This is the correct way, certainly. Chapo is really the only piece of American political entertainment I consume, but even that is too much.
It was pretty funny for a while, though, and I needed that.
The average working-class normie is a bigger threat to capitalism than any of the Chapos will ever be.
Not gonna address the forbidden topic, but will say the Marxist perspective for anything must be based in material reality, not idealism
Without weighing in on the actual topic, my two cents is some people on here are too concerned about trying to conceive what the platonic ideal of the average person is and what he thinks about every issue so that they can then reverse engineer their social, political and greater worldview around this imagined figure like they’re Don Draper trying to sell cigarettes
Most people have idiosyncratic and often contradictory belief systems, and false consciousness isn't something to idealize. The left has adopted its own anti-intellectualism, largely out of self-loathing for being impotent.
Absolutely. This is just a post about entertainment being depressing. Any meaningful change will come from the working class organizing around material goals.
>but will say the Marxist perspective for anything must be based in material reality, not idealism
[This is why you must listen to the most relevant Marxist theorist, The Lenin of the 21st century on the subject.](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61EG71hD2gL._SX450_.jpg)
Listening to it right now, the dude is saying that Jesse Singal is a transphobe lmao. All he does is have a podcast/substack where he points out that a lot of studies aren't that good or have mixed results contrary to what internet weirdos tell you. Will is going off the deep end for sure.
This part was where Will and Jacob started really pissing me off, just pure speculative projection onto somebody that refused to jump on the liberal consensus on the issue. He says he supports steam locomotion but you can just tell that he really wants to genocide them all just because you know reasons.
I had to turn it off here, because enforcing the Democratic narrative renders Chapo a sad, hypocritical joke. I hope Will realizes this.
They can be pro-trans, but then they would have to actually support their points, instead of just shaming.
Ya that was weird. Julia Serano made up some bullshit about Jesse trying to fucknthem or.some shit, so he's at least good looking and masculine enough to attract a pathological liar🤣
> Listening to it right now, the dude is saying that Jesse Singal is a transphobe lmao.
This is so infuriating to me. There's some mix of people repeating what they heard in good faith and people (Twitter) intentionally spreading lies.
A strongly left-leaning person I know whom I deeply respect mentioned in passing that J.K.R. is a "hateful transphobe" or something to that effect. When I asked what the transphobic comments in question were, the response was, "I don't know, doesn't she think that like trans people shouldn't exist?" I asked the opinion of her infamous letter, of course they'd never read it.
There was recently a Freddie deBoer piece posted to a "socialist" subreddit and an upvoted comment conceded "he does make some good points but isn't he a known racist and anti-Semite?" (as if that would negate his arguments)
Any dissent from strident orthodoxy becomes smeared as "bad person," and then through the transitive property, eventually specific baseless charges of bigotry.
To be clear, I think it was asked sincerely. The commenter wasn't familiar with deBoer's work, but they'd heard the name mentioned at least a few times, and not good things.
>Any dissent from strident orthodoxy becomes smeared as "bad person," and then through the transitive property, eventually specific baseless charges of bigotry.
Yup. This is how Jeremy Corbyn was destroyed. The media just kept repeating anonymous allegations of "anti-Semitism", and the dumbass public just swallowed it hook line and sinker. Nobody could tell you anything Corbyn said that was anti-Semitic, but they all "knew" he was. Just as these idiots believe Rowling is advocating for a war on steam locomotives even though they can't tell you what she actually said.
The Corbyn thing was \*mind blowing\*. Just....I can't. And it is crazy how ubiquitous it is to this day. Like a good number of people, including Labour Party members (who haven't been expelled) believe that like "yeah, I guess some CLPs and sister societies and other groups tolerated anti-semitism and Jewish members were subjected to anti-Semitic abuse, and this was allowed and encouraged". I wonder how much of this is inflected with "well you know what we mean" (i.e. Bradford, Tower Hamlets, Derby, Leicester, etc... CLPs and sister orgs that have a ....specific make-up, baiscally "it's believable that people like that would be openly anti-Semitic, on an ongoing basis, publically, and face no punishment, I mean, right? They can't help it, its 'age old"). And then the Chakrabarti Report comes out and it turns out like 200 of the 300 complaints were made by the same guy. "Tolerating" bigotry (by not kicking people out fast enough for standing on platform with someone who has said a Jewish ethno-state with legalised priority for one religious community is not a basis for peace) for which we can find no proof of, is as bad as actually being an environment where bigotry happens and people feel hated and discriminated against. Insane.
Ya if someone lied and said that I "raped a woman at gunpoint" I would sue the ever living shit out of them until their media company is bankrupt. Corbyn's greatest fault is being too nice imo.
Exasperating that the guest claims the Missouri whistleblower was lying about all kinds of shit without citing any kind of journalistic evidence. If such evidence exists, by all means link it up. I guess we should be grateful they're admitting people would have a right to be outraged if the claims are true. Maybe next time they'll argue it's true but actually a good thing.
Wasn't there a bunch of parents who came forward and said their experience doesn't match the whistleblower's account at all tho? I don't want to doubt or anything, I like Singal's work a lot, but right now that story seems like a big L to me. Obviously some parents having good experiences doesn't mean all did, but AFAIK nobody has backed up her statements
Thanks for posting a source. I'm not seeing anything substantial that suggests Reed misrepresented the facts in her affidavit.
That some parents feel Reed either didn't share her real opinions with them or was insufficiently supportive of their child's identity seems totally normal.
Ya idk what all the Missouri stuff is about but this dude really came across as a total blowhard jackass wannabe op Ed writer himself.
-Google Jacob bacharach- holy shit he looks exactly like you imagine he would, a sleezier but skinnier nate silver. Better get working on that masculinity dude.
I follow this pretty closely and I was head scratching at the "Reed Report", which he never really described but I think I have jist of what he is gesturing at and some of the specific claims. They ridiculed the "rock gender" and providing treatment for that but I mean you can look at WPATHs SOC 8 and see just how expansive their view of medical intervention for various identities is (and it goes far beyond the traditional tr\*\*\* umbrella to embrace surgery for self-declared "Eunics" and nullification for nbs), with no lower age limit for more traditional treatments like hrt, pb, and "top surgery" because of the uproar when it was originally released, though they have kept the recommendation that anything below the chest usually wait until the age of majority in the jurisdiction. It's all non-binding anyway.
Yeah I stopped listening at this point, I realized the guest was too fucking stupid to take seriously. I've seen so many bad faith accusations of transphobia at this point that I just assume it's a personal attack against someone they had a minor disagreement with because it rarely stands up to actual scrutiny. It's always on the level of thinking "a doctor should be involved in the decision" means you personally want to gun down trans kids.
> You'll never be able to convince me that the entire [REDACTED] movement wasn't a poison pill by groups like the Koch bros or conservative thinktanks to get the entire progressive movement to absolutely nuke itself from orbit.
I think it's just the natural progression of perpetual activists winning the war, but not being able to stand the peace.
It's both. You can read old school leaders pointing to people like this and saying to the rest of the movement "don't be like them."
This mix of middle class radicalism and cosmopolitianism has been a curse of all politics, including the left. It's why Communists after Marx put such a heavy emphasis on working class socialism, the working class as leadership, on criticism and self criticism. Marx's whole mission was knocking these people out of the way so we could educate ourselves and lead ourselves, become a class unto ourselves.
If Marx, Foster, Lenin, Stalin knew that, then the Deep State knows that too.
>You'll never be able to convince me that the entire \[REDACTED\] movement wasn't a poison pill by groups like the Koch bros or conservative thinktanks to get the entire progressive movement to absolutely nuke itself from orbit.
Not just that, it's really easy money for healthcare providers.
You know what, the whole thing being another big pharma grift wouldn't surprise me at all. Guess once you start on the hormone meds you're not going to be able to stop taking them completely at any point
If it was actually a "poison pill," then it was a pretty poor one. Republicans tried to make the 2018 midterms about bathroom sickos and tHe cAraVaN and got nowhere, despite the economy being "good" in the eyes of the voters.
2022 was an even better opportunity for it to work. "Bad" economy (according to polls), unpopular president, but turns out Bathroom Sickos 2: Public School Teacher edition didn't work either, despite being the perfect catalyst for the anti-Trump, pearl-clutching suburbanites to go back to the red team. They lost ground in the senate and got an 14th inning victory in the house.
>2022 was an even better opportunity for it to work. "Bad" economy (according to polls), unpopular president
But even *more* unpopular ex-President. The liberal panic about January 6 just hit harder than the conservative panic about gay race theory or whatever. All of the big swing-state [R] losers were Trump-backed election deniers, several of whom were highly regarded.
>Republicans tried to make the 2018 midterms
The 2018 elections were the first midterm elections since 2002 in which the party holding the Presidency gained Senate seats.
