Thread by @N7IRL

Chapo appeals to people who haven't interrogated why they reflexively associate working class with coarseness and crudeness, let alone interrogated their own biases, and can believe that podcast millionaires are the true voice of working people becsuse they act like shock jocks.

That they're seen as especially left is more an indictment of how far right the Overton window has been yanked than any accurate description of their working class solidarity put into practice.

They would never accept a revolution that required giving up their platform.

I don't buy the notion that they're leading people to the left.

I lean more towards the idea that they're laundering social conservativism into the left, whether or not they intend to.

They're appealing to people who like M4A as a concept but don't want to hear about bigotry.

I see any notion of leftism that ignores that solidarity means not just "workers" but the ENTIRE proletariat - those who CANNOT work included- to be not only wrong but actively harmful.

And Chapo is entirely comfortable with ableism in words and practice.

That something or someone self-refers as leftist doesn't automatically equal good.

The NSDAP did, after all, begin as a workers' party.

Just because you're appealing to real populist anger doesn't mean you're doing something good with it.

And this is not accusing Chapo of nazbol bullshit. I don't think they're trying to actively bridge any left-right divide.

I think like any useful idiots they're mostly unaware that working class anger is easily distorted towards hate.

The danger is mostly in that insisting that non-class conflict is simply a result of false consciousness and not meaningful in any material sense means not considering one's own bigotries and biases, and often reinforcing them without realizing it.

Chapo, to me, allows a lot of people to believe they're meaningfully embracing class solidarity, but we've seen just in recent weeks how easily that's flipped against individuals based on how people want to interpret who gets to count as working class.

Without getting people to move beyond a more simplistic notion of class conflict that acknowledges that class and identity are inextricable in understanding any issue of oppression, you largely reinforce a notion that oppressor/victim is either/or.

There's a very real risk of ending up with ostensibly left voters who nonetheless repeat social conservative talking points like the notion that cishet white males are unfairly being made the world's villains.

Which is a position that right-wing demagogues love.

I don't see Chapo or similar outfits as a general good in spite of their crudeness just because some listeners might be swayed towards Sanders.

I don't care about the crudeness in general, except in terms of who is targeted.

And I don't think they actually sway a lot of people.

And I don't see Sanders as especially left anyway, so even should he win and manage to get M4A passed I don't think that's a leftist victory so much as it is an overdue correction back to the left-of-center the majority of Americans actually embrace.

It would be a vast inprovement but I'm not entirely convinced that a Sanders-signed M4A would cover all of what it actually needs to as so many seem to assume it would by default.

Just like how the ACA had far too many compromises, what gets passed can disaapoint.

But I don't see Chapo et al as especially effective ambassadors for making it happen in the first place.

I think there's a lot of people, some of them part of the campaign, who see benfit in riding Bernie's coattails because being part of universal healthcare is bragworthy.

Winning isn't getting it passed, getting it passed isn't getting everyone covered, and shitposting isn't getting anything done at all.

But people can convince themselves it was okay to be assholes because THEY'RE HELPING EVERYONE.

And I think what Chapo-style "leftism" represents is largely a 4chan/Reddit-level idea of politics where who's on what side is clearly defined, your side is versus the normies, and "fuck your feelings" is almost a mantra.

Chapo is indeed popular, and that's my worry.

A lot of people want a simple, straightforward notion of who's good and who's bad and it's kind of important that we not have a left that gives them that, but rather pushes us to look beyond simple dichotomies.

I want a left that cringes at the idea of pulling the same mob behaviors as right-wing culture warriors.

And the Chapo-aligned types...don't cringe.