I hate seeing Hasan become a prominent face of democratic socialism.
He wields nuance like a bludgeon, not a tool for understanding. He doesn’t inspire curiosity or invite people to question their assumptions. He tells his audience what to think and delivers it with absolute conviction.
For all their ideological differences, he reminds me of Shapiro and Crowder. The same performative certainty, selective reasoning, and confidence masquerading as intellectual authority.
And that’s precisely what makes him such a convenient bogeyman for conservative propaganda. He sounds remarkably similar to the very right-wing influencers whose audiences are being told to despise him.
I don’t doubt that much of the outrage surrounding him is manufactured. But that doesn’t make every criticism of him illegitimate, nor does it excuse his own intellectual shortcomings.
Attention isn’t credibility, and political fandom isn’t intellectual discourse.
I despise that style of political commentary, regardless of which side it comes from.
Yeah. It’s definitely legitimate to have criticisms of him and I wouldn’t entirely disagree with your assessment, it’s just worth keeping in mind that the kind of criticisms we might have aren’t even in the same intellectual ballpark as those of the right wing attacks on him.
As far as him being the face of the movement, I think it’s just a sad reality of left organizing, or the lack thereof, in America as well as the issue of organizing primarily around electoral politics. Socialist movements are mass politics. It’s not about specific people, it’s about everyone working together towards a common cause. Elections, and the media that discusses them, end up being more cults of personality. It’s great that we’re getting more leftists/progressives elected, but the way that gets portrayed focuses almost exclusively on the politician themselves as a charismatic figure with the right moral character rather than all of the work done by people to get them there. A similar thing happens with media. I think it’s just easier to follow and make a narrative around some individual than around a large ill defined group.
How do we fix that? Idk. It’s not like we don’t have any media which puts the focus on the broader movement activities, it’s just that they don’t tend to break containment to the broader public who aren’t super nerdy lefties or people directly involved with whatever is being discussed.
I hate seeing Hasan become a prominent face of democratic socialism.
He wields nuance like a bludgeon, not a tool for understanding. He doesn’t inspire curiosity or invite people to question their assumptions. He tells his audience what to think and delivers it with absolute conviction.
For all their ideological differences, he reminds me of Shapiro and Crowder. The same performative certainty, selective reasoning, and confidence masquerading as intellectual authority.
And that’s precisely what makes him such a convenient bogeyman for conservative propaganda. He sounds remarkably similar to the very right-wing influencers whose audiences are being told to despise him.
I don’t doubt that much of the outrage surrounding him is manufactured. But that doesn’t make every criticism of him illegitimate, nor does it excuse his own intellectual shortcomings.
Attention isn’t credibility, and political fandom isn’t intellectual discourse.
I despise that style of political commentary, regardless of which side it comes from.
Yeah. It’s definitely legitimate to have criticisms of him and I wouldn’t entirely disagree with your assessment, it’s just worth keeping in mind that the kind of criticisms we might have aren’t even in the same intellectual ballpark as those of the right wing attacks on him.
As far as him being the face of the movement, I think it’s just a sad reality of left organizing, or the lack