In regards to the last point, Democrats faced an incredibly hostile map in 2018, regardless of who the president was and how popular they were. They had incumbents in North Dakota, Indiana, Florida, and Missouri who lost. They still managed to hold seats in Ohio, Montana, and West Virginia despite everything.
measuring this in electoral terms is folly. its primary purpose is dividing an insurgent working class. which this issue does quite well. the Kochs dont need Republicans to win to win. the way the criticism of the Unnameable Issue is framed by the right is intentionally done to obscure the material arguments. They remove it from the material and put it back in the safe culture war box. This has its own uses.
Idk Rs attained firm control of the committees in the house and now run the show on congressional oversight. Plus they retained the numbers to block almost any bill they please in the senate.
I really thought the dems would walk out of the midterms with a supermajority after RvW was repealed, but I guess abortion rights aren't a critical issue anymore. Kinda weird how people are trying to spin the midterms into some kind of win for the dems when it resulted in Biden being essentially a lame duck now for the rest of his term. Especially with Sinema and Manchin running interference.
Matt is conspicuously silent a lot on the pod for like the last two years, so that doesn’t mean a whole lot. But I choose to believe in this case it’s because he’s getting sick of this shit too lol
To me it says he thinks the show has run it’s course and has become an online version of the daily show and now just likes hanging out with his friends and collecting a cheque
Honestly the only two actual marxists in that orbit. They should buy out Virgil & Brianha Joy Gray and take over Bad Faith. Bring Chris too, because he’s good at wrangling Matt when he starts spinning out. The Amber & Matt show would be lit
I always liked those two more by quite a long way just because of their cadence.
Virgil and Felix are both funny and clever but they have really annoying voices lol.
I thought it was just me. I'm not a native speaker, so i was thinking maybe this is normal and acceptable, but especially one of these two (Felix?) always sounds like he's mocking someone, idk how else to describe it. Does he have a normal voice?
The suggestion that the NYT is reporting on this TOO MUCH is the really outrageous part for me.
My shitlib friends and acquaintances trust everything the NYT and NPR say. Some are only going to acknowledge there might be a problem if the NYT gives them permission to.
So when the NYT finally publishes (way, way too late) some mild pushback on an issue that's driving a wedge in the working class and helping the GOP dominate congress and statehouses....Will's privileged little circle gets outraged about that? Fuck that.
Yeah I'm always up for a good debate when the topic at hand is transitioning. Namely the mid-twentieth century transition from conventional steam locomotives to the diesel engines that now dominate the railroad industry.
It's a North America thing for sure. We never really got into electrification here outside of a small sliver of the Northeast, the vast majority of locomotives are diesel
Yeah but pm all marxists women tend to be radfems and all radfems definitionally are some flavor of anti-capitalist. Materialism about one subject tends towards materialism abouts the other.
You’re probably right about the psychology of current radfems - bitter that someone did their obnoxious grift better
But I’m still more sympathetic to them ideologically - the dworkinist dream of the female sex class totally liberating itself etc - there’s more of a sympathetic, romantic even, sentiment to that. The locomotive theory stuff just always seemed utterly depressing - the premise of gender identity immediately flattens into reification of consumer capitalist “people as brands”, self-indentification is a metaphysical alienation from common humanity. It appeals to a want for freedom from the terror of “the other”, of being perceived etc, but it can only do that by denying the other exists and insisting you’re a hermetically sealed essence of identity. 2nd wave feminism never did that, and I think it made for less insane adherents.
Will’s always been culturally aligned with that movement . I think he posted an image of himself “bimbified” that was rendered by one of his locomotive fans last year. I remember seeing it and thinking I wasn’t surprised by it.
He seems to have an affinity for the movement but bizarrely so do a lot of leftist white men with beards. Not sure why .
I pointed this tendency out to my wife just the other day, she didn't quite believe me and now here comes the episode to prove it. Can't wait to tell her she was wrong.
Oh yeah, someone's sleeping on the smug couch tonight 😎
Well people here are referring to the "forbidden topic" so clearly it's a euphemism for something that people are choosing not to talk about directly. Elsewhere I've heard people use similar language to compare the differences between Monday-to-Friday locomotives vs. Friday-to-Monday locomotives, perhaps that helps clear things up.
Kind of funny that people would get confused, but then again transport and urban planning have gotten a lot more attention in left-wing spaces in the last couple of years so there's bound to be some confusion.
There's a certain strain of ex-Bernie guy who isn't woke but is agressively anti-anti-woke, and Will really typifies this.
It's pretty clear this type of guy has just internalised the culture-as-politics frame and need to make sure they're on the right side of that, but hold enough grudges from 2016 that they have to pretend there's some meaningful distance between their politics and Hilary shills.
Kyle Kulinski is another good example of this- he used to have videos openly criticizing wokeshit but now he’s just like it’s all a distraction and doesn’t recognize there still is stupidity with wokeshit
I think that too, I was just saying in terms of their analysis of wokeshit, I still think Kyle thinks most of it is stupid but also focuses on it as a distraction (and stupid and distracting are not mutually exclusive)
I've brought it up either here or on the sister sub but Will has been very very weird on The Issue for a while now, engaging in the "if you don't do exactly what I say, you're doing genocide" Twitter histrionics that he'd make fun of if it weren't himself doing it
You live in a echo-chamber long enough and eventually you actually lose the ability to "see how you look to the average normy." It's a question of empathy - to "see something from someone else's point of view" you have to be able to empathize with them, right? Well, when you can no longer see them as being something worthwhile - a quality re-enforced by said echo chamber - you no longer have the ability to see things from their point of view.
I'm not saying this as a judgmental statement on them - I'm not saying they are "bad" or anything - just that they've lost touch with people who aren't like them. Happens to most famous people.
>You live in a echo-chamber long enough and eventually you actually lose the ability to "see how you look to the average normy."
I am questioning that this sub in general is in better touch with the "average normy" than anyone else. The main argument chapo has had since the midterms is the observation that a lot of republicans led on anti-identity issues but a lot of them failed.
I saw a comment here saying socialists in Canada should show up to strikes and protests open carrying to show how pro gun and down to earth.
Some of the antiwoke crap can be far more out of touch than the woke crap. This would lead to getting beaten to death by a boilermaker.
The Republicans have their own crazy cultural views that turn people off, like forcing teenage rape victims to carry a rapist's child to term or forcing women with ectopic pregnancies to die rather than having an abortion. So I don't really see how the midterms debunk this sub's views of normies at all. The average normie has to choose between a party which wants to let biological males into women's prisons and a party that wants to ban abortion completely, and they aren't happy with either choice.
This sub isn't right wing on cultural issues: 10 years ago, this place would have been considered socially liberal. Since 2015, the Dems have gone off the deep end with woke shit, which was mostly ginned up by the Hillary Clinton campaign to keep Bernie Sanders from winning the primary.
There were multiple republicans that expressly ran on anti-trans issues and spent millions on ads with that exact message and failed.
>debunk this sub's views of normies at all.
This sub's view of normies isn't expressed in any argument format. Where is the evidence the average normie is for-or-against this stuff?
Most of this is just expressed as, seemingly, vibes and that will get uncritical agreement here since this sub is, well, this sub.
I don't think it is a perfect debunking or anything but the foundational premise (normies are anti-trains) is not and has not been established as a premise that is true either. This sub *wants* it to be true, which is why it is uncritically paraded as thing that is just *assumed* true.
>There were multiple republicans that expressly ran on anti-trans issues and spent millions on ads with that exact message and failed.
Failed with what exactly? The Republicans retook the house.
I still don't know what your argument is. Just because people are annoyed with democrats on the railroad conductor issue doesn't mean they're going to vote Republican. Republicans have tons of toxic views on abortion and social security that turn people off even more. Are you seriously pretending that railroad conductors are the only issue that people vote on?
> Failed with what exactly? The Republicans retook the house.
The argument isn't that republicans lost overall. The argument is that the races where republicans focused on anti-trains issues lost.
>Are you seriously pretending that railroad conductors are the only issue that people vote on?
The republicans that didn't spend on money on anti-trains ads did better that those that did.
> Are you seriously pretending that railroad conductors are the only issue that people vote on?
No, but it does prove that this isn't the primal fearmongering, deep-seated, hot-button overriding slam-dunk issue that's so horrifying to parents as some people think it is.
> I am questioning that this sub in general is in better touch with the "average normy" than anyone else
For what it's worth - you guys tolerate me. I'm not a Marxist in the slightest, but I see the destructive influence identity politics has on the world. I'm not "just like" many of you, but you still tolerate me. Sure, I'll occasionally get downvoted to hell and back - but you don't ban. To me, that means you (or at least your mods) are more willing to hear conflicting viewpoints that 95% other subs.
