Stu Smith Profile picture
May 31 6 tweets 3 min read Read on X
🚨 Hasan’s Marxist Agitprop Masterclass

Everything about this superclip is mandatory viewing if you want to understand DSA and Hasan’s alliance with the organization.

First, DSA is not framed as some slightly more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Hasan describes it as “directionally on the diametrical opposite side of the political spectrum” from the “liberal capitalist Democratic Party.”

Second, Hasan zeroes in on what he sees as the problem with Americans. They “do not have class consciousness” and “do not have political education.” And without those things, “you can’t have organizing on the basis of class.”

So what is the solution for Hasan?

“To foment class consciousness and to engage in agitative propaganda, as is the Marxist tradition.”

He then says elections are “one of the most viable routes to reach the masses.”

In other words, when DSA candidates go on Hasan’s stream, this is not a standard interview. He sees it as part of the Marxist tradition of agitprop, using his platform to create political action, build class consciousness, and bring people into DSA.

Third, he is completely right about the DSA growth model. He says that whenever you get “an AOC style figure or Zahra Mamdani,” DSA’s ranks “explode” with new paying members.

And fourth, the caucus part is hilarious. Hasan explains that DSA is “a massive institution with many different caucuses,” all “constantly fighting one another.” But when asked to choose between them, he says it is like “picking favorite children.”

I don’t think Hasan is alone in giving a blanket answer like that, but if DSA were principled, it would have to grapple with the fact that the organization has some genuinely insane caucuses, including ones that have put out statements in support of Elias Rodriguez.
I would say Liberation Caucus is probably the craziest caucus inside DSA.

And here is Hasan with DSA Emerge, another DSA caucus that “just likes a little bit of Mao.”
But seriously, DSA’s Liberation Caucus is out here talking about executing people after the revolution, and it still has a seat inside DSA’s Red Rabbits Security Commission, which trains the broader organization on “security culture.”
Even the Libertarian Socialists get militant.

Here is one of DSA’s national leaders, whose home chapter is NYC DSA, talking about the organization and his desire to abolish the police.

"Our goal is communism.”
To give more evidence for these DSA boom-and-bust growth cycles around political figures, here is a DSA member explaining how much younger the organization has gotten and how Zohran’s rise helped lower the median age even further.
And remember, all of this ends with some sort of DSA uniparty if people like Hasan and DSA get their way.

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More from @thestustustudio

Jun 2
🧵 Cox Media heir Fergie Chambers says his job is to move his family’s wealth into revolutionary organizing.

That made him a target for Neville Roy Singham’s network, which tried to bring him into its orbit with plans for what Chambers described as a “second People’s Forum.”

But the relationship blew up over differing views on the necessity of direct action, leading Fergie to start spilling secrets about what he says sits at the center of the entire Singham network, the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

If you want the juicy details of what it’s like to be courted by the Singham network, and why Fergie may have just shown Congress where to investigate next, go read my latest at @CityJournal!
This was an insanely fun piece to write, but it had to be written for readers who may not know every name in the Singham orbit. Click through the links, because Fergie’s tweets are the real treasure map here. Enjoy!
city-journal.org/article/jim-fe…
Fergie Chambers says the rural “second People’s Forum” was supposed to offer two-week retreats, political schools, and united-front education work. But the project started to look very different once he got closer to it.

He says they realized “they’re all just PSL staff, they’re all funded by the same people,” and that the proposed curriculum was “all PSL cadre classes.” When he suggested bringing people from other organizations onto the board, he says they told him no.

This experience gets to the question at the center of all Singham network discourse. Is this a loose coalition of allied left-wing groups, or a coordinated infrastructure project built around one party?

Fergie seems to think he got his answer.
Read 7 tweets
May 28
🧵 One of DSA’s top national figures, National Political Committee co-chair Ashik Siddique, sat down with Brazil’s Perseu Abramo Foundation and laid out a pretty clear vision for where DSA sees itself right now.

DSA is an organization waiting to become a political party in all but name, building local political machines across the country while using elected office and street movements to create conflict with Democrats, Republicans, corporations, and billionaires.

DSA candidates should “stand up with movements on the streets,” members should remain “agitational,” and the organization should be willing to antagonize Democratic officials like New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Understandably, DSA sees the election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City as a huge victory. But Siddique really hammers that NYC DSA is also the model to replicate in all 50 states because it did not even exist nine years ago.

The future Siddique painted is one where DSA forces its way into power by playing foil to both Democrats and Republicans, while slowly building the infrastructure and elected bloc of a national political party.
What Siddique is describing here is DSA’s inside/outside strategy.

On the outside, you have the movement: the activists, the street pressure, the screaming protesters, and the DSA machine keeping the demands alive.

On the inside, you have Zohran smiling, negotiating, and asking nicely.

It is basically political good cop, bad cop.

Mamdani can maintain the polite public relationship with Gov. Kathy Hochul, while DSA keeps “agitating” and being “very antagonistic” toward her from the outside.
Democrats winning is not enough for DSA or Siddique.

DSA’s role is to act as the foil, pushing the Overton window of the Democratic Party leftward while building its own elected bloc.

Siddique says Democrats need to offer a “clear alternative.” But for DSA, that “clear alternative” is obviously socialism/communism.

Some in DSA still think they can take over the Democratic Party. Others want a clean break.

