The Rise of the Dirtbag Left

I don't listen to podcasts, but I do keep a lookout for those who stick their fingers in the eyes of the political establishment. That's why this article denouncing Chapo Trap House brought them to my attention.

On a recent episode of the popular podcast Chapo Trap House, co-host Will Menaker used a memorable metaphor in addressing calls for unity on the left. “Republicans in control of politics, that’s the problem,” he began. “However, to the pragmatists out there and the people who don’t like purity in politics, yes, let’s come together. But get this through your fucking head: You must bend the knee to us. Not the other way around. You have been proven as failures, and your entire worldview has been discredited. You bend the knee to us and then let’s fucking work together to defeat these things, not with fucking means testing or market-based solutions but with a powerful social democratic message.”
Chapo’s many foes seized on the phrase “bend the knee.” Because the show has often been accused of sexism, the phrase “bend the knee” was interpreted by some listeners as a sexual remark aimed at humiliating Hillary Clinton supporters.

Except "bend the knee" obviously has nothing to do with sexism, and this article even admits it. To put it another way:

-We all agree this is not what Chapo meant, at all.
— However, doesn’t this sound like a bad thing somebody could have said? Couldn’t you imagine that happening?
— So, in conclusion, we have proven Chapo did something terrible.

The New Yorker did the same smear, but in a more subtle way.

Their argument is inextricable from the way in which they make it. But when an ethos of vulgarity is enthusiastically practiced by a group of white men, this will sometimes translate as chauvinism. Particular strains of “Chapo” invective can be hard to take—people are “pussies,” or they’re “retarded.” Botanical gardens are “gay,” Hillary Clinton is “a freak.” The caricature of the “Bernie bro”—an aggressively disaffected white guy who hates Clinton ostensibly because of her neoliberal incrementalism but deep down because of her gender—occasionally seems to apply. The very name of the podcast—as well as its theme song, a vaporwave remix of Gucci Mane—suggests a dismissive attitude toward identity politics. They are, after all, three white guys.

This smear tactic just happens to be exactly the kind of bullsh*t identity politics that has made Chapo Trap House popular to begin with.
And when I say popular, I mean very, very popular.

A given Chapo episode sees the hosts yukking it up at the expense of hacky mainstream media op-eds (New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is a favourite target of the gang’s derision), or critiquing the limp, liberal identity politics of the recent, and much-lauded, Wonder Woman movie. With its bricolage of trenchant political commentary, obscene inside jokes, absurdist comedy, socialist boosterism, and giddy vulgarity, Chapo became a kind of citizen’s band radio frequency for leftists isolated by the pervading online culture that practices sanctimony over solidarity. It currently receives more than US $66,000 a month in listener donations, nearly triple that of other top-earning podcasts fan-funded through Patreon. “I think people are just relieved to know they can be socialists without being humourless, sanctimonious or pious,” says Frost. “We let people have fun in an atmosphere where it’s hard to laugh.
Where more orthodox forms of leftism are marked by defeatism and self-seriousness, Chapo is shot through with irony and self-deprecation. It emboldens the left not only to criticize itself, but to laugh at itself. See, for example, the very embrace of the term “Dirtbag Left.” “[It] speaks to a lot of people who have been dismissed or chided by liberals for embracing vulgarity, eschewing sanctimony or piety, and refusing to be civil to the right wing,” says Frost. “The libs have no principles beyond good manners, so I think ‘Dirtbag Left’ says something positive about what we do believe, and what we’re willing to ruthlessly fight for, regardless of established etiquette.”

Their slogan could be, “When they go low, we go into the gutter.”
-- New Republic

Chapo Trap House has been accused of being the Leftwing Breitbart, despite the fact that they don't invent news.
And then there is this lesser-evilism.

How do you feel about the hatred neoliberals get from the left? Do you think it's justified?
I think it's foolhardy and counterproductive. Trump-ism is a five-alarm fire that everyone on the left (defined broadly) should be uniting to oppose. Chapo Trap House–ism is convincing lefties that their true enemies are the people who agree with them 75 percent instead of the people who disagree with them 100 percent. If fighting Trump can't unite the left, nothing will.