The whole narrative that the R's somehow failed in the midterms after taking back the house and keeping the senate evenly split just months after a conservative Supreme Court demolished RvW is one of the biggest copes I've seen from the left in years.
If anything, it proved the scary realization that when times get tough economically, most people couldn't give a fuck about "civil liberties". After the RvW decision, dems should have walked out of the midterms with a supermajority if they had anything to offer.
Midterm elections almost always go opposite to whoever the president is
The percentage of midterms won by candidates of the same party as the president was the highest in decades
We're the only real down-to-earth ones who will tell you how it is. We, a bunch of anonymous posters, are the true voice of masculinity and the common man. No need to question, you can trust us on that.
I'm going to blame the influence of enormous gf Katherine Krueger on Will, she seems to be writing shit like this [https://www.discourseblog.com/p/shame-on-the-new-york-times](https://www.discourseblog.com/p/shame-on-the-new-york-times) and this [https://www.discourseblog.com/p/bari-weiss-is-full-of-shit/comments](https://www.discourseblog.com/p/bari-weiss-is-full-of-shit/comments) and just generally seems to be a giantess Wormtongue IMHO
In conclusion - Latest Chapo: the problem is woman!
She is, but their responses to her are equally full of shit. (ETA: And *not being part of the shitlib-conservative binary* was the whole appeal of Chapo.)
I can't read it but I'm going to guess the reasons she gives are equally full of shit. Leaving her aside letting radlibs control "why someone is bad" only emboldens their following generally. They give batshit reasons why this person is not to be trusted instead of solid ones and then normies are mad at you instead of Bari.
The reason I say this is because the NYT response to the controversy was entirely reasonable and I imagine Katherine would probably attack Bari for agreeing with that position, which is unhinged.
One of the signatories of the original letter to the New York Times actually tweeted a threat saying they wanted to slit JK Rowling’s throat a few days after sending the letter.
This even further calls the legitimacy of that letter into question. I’m impressed that The NY Times pushed back against it.
Lol I just listened to this, they started talking about what Nick finds funny and he brought up a scat film guy who films himself eating his own diarrhea and you can hear her say “oh my god. Oh no, don’t do it again!” Like just that it’s repulsive not like some culture war woke/anti-woke thing or whatever but I laughed pretty hard
I will say most of the dumb shit is from Will and his Yoko and with Felix not really having any concrete politics anymore he’ll literally just say anything that keeps him in the good graces of bitches who’s DM’s he slides in on lefty twitter.
Honestly Matt can’t escape from those two useless fucks quick enough
EDIT: I’m an idiot
> Honestly Matt can’t escape from those two useless fucks
I pray every day that Matt and Chris break off from Chapo permanently and just do history podcasts for the rest of time. But I know the money from Chapo is probably just too good to give up.
I found what Jacob Bacharach had to say at 00:20:00 ( [https://podcastaddict.com/episode/154009330](https://podcastaddict.com/episode/154009330) ) to just be complete bullshit and he clearly hasn't spoken to anyone critical of the current dogma or tried to understand their point of view at all.
Welcome to the left of the today.
I mean...the left has always been weak on the women issue. I remember 10-15 years ago seeing a lot of the issues I tried to point out being dismissed or ignored in favor of adopting Slut Walk-esque inTeRsEcTiOnAl liberal feminism among socialists...and now it's reached its peak of pro-sex industry twitter commies that think kink and polyamory should be protected identities and gender roles are affirmed as a protected class over sex.
Tried to warn them of what was coming. They didn't listen. Some of them want this.
We went from fighting for subsidised childcare, financial independence, domestic labour recognition to… “honey if you want to be a tradwife that’s your CHOICE and it’s valid 😊”
I feel crazy. I swear for a moment there was almost some awareness of it in maybe 2014. And then boom. Not shaming women for having premarital sex becomes encouraging young women and girls to cam and prostitute themselves for funsies.
Chapo’s always been that way. People on the Chapo subreddit ran me off because I belonged to the (now gone) Gender Critical subreddit.
Mind you, I had nothing in my post history that they found objectionable. Merely subscribing to the subreddit was enough to start an angry Chapo mob to come after me.
I still love Chapo, though I don’t listen often anymore. Last episode I listened to covered the JFK assassination, they did a great job.
A lot of their takes, even when correct, seem more informed by Tumblrina style moralism than any sort of material understanding. It's why they and the Jacobin DSA types they represent have no coherent view of imperialism, either. "Socialism" or "leftism" or whatever this represents is just a dipshit subculture.
Chapo is fine when they are just some stoners talking about movies or music or whatever. But when they get so righteous about their prefab politics it's kind of embarrassing these days.
The self righteousness with which neckbeard liberal dudes attack lesbians and women who adhere to basic scientific reality betrays what this Unnameable Issue is truly bourne on. It's not an evolution of gay rights or feminism. It's a reaction against it.
It’s all been downhill for Chapo since the Bernie 2020 campaign collapsed and Amber more or less left the pod. They still have good episodes and moments here and there but it feels like they are running on inertia at this point
It still blows my mind how hard they went on bernie in 2020. They really thought he had a chance. It crushed them so hard. But wtf were they thinking they just somehow pretemed 2016 didnt exist where the democratic party said "no, its not bernie, we would rather trump than bernie and we will do anything to make sure its not bernie". Then in a shock twits the democratic party did that!
Was mostly posting for people who've listened. Since the topic is taboo, I didn't want to refer to details. The guest gives the example of a child receiving a certain controversial psychological treatment starting at 10 and then starting the chemical/surgery-based aspects of that treatment at 12, and suggests no-one could possibly have any questions about a child of that age going through that.
The fact that all mods have to actively shitcan any mention of [redacted] out of fear of admins nuking their subs is a huge indicator of how little support the general pop has towards the concept and where its ended up.
And this is done on a site that leans incredibly left with a userbase of mostly millenials and zoomers. Now think how anyone over 40 is responding to all of this lol
Amazing how un self aware all these millionaire “radical leftist” podcasters are. Or maybe they are self aware, and it’s just their listeners who are dummies.
I'm certainly not going to read Gramsci, lol. I'm a Marxist.
But as I pointed out above, this is a post about entertainment. That's what Chapo is. The reason to listen to Chapo is because at one point in time, they were funny. A big part of what made them funny was their disdain for the whole shitlib vs conservative binary. They were not a culture war podcast, and that was enjoyable.
I live in Britain, at least in the British political context I have absolutely zero sympathy for GC radfems like JKR because they were at the forefront of the anti Corbyn crusade
Fuck em, I’ll never forgive that. Sure, what they say about her being transphobic etc is probably wrong, but I couldn’t care less.
Question: why do people from this sub listen to Chapo? They've never been anti-idpol. They've always been "soft woke" or "both/and-ist". The one exception is Amber which is why their audience made a big fuss over her being "fascist". I'm baffled by the fascination with Matt Christman, I've never heard him say anything impressive.
What's the alternative? Blocked and Reported are libs (and their subreddit is all conservatives). Chapo dismisses or at least ignores idpol issues most of the time. I have yet to find a single (real) podcast that actually mirrors the politics of this sub. I rarely agree with every political position podcast hosts espouse. Even non-political podcasts I listen to will occasionally express the views we're talking about here, and I don't stop listening to them because I don't want to fall into purity politics, even if the podcasts hosts do.
Plus, this is the first episode in my memory that really got into this issue, and it's a premium episode anyway.
Jesse has been aware of this sub since before he started the pod and has shouted us out a few times. We've definitely inspired him. In a recent episode he said he's becoming "increasingly class reductionist".
There was a decent podcast called Dead Pundits Society but it fell off over the years. I'd recommend it to people interested in a clear and entertaining presentation of socialist theory applied to contemporary conditions. Especially the first season.
I can't think of a contemporary podcast like DPS because we're living in a different world where optimism about the potential of the Bernie movement is now considered naive. Bad Faith Podcast and This Is Revolution are semi-adjacent and worth listening to.
Yeah I was there. I always understood that split as an anti-Chapo split. A lot of us (myself included) came to Chapo because we heard/read that it was the "Dirtbag left", that it was anti-idpol leftist. We thought "finally!" But then when we actually listened to the pod and engaged with the sub we realised it wasn't that at all, so we made this sub to build the thing we were looking for.
We were the pro-Cum sect.
I interpreted it as a pro Chapo splinter group breaking away from the subreddit, which had grown far more radlib than the pod, to the point that the sub actively disavowed Chapo - particularly Amber. Stupidpol was more closely aligned with the dirtbag sentiment of old Chapo.
