Chatters deflated this dude in record time. Weaponizes mental illness and then immediately back peddled saying "you know that's not what I mean". Paints them as monoliths BE fans. Puts a ban out on all BE supporters in the chat for being "parasocial thinkers". Then mopes and pouts for the next 20+ minutes.
I enjoy Hasan, I like the Fear& podcast, but I also see his limitations, and it fully drives me up a wall when he starts dropping "mental illness" derogatorily. Use that college education and find some new fucking words.
Anyway, I don't know much about Graham Platner, but I love this part of his Wikipedia page:
He was pictured holding a sign reading "Free Kosovo, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Kurdistan, Tibet". When he was 18, he was quoted in the Bangor Daily News after protesting President George W. Bush and the Iraq War at an appearance by Bush at Bangor International Airport.[7]
Platner enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after graduating from high school, and served three tours in Iraq, in areas including Ramadi and Fallujah.
How do you get from "protesting the Iraq war" to "did three tours in Iraq including Fallujah"?
I get it, he's doing the populist thing, but we should be clear that populism isn't socialism by it self. If I have that wrong then maybe Donald Trump is the greatest socialist of our time.
I have more faith in Zohran coming out of the DSA then this guy coming off the oyster boat. I have a funny feeling he won't be met with the same resistance that these DSA candidates are getting hit with. At least there is a chance thr DNC turns on the DSA and forces them to rethink their strategy. There is nothing supporting this guy should he get the same treatment. I don't think he will though. I think the dems like dudes who do 5 tours as an imperial foot soldier and another as a security contractor for the State Department.
Hasan's ableism is a legitimate critism, probably his biggest flaw IMO. Even r/hasan constantly shits on him for it. I wish he wouldn't use this because I suspect its just Gamer slur he should have grown out of it and its not excusable.
I don't think you disagree with him though, he clearly states mostly the same thoughts as you do here @9:40.
He is literaly telling his chat how the online left view him and others as some revolutionary leader or movement builders when the reality is that clearly they're not and his only real hope is marginal improvements. So very clearly he is not supporting someone because they just socialists alone. Its obvious given how close he is with Bernie/AOC etc...
At the current global stage where there is no global socialist movement and the left rethoric is "multipolarity is good when global south fascists get together because they resist the US ~~even when they clearly don't~~" then he is right to say we're cooked and not just the US. There is no USSR and no real hope for any socialist movement until material conditions deteriorate a lot more.
He even concedes you can disengage from electorialism and Zohran if you want too.
The only real commentary on this video is TL;DR "he clears the Gaza genocide bar" and even though that is a low bar, its enough to give the benefit of doubt given the situation. This random guy is definitely irredeemable based on principles alone for sure, but the point here is to create pressure by having any sort of alternative political candidate against the genocide. For now the standards are low but once more and better candidates appear you'd obviously pick them over any random pro-Palestine grifter or so the logic goes.
Bernie etc are shit because they have a proven record of being shit. Is the new random guy saying marginally good things this week also shit? Yes probably, but keep in mind he is not speaking to people like us but the average person that already lost all hope. I don't particularly care about lesser evilism politics, but it is always an argument to be made.
I guess my view has a longer tail, and I'm pretty pessimistic about getting movement out of the house and the senate on the matter Gaza, given their recent votes in the DNC, that by the time we get enough individuals who will side with Gaza against Israel, it'll be far too late. I have more faith in the grass roots movements sending boats, doing work stopages at ports, and groups like Ansar Allah and maybe even Iran to create more pressure than Democrats and the US Federal Government broadly. I'm thrilled to see that something like 90% of Democratic voters support an arms embargo, but I'm also very aware that they're just going to vote for the D on the ballot. Meanwhile, we'll have "critically supported" guys like Graham Platner who are, by all accounts, "Social Imperialists" who are ready and willing to fight the next war and report to have always been against the last war, leaving us effectively where we started. I don't believe Hasan would call himself a "Leninist," so that could be where we differ. The conditions are ripe for cynical opertunism for those looking to build a political corrier, and Platner really fits the mold.
I think disengaging from electoralism is a grave mistake at this stage of development, so that's not something I'm trying to push here. I think viewing the Democratic Party as a vector for change through your engagement with electoralism is also a grave mistake. They have their fangs out for Zohran, Omar Fetah, and even liberals like David Hogg. They imploded the Sanders campaign, which was a real fork in the road for countless people like myself. It's obvious they do not want to be reformed and that they will resist it at all costs, including supporting the genocide of Palestinians. The DSA should also awaken to this reality as well, and for the long-term success of building a socialist program in America, I hope they do. I think history shows us how repulsed the Democrats are by actual reformists, and that sounds like a good contradiction to accelerate through electoralism directly and not entryism. Long term, I want to see more motion from all the major socialist parties and more direct collaberation around building a working-class party.