I can think of something better to unite the left: socialism, or fighting for anything rather than against a person.

“If you sleep on a mattress on the floor and fuck in a sleeping bag, then you just might be the dirtbag left! If you’re the only dude at a function not wearing a pocket square in a linen blazer and adulting like a boss, then you’re in the dirtbag left!”
-- Will Menaker

These guys are exactly the sort of people who would get banned on the GOS.
Not that they would have ever gone there to begin with.
However, their real crime isn't being anti-PC. Their crime is not being liberal.

At first blush, the most obvious model for this iteration of the millennial left is the New Left of the 1960s — young activists who attacked the hypocrisy of liberals with similar tactics. And indeed, Chapo could easily be mistaken for the Internet Age version of the Yippies — the Youth International Party, led by 1960s left-wingers Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, famous for theatrical political high-jinks. In 1968, the Yippies playfully advanced a pig for president, “Pigasus the Immortal,” and advocated group joint-rolling and nude “grope-ins” for peace.
But actually, the Chapo left advocates for Old Left socialism.

The hosts are aligned with the Brooklyn arm of the Democratic Socialists of America, who by coincidence has tripled their membership in the past year.
What we are looking at is a leftwing “counter-reaction” against a liberalism that has effectively surrendered to neoliberalism.

“It’s the feeling that the new liberal agenda resulted in a whole generation of young Americans being shafted, locked into a gig economy, loaded down with student debt and no access to healthcare,” he said.
“So there’s been a building a reaction against Democrat politicians of the 90s who tried to make a compromise with corporate capitalism and then defined liberalism around cultural issues of diversity, immigration, women’s rights and so on, while riding along with the shafting of the working class.”
In an interview first drafted for the Harvard Crimson ahead of an appearance at the university in April, Chapo host Christman criticized Ivy League universities for being “perpetuator[s] of privilege, obviously, but also … perpetuator[s] of the fantasy of meritocracy, which is what justifies the privilege”.
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Bollox Ref's picture

Polite, choice 'liberals' appear to be worried all round.

Has Kevin Drum chimed in?

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

- @Bollox Ref So 'Left Action' just put up a Facebook post in praise of McCain. I couldn't resist. How can anyone on the Left praise the guy who calls the Confederate flag 'heritage' and supports every war he can get his hands on?

Turns out quite a few! For daring to call him out for factually supporting the Confederate flag and wars, I was called numerous names. I wasn't as 'brave', I didn't 'suffer' like him, I was not a 'hero' like him.

I expect that shit from the right, but the left?

What really pissed me off was Bernie. I love me some Bernie. But today he posted that 'Trump' and only 'Trump' should be called out for not fighting big pharma.

Fun Fact:

Congress passed the "School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act" under intense lobbying by Mylar. Obama signed it into law. Mylar then jacked the prices up astronomically. No Trump involved in that back door pay to get fucking rich scheme.

I hate that people are using Trump being an ass to hide their corruption, greed, incompetence.

'

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@Mickt when McNasty kicks the bucket. Ugh.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

@Bollox Ref

we know it is the latest Democratic Party talking point. Alternet and Ring of Fire are all saying the circular firing squad has to end. Didn't look on DailyKos, but I'll bet it is there too.

They can all go straight to hell. If they think we're going to give up and kiss the ring, they're totally full of it. The establishment Democratic Party will either kiss our ring or die.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Alligator Ed's picture

@dkmich This change in direction occurring in the post-Trump inauguration has dismayed me. Now I rarely watch the channel because of intensifying bullshit.

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@Alligator Ed

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

GreatLakeSailor's picture

@Alligator Ed

Oxymoron of the day!

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@dkmich They don't get to kiss our ring. I know where they've been.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lookout's picture

https://thetrap.fm/

Vids, podcast, and blog

From the blog..
By applying this website and its affiliated content to your life, you will improve your health and fitness, earn more money, and have stronger relationships. Your posture will improve. Your brain chemistry will become pure. You will have more focus.

Pretty convincing.

Thanks.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Just return to this "...get this through your fucking head: You must bend the knee to us. Not the other way around. You have been proven as failures, and your entire worldview has been discredited. You bend the knee to us and then let’s fucking work together to defeat these things,.."