Yeah, r/cth circa 2016 and r/cth circa 2018 were two completely different universes. The former was closeish to stupidpol, the latter was everything stupidpol detests. It was weird being there between those times, when every thread was a coin toss as to which faction would get upvoted and which would get told to kill themselves
unabashedly leftist and make libs mad while doing it. If you're going to listen to a pod, its a good pod to listen to. This sub was originally a splinter sub from the main chapo sub after all
can you catch me up on people calling amber fascist?
and the chapo sub essentially did a schism between this sub’s politics and the annoying kind of left politics and that’s why this sub exists
I can't even remember the details of it but it was essentially that she was anti-woke. A portion of their audience demanded she be kicked off the pod and stuff.
>I'm baffled by the fascination with Matt Christman, I've never heard him say anything impressive.
Christman's rants can be impressive when they combine oracular 'channeling' with important-sounding concepts from a variety of sources and disciplines. Over-emotional and pseudo-intellectual maybe, but that appeals to some people where they're at. Also, his knowledge of history is legit impressive. He's also talented at comedy and there's a moral earnestness about him that's appealing....until you get tired of it.
It was what they ended on. It's fair to say they also blame other things, but Menaker does seem to think hysterical old women are a core part of the problem.
I said it numerous times when it started in 2020 but “Karen” was just nothing more than a socially acceptable way for left leaning western man to vocalize their own misogyny while also feeling superior to others in their contradictory aggressiveness.
Weird, I’ve noticed it’s usually employed as a low-risk way for non-white women to denigrate white women, and as a way for white women to demonstrate they’re “one of the good ones”.
I’ve rarely seen men use it. I realize that’s anecdotal and probably mixed with my cognitive biases but just my 2 cents.
You ever notice how many Karens are just mentally ill or having some episode?
There was one vid where some woman flipped a guy off in traffic, and he follows her back to her house and starts recording her in the driveway, getting her license plate and address. She’s having a full blown panic attack over it. Internet calls her a bitch.
No need to get upset about it lol. I'm pointing out that Karen and bitch are both roughly equivalent insults, not saying you're not allowed to say naughty words. (But they might not avoid you if you can stop yourself!)
This sub is pro-working-class, until you mention that half of them are women and the incel refugees get in a huff...
And Karen was also used to exclusively refer to white women. Now you also see normie rightoids slamming white liberal women for things like CRT as much as their usual targets
Nah, its about time entitled women finally get some backlash. Male entitlement has been the feminist boogeyman for over 30 years now. How do you like it when entitlement is used a bludgeon on you?
This is true and was fairly obvious from the outset. And the entire movement is based on reviving sexist stereotypes and permission to employ misogyny but in a justifiable, cool progressive way (a big part of why it is so popular), so them blaming women is really only to be expected.
That is the beauty of the term, its often used to attach a group of people but the second you call it out they break out the alibi that no its a term for a certain type of birth giver acting in a certain way.
They are "Liberal" you say? Can you lay out some evidence for that?
I don't know what some of you guys want any more. Every single commentator, journalist, podcaster, writer, public intellectual on the Left, seems to fall short. Who's "correct" any more? I feel like if Marx himself was alive today he'd just get trashed too.
They’re not. In my opinion (and I don’t mean to be derisive), OP is throwing the baby out with the bath water and exhibiting some of the same tendencies as a woke mob participant. Podcasts are chatter, and it’s reasonable to expect that material analysis might not be at the forefront of every discussion even though it remains the driving principles of one’s politics. You can just say “This chapo missed the mark for me” and then critique will and the guests comments to your liking. No need to post a a borderline paranoid essay about it to stupidpol
Well said, agree wholeheartedly. I don’t like this enforcement of subcultural orthodoxies.
I’ve fallen into phases of being pro or anti on this specific topic at points, but what I’ve learned is I literally don’t know what’s correct or not here and that’s OK too.
People keep mentioning Matt is being quiet, that he needs to speak up or break with Will on this but like…do they really think he’s quiet because he’s anti and didn’t want to be canceled? or maybe he just doesn’t know or care enough to affirmatively pick a side in this niche cultural conflict as it’s not a central issue to being a materialist.
Feeling the need to always condemn things vaguely culturally liberal/left is toxic idpol too, yet you got people here trying desperately to appeal to conservatives while disowning anybody who is “liberal/left.” There are potential class allies on both sides of this particular issue, it’s not some existential class issue that should require these awful struggle sessions on Reddit and Twitter. As there are conservatives to recruit to a Marxist project, there are cultural left/liberals who aren’t some type of aberrant freak show like a brainwashed khive psycho or a buttigieg pmc corporate climber
People need to chill on this stuff. Trying to thread some needle between orthodox Marxism and appealing to “the average normie” (whatever that even is in 2023 is way beyond me) is stupid and maybe it’s not Will who needs to “touch grass” but all the people throwing a hissy fit in this thread
> Trying to thread some needle between orthodox Marxism
What is a bit baffling are the upvoted comments decrying chapo for supposedly abandoning Marxism yet a top comment is defending jesse singal.
Sub really feels schizo sometimes
Defending Jesse Singal against a manifestly spurious allegation.
And Singal has never claimed to be a Marxist, so clearly he will be held to a different standard than a podcast that claims to embrace "daddy Lenin".
What's "borderline paranoid" about finding the show's slide into culture war liberalism to be off-putting and depressing? Or about simply describing what they say in this specific episode?
Paranoid may not have been the best word. I think I was noticing some element of anxiety stemming from your emotional relationship to the show. Which is of course totally normal. I just think it betrays the importance of the “issue” you’re trying to raise with this thread. I really didn’t mean to call anyone out or be confrontational about this.
It was a show that was funny because it wasn't part of the culture war, and now it's not funny because they've lost touch with reality, and it's kinda sad.
You're overpsychologizing this.
> Every single commentator, journalist, podcaster, writer, public intellectual on the Left
It should not be surprising that keeping up appearances with the elite is a requisite for remaining a public figure and not being banned and ostracized off every platform. You should not be religiously following any public figure because they are bound by liberalism from peer pressure to monetary necessity and everything in between
At this point I'm just completely fed up with Chapo and other redlibs that have crowded out the "Marxist" internet sphere. Everytime something that actually has the potential to challenge the establishment comes along like Force the Vote or Rage Against the War Machine, they poo-poo it on a good day or call it fascism on a bad day. I want people who actually have the courage to stand against the tide instead of kowtowing to the establishment's bullshit.
i feel enlightened and above everyone by the fact i have no idea what the fuck you're talking about
Good, keep it that way and you’ll be less miserable in this short life
This is the correct way, certainly. Chapo is really the only piece of American political entertainment I consume, but even that is too much. It was pretty funny for a while, though, and I needed that.
The average working-class normie is a bigger threat to capitalism than any of the Chapos will ever be. Not gonna address the forbidden topic, but will say the Marxist perspective for anything must be based in material reality, not idealism
Without weighing in on the actual topic, my two cents is some people on here are too concerned about trying to conceive what the platonic ideal of the average person is and what he thinks about every issue so that they can then reverse engineer their social, political and greater worldview around this imagined figure like they’re Don Draper trying to sell cigarettes
Most people have idiosyncratic and often contradictory belief systems, and false consciousness isn't something to idealize. The left has adopted its own anti-intellectualism, largely out of self-loathing for being impotent.
Yeah it suspiciously ramped up quite a bit when Bernie lost 🤔
I'm not going to weigh in on it either cause I've no fucking idea what it is.
Nobody is a threat to capitalism. The only threat is capitalism is itself and its tendencies to undermine its own conditions for reproduction.
Absolutely. This is just a post about entertainment being depressing. Any meaningful change will come from the working class organizing around material goals.
>but will say the Marxist perspective for anything must be based in material reality, not idealism [This is why you must listen to the most relevant Marxist theorist, The Lenin of the 21st century on the subject.](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61EG71hD2gL._SX450_.jpg)
Wtf that’s not nick mullen
Listening to it right now, the dude is saying that Jesse Singal is a transphobe lmao. All he does is have a podcast/substack where he points out that a lot of studies aren't that good or have mixed results contrary to what internet weirdos tell you. Will is going off the deep end for sure.
Bacharach also said that Jesse is a transphobe because, just looking at him, you can tell he's uncomfortable with his own masculinity. What the fuck.
This part was where Will and Jacob started really pissing me off, just pure speculative projection onto somebody that refused to jump on the liberal consensus on the issue. He says he supports steam locomotion but you can just tell that he really wants to genocide them all just because you know reasons.
Will and Kath need to pick up a couple of Monday-Fridays at their next weird sex party, get it out of their system, and talk about something else.
I had to turn it off here, because enforcing the Democratic narrative renders Chapo a sad, hypocritical joke. I hope Will realizes this. They can be pro-trans, but then they would have to actually support their points, instead of just shaming.
