• cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 day ago

    If you betray one anti-imperialist struggle for the sake of another you are by definition an opportunist.

    Also, i just don’t believe that he is engaging in this elaborate strategic deception act that you say he is. If it was just about fear of censorship he could just shut up about it and not say anything. Or he could stream on YouTube, which so far is less censorious than Twitch. Instead he goes out of his way to virtue signal about how bad he thinks Putin and Russia are and how Ukraine are just these innocent smol-beans defending themselves. You are not a pipeline when you are actively lying to your audience, hiding the truth about the Donbass genocide, and demonizing those who are fighting against fascism and imperialism.

    What is the difference between him saying that NATO is not good but Russia is still bad for invading and the liberals who will say that the genocide in Gaza is bad but you should still condemn October 7? How hard would it be for him to invite someone on his show who lives in the Donbass and could actually educate him and his audience about life under Ukrainian fascism and Ukrainian bombs?

    And speaking of Palestine, yes, he is one of the bigger pro-Palestinian voices in the online commentariat. Great. But it is now acceptable within liberal circles to be pro-Palestine. Pro-Palestine sentiment is increasingly mainstream. We have won that narrative battle decisively among the young generations that are likely to be his viewer demographic. But you know what is still incredibly unpopular? Telling the truth about Ukraine. That is all the more reason to use your platform to do it, when no one else with your reach will.

    Instead he chooses what is easy, and convenient for his bank account: respectability politics and trying to ingratiate himself with the liberal mainstream, which is a demonstrably failed strategy. It has been tried over and over again and never worked. Yet he still carries water for Democrats and their electoral politics, still simping for the so-called “progressives” who will vote every time in lockstep with the bipartisan warmongers to give weapons and money to Ukrainian Nazis.

    It’s time you stopped making excuses and inventing elaborate theories about him hiding his power level and just admit that he is a liberal.

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.netOP
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      1 day ago

      It’s blatantly obvious you haven’t watched a single stream of his in a LOOOONG time, he has talked about Maidan, Nazis in Ukraine, how NATO provoked the war, what’s he’s not gonna do is sing the glories of the Russian state and its so-called “anti-imperialist” bona fides, and he was smart not to do it, because unlike Palestine, the War in Ukraine DOES NOT have popular grassroots support, ignoring and blundering ahead like an ox and getting banned is not worth it for the sake of Russian headpats

      What is the difference between him saying that NATO is not good but Russia is still bad for invading and the liberals who will say that the genocide in Gaza is bad but you should still condemn October 7?

      Russia has nukes, are you joking, Palestine doesn’t. And unlike Palestine, half the fault lies on Putin for getting fooled multiple times and allowing an army of neo-nazis to mobilize along his border for eight years. Took 15,000 Donbass Ukrainians getting disappeared before Putin opened his eyes to the western plan

      Instead he chooses what is easy and convenient for his bank account

      He choose not to get banned for the sake of Russian pride and the nonexistent support of MLs who wouldn’t have his back no matter the circumstance, if he praised the Russian intervention and got banned you’d make fun of him and still call him a liberal, like get real

      It’s time you stopped making excuses and inventing elaborate theories about him hiding his power level and just admit that he is a liberal.

      lmao it’s time you admit there’s literally nothing this guy could do politically to get you to like him or in this case even tolerate him, largest pro-Palestinian leftist in the country and he’s an “opportunist” miss me with that ultra horseshit, thank god Hasan largely avoided the subject and survived long enough to advance the pro-Palestine movement

      I’m open to Hasan eventually developing a better take on the Ukraine War, but I’m not gonna blame him for preserving his platform over losing access to millions of eyeballs and advancing nothing

      • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 day ago

        unlike Palestine, the War in Ukraine DOES NOT have popular grassroots support

        It does in Russia. It doesn’t in the West because of the decades of anti-Russia propaganda and the barrage of lies and retconning of history that the imperialist media saturated the Western public with after February 2022.

        But the task of public leftist figures in the West isn’t to be slave to already existing majority public opinion. If we had acted like that when the Palestinian cause was not yet popular where would we be now? This is Tailism. Tailism is opportunism.

        Russia has nukes, are you joking, Palestine doesn’t.

        Russia has nukes but the people of the Donbass don’t. The ethnic Russians whose language and identity the Banderite regime is trying erase don’t. All they have is Russia. If Palestinians had a big country nextdoor willing to intervene on their behalf by invading the Zionist entity, would you denounce that intervention? Countries have a humanitarian duty to stop genocides, by armed force if necessary. Russia is fulfilling its humanitarian duty to protect the people of the Donbass and other majority Russian regions in Ukraine from ethnic cleansing.

        And unlike Palestine, half the fault lies on Putin for getting fooled multiple times and allowing an army of neo-nazis to mobilize along his border for eight years.

        Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve.

        Many would argue that the idea of Russia intervening in 2014 is naive and ignores the material realities of Russia’s economic and military situation at the time. They would say that Russia was not yet ready to take on NATO militarily, that they needed time to reorganize and modernize the army, and that their economy would not have withstood the economic assault the West would unleash in response without the eight years of sanction-proofing the Russian economy.

        And besides, they did intervene. They protected Crimea from the Maidan thugs that were raging in other parts of Ukraine at the time, allowing Crimeans to peacefully vote to reintegrate with Russia.