Irrefutable position.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

@jim p I think you may be the same poster. Message was you fucked up, you lost, get out the way.

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@MrWebster Just quoting Chapo.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@jim p If you embrace his political assumptions (i.e. that there's still a reason to talk to these people), then yes.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

SpamNunn's picture

@jim p @jim p
I think the term "genuflect" might have been less easily twisted into something it's not.

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It's just my opinion. It can't hurt you

Alligator Ed's picture

@SpamNunn Bend the knee intones submission to power. The Corpodems are losing power at alarming rate and don't know it. They're not only arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, they are bringing more chairs to the deck.

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Chapo Trap House–ism is convincing lefties that their true enemies are the people who agree with them 75 percent instead of the people who disagree with them 100 percent.

If we were just talking about disagreements on trivial matters, they'd be right. The thing they can't chose to ignore is that last 25% happens to be more important than the other 75% and that the Democrats consistently wrap the odious 25% in the other 75% in order to sell it. That destructive 25% of policies are the same as Republicans and the "Dirtbag Left" is correct in taking them to task on it.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

snoopydawg's picture

us that we were fucking retards because we wanted the things that Obama promised us when he was running for the presidency. This is a great article about what the republican's agendas are for us that is "a key to understanding the politics of the past half century."

A Despot in Disguise
Nancy MacLean's new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America.

The democrats are just as complicit in this scheme and this is one of the reasons why they lost 1,000 seats at the federal and state levels and many governorships. The plan is for the republicans to be the ones out front on deregulating so many of the regulatory agencies that will return us to the time before Nixon created the EPA to stop corporations from poisoning our air, water and other things that we need to survive.
After this is achieved, the republicans will be in a position to do a constitutional convention and Gawd only knows much damage they are going to do. Any rights that we think we still have we can kiss goodbye and any restrictions on the banks and corporations will be erased and we are going to be in a world of hurt.

The New Deal will finally be demolished and the corporations are going to be able to do whatever the hell they want.
Fun times. Buckle up, it's going to be a hell of a ride.

@Dr. John Carpenter

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Wink's picture

@snoopydawg
all up. Had Hillary won they - the 1% - would well be on their way to mop up. Game over. But, thanks to the Trumpster - and Repubs not knowing what to do with him - the mop up was put on hold as Trump gave the rank & file and casual political observers time to get a clue what's going on. If not for Trump we might be in Camps already. Well, that might be a stretch, but there's no doubt the mop buckets would be on the floor, the 1% sharpening the stakes. The Trumpster has given time for the Dirtbag Left to rise!

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Wink's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

1. I can think of something better to unite the left: socialism, or fighting for anything rather than against a person. [Yes! ty, gjohnsit]

2. “It’s the feeling that the new liberal agenda resulted in a whole generation of young Americans being shafted, locked into a gig economy, loaded down with student debt and no access to healthcare,” he said.
“So there’s been a building a reaction against Democrat politicians of the 90s who tried to make a compromise with corporate capitalism and then defined liberalism around cultural issues of diversity, immigration, women’s rights and so on, while riding along with the shafting of the working class.” [Dem pols of 2017, and their social media enforcer swarms, are still doing that.]

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"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." --Jiddu Krishnamurti

Song of the lark's picture

Snark and swearing allowed. SIgn me up.

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Ravensword's picture

Obviously a fan of Game of Thrones. As it happens, season 7 is already airing on HBO on Sundays.

Now, it seems odd that a socialist would use a word which reflects the feudal traditions of the Middle Ages; bending the knee being a vassal swearing fealty to his liege lord. Basically, homage.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Ravensword Democratic socialists are social democrats, not exactly socialists.
Which you probably already know!

But more to the point, I'm guessing he's taking "bend the knee" as a metaphor because that's what the Democratic Party has become: a place where one person, or faction, "bends the knee" to another. It's definitely feudal. You obey your leadership, or you are a traitor. My guess is that the Republican party works similarly, but with less complete control over their rank and file.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Ravensword's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal Well, it seems like he's demanding that all the centrists follow him.