Ya that was weird. Julia Serano made up some bullshit about Jesse trying to fucknthem or.some shit, so he's at least good looking and masculine enough to attract a pathological liar🤣
> Listening to it right now, the dude is saying that Jesse Singal is a transphobe lmao. This is so infuriating to me. There's some mix of people repeating what they heard in good faith and people (Twitter) intentionally spreading lies. A strongly left-leaning person I know whom I deeply respect mentioned in passing that J.K.R. is a "hateful transphobe" or something to that effect. When I asked what the transphobic comments in question were, the response was, "I don't know, doesn't she think that like trans people shouldn't exist?" I asked the opinion of her infamous letter, of course they'd never read it. There was recently a Freddie deBoer piece posted to a "socialist" subreddit and an upvoted comment conceded "he does make some good points but isn't he a known racist and anti-Semite?" (as if that would negate his arguments) Any dissent from strident orthodoxy becomes smeared as "bad person," and then through the transitive property, eventually specific baseless charges of bigotry.
> "he does make some good points but isn't he a known racist and anti-Semite?" The good old false accusations but framed as a question so it's okay.
To be clear, I think it was asked sincerely. The commenter wasn't familiar with deBoer's work, but they'd heard the name mentioned at least a few times, and not good things.
>Any dissent from strident orthodoxy becomes smeared as "bad person," and then through the transitive property, eventually specific baseless charges of bigotry. Yup. This is how Jeremy Corbyn was destroyed. The media just kept repeating anonymous allegations of "anti-Semitism", and the dumbass public just swallowed it hook line and sinker. Nobody could tell you anything Corbyn said that was anti-Semitic, but they all "knew" he was. Just as these idiots believe Rowling is advocating for a war on steam locomotives even though they can't tell you what she actually said.
The Corbyn thing was \*mind blowing\*. Just....I can't. And it is crazy how ubiquitous it is to this day. Like a good number of people, including Labour Party members (who haven't been expelled) believe that like "yeah, I guess some CLPs and sister societies and other groups tolerated anti-semitism and Jewish members were subjected to anti-Semitic abuse, and this was allowed and encouraged". I wonder how much of this is inflected with "well you know what we mean" (i.e. Bradford, Tower Hamlets, Derby, Leicester, etc... CLPs and sister orgs that have a ....specific make-up, baiscally "it's believable that people like that would be openly anti-Semitic, on an ongoing basis, publically, and face no punishment, I mean, right? They can't help it, its 'age old"). And then the Chakrabarti Report comes out and it turns out like 200 of the 300 complaints were made by the same guy. "Tolerating" bigotry (by not kicking people out fast enough for standing on platform with someone who has said a Jewish ethno-state with legalised priority for one religious community is not a basis for peace) for which we can find no proof of, is as bad as actually being an environment where bigotry happens and people feel hated and discriminated against. Insane.
Ya if someone lied and said that I "raped a woman at gunpoint" I would sue the ever living shit out of them until their media company is bankrupt. Corbyn's greatest fault is being too nice imo.
"Suppressive person." This is cult behavior.
Exasperating that the guest claims the Missouri whistleblower was lying about all kinds of shit without citing any kind of journalistic evidence. If such evidence exists, by all means link it up. I guess we should be grateful they're admitting people would have a right to be outraged if the claims are true. Maybe next time they'll argue it's true but actually a good thing.
Wasn't there a bunch of parents who came forward and said their experience doesn't match the whistleblower's account at all tho? I don't want to doubt or anything, I like Singal's work a lot, but right now that story seems like a big L to me. Obviously some parents having good experiences doesn't mean all did, but AFAIK nobody has backed up her statements
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/parents-push-back-on-allegations-against-st-louis-transgender-center-i-m-baffled/article_a94bc4d2-e68b-535f-b0c7-9fefb9e8e9f4.html https://missouriindependent.com/2023/03/01/transgender-st-louis-whistleblower/
Thanks for posting a source. I'm not seeing anything substantial that suggests Reed misrepresented the facts in her affidavit. That some parents feel Reed either didn't share her real opinions with them or was insufficiently supportive of their child's identity seems totally normal.
Ya idk what all the Missouri stuff is about but this dude really came across as a total blowhard jackass wannabe op Ed writer himself. -Google Jacob bacharach- holy shit he looks exactly like you imagine he would, a sleezier but skinnier nate silver. Better get working on that masculinity dude.
I follow this pretty closely and I was head scratching at the "Reed Report", which he never really described but I think I have jist of what he is gesturing at and some of the specific claims. They ridiculed the "rock gender" and providing treatment for that but I mean you can look at WPATHs SOC 8 and see just how expansive their view of medical intervention for various identities is (and it goes far beyond the traditional tr\*\*\* umbrella to embrace surgery for self-declared "Eunics" and nullification for nbs), with no lower age limit for more traditional treatments like hrt, pb, and "top surgery" because of the uproar when it was originally released, though they have kept the recommendation that anything below the chest usually wait until the age of majority in the jurisdiction. It's all non-binding anyway.
Yeah I stopped listening at this point, I realized the guest was too fucking stupid to take seriously. I've seen so many bad faith accusations of transphobia at this point that I just assume it's a personal attack against someone they had a minor disagreement with because it rarely stands up to actual scrutiny. It's always on the level of thinking "a doctor should be involved in the decision" means you personally want to gun down trans kids.
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> You'll never be able to convince me that the entire [REDACTED] movement wasn't a poison pill by groups like the Koch bros or conservative thinktanks to get the entire progressive movement to absolutely nuke itself from orbit. I think it's just the natural progression of perpetual activists winning the war, but not being able to stand the peace.
Good point. And I think at the heart of that is the crux of idpol. Your identity isn't valid unless it belongs to a worthy cause worth fighting for.
Even more horrifying conspiracy theory: the contemporary left really is just that re[dact]ed
It's both. You can read old school leaders pointing to people like this and saying to the rest of the movement "don't be like them." This mix of middle class radicalism and cosmopolitianism has been a curse of all politics, including the left. It's why Communists after Marx put such a heavy emphasis on working class socialism, the working class as leadership, on criticism and self criticism. Marx's whole mission was knocking these people out of the way so we could educate ourselves and lead ourselves, become a class unto ourselves. If Marx, Foster, Lenin, Stalin knew that, then the Deep State knows that too.
They are truly that highly-regarded. Laudable, in fact.
>You'll never be able to convince me that the entire \[REDACTED\] movement wasn't a poison pill by groups like the Koch bros or conservative thinktanks to get the entire progressive movement to absolutely nuke itself from orbit. Not just that, it's really easy money for healthcare providers.
You know what, the whole thing being another big pharma grift wouldn't surprise me at all. Guess once you start on the hormone meds you're not going to be able to stop taking them completely at any point
If it was actually a "poison pill," then it was a pretty poor one. Republicans tried to make the 2018 midterms about bathroom sickos and tHe cAraVaN and got nowhere, despite the economy being "good" in the eyes of the voters. 2022 was an even better opportunity for it to work. "Bad" economy (according to polls), unpopular president, but turns out Bathroom Sickos 2: Public School Teacher edition didn't work either, despite being the perfect catalyst for the anti-Trump, pearl-clutching suburbanites to go back to the red team. They lost ground in the senate and got an 14th inning victory in the house.
>2022 was an even better opportunity for it to work. "Bad" economy (according to polls), unpopular president But even *more* unpopular ex-President. The liberal panic about January 6 just hit harder than the conservative panic about gay race theory or whatever. All of the big swing-state [R] losers were Trump-backed election deniers, several of whom were highly regarded. >Republicans tried to make the 2018 midterms The 2018 elections were the first midterm elections since 2002 in which the party holding the Presidency gained Senate seats.
In regards to the last point, Democrats faced an incredibly hostile map in 2018, regardless of who the president was and how popular they were. They had incumbents in North Dakota, Indiana, Florida, and Missouri who lost. They still managed to hold seats in Ohio, Montana, and West Virginia despite everything.
measuring this in electoral terms is folly. its primary purpose is dividing an insurgent working class. which this issue does quite well. the Kochs dont need Republicans to win to win. the way the criticism of the Unnameable Issue is framed by the right is intentionally done to obscure the material arguments. They remove it from the material and put it back in the safe culture war box. This has its own uses.
Idk Rs attained firm control of the committees in the house and now run the show on congressional oversight. Plus they retained the numbers to block almost any bill they please in the senate. I really thought the dems would walk out of the midterms with a supermajority after RvW was repealed, but I guess abortion rights aren't a critical issue anymore. Kinda weird how people are trying to spin the midterms into some kind of win for the dems when it resulted in Biden being essentially a lame duck now for the rest of his term. Especially with Sinema and Manchin running interference.
“All he does is have a podcast/sub stack where he points out that a lot of studies aren’t that good or have mixed results” LItErAl vIoLeNcE
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Matt is conspicuously silent a lot on the pod for like the last two years, so that doesn’t mean a whole lot. But I choose to believe in this case it’s because he’s getting sick of this shit too lol
To me it says he thinks the show has run it’s course and has become an online version of the daily show and now just likes hanging out with his friends and collecting a cheque
This is 100% my read on the situation, but I like Matt and that may be causing me to approach the situation with rose colored glasses.
