On a serious note his ultracomm ideology, nihilism, and the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak positively about another leftist made me doubletake what I was reading.
On a serious note his ultracomm ideology, nihilism, and the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak positively about another leftist made me doubletake what I was reading.
Most of these online people were never communist to begin with. Don’t know much about Samsen, but last I checked he is a generic lib making videos about some reactionary gamer. For most of the breadtube/nebula posse, being the “left” was just marketing and sub-culture appeal akin to being a skater or hipster rather than questions of fundamental political economic importance such as critical support for flawed but nonetheless anti-hegemonic forces.
Secondly, it isn’t true that bad is a nihilist. He is against entryism as it is tactic that hasn’t once achieved anything of note. I really wish Americans would stop falling for the idea that if they just vote for the DSA entryist candidate, then socialism will happen. Mamdani, AOC, Sanders, and a number of other supposedly “left” Democrat electoral options were either all imperialists from the start or got coopted. You will not change the system from within, it’ll change you. This isn’t nihilism, it’s just facts.
Edit: not that I’m big on the guy personally. I think supporting the US-aligned Zelensky puppet regime, palling around with the lausan collective, being a transphobe, and doing anti-Maduro propaganda amid imperial aggression against Venezuela are all quite damning reasons for why he shouldn’t be considered a comrade. He is good at bullying lib entryist advocates and being an opportunist, that is all.
The contradiction is that once they start making serious money from this (to the point that they can start considering this can be their job) then it’s in their interest to keep that not only going, but growing as well. More viewers = more payers = more money.
This places them squarely in the petite-bourgeoisie, objectively speaking. But because of parasocial identification whenever I talk about this phenomenon there’s always someone that says “but not my guy though! He’s good!”
I’m being a bit mean above and I don’t want to antagonize anyone on lemmygrad but it’s just objectively true. It’s in their interest to make more money and thus they engage in the same process as any other capitalist venture: if you don’t grow, you get eaten by someone else. I’m not saying it’s good or bad inherently, it’s just how it is.
And likewise it’s in their interest to keep doing this since it’s a livelihood, and a pretty cozy one at that: you just make videos and streams. There’s worse jobs out there.
When Lenin said “the capitalist will sell us the rope we will hang him with” he was saying many, many things - and none of them literal. But one of the things this phrase means is also that capitalism has its upsides, much like these content creators can have some upsides. They can make a good video once in a while. They can start bringing some people over to new ideas. There were, in the Bolsheviks, actual infiltrators who were also very good organizers - they needed to be, if they wanted to be good infiltrators (otherwise you’d just give them the mind-numbing paper-pushing job far from anyone and they would never get a chance to actually infiltrate you).
But they also won’t stop selling ropes.
I’m aware that people who make a living from the internet have an incentive to clickbait and appeal to the lowest common denominator to maximise views and thus earning potential. Nonetheless, I maintain that the posse who made being super into analysing disney movies and meaningless internet drama into a career were never left to begin with and always did their anti-reactionary stuff from a liberal democratic framework of there being nothing wrong with the current system.
Hate to be that guy… but, actually there is no proof Lenin ever said that.
lol I imagined as much, it felt too edgy to be something he would have said. But like all anti-communist propaganda it ends up sounding cool as fuck, and it does have many ways to read it.
I’ve heard the same quote attributed to Lenin, Marx and even Mao, which is what made me wonder if it were real at all.
some guys apparently looked into it https://checkyourfact.com/2019/11/29/fact-check-karl-marx-capitalist-hang-sold-rope-quote/. i skimmed but apparently it was made up in many different ways, including one attributed to solzenitzin lol (can never spell that name right). but it’s older than his 1975 elocution.