You bend the knee to us and then let’s fucking work together to defeat these things, not with fucking means testing or market-based solutions but with a powerful social democratic message.

He seems to be addressing the third way folks when he mentions "means testing and market-based solutions."

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Ravensword Yeah he is, but I have no idea why he's talking to them.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Wink's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
are the party.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Big Al's picture

thing? Is that who Chapo is, the Bernie wing of the democratic party? All these people tied into the duopoly political system are in the fucking way. This is all stupid bullshit.

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Ravensword's picture

@Big Al

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Big Al's picture

@Ravensword But this intellectual liberal bullshit, around since the Vietnam war, is it's own special brand.

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@Big Al From the diary:

The hosts are aligned with the Brooklyn arm of the Democratic Socialists of America, who by coincidence has tripled their membership in the past year.

DSA=good folks.

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Big Al's picture

@peachcreek

"Lawrence Dreyfuss, a spokesman for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), echoed the Democrats’ anti-Russia rhetoric, telling the World Socialist Web Site that the Russians posed the greatest threat to “the autonomy of our country, perhaps in all our history.”

https://www8.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/20/summ-j20.html

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@peachcreek My rant about democratic socialism below not meant to imply that I think the people at DSA aren't good folks, btw. Just that you can't use democratic means when you don't have a democracy. Or even a republic.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Big Al

All these people tied into the duopoly political system are in the fucking way. This is all stupid bullshit.

But it is pure money-making bullshit, lots of it. They will never get out of the way as long as legal bribery is the law, folks will make use of it. "That's the system." Oligarchy, not democracy. The oligarchy is packed full of good Ds don't you know. "We're capitalists." Available soon, new and improved Social Ds, "who by coincidence has tripled their membership in the past year." From 1 to 3? LOL just kidding, I followed a link and saw:

to claim more than 19,000 dues-paying members

Everybody got a "Trump bump", there's plenty of hamster wheels to go around.

There’s no doubt that the grassroots group forms only a small part of America’s swelling ranks of activists. The American Civil Liberties Union amassed hundreds of thousands of new members after Trump’s victory. The fast-growing and liberal-centric “Indivisible” movement claims 4,500 associated groups compared with the 121 chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America. As far as political parties go, California alone boasts 8.7 million registered Democrats.

California has the most poverty and homelessness too, last time I checked. Same same. Rodney Stooksbury.

peace

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Big Al's picture

@eyo not a peep since then.
And tripled all the way to 19K.
It appears the DSA is Bernie light with a touch of democratic party thrown in.

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@Big Al
I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I seriously doubt that.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@gjohnsit The DSA isn't the same thing as Working Families Party, is it?

I don't trust WFP anymore at all. You can't be for working people and Andrew Cuomo.

As for the DSA, why the hell are we fooling around with anything other than straight-up socialism at this point? Socialism is the one thing the establishment seems unwilling to take over, kill from within, and puppet as a zombie version of its former self. And anyway, "democratic socialism" isn't going to do jack or shit with a system like this. You can't have "democratic socialism" when you don't have a democracy.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
is part of the Socialist International.
Has the DSA sold-out? Someone might make that case, but they certainly start from a good point (i.e. Eugene Debs)

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@gjohnsit Oh, so they're basically the American part of socialism. Cool beans! I have no idea whether they've been co-opted, but if they're actually socialists, I doubt it. The establishment doesn't like to wear that face.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Ravensword's picture

@eyo @eyo You could pretend like you wouldn't want to be tons of money.

It's real easy to play the man of honor when you're on the outside looking in, but once you start seeing all those zeroes, you'll discover what you're truly made of.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Ravensword Unfortunately, some of us understand that Thoreau was right when he said:

"What's the point of having a fine house if you don't have a tolerable planet to put it on?"

I wish the libertarians who put his face all over their websites would grasp this.

But anyway, there's no use in letting yourself be corrupted when the corrupters are going to destroy the world while you're still alive.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Ravensword's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal The only way to know if one would turn down a shit-ton of cash if they're in a position to do so. There are other ways to make money that don't involve ripping off the people. An example of that the 60 grand a month that the Chapo Trap House hosts are clearing.