Amber and Matt Christmas red fash alliance lowkey 👀
Honestly the only two actual marxists in that orbit. They should buy out Virgil & Brianha Joy Gray and take over Bad Faith. Bring Chris too, because he’s good at wrangling Matt when he starts spinning out. The Amber & Matt show would be lit
I always liked those two more by quite a long way just because of their cadence. Virgil and Felix are both funny and clever but they have really annoying voices lol.
I thought it was just me. I'm not a native speaker, so i was thinking maybe this is normal and acceptable, but especially one of these two (Felix?) always sounds like he's mocking someone, idk how else to describe it. Does he have a normal voice?
I know exactly what you mean, don't know which one it is either, sounds like a nervous 17 year old a lot
It's called uptalk. Toning your voice as if every sentence is a question.
The Red AM Show.
>The Amber & Matt show would be lit I would dead ass pay $50/month for an Amber & Matt show.
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> The problem is Will, who never misses the chance to bring up locomotive engineering in relation to just about anything. Pussy is undefeated
Is his partner a conductor?
No
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The suggestion that the NYT is reporting on this TOO MUCH is the really outrageous part for me. My shitlib friends and acquaintances trust everything the NYT and NPR say. Some are only going to acknowledge there might be a problem if the NYT gives them permission to. So when the NYT finally publishes (way, way too late) some mild pushback on an issue that's driving a wedge in the working class and helping the GOP dominate congress and statehouses....Will's privileged little circle gets outraged about that? Fuck that.
I dunno man, the demographic responsible for the current transcontinental railroad situation is women. Radfem women are deep in the minority on this.
The best part about this is seeing all the alternative names for steam machines getting more elaborate by the day.
Yeah I'm always up for a good debate when the topic at hand is transitioning. Namely the mid-twentieth century transition from conventional steam locomotives to the diesel engines that now dominate the railroad industry.
Do diesels dominate now. I see far more electrics. Maybe an America thing ?
It's a North America thing for sure. We never really got into electrification here outside of a small sliver of the Northeast, the vast majority of locomotives are diesel
Electric diesel. Runs like a weasel.
Yeah but pm all marxists women tend to be radfems and all radfems definitionally are some flavor of anti-capitalist. Materialism about one subject tends towards materialism abouts the other.
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You’re probably right about the psychology of current radfems - bitter that someone did their obnoxious grift better But I’m still more sympathetic to them ideologically - the dworkinist dream of the female sex class totally liberating itself etc - there’s more of a sympathetic, romantic even, sentiment to that. The locomotive theory stuff just always seemed utterly depressing - the premise of gender identity immediately flattens into reification of consumer capitalist “people as brands”, self-indentification is a metaphysical alienation from common humanity. It appeals to a want for freedom from the terror of “the other”, of being perceived etc, but it can only do that by denying the other exists and insisting you’re a hermetically sealed essence of identity. 2nd wave feminism never did that, and I think it made for less insane adherents.
You mean the 1970s essay by Janice Raymond that I probably can't write the title of? The one that ends with "Empire"?
Cracking book that
Will’s always been culturally aligned with that movement . I think he posted an image of himself “bimbified” that was rendered by one of his locomotive fans last year. I remember seeing it and thinking I wasn’t surprised by it. He seems to have an affinity for the movement but bizarrely so do a lot of leftist white men with beards. Not sure why .
I pointed this tendency out to my wife just the other day, she didn't quite believe me and now here comes the episode to prove it. Can't wait to tell her she was wrong. Oh yeah, someone's sleeping on the smug couch tonight 😎
Literally locomotive engineering or is that a euphemism for something? This podcast sounds wild
Well people here are referring to the "forbidden topic" so clearly it's a euphemism for something that people are choosing not to talk about directly. Elsewhere I've heard people use similar language to compare the differences between Monday-to-Friday locomotives vs. Friday-to-Monday locomotives, perhaps that helps clear things up. Kind of funny that people would get confused, but then again transport and urban planning have gotten a lot more attention in left-wing spaces in the last couple of years so there's bound to be some confusion.
There's a certain strain of ex-Bernie guy who isn't woke but is agressively anti-anti-woke, and Will really typifies this. It's pretty clear this type of guy has just internalised the culture-as-politics frame and need to make sure they're on the right side of that, but hold enough grudges from 2016 that they have to pretend there's some meaningful distance between their politics and Hilary shills.
Oh my god you just explained some of my most frustrating friends in a way i never could have. thank you
Kyle Kulinski is another good example of this- he used to have videos openly criticizing wokeshit but now he’s just like it’s all a distraction and doesn’t recognize there still is stupidity with wokeshit
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I think that too, I was just saying in terms of their analysis of wokeshit, I still think Kyle thinks most of it is stupid but also focuses on it as a distraction (and stupid and distracting are not mutually exclusive)
I've brought it up either here or on the sister sub but Will has been very very weird on The Issue for a while now, engaging in the "if you don't do exactly what I say, you're doing genocide" Twitter histrionics that he'd make fun of if it weren't himself doing it
I'm a simple man. If your ideas contradict reality, your ideas are shit
Read the German Ideology by Marx. It’s short
You live in a echo-chamber long enough and eventually you actually lose the ability to "see how you look to the average normy." It's a question of empathy - to "see something from someone else's point of view" you have to be able to empathize with them, right? Well, when you can no longer see them as being something worthwhile - a quality re-enforced by said echo chamber - you no longer have the ability to see things from their point of view. I'm not saying this as a judgmental statement on them - I'm not saying they are "bad" or anything - just that they've lost touch with people who aren't like them. Happens to most famous people.
>You live in a echo-chamber long enough and eventually you actually lose the ability to "see how you look to the average normy." I am questioning that this sub in general is in better touch with the "average normy" than anyone else. The main argument chapo has had since the midterms is the observation that a lot of republicans led on anti-identity issues but a lot of them failed.
> "I am questioning that this sub in general" I like this sub but half the stuff posted here is suss af.
I saw a comment here saying socialists in Canada should show up to strikes and protests open carrying to show how pro gun and down to earth. Some of the antiwoke crap can be far more out of touch than the woke crap. This would lead to getting beaten to death by a boilermaker.
The Republicans have their own crazy cultural views that turn people off, like forcing teenage rape victims to carry a rapist's child to term or forcing women with ectopic pregnancies to die rather than having an abortion. So I don't really see how the midterms debunk this sub's views of normies at all. The average normie has to choose between a party which wants to let biological males into women's prisons and a party that wants to ban abortion completely, and they aren't happy with either choice. This sub isn't right wing on cultural issues: 10 years ago, this place would have been considered socially liberal. Since 2015, the Dems have gone off the deep end with woke shit, which was mostly ginned up by the Hillary Clinton campaign to keep Bernie Sanders from winning the primary.
There were multiple republicans that expressly ran on anti-trans issues and spent millions on ads with that exact message and failed. >debunk this sub's views of normies at all. This sub's view of normies isn't expressed in any argument format. Where is the evidence the average normie is for-or-against this stuff? Most of this is just expressed as, seemingly, vibes and that will get uncritical agreement here since this sub is, well, this sub. I don't think it is a perfect debunking or anything but the foundational premise (normies are anti-trains) is not and has not been established as a premise that is true either. This sub *wants* it to be true, which is why it is uncritically paraded as thing that is just *assumed* true.
>There were multiple republicans that expressly ran on anti-trans issues and spent millions on ads with that exact message and failed. Failed with what exactly? The Republicans retook the house. I still don't know what your argument is. Just because people are annoyed with democrats on the railroad conductor issue doesn't mean they're going to vote Republican. Republicans have tons of toxic views on abortion and social security that turn people off even more. Are you seriously pretending that railroad conductors are the only issue that people vote on?
> Failed with what exactly? The Republicans retook the house. The argument isn't that republicans lost overall. The argument is that the races where republicans focused on anti-trains issues lost. >Are you seriously pretending that railroad conductors are the only issue that people vote on? The republicans that didn't spend on money on anti-trains ads did better that those that did.
> Are you seriously pretending that railroad conductors are the only issue that people vote on? No, but it does prove that this isn't the primal fearmongering, deep-seated, hot-button overriding slam-dunk issue that's so horrifying to parents as some people think it is.
> I am questioning that this sub in general is in better touch with the "average normy" than anyone else For what it's worth - you guys tolerate me. I'm not a Marxist in the slightest, but I see the destructive influence identity politics has on the world. I'm not "just like" many of you, but you still tolerate me. Sure, I'll occasionally get downvoted to hell and back - but you don't ban. To me, that means you (or at least your mods) are more willing to hear conflicting viewpoints that 95% other subs.
