead some movement after making 60% of the country believe in socialism, it would be a lot easier for someone else to do so with that support. And that starts with entertainment and culture. Was it Gramsci who had the theory on the structure and super structure that effect each other? I think that's definitely true. There's a reason the US is willing to give movies free money for propaganda or let them use their vehicles. It enforces the cultural hegemony that will have to be broken, or at least chipped away.
People feel something is wrong, sure, but that can lead them to fascism as much as Marxism. And they're not going to read those books you mentioned because people are terrified to read those books or hear those ideas in the US, yet entertainment provides an acceptable way to be exposed to those ideas. People are identifying the wrong solutions or sources of those problems all the time, that's why Trump was elected.
I don't think all the push back is all parasocial, i just think some is that you're under valuing the power of culture and entertainment. The right has a pipeline that's working pretty damn well to slowly convert people from neocons to fascism, and it often starts with talking about their entertainment or being in the guise of entertainment itself (like with comedians, like Rogan, Crowder, etc). There's no reason the left can't have a similar path made up of multiple creators and media personalities, each on a step along the path. I think some are just critical of Hasan because he's the only one right now and no one else is picking up the slack, but I don't think that's his fault.
I think "Hasan exposes people to leftist ideas" is great and all, but your argument has the following lynch pin:
This has a couple of parts we need to inspect:
The Right has it easy. It's why they can be boring, lazy, stupid and evil. They have it easy because not only are they the status-quo, but their arguments have big salacious things they can point to. Capitalism exists, the US Empire exists, and people's suffering exist. The right doesn't actually need people to continue it's project in the same way the left needs people. The Right can sustain itself on morons running into walls until the whole system collapses under its own weight. There is a pinprick of sunlight between your average neocon and your average fascist. Hell there's only a 4ft window of sunlight between a liberal and a fascist. The last 2 libs that ran were hard to distinguish from fascists if you understand fascism (most people only understand the aesthetics of fascism and only in particular contexts). Fascism is easy because it's the logical ends of an already existing system of capitalism. All you have to do is give the morons something to do and let the system run, that's why culture war is great for the right. Fascism more or less exists as a real and in-power political force in most of the Western World.
The Left needs people to build an alternative, something that doesn't exist, something that works for everyone, something intelligent and intelligible. The only way to do this is to be armed with the knowledge of the past, cognizant enough to understand the landscape of the present, have enough foresight to visualize the future, planing capacity to deal with the logistics, and the resources to put it into motion.
"Roganism" will never deliver these things. In fact "Roganism" will simply get you a bunch of consumers. The only way that "Roganism" will prevail for the left is if we are already at war and we simply need bodies to take orders and to pull triggers.
Now Hasan isn't really responsible for any of this, he's an entertainer. He's a good entertainer, he has okay politics. But that's it, there's no there there beyond that.
Hasan makes $1.4 million a year about probably more now. If we pretend that everyone paying for that is "the left", we're doing the same type of spending as we criticize the DNC for. Hasan is our Beyonce concert, our Oprah interview, it's just spread out over the whole year. That didn't work for the Democrats. Meanwhile the Democrats also have it easy. 90% of what they want literally just exists as is. They can be losers forever if they wanted to, and they do.
The Democrats might be missing a "message" or "policy" or any desire to help people in any realistic way that isn't a spreadsheet, and it's stupid that they paid for Beyonce thinking it will get them over the line. Leftists don't have a unified platform and don't even have a machine, but it's smart that we "pay" for Hasan? That's really the argument that I'm reading from all this:
It's the same argument:
I think one thing a lot of Westerners don't want to understand is that socialism necessitates the death of American media culture. That includes the Hasan path, because what is Hasan under socialism? The US overproduces media culture to the point where it's gig work, because of the same exact reason that "Roganism" works. Hasan's path under socialism is to either go back to an organization where he will be subjected to the same if not worse circumscription he had at TYT, pick another career or at best be the last of a dying breed. No socialist economy is actually going to be able to support the ecology of streamers needed to generate Hasans. Hasan likes what he does, when push comes to shove is he going to give it up for socialism? It's really easy to say that, it's another thing to actually do it. Given his personal consumption and what he talks about, I have my doubts that Hasan is going to tighten the Gucci belt for us.
A lot of Western socialists assume that the desired individualized labor mix of the population is a realistic goal. The idea that everyone does what they want to do is not real. Yes people will still want to do certain necessary jobs, but that doesn't mean enough people will want to do them to ensure social reproduction. We can talk about robots and magical maguffins till the cows come home, but in practice until those maguffins are created and function good enough humans will still have to do those jobs.
Well, I've heard that he at least encourages people to go on beyond him and read things or organize IRL, so I think that's already a marked differentiator from the Democrats, who just encourage you to vote for them, and they'll have all the answers. I see people like him as like the state under communism. Useful up to a point, and then they can do something else. Until that time, critical support to leftist streamers and class traitors lol.
But, since my only personal experience is with people who have come from Hasan and I haven't really listened to him much myself, it makes it hard to agree or disagree, so I'll leave it there.
But I will say, your writing is a pleasure to read 😂
Actually laughed out loud at this, well done. You're an excellent writer. This encapsulates the 24 election so perfectly 😭
I agree. Whether I agree with them or not, they really have a way with words. The imagery of the right running their mindless subjects into a wall put a smile on my face lol.