Some users on here want to immediately assume the worse and just say that these guys are charlatans or part of some Democratic conspiracy. For those who may be suffering cognitive dissonance from seeing three guys who talk about democratic socialism, yet are making a combined $720,000 a year need to realize that they're living in the real world, not in the Federation of Planets.

Also, libertarians are just assclowns who haven't outgrown Ayn Rand's pseudophilosophy.

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@Ravensword not me, and thanks for the comments. I thought the other one was being sarcastic, it made me LOL so no harm done. Biggrin

and just say that these guys are charlatans or part of some Democratic conspiracy. For those who may be suffering cognitive dissonance from seeing three guys who talk about democratic socialism, yet are making a combined $720,000 a year need to realize that they're living in the real world, not in the Federation of Planets.

The ones who "saw those three guys talking" on social media for $66K/month got what they paid for I guess. Agreed they would not make good Federation material. Something more modern perhaps. ;-D

peace

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Ravensword's picture

@eyo @eyo Now there's a fair response. These are just guys with a wildly successful podcast, and all this free press they're getting is gonna allow more people to know about them and what they're about.

Remember, the only bad publicity is no publicity.

And so:

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Ravensword What that CTH is? As I've said, I don't think so. Doesn't have that smell to me. It's possible, of course.

I'm really confused about the $720,000 figure. Is that what CTH is making per year?

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Ravensword's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
The article said that they make $60,000 a month from Patreon contributions.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Ravensword They don't seem to have that many subscribers, but maybe I'm reading it wrong.

The issue isn't so much: it's bad for those people to make money as it is could this money possibly be coming from the little guy and could this all be just as it seems? Maybe. It would only take 3,000 people giving 20 bucks a month to produce those numbers. But that rarely occurs.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Wink's picture

@Big Al
what alternative would you recommend? This is where we are, where "the party" is, and where we've been for 18 months and more. The Bernie wing finally getting some recognition, feeling our oats, finally pushing back.
Whether any of this amounts to anything of significance over the 2018 election cycle remains to be seen, but the fact that the Bernie wing is Back means, if nothing else, that I can rub in Hillbots faces. And, yes, Markos, I'm looking at you. The hippies are back!

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Anja Geitz's picture

Chapo Trap House–ism is convincing lefties that their true enemies are the people who agree with them 75 percent instead of the people who disagree with them 100 percent.

The "lefties" we are warring against agree with us on 75% of liberal issues? When did that happen? And who in the hell are these "Lefties" he is referring to? The imposters over at TOP? Ah, yes. Well maybe I missed those heart to heart dialogues we had over there about the ungodly war for profit machine being waged in our name and with our tax dollars? Or maybe I forgot about that time we saw eye to eye over the farce that is our electoral process? Or maybe it was the understanding we came to about a media industry that exists to manipulate and lie to us that put me over the edge?

Yeah, right. We agree on 75% of the issues that are consequential to the fate of this planet and life as we know it. What a load of crap.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

snoopydawg's picture

in case you want to know how the farce of the primary election wasn't rigged against Bernie, this is how they convince themselves that the DNC and Hillary's campaign email topics weren't against Bernie being sabotaged:

Uh, the leaked DNC emails didn’t show the DNC sabotaging Bernie’s failed presidential bid, they showed that DNC insiders had a deep-seeded hatred of Bernie. That’s a huge difference there.

More importantly, the connections between the Donald Trump presidential campaign and the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia is not a ton of conspiracy theories. It is inherently clear that the Russian government played a far bigger role than Stein did in getting Trump elected to the White House.

I have no idea how this person can pretzelize their thinking to believe this statement, but the echo chamber believed him Smile

This was one of the comments in a diary there that was criticizing Jill Stein for saying that she wasn't the one who sabotaged Bernie's campaign.
Here's one comment that accuses Stein of being a Putin puppet too. The collusion of the Russian's election interference keeps snaring more and more people.

How far Putin used Stein's candidacy as a propaganda tool against Clinton is not known. But the Steele dossier does suggest she was part of his plans.