Specifically here, his comments read incredibly pessimistic about the nature of organizing in the country and read increadably defeatist on the matter. He is retreating to support for attempting to push the Democrats more left. I'm actually of the opposite opinion. For as liberal as the 50501 movement has been, the mobilization of Americans has been a huge opportunity for leftist organizations. Concentrating people who see the state devolving and their elected leaders motionless in response to genocide in one place makes for a good landscape for recruitment. The success of Zohran isn't signaling success in remforming the Democratic Party; it's signaling people's hunger and openness to economic populist ideals, and we can't allow the Democrats and Sanders to capture that energy and redirect it into the ground yet again. Sanders is using his prestige as king "socalist" to back a social imperialist. Maybe he's working with what he has; I'll give him that much, but Sanders doesn't need the support of the volume of eyeballs Hasan can attract; he's doing just fine. I actually think we are finding ourselves yet again in a ripe field of budding supporters of socialism, and all we need to do is shepard them away from the Democratic Oppertunists.
IDK, I'm just some dickhead killing time at work who has spent the last two months cramming Lenin into my brain. So take my opinions for what you will.
libs that weren't ready to be radicalized by what was done to Sanders are getting pretty mad about Zohran and Hogg getting it too. I doubt it's enough to prevent them voting for Newsom or driving them into the streets for some actual organizing because of how isolated and alienated everyone is.
Consider this for a moment: If you were 10 years old when the Sanders campaign was derailed by the Democrats, you're 21 now. How much does the typical American 21-year-old even know about that part of recent history? Even still, there were countless people radicalized by what happened to Burnie's campaign, and many became right-wing instead of left-wing. Those people still hold those economic populist values, and Donald Trump capitalized on that in the following years. The Trump Mamdani crossover vote is very real, and so is the Trump AOC crossover vote. There is a common denomimator here, and it is economic populism. Obviously, this is because when the economy takes a nose dive, it impacts everyone on class lines. It's pretty obvious evidence of class warfare.
I agree with this fully; however, as I said, I take a longer view on this issue. I don't expect these latent conditions to suddenly lead to voters, in mass, rejecting the Democratic candidate for president in favor of someone else. Though there is evidence that voters would simply disengage all together if Newsom is goulish enough. Engaging in electoralism isn't simply showing up and voting. Engaging in electoralism is about building a working-class party that the working class can vote for that holds party lines on working-class intrists and agitates the masses through the parties participation in the electoral system. Sanders does this, but then funnels those agitated masses back into the Democratic Party. He could be redirecting them to the DSA, but he's never shown much interest in the organization, from what I can tell. He could be funneling them into a new, working-class party, but he says now isn't the time.
The DSA, for all its flaws, is one of the largest left organizations in the country that also has a proven record of running working-class campaigns and winning. Their strategy of entryism into the Democratic Party seems to be engendering a growing aversion within the Democratic Party establishment, especially now that the Democrats are becoming more openly fascist. This could, should it continue to be successful, lead to a full separation between the DSA and the Democratic Party. This presents an opportunity within the DSA to pivot into becoming a fully fledged ballot party. The presedental race will be, for a long time, dominated by the Democrats and the Republicans, for many reasons, but not the least because of the way electoralism is structured in the country. Should this pivot to becoming a fully fledged ballot party come to pass, the DSA needs to build its base, and I can think of no better way to do that than with local races for mayorships, govenors, and state legislatures. One of the things that made Zohran successful in New York was their focus on the non-voting class.
Broadly, young people constitute the largest share of nonvoters, according to Pew Research. Circle has data from 2024 that shows only 9 states had more youth registration than in 2020, and overall, it was a net negative registration of young voters across the country. That would suggest the non-voting class is growing. Yet, when a candidate like Mamdani engages with the struggles these young people see so clearly, he turns out almost two to three times youth voter registration compared to 2021 in some districts.
All this tells me that a working-class party would undoubtably be successful if time and energy were put into building one. It will be a long project, but a project worth engaging in to agitate the masses and raise class consciousness. While youth comprise a large portion of non-voters, since 2008, according to census data, youth engagement in electoral politics is at an all-time high. It tells me that electoralism isn't "politically obsolete." To quote Lenin,