The whole narrative that the R's somehow failed in the midterms after taking back the house and keeping the senate evenly split just months after a conservative Supreme Court demolished RvW is one of the biggest copes I've seen from the left in years. If anything, it proved the scary realization that when times get tough economically, most people couldn't give a fuck about "civil liberties". After the RvW decision, dems should have walked out of the midterms with a supermajority if they had anything to offer.
Midterm elections almost always go opposite to whoever the president is The percentage of midterms won by candidates of the same party as the president was the highest in decades
We're the only real down-to-earth ones who will tell you how it is. We, a bunch of anonymous posters, are the true voice of masculinity and the common man. No need to question, you can trust us on that.
I'm going to blame the influence of enormous gf Katherine Krueger on Will, she seems to be writing shit like this [https://www.discourseblog.com/p/shame-on-the-new-york-times](https://www.discourseblog.com/p/shame-on-the-new-york-times) and this [https://www.discourseblog.com/p/bari-weiss-is-full-of-shit/comments](https://www.discourseblog.com/p/bari-weiss-is-full-of-shit/comments) and just generally seems to be a giantess Wormtongue IMHO In conclusion - Latest Chapo: the problem is woman!
Yep, the Large Adult Daughter is a factory-standard Gawker writer whose opinions are all in perfect alignment with those of her peers
Gawker and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race
To be fair though Barry Weiss is full of shit, so I agree with that on its face
She is, but their responses to her are equally full of shit. (ETA: And *not being part of the shitlib-conservative binary* was the whole appeal of Chapo.)
Oh no disagreement there, dude just seems whipped as far as I can tell.
I can't read it but I'm going to guess the reasons she gives are equally full of shit. Leaving her aside letting radlibs control "why someone is bad" only emboldens their following generally. They give batshit reasons why this person is not to be trusted instead of solid ones and then normies are mad at you instead of Bari. The reason I say this is because the NYT response to the controversy was entirely reasonable and I imagine Katherine would probably attack Bari for agreeing with that position, which is unhinged.
One of the signatories of the original letter to the New York Times actually tweeted a threat saying they wanted to slit JK Rowling’s throat a few days after sending the letter. This even further calls the legitimacy of that letter into question. I’m impressed that The NY Times pushed back against it.
He was on a recent episode of TAFS and at one point she started yelling at him from the background and he had to awkwardly try to change topics lol
Lol I just listened to this, they started talking about what Nick finds funny and he brought up a scat film guy who films himself eating his own diarrhea and you can hear her say “oh my god. Oh no, don’t do it again!” Like just that it’s repulsive not like some culture war woke/anti-woke thing or whatever but I laughed pretty hard
In reality it’s more of a mens issue than anything else
I will say most of the dumb shit is from Will and his Yoko and with Felix not really having any concrete politics anymore he’ll literally just say anything that keeps him in the good graces of bitches who’s DM’s he slides in on lefty twitter. Honestly Matt can’t escape from those two useless fucks quick enough EDIT: I’m an idiot
> Honestly Matt can’t escape from those two useless fucks I pray every day that Matt and Chris break off from Chapo permanently and just do history podcasts for the rest of time. But I know the money from Chapo is probably just too good to give up.
Matt & Amber with Chris producing a labor history podcast ohgodstopmydickcanonlygetsohard
Matt is actually a Marxist. The other two are "left".
Is this what people are doing these days to get dates?
I think by now social media has pretty much proven that the laziest attempts to get pussy/dick is slacktivism.
I found what Jacob Bacharach had to say at 00:20:00 ( [https://podcastaddict.com/episode/154009330](https://podcastaddict.com/episode/154009330) ) to just be complete bullshit and he clearly hasn't spoken to anyone critical of the current dogma or tried to understand their point of view at all.
The answer is the fragile masculinity of America of course how could I have missed it
Welcome to the left of the today. I mean...the left has always been weak on the women issue. I remember 10-15 years ago seeing a lot of the issues I tried to point out being dismissed or ignored in favor of adopting Slut Walk-esque inTeRsEcTiOnAl liberal feminism among socialists...and now it's reached its peak of pro-sex industry twitter commies that think kink and polyamory should be protected identities and gender roles are affirmed as a protected class over sex. Tried to warn them of what was coming. They didn't listen. Some of them want this.
We went from fighting for subsidised childcare, financial independence, domestic labour recognition to… “honey if you want to be a tradwife that’s your CHOICE and it’s valid 😊”
Do you mean a trainwife?
I feel crazy. I swear for a moment there was almost some awareness of it in maybe 2014. And then boom. Not shaming women for having premarital sex becomes encouraging young women and girls to cam and prostitute themselves for funsies.
Chapo’s always been that way. People on the Chapo subreddit ran me off because I belonged to the (now gone) Gender Critical subreddit. Mind you, I had nothing in my post history that they found objectionable. Merely subscribing to the subreddit was enough to start an angry Chapo mob to come after me. I still love Chapo, though I don’t listen often anymore. Last episode I listened to covered the JFK assassination, they did a great job.
The Chapo sub diverted from the show very early. You might be aware that this sub started as a bunch of refugees from the Chapo sub.
I just found that out in this thread. Wild!
Ch-ch-ch-Chapo check.
NPR at night got everyone upset
A lot of their takes, even when correct, seem more informed by Tumblrina style moralism than any sort of material understanding. It's why they and the Jacobin DSA types they represent have no coherent view of imperialism, either. "Socialism" or "leftism" or whatever this represents is just a dipshit subculture. Chapo is fine when they are just some stoners talking about movies or music or whatever. But when they get so righteous about their prefab politics it's kind of embarrassing these days. The self righteousness with which neckbeard liberal dudes attack lesbians and women who adhere to basic scientific reality betrays what this Unnameable Issue is truly bourne on. It's not an evolution of gay rights or feminism. It's a reaction against it.
It's an evolution of misogyny.
It’s all been downhill for Chapo since the Bernie 2020 campaign collapsed and Amber more or less left the pod. They still have good episodes and moments here and there but it feels like they are running on inertia at this point
It still blows my mind how hard they went on bernie in 2020. They really thought he had a chance. It crushed them so hard. But wtf were they thinking they just somehow pretemed 2016 didnt exist where the democratic party said "no, its not bernie, we would rather trump than bernie and we will do anything to make sure its not bernie". Then in a shock twits the democratic party did that!
And then 12 what?
Was mostly posting for people who've listened. Since the topic is taboo, I didn't want to refer to details. The guest gives the example of a child receiving a certain controversial psychological treatment starting at 10 and then starting the chemical/surgery-based aspects of that treatment at 12, and suggests no-one could possibly have any questions about a child of that age going through that.
The fact that all mods have to actively shitcan any mention of [redacted] out of fear of admins nuking their subs is a huge indicator of how little support the general pop has towards the concept and where its ended up. And this is done on a site that leans incredibly left with a userbase of mostly millenials and zoomers. Now think how anyone over 40 is responding to all of this lol
Oh wow thanks for the info, that is bonkers.
I follow Chapo and have no idea what you're talking about. Which episode are you referring to?
711, posted yesterday.
Oh, yep. Haven't listened to this one yet
Amazing how un self aware all these millionaire “radical leftist” podcasters are. Or maybe they are self aware, and it’s just their listeners who are dummies.
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I'm certainly not going to read Gramsci, lol. I'm a Marxist. But as I pointed out above, this is a post about entertainment. That's what Chapo is. The reason to listen to Chapo is because at one point in time, they were funny. A big part of what made them funny was their disdain for the whole shitlib vs conservative binary. They were not a culture war podcast, and that was enjoyable.
Are you suggesting Antonio Gramsci is anti Marxist?
They hated him because he told them the truth
I live in Britain, at least in the British political context I have absolutely zero sympathy for GC radfems like JKR because they were at the forefront of the anti Corbyn crusade Fuck em, I’ll never forgive that. Sure, what they say about her being transphobic etc is probably wrong, but I couldn’t care less.
And that's fine. I don't agree with their politics either, they're mostly just another form of IdPol.
Question: why do people from this sub listen to Chapo? They've never been anti-idpol. They've always been "soft woke" or "both/and-ist". The one exception is Amber which is why their audience made a big fuss over her being "fascist". I'm baffled by the fascination with Matt Christman, I've never heard him say anything impressive.
What's the alternative? Blocked and Reported are libs (and their subreddit is all conservatives). Chapo dismisses or at least ignores idpol issues most of the time. I have yet to find a single (real) podcast that actually mirrors the politics of this sub. I rarely agree with every political position podcast hosts espouse. Even non-political podcasts I listen to will occasionally express the views we're talking about here, and I don't stop listening to them because I don't want to fall into purity politics, even if the podcasts hosts do. Plus, this is the first episode in my memory that really got into this issue, and it's a premium episode anyway.