@Anja Geitz

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Anja Geitz's picture

@snoopydawg

of what I call the fallacy of their argument. But I suppose pointing out that someone who never dug through the WikiLeaks tranches doesn't get to pontificate with such pseudo-certainty about what is in them is a bit obvious to those of us with brains capable of independent thoughts, eh?

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Pluto's Republic's picture

@Anja Geitz

They vote their self-interests. They want to privatize, monetize, capitalize, and deregulate government services. They're not real big on creating a healthy, educated society if that means "free" health care and college. Unless their leader believes in something else. Then they will, too.

They usurped the Democratic party from the Left, who remain the party of all the people.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Anja Geitz's picture

@Pluto's Republic

They want to privatize, monetize, capitalize, and deregulate government services

That's what Republicans want to do. But at least they're honest about it.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Anja Geitz @Anja Geitz 75% my white ever-lovin' ass.

Is the 25% where they walk on our faces in Nevada and portray us as thugs across the country in the corporate press?

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Anja Geitz's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Is the 25% where they walk on our faces in Nevada and portray us as thugs across the country in the corporate press

Or maybe the 25% is where they lapped up the media's never ending agit prop like an army of toothless Meth heads and then held a gun to our heads and demanded we vote for their Queen?

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Alligator Ed's picture

Kekistan was invented by Sargon of Akkad as a way of trolling the SJW, PC, DNC AND Trump factions.

“Anyone on the left with any independence of mind has experienced this backlash,” says Nagle. “People will look back at this period as a moment of madness—if it ends. I feel like there’s much more of an exciting, funnier left-wing culture emerging around people who are critics of it. That’s not a coincidence. You can’t be a puritanical purger and have a sense of humour.”

Enter a new culture of the online left. It’s a reinvigorated wing that’s simultaneously anti-alt-right, anti-PC and anti-SJW, anti-centrist and against liberal-democratic line-toeing. It’s a movement that uses many of the tactics of the online alt-right—humour, memes, Twitter trolling and open animosity—while remaining committed to progressive leftist ideology. It’s sometimes called the “alt-left” or the “vulgar left,” or the “Dirtbag Left”

Now the alt-right has been credited with inventing Kekistan, Norms, Cuckistan when actually they highjacked the concept to represent ing exactly this quote :

simultaneously anti-alt-right, anti-PC and anti-SJW, anti-centrist and against liberal-democratic line-toeing

The heart of Kekistan is shit-posting (knowingly making stuff up just like the MSM), ridiculing snowflakes and SJWs.

For more on Kekistan see:

Sargon commenting on Kekistan

And

Kekistan being explained to Joe Rogan

While Kekistan is pure bullshit so is American democracy. The difference is that with Kekistan, everyone knows (or should know) it is crap, whereas in the Neoliberal, duopolistic Amerikkkan reality most people don't realize this is bullshit, too.

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orlbucfan's picture

Hippies." Rec'd!!

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

detroitmechworks's picture

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjzYdzHkjec]

When the best the other side has is "You're Uncouth, and I shall criticize thy tone", all I can think is an idiot in a powdered wig attempting to explain that the mob has NO RIGHT TO DO WHAT THEY ARE DOING!!!!!!!!

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@detroitmechworks Indeed. Let's bring back the Sedition Act.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Caitlin Johnstone

But according to Amy Schumer’s creepy uncle, the problem isn’t what the Democratic party did, it’s what you thought about what the Democratic party did. Their party isn’t in the worst shape it’s been in since the Civil War because they’re the slightly more photogenic conjoined twin of the GOP, who promulgate the exact same soul-crushing neoliberal and neoconservative policies as the Republicans but slap a rainbow flag bumper sticker on it for appearance, who deliberately sabotage progressive candidates and who are now contesting the DNC fraud case on the grounds that they have no obligation to provide real party primaries. No, their party is in the worst shape it’s been in since the Civil War because you’re just not thinking the correct thoughts about them. You refused to support the Democratic party because you don’t know enough about them, not because you know so much about them that you hope they lose party legitimacy soon and get flushed down the toilet where they belong.
If that wasn’t clear enough, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi added that the change the Democratic party will be making “is not a course correction, but it’s a presentation correction.”
Are you getting this loud and clear, America? The undisputed leaders of the Democratic party are telling you with their own face holes that they are not changing course at all — they are only going to change the way that they have been speaking to you. Because the problem is in you, not them. They’re infallible; you have just failed to see this thus far, so the only adjustment they need to make is in their presentation.
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Meteor Man's picture

From The Daily Beast, a plutocrat channels Obama:

And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.