Either way, this strategy lets them pursue both at once. DSA keeps electing socialists inside the system, more often than not on the Democratic ballot line, while pressuring Democrats from the outside and forcing the party to move toward them whether it wants to or not.
Read 10 tweets
May 27
🧵 I watched Hasan’s Cuba doc so you don’t have to

A regular Hasan viewer asked me to watch his Cuba documentary, seemingly because it would change my mind. It actually did the opposite.

We are still waiting to learn more about the reported OFAC probe into the Nuestra América Cuba convoy, which Fox says involves as many as 40 Americans, including Hasan Piker.

But this is the “journalism” Hasan is going to point to as proof that his Cuba trip was legitimate.

The medical missions are presented as pure humanitarian virtue, with no serious scrutiny of the forced-labor allegations, how much of the doctors’ pay the regime keeps, or whether host countries are receiving fully accredited care.

Cuba’s blackout-ridden, Soviet-era power grid becomes a story about American cruelty and heroic solar panels from China, not the regime’s decades of mismanagement.

The medical “miracle cures” get the soft-touch treatment too, with no real interrogation of what has actually been proven, what is still experimental, and what is just regime hype.

And the doc literally ends with a close-up on The People’s Forum, CODEPINK, a Fidel Castro billboard reading “Fidel, faithful to your legacy,” as Hasan repeats the revolutionary slogan “Patria o muerte, venceremos.”

But wait, there’s more.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.

Almost 15% of the entire documentary is just Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Carlos F. de Cossio, talking largely uninterrupted.
Even Medea Benjamin, who is reportedly also facing a subpoena, has offered a more critical view of Cuba than Hasan’s documentary ever did.
Read 10 tweets
May 27
🚨 Manolo’s Cuba “Aid” Pitch Turns Into a Call for Political Upheaval Inside America

In an interview yesterday from Havana, The People’s Forum executive director Manolo de los Santos essentially said material aid is not what Cuba needs most right now.

What will “help Cuba the most,” he says, is “massive mobilization” inside the United States to “change the reality within the United States.” He says that would also help Mexico, Iran, and “the people of the world.”

You need a far-left dictionary to know what Manolo means by “massive mobilization” and “reality,” but he is pretty clearly calling for a mass uprising to change America’s political reality.
This fits Manolo’s broader thesis. America has mass mobilizations, but never the revolution, because there is no vanguard to discipline the chaos and turn it into power.

That sounds insane to say out loud, but listen to him say it himself.
This is from the Youth Brigade trip to Cuba.

His latest interview gives you a taste of the anti-imperialist worldview, but this clip makes it clearer.

Cuba is part of a global anti-American front that connects Havana to North Korea, Iran, and beyond.
Read 5 tweets
May 25
🚨 Hasan Names Singham, PSL, ANSWER, and Code Pink in One Breath

On stream today, Hasan Piker discussed the reported Treasury scrutiny and said the broader target is “probably Singham” and “his operation,” naming PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, and “anything that he has ever financed.”

He then acknowledged that Roy Singham lives in China and has been “a funding vehicle” for political movements and activism in the United States.

That is exactly why this matters.

This was never just about one influencer’s Cuba trip. It is about the Singham-linked ecosystem, the groups it funds, the delegations it supports, and the political operations built around them.

Hasan didn’t refute the network. He mapped it.
Singham usually stays far from the public-facing side of the operation. His influence runs through subordinates, funding channels, and the groups orbiting his network.

That’s why it stands out when people inside that ecosystem mention him directly.
Fergie Chambers, another far-left financier funding similar projects, offers a pretty revealing critique of the Singham network and how little transparency there is around Singham’s role. Image
Read 5 tweets
May 25
🧵 Medea Benjamin of Code Pink is reportedly on the subpoena list over the Nuestra América Cuba convoy, and honestly, I would love to know the finances behind what she says here.

In one clip, she says you can’t blame the Cuban government until the “blockade” is lifted, encourages Americans to travel to Cuba and spend money, praises Cuba’s China-backed solar buildout, directs donations to Global Health Partners, Code Pink, and Pastors for Peace, invokes Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, touts Cuba’s medical system, and says there is “no reason” to treat Cuba differently just because it is communist.

She also says they have been sending “thousands of pounds” of medicine and food every two weeks, with another 2,500 pounds going out.

That is exactly the kind of thing investigators should want to understand. Who funded it? Who bought it? Who transported it? Who received it? What licenses covered it? And how much money moved through this “humanitarian” pipeline?

Stick around for some Medea lore and other fascinating moments.
Medea Benjamin says she first went to Cuba in 1979, ended up living there for three years, married a Cuban, and had a child there.

She says Cuban doctors told her there was “no malnutrition in Cuba,” that Cuba’s problem was “obesity,” and that the only “malnourished” child she saw was supposedly her own.

Then she calls the late 1970s and 1980s Cuba’s “good old days,” when Soviet support helped counteract U.S. sanctions.

This is the lens she brings to Cuba, not skepticism, not accountability, but decades of revolutionary nostalgia.
More Medea lore, and this one shows how the activist worlds connect.

The intro from Sue Ellen Klein walks through Benjamin's 2014 Gaza delegation attempt, Egyptian detention, broken arm, and broader flotilla activism.

Then Medea immediately connects Gaza to Cuba, saying the March Nuestra América trip included Palestinian Americans and that they met Palestinians being trained for free in Cuba’s medical school.

She says more than 1,000 Palestinians have been trained there.

And remember, Medea frames Cuba’s medical system as producing “revolutionary doctors,” rooted in the vision of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and the Cuban Revolution.
Read 6 tweets

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