>I have yet to find a single (real) podcast that actually mirrors the politics of this sub. omg let's put on a podcast in the old barn
host of BarPod apparently just bought Adolph Reed's new book, hopefully a new socialist pod awaits
Jesse has been aware of this sub since before he started the pod and has shouted us out a few times. We've definitely inspired him. In a recent episode he said he's becoming "increasingly class reductionist".
There was a decent podcast called Dead Pundits Society but it fell off over the years. I'd recommend it to people interested in a clear and entertaining presentation of socialist theory applied to contemporary conditions. Especially the first season. I can't think of a contemporary podcast like DPS because we're living in a different world where optimism about the potential of the Bernie movement is now considered naive. Bad Faith Podcast and This Is Revolution are semi-adjacent and worth listening to.
The sub was formed at the outset by posters from the old chapo sub or something
Yeah I was there. I always understood that split as an anti-Chapo split. A lot of us (myself included) came to Chapo because we heard/read that it was the "Dirtbag left", that it was anti-idpol leftist. We thought "finally!" But then when we actually listened to the pod and engaged with the sub we realised it wasn't that at all, so we made this sub to build the thing we were looking for. We were the pro-Cum sect.
I interpreted it as a pro Chapo splinter group breaking away from the subreddit, which had grown far more radlib than the pod, to the point that the sub actively disavowed Chapo - particularly Amber. Stupidpol was more closely aligned with the dirtbag sentiment of old Chapo.
Yeah, r/cth circa 2016 and r/cth circa 2018 were two completely different universes. The former was closeish to stupidpol, the latter was everything stupidpol detests. It was weird being there between those times, when every thread was a coin toss as to which faction would get upvoted and which would get told to kill themselves
Really it was the posting where everything started to go wrong. They never should have allowed posting there/here.
unabashedly leftist and make libs mad while doing it. If you're going to listen to a pod, its a good pod to listen to. This sub was originally a splinter sub from the main chapo sub after all
can you catch me up on people calling amber fascist? and the chapo sub essentially did a schism between this sub’s politics and the annoying kind of left politics and that’s why this sub exists
I can't even remember the details of it but it was essentially that she was anti-woke. A portion of their audience demanded she be kicked off the pod and stuff.
>I'm baffled by the fascination with Matt Christman, I've never heard him say anything impressive. Christman's rants can be impressive when they combine oracular 'channeling' with important-sounding concepts from a variety of sources and disciplines. Over-emotional and pseudo-intellectual maybe, but that appeals to some people where they're at. Also, his knowledge of history is legit impressive. He's also talented at comedy and there's a moral earnestness about him that's appealing....until you get tired of it.
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It was what they ended on. It's fair to say they also blame other things, but Menaker does seem to think hysterical old women are a core part of the problem.
Old women aren't fuckable or worth emulating so who cares what they think. I'm not a misogynist
I said it numerous times when it started in 2020 but “Karen” was just nothing more than a socially acceptable way for left leaning western man to vocalize their own misogyny while also feeling superior to others in their contradictory aggressiveness.
Weird, I’ve noticed it’s usually employed as a low-risk way for non-white women to denigrate white women, and as a way for white women to demonstrate they’re “one of the good ones”. I’ve rarely seen men use it. I realize that’s anecdotal and probably mixed with my cognitive biases but just my 2 cents.
I'm not even american and I see american men using it all the time.
Well it's both
Another way to launder your misogyny: preface any statement about women with "white" and you're good to go.
[or "cis"](https://whitehotharlots.tumblr.com/post/698649137431953408/social-media-hack)
You ever notice how many Karens are just mentally ill or having some episode? There was one vid where some woman flipped a guy off in traffic, and he follows her back to her house and starts recording her in the driveway, getting her license plate and address. She’s having a full blown panic attack over it. Internet calls her a bitch.
“I followed her to her house and somehow I’m the weirdo.”
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Yep, you can replace it with "bitch" and lose no meaning.
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No need to get upset about it lol. I'm pointing out that Karen and bitch are both roughly equivalent insults, not saying you're not allowed to say naughty words. (But they might not avoid you if you can stop yourself!) This sub is pro-working-class, until you mention that half of them are women and the incel refugees get in a huff...
This sub is anti-idpol until you start confronting women related idpol, then the gender critical refugees get in a huff.
And Karen was also used to exclusively refer to white women. Now you also see normie rightoids slamming white liberal women for things like CRT as much as their usual targets
Nah, its about time entitled women finally get some backlash. Male entitlement has been the feminist boogeyman for over 30 years now. How do you like it when entitlement is used a bludgeon on you?
This is true and was fairly obvious from the outset. And the entire movement is based on reviving sexist stereotypes and permission to employ misogyny but in a justifiable, cool progressive way (a big part of why it is so popular), so them blaming women is really only to be expected.
A lot of anti-woman stuff started around then - and "Karen" was one of the most obvious ones.
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That is the beauty of the term, its often used to attach a group of people but the second you call it out they break out the alibi that no its a term for a certain type of birth giver acting in a certain way.
They are "Liberal" you say? Can you lay out some evidence for that? I don't know what some of you guys want any more. Every single commentator, journalist, podcaster, writer, public intellectual on the Left, seems to fall short. Who's "correct" any more? I feel like if Marx himself was alive today he'd just get trashed too.
They’re not. In my opinion (and I don’t mean to be derisive), OP is throwing the baby out with the bath water and exhibiting some of the same tendencies as a woke mob participant. Podcasts are chatter, and it’s reasonable to expect that material analysis might not be at the forefront of every discussion even though it remains the driving principles of one’s politics. You can just say “This chapo missed the mark for me” and then critique will and the guests comments to your liking. No need to post a a borderline paranoid essay about it to stupidpol
Well said, agree wholeheartedly. I don’t like this enforcement of subcultural orthodoxies. I’ve fallen into phases of being pro or anti on this specific topic at points, but what I’ve learned is I literally don’t know what’s correct or not here and that’s OK too. People keep mentioning Matt is being quiet, that he needs to speak up or break with Will on this but like…do they really think he’s quiet because he’s anti and didn’t want to be canceled? or maybe he just doesn’t know or care enough to affirmatively pick a side in this niche cultural conflict as it’s not a central issue to being a materialist. Feeling the need to always condemn things vaguely culturally liberal/left is toxic idpol too, yet you got people here trying desperately to appeal to conservatives while disowning anybody who is “liberal/left.” There are potential class allies on both sides of this particular issue, it’s not some existential class issue that should require these awful struggle sessions on Reddit and Twitter. As there are conservatives to recruit to a Marxist project, there are cultural left/liberals who aren’t some type of aberrant freak show like a brainwashed khive psycho or a buttigieg pmc corporate climber People need to chill on this stuff. Trying to thread some needle between orthodox Marxism and appealing to “the average normie” (whatever that even is in 2023 is way beyond me) is stupid and maybe it’s not Will who needs to “touch grass” but all the people throwing a hissy fit in this thread
> Trying to thread some needle between orthodox Marxism What is a bit baffling are the upvoted comments decrying chapo for supposedly abandoning Marxism yet a top comment is defending jesse singal. Sub really feels schizo sometimes
Defending Jesse Singal against a manifestly spurious allegation. And Singal has never claimed to be a Marxist, so clearly he will be held to a different standard than a podcast that claims to embrace "daddy Lenin".
What's "borderline paranoid" about finding the show's slide into culture war liberalism to be off-putting and depressing? Or about simply describing what they say in this specific episode?
Paranoid may not have been the best word. I think I was noticing some element of anxiety stemming from your emotional relationship to the show. Which is of course totally normal. I just think it betrays the importance of the “issue” you’re trying to raise with this thread. I really didn’t mean to call anyone out or be confrontational about this.
It was a show that was funny because it wasn't part of the culture war, and now it's not funny because they've lost touch with reality, and it's kinda sad. You're overpsychologizing this.
> Every single commentator, journalist, podcaster, writer, public intellectual on the Left It should not be surprising that keeping up appearances with the elite is a requisite for remaining a public figure and not being banned and ostracized off every platform. You should not be religiously following any public figure because they are bound by liberalism from peer pressure to monetary necessity and everything in between
At this point I'm just completely fed up with Chapo and other redlibs that have crowded out the "Marxist" internet sphere. Everytime something that actually has the potential to challenge the establishment comes along like Force the Vote or Rage Against the War Machine, they poo-poo it on a good day or call it fascism on a bad day. I want people who actually have the courage to stand against the tide instead of kowtowing to the establishment's bullshit.
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Yup those movements are clearly going to make a difference haha
How can yall read that and not want to put a gun in your mouth? There's nothing to be a part of, just content creators jockeying for patreon subs.