I can give you my two cents. Currently, there aren't many left leaning pundits, and I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. His privilege means nothing if he's actually being a good progressive advocate. Also, he's actually talking about the things the left populace actually care about. Controlled opposition wouldn't look like him to me. They'd be more like the Democrat party, trying to copitulate with the right. He's been fairly consistent with his messaging of workers rights, lgbtq rights, womens rights, and the atrocities happening in Gaza. His income from streaming is incidental, and isn't a problem in and of itself. In fact, it lets him be independent and not beholden to corporate media. It's hard enough to afford bills working a regular job. The vast majority of regular jobs take all your time, leaving none for anything else, much less being a left leaning advocate online. I'm assuming you'd rather a full-time employee take his place, but how would someone like that be able to be effective in their advocacy?
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this is hard as fuck holy
Also, class is not defined by wealth, but by relation to labor. He is doing the work he is getting paid for, regardless of whether someone thinks its too much. He's not exploiting others to make that money as far as I know.
Exactly!
Is this a "no true Scotsman" thing where only poor people with a blue collar work history are worthy of being listened to?
Hasan occupies a niche within the broad "leftist" umbrella niche within the West. Unlike many breadtubers, he actually doesn't serve as much of a barrier for further leftist movement (see: Vaush, Destiny, etc.). He is privledged, but so was Engels. Hasan certainly is no Engels, but he does serve a useful role in radicalizing liberals towards the Left, like how he vocally combats the nonsense usage of the word "tankie" trendy among liberals these days.
Hasan is a pundit at the end of the day, and isn't bringing about the revolution, and he is definitely more of a USophile than he should be, but he is better than most leftist commentators and helps serve as a conveyor to the left of himself.
I think you have an extremely online view of "leftist political spaces" because I have never even heard this guy's name mentioned in any real life context, and I've been a very politically active communist since I was a teenager.
Yeah the problem with living in capitalist hellworld at the heart of the empire is that you have two separated insular communities of leftists that are knife fighting rings. One in meetings and one on message boards, and they frequently know nothing about each other.
While the meetings communists sometimes eke out wins like Kshama Sawant, they often struggle to connect to the message board communists who really should be their base. Meanwhile both struggle to connect to society at large.
What's really funny is that most meetings communists I know locally essentially think of him in essentially the same way message board communists think of AOC. Most meetings communists cannot stand his level of yadda yadda when pressed on any specifics he often just goes more general and says things like 'I just want everyone to have healthcare bro'.
I understand where you're coming from, honestly. But I think this is a sort of trauma response on our end (myself included) at this point. I'm not trying to pin mental illnesses on you, I'm nowhere near a licensed head doctor of any kind, I'm saying that we've been kicked and abused so much by the rich, that it's only natural for those of us who broke free of the brainwashing to be on high alert, at least for a while. The continued unfolding of things surely can't help this situation, either.
That being said, as long as he acts in good faith and is sincere and logical in his approach, which so far seems to be true, I'd say we should embrace his participation! As I see it, we need all the voices we can get. We're already arguing semantics amongst ourselves all day long, I think it'd be a shame to let mistrust shatter "our side" without concrete proof of malicious intent.
At the end of the day, the greatest weapon the Right has is the fact that they yell united at everyone else. Let our chorus rival theirs!
A person's class is defined by their relation to labor, not their wealth. He's not exploiting labor. I'm not sure the people claiming he's a hypocrite for having money understand anything about communist/socialist theory. Engels was famously in a very similar situation.
Plus as far as I know socialists have always been fine with class traitors who join them.
You can advocate for hungry people after eating a meal. You can advocate fornsex worker rights even if you are a virgin.
You can't tell people you are "working class" if you're rich. You can't advocate for punishing day people while pretending to be straight.
It is not complicated.
What's with the identity politics man? Does what he says makes sense or not? Don't tell me you won't listen to rich white people when they make sense because they're rich and white.
'This person's not allowed to do the right thing, because he was born wrong.'
Uh huh.
He sometimes tells his audience to log off and join an org, we get a handful of new recruits occasionally due to the guy.
So he actually is successfully moving people from being socialist sympathizers to actual socialists (you need to be part of an org to be a socialist)
That's all I really know about him, besides some people being thirsty about him.
you need to be part of an org to be a socialist
Saying shit like this makes you feel special because you can call yourself a "Real Socialist", while gatekeeping political self-identification from anyone you feel isn't as pure as you.