If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming...

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

arendt's picture

Nobody cares about the discourse

the Democratic intelligentsia resorted to its favorite tactic: pretending that this new socialist and Berniecrat movement from below was little more than a gang of soccer hooligans throwing batteries (or chairs) in the faces of the most vulnerable members of the electorate.

To hear them tell it, left criticism for the Democratic Party leadership — affluent at the bottom, filthy rich at the top — was somehow disdain for voters who have little say in the party’s direction. By this standard, the GOP of the 1890s belonged to the black workers who adamantly voted for it, and not the wealthy robber barons who controlled it.

It’s a neat little trick: talking shit about a think-tank employee raking in a doctor’s salary somehow becomes talking shit about a retired black grandmother in South Carolina dutifully heading to the polls every couple of years to vote “D.”

But in the curious world of the Discourse, it’s more than a trick — it becomes their own little reality. They simply think-piece and tweet it all out until it manifests itself as “common sense” in their little corner of society. That whole big world happening outside of the Discourse doesn’t matter in the slightest.

The pushback is completely "inside the bubble" propaganda from increasingly desperate corporate apparatchiks. Outside the corpo-Dem bubble, the nakedness of the emperor is ever more obvious. The millenials do not buy the shit the DNC is selling. The Jacobin article lays it out:

it’s we who represent the many. And the Democrat intelligentsia who represents the powerful few. And Menaker is right — by definition, a mass social-democratic movement does not live or die by professional-class enthusiasm for it. They are the people in the way. And they are the ones guarding the agenda of the powerful.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@arendt Excellent analysis in that article.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

travelerxxx's picture

@arendt

Thanks for the tip off on the Jacobin article. Good one!

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

thanks for letting us know about this.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

I think this is complicated stuff and agree that letting the powerbroker neoliberals have an inch will always lead to them trying to guilt you back into "waiting for your turn" that they will make sure never comes.

I like cursing and a fair amount of vulgarity, and I even agree that the particular comment being attacked doesn't literally refer to gender. However, you can't completely divorce language from history and context. Just because the DNC flacks have stolen gender, race, sexual identity, and other legitimate concerns for their own agenda of using people who really care about these things as pretty wallpaper while they do the real dirty deals about patronage and filthy lucre in the most cynical ways possible doesn't make me want to jump on board with a bunch of other people who do like to use gendered insults themselves maybe at least in part because they're tired of being insulted by asshole right-wingers as being effeminate liberals. The irony is deep and rich here in my opinion.

I can still see how that kind of juvenile and ignorant attack language would get really old for men especially in this stupid-ass culture, but I don't think the answer is to call random people pussies and feel all righteous about it as if I as a woman should just be a good sport about that shit myself. As our alt-right brethren will be happy to inform me, women aren't just fully equal now though. We're actually holding the men-folks down from our ill-gotten and undeserved total domination of the world, but why would we do that? Oh, I know, they'd be the first to tell me it's because we're hateful bitches that need to be taken down a peg or two. Fuck that uppity Wonder Woman too. Who does she think she is empowering little girls? They need to get over themselves. Yup.

I can see myself agreeing with the subject group of this post's politics if one of their points is about neoliberals hijacking civil rights issues so they can keep being the greedy fucks they are, but wading through insults to find out what they actually stand for politically is not even slightly appealing though, so I won't be doing it. I do, however, take responsibility for and am speaking only for myself and don't expect other people to react the same way.

The same thing happens to me fairly often as a female sports fan of some men's teams when I forget that I'm not really welcome in the club. I can't relax and enjoy going to message boards to support my team because as I'm laughing along with some pointed humor and what-not, I'm often smacked in the face by some random sexist tirade. I do know that I'm not likely to find "my people" on a sports message board, but I don't go for masochism in my political reading either.

