“Hamas is 1000x better than the IDF, as a lesser evil voter, yes I would vote for them every time” “obviously Iran should have built a nuke for their own protection, this is the clear message to every country hostile to the United States based on the last several decades’ events” “the Chinese century is upon us, we have much to learn from them”

see, he says all of this and way more that i agree with, but then he turns around and defends soc dems like zohran, bernie, platner and aoc to no end. i dont understand how can a "communist" believe that the usa can be reformed. idk overall i do think hes good for bringing new people in, but recently i feel like hes become more of a vote blue no matter who guy, once in a while he will say things like "zionists are rabid dogs" but nowadays mostly he just defends socdems like his life's on the line

[–] spectre@hexbear.net 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

"Vote blue no matter who" means exactly what it says.

His stance is "vote blue for these socdems (or socdem+'s) or I don't care either way". He literally got into the media cycles saying "I will not vote Gavin Newsom for president".

It is totally fine to have skepticism of his tactics, rhetoric, positions, or behavior, but "vote blue no matter who" demonstrably does not apply.

That said, it doesn't bother me because Hasan is a media figure, not a political leader. It is up to us as on the ground political operative to provide leadership in our orgs and communities and "play off" of his growing presence in the political sphere and steer people in a better direction, since his platform is larger than ours. I firmly believe that denouncing him in front of liberals or reactionaries does not suit this purposes in most cases, and constitutes an unforced error in rhetoric.

Even in this thread you can see reports of how hasanabi heads are ripe for becoming effective comrades in the western left wing movement. I agree with you that he plays around with Democratic party electoral politics more than I would like, but also that is what gives him.his platform, and it is comedy gold as more people have a meltdown over his takes (since most of them align with hexbear). Same goes for Mamdani, sieze the moment and guide people farther along!

[–] CommieKhinkali@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

i mean hey, i did say i agree with most of what he says. i became a communist because i started watching him in like 2022 and i am grateful for that. but overtime he has toned down his "radical rhetoric". saying that he would not for gavin is great but half the libs also dont like gavin so idk. i mean if youre supporting platner after all the info thats been leaked about him, youre basically vote blue no matter who in my eyes. also does he promote any further left streamers or video creators on his streams? i havent seen it when i watched him. instead of watching him its better to sit and read news from the intercept or dropsite or counterpunch or any other socialist/communist outlet

[–] spectre@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

Fair enough! o7

[–] tactical_trans_karen@hexbear.net 12 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

We're not going to vote our way into a revolution and I'm very confident that he knows that. He sees his place as pushing the narrative that leads people to dig deeper and shift the overton window, and I'd argue that he's very successful at doing this. He's just one of the many pressure points we need to apply to the system, we have a different role.

[–] InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

overton window is not a real thing, and is a fundamentally idealist framing of the world and politics

there is a liberal understanding of the world and history, and the marxist one. There is very little overlap. You can't "drag a liberal left" slowly like a gradient until they are a communist, at a certain point they must make a qualitative leap into a fundamentally different ideology. There is a point of confusion and radicalization where the radicalizing Liberal has "radliberal" confused beliefs, but this is not a real or legitimate position that has any coherency. It's just a moment of confusion as their old understanding breaks down and they have to build up the new one. There is no Liberal-Marxist synthesis ideology that has any coherency whatsoever, they're all philosophical abominations.

Claiming that people like Hasan are "pipelines to the left" fundamentally misunderstands how radicalization works. There is no straight line from Liberal to Marxist, you have to shift to another model entirely not move along an axis within a single unified "political compass" or "political gradient". Hasan can only take people as far left as he is, which is radliberal. He can only bring them into the confusion that he is mired in himself. He's stuck in that in-between incoherent stage, which is why he often gets "gotcha'd" in arguments or comes to the right conclusions for the wrong reasons (or the wrong conclusions entirely, like that we should support Ukraine). It's also why a lot of people on the left don't like him, he continues to make a lot of radliberal arguments and incoherent points.

[–] tactical_trans_karen@hexbear.net 9 points 2 weeks ago

Well it's probably my personal experience coloring it, but that's essentially how I became radicalized. To that end, I don't think we can say there's a blanket way in which all radicalization happens. And he also introduces audiences to further left figures than him. I'm just not on board with the idea that he's harmful to revolutionary work. But I will say I'm not the most focused theorist, I watch him to keep up on bleeding edge news with someone who calls out bullshit in real time.

[–] CommieKhinkali@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

Sure, but whenever someone in his chat criticizes him from the left he instantly dismisses them often by saying "hit the communism button right now". Im just saying praising hasan and hasan being the most left person anywhere is bad. Imo you cant be a reformist and a communist/radical at the same time, hes more of a socdem himself with often correct takes on foreign policy. I just switched to watching yugopnik instead

[–] Rey_McSriff@hexbear.net 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

i dont understand how can a "communist" believe that the usa can be reformed.

He's a streamer, he makes money from saying inflammatory things. Communist viewpoints happen to be inflammatory in a capitalist country. He'll turn around and support sucdems because his class interests align with them now that he's got all that money from saying things he probably has no real conviction for.

I should make a filter for popular streamers, I'm sick of reading about him tbqh. Just because people feel good eating their lunch while they stare at him doesn't make him some kind of revolutionary