        In any case, there is no point in speculating about what could have been, focus on the present. Russia was objectively right to intervene. Whether they were late in doing so is irrelevant when assessing if they deserve our support today. That doesn’t mean you need to go out there and shout “i support Russia”, but if you claim to be an anti-imperialist and have a platform of a certain size, you have a responsibility to educate people on the crimes of the Banderites, the crimes of the Kiev regime, and the real views of the people of the Donbass who overwhelmingly support Russia’s intervention.

        if he praised the Russian intervention and got banned you’d make fun of him and still call him a liberal

        Look, nobody is asking Hasan to profess his love to Putin. But you don’t get to call yourself anti-imperialist if you take the side of the openly fascist imperialist proxy in a war.

        And if maintaining a principled anti-imperialist position results in you being banned, then maybe you should not be on that platform. That is exactly the reason why many of us are no longer on Reddit. And if you have an established audience, a part of it will follow you to whichever new platform you choose to migrate to. You will lose a part of it but those who stay will be all the more dedicated, and you can rebuild your audience on the basis of that dedicated core. This is infinitely preferable to self-censorship. Because if you constantly self-censor in order to remain acceptable to the liberal mainstream, you will simply end up just another reformist.

        At the end of the day all the lame excuses about platforms are just that. There are plenty of content creators on YouTube who take either a neutral or even a pro-Russian stance on the conflict and still have a platform, even some leftists. They can do it. Why can’t Hasan? Because he fundamentally thinks that Russia is the one in the wrong here. He is choosing to side with fascism and imperialism, even as he offers lip service to criticizing NATO’s role in the conflict, because the alternative offends his liberal sensibilities and those of his liberal audience.

        And of course his material interest is tied to maintaining his very lucrative business model at Twitch…

        • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.netOP
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          1 day ago

          It does in Russia

          Hasan doesn’t live in Russia and doesn’t have a platform in Russian

          Many would argue that the idea of Russia intervening in 2014 is naive and ignores the material realities of Russia’s economic and military situation at the time.

          Well they’re stupid, considering there was no western built-up Ukrainian military that could challenge the Russian military, Putin didn’t rescue Donbass from Nazi attention for eight wars because he believed the promises of the fuckin Germans about peace, THAT’S naive and ignores material realities, watching an army being swelled by western arms for eight years while trusting the Germans

          And maybe, if maintaining a principled anti-imperialist position results in you being banned, then maybe you should not be on that platform.

          WHY? What’s the point of a “principled” position if you don’t have a platform to leverage that position, the irony is you are arguing for self-censorship by throwing away a massive platform because you disagree with 1/10 of his takes

          You will lose a part of it but those who stay will be all the more dedicated

          The point is NOT to create a dedicated CULT, the point is to reach out to normies and changes their goddamn mind about socialism, please develop a sense of strategy, we want an army not a fuckin bookclub

          And if that means calibrating a take that may violate the policies of a massive platform, then so be it, the normies will find YOUR take when they dig deeper, but they wouldn’t have dug if not for people like Hasan easing them in

          • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 day ago

            the irony is you are arguing for self-censorship by throwing away a massive platform because you disagree with 1/10 of his takes

            And if that means calibrating a take that may violate the policies of a massive platform, then so be it

            And when the TOS of that platform change to further restrict anti-imperialist views? You just go along for fear of losing that platform. And you justify it by saying that you are only giving up one tenth of your principles. And then you give up another tenth. And another. And every time it’s ok because it’s only a small part.

            There is obviously an inherent problem with remaining on bourgeois controlled platforms in general. Leftists and anti-imperialists need to stop falling into this trap that says it’s preferable to self-censor and remain on the mainstream platforms than move to alternative ones and try to grow those instead.

            The more you grow your audience on the mainstream platforms the more you will feel compelled to do whatever it takes to stay there. It’s a gambler’s fallacy. You have become too invested and your material interest too tied into this brand and this space you have built to abandon it and start again. So now the bourgeois owners of the platform can force you to bend to more and more of their whims.

            But even if you do stay on big corporate platforms, you can still do much better than Twitch. YouTube for instance, as i said, has less strict TOS. Only he probably wouldn’t be making the same astronomical sums of money there that he is on Twitch. I will never understand why his fans are so parasocially attached to him that they can’t see how problematic this is.

            The point is NOT to create a dedicated CULT, the point is to reach out to normies and changes their goddamn mind about socialism

            The point is to grow the audience on a less censorious platform. The point is to educate people correctly, not to perpetuate imperialist narratives. There is no use having a million people listening to you if you can’t advocate for a genuine socialist and anti-imperialist position, if you can only say what your bourgeois masters will allow you to say.

            please develop a sense of strategy, we want an army not a fuckin bookclub

            The notion that a Twitch chat is an army is absurd to the point of delusion. At least a bookclub would be achievable. Most people just go to his streams for entertainment.

            You seem to think that he is converting all these liberals to socialists and communists, but all he is doing is turning them into edgy socdems. Maybe some go further but it is not thanks to him.

            And i wouldn’t even mind it that much if at least people were honest about it rather than pretending he is more radical than he really is. If he just stuck to pro-Palestine advocacy i would not be saying anything. When it becomes problematic is when you start to abuse the credibility that you have built on Palestine just to repeat imperialist propaganda about another country that is actively fighting against fascism and imperialism.

    • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      Ukraine are just these innocent smol-beans defending themselves.

      I wish he talked more about Banderism, etc, but I think this is an exaggeration. I think his position is that Ukraine’s government is shitty, corrupt, reactionary, etc. but that the invasion is nonetheless unjustified. That’s also a position you vehemently disagree with, but it’s not the same position.