Maybe they don't really do very much of it though, so y'all that enjoy the iconoclasm and irreverence, I don't want to rain too hard on your parade.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@NCExile @NCExile A nuanced response.

The problem is that you can take the following maxim:

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

And apply it to discourse as well.

Here's what they have done over the past 45 years. And "they" includes Clinton Democrats as well as Republicans at this point:

Demolished (and I'm choosing that word advisedly) civic discourse over a course of 45 years by

1) wrecking its foundation stones of
a) education,
b) journalistic standards, and
c) social expectations of how a republican (small-r) citizenry should act toward each other,
2) rearranging American moral culture to embrace the fact that
a) hurting people isn't wrong,
b) sort of like greed isn't wrong, and that
c) in fact being greedy and hurting people proves you're stronger than those people, and that
makes you better than they are, and
3)denying what is left of civic discourse a place to thrive, or even to exist, by
a)driving it off all the airwaves and replacing it with constant
i)character attacks,
ii)misinformation, and even
4)pursuing the few remaining purveyors of civic discourse onto the Internet, where they fled after being driven off the airwaves, and using
a)sockpuppetry
b)shills (paid trolls), and
c)the natural resource of unpaid trolls to
i. commit character assassination upon the people who are still trying to speak the truth
AND be civic, and
ii. destroy the websites where such people congregate, which is part of
5)denying civic discourse any venue, whether digital or physical
a)like Occupy Wall St, whose encampments were destroyed, and
6)turning the politics of the country into a more mendacious 24/7 version of the Howard Stern Show.

When you're living in a political landscape that has had that done to it for over 45 years,

17-Air-raid-damage-during-the-Blitz-London-Sep-10-1940-01.jpg

it's not at all surprising that those who value independence of thought and don't want to put up with establishment bullshit sometimes behave in ways that are neither civic nor moral.

I don't know whether or not CTH has been an offender of that sort.
But I certainly understand why there's a backlash that expresses itself in ugly ways. And, in fact, I'm surprised it's not already much, much worse.

And, by the way, in that World's Longest Sentence I wrote up there at the beginning of this comment, I left some things out. Like absorbing other discourses, digesting them, rearranging them to serve the purposes of the establishment, and running them like zombie puppets of their former selves.

It's the zombie apocalypse of the public square. It's amazing people are holding together as well as they are, but, like you, I'm scared of what might be coming. As long as I have a choice, though, I'm going to try to stand with people who use reason and tell the truth. If we end up having a fight about sexist or racist words, well, there's nothing I can do to prevent that. So much cultural damage has already been done and I can't prevent all the consequences of that.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@NCExile
at work for asking where someone was from.
That's all. The guy had an accent and I was curious. I thought I was making a human connection.

My boss called it a racist micro-aggression.

I call that bullsh*t.
This is the kind of crap that leads to everyone being afraid of saying anything that might be controversial, and it's everywhere.
The politically correct future is a world of silence.

I know what racism is, and it looks and sounds very different.
I saw it when I was in the Peace Corps.
It looks like a 19-year old dark-skinned kid in a uniform with a machine gun getting on a public bus and looking for the person with darker skin than hiss. Then pulling that person off the bus and telling them to give him all their money or he will smash their teeth in with his rifle butt.

THAT is what racism looks like.

People in this country need to get a grip on reality.
I have lost the ability to give a sh*t about people's personal outrage.

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Wink's picture

@gjohnsit
I ask that question all the time. "Where you from... ?" This is a 90%-plus white UK / German / western Europe neck of the woods. If someone "looks different" or "sounds different" I ask that question. One, it's a conversation opener, two, I'm curious how they got here. "How did you ever find your way here?"
Some are offended, "what's it to you?!" But, 90% will answer the question, and some will then ask why I ask. I'm amazed at the corners of the earth people hail from that, even for a brief time, find themselves here in NY-21. I look at the chances of that happening near zero. So, I have to ask the question.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

@Wink
it was a contractor we were meeting and he was from Nigeria.
In my mind I was guessing west Africa.
I guess my boss expected me to pretend not to notice the obvious. And you are only supposed to ask when the person is white.

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Wink's picture

We need more like this.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.