Telling me that I'm not a Socialist because I'm not a registered member of a Socialist organization doesn't encourage me to join any organization. It encourages me to dump you and find an actual mutual ally.
Stop saying stupid exclusionary things about your left-wing allies if you want to actually have a movement capable of change. I'll happily accept anyone who believes in Socialism as a Socialist.
In case you're actually, seriously asking and not just trolling, having privilege and success under capitalism does not disqualify a person from being a leftist. You can't really criticize a person for participating in a system where if you don't participate, you starve.
He's using his influence to organize the working class and advocate for collective action, which is the one tool workers have in the fight against their own exploitation. Even if you don't like him personally or don't think he's part of the working class, he is a very strong ally and has undeniably strengthened the movement.
Heβs using his influence to organize the working class and advocate for collective action, which is the one tool workers have in the fight against their own exploitation.
Posting and streaming (which is just video posting) is not "organizing the working class and advocating for collective action". The closest he gets to this is fundraisers, but the buck pretty much stops there.
Money is important sure, but that's not what organizing is. If fundraising is organizing than the Democratic Party should be Bolsheviks.
Going on stream to tell the people who decompress from their shitty McDonalds shifts that they should organize as they say hell yeah man and go back to the work the next day without doing anything isn't organizing, it's not advocacy, it's entertainment.
I donβt know Piker from a hole in the ground. This sure sounds like a red flag, and I think The Young Turks are hacks. Nonetheless, bourgeois class traitors are a thing, Engels & Mao being a prime examples.
Not knowing Pikerβs particulars, I can only speak at the 30,000 foot view: Western βleftistβ spaces have largely been captured by US imperialism since the end of WWII.
Embrace petty bourgeouis class traitors and don't fetishize the working class.
My partner watches him a lot and while personally dislike Hasans loud yelly bro style I've never heard an opinion from him that I disagreed with.
Imagine actually drawing the line at Hasan Piker's net worth...
- Average U.S. net worth: $1,000,000
- Hasan Piker net worth: $2,600,000
Here are your real enemies:
- Elon Musk net worth: $336,800,000,000
- Jeff Bezos net worth: $225,900,000,000
Lol this is a misuse of statistics to make it look like Hasan isn't rich. The median US net worth is roughly $200,000. That means 50% of people have less than $200k of net worth, and remember it's not real money. It means liquidating all of your assets.
Hasan makes the median net worth of an American in one month on Twitch subs alone (from the Twitch leaks where he was the 13th most paid on the site at ~$200k and that's just one of his income streams). Which means he makes the average US net worth in 5. Using just his house price as his "net worth" is laughable.
Using the Twitch leaks numbers, Hasan bought his house in 2021. Twitch leaks were about 2019-2022. If he makes $200k since 2019 (which is a low estimate because his line go up), he's made $12,000,000 off of Twitch alone. He can arguably buy 4 of that same house cash and carry.
I get it, he's a cool guy, but are we really gonna pretend here that he's living some life comparable to normal people when he's made $12 million in 5 years? He's certainly better than most of his peers (other rich people) since you could argue there's minimal direct exploitation (indirect exploitation is a whole other argument, and given that people hate nuance I'm not gonna bother to make it), but let's not pretend he's living the same type of life.
Hes good at breaking down media. Gets involved on community organizing. Does good propaganda.
People are free to like who they like and make up their own minds. Why you hating? Who made you thought police?
He's more conventionally attractive, confident, charismatic, muscular, well dressed, and less of a drama king/queen than most other leftist influencers his age, and he speaks in more Gen Z lingo/vocabulary than other left wing influencers (who are often older) with similar knowledge levels and political stances.
Oh, and he is already popular, on a platform where people love to exist in one-sided, parasocial relationships.
... Sorry if this bursts your bubble, but even most self described leftists basically operate by the same fundamental popularity / favorability dynamics that middle or high schoolers do, whether concsiously or subconsciously.
Never heard of him.
I've never listened to him for more than a few seconds. He gives me shyster vibes and I don't need a pundit to tell me everything is shit.
Because he's cool to a certain type of person and those people are vaguely leftist (just like Hasan is vaguely leftist).
That cool factor and the parasocial relationships protect him a lot in places like this where some of the more knowledgeable users will actually dunk on his sources like Ettingermentum when they do/say stupid shit. It's incredibly funny to see.
Honestly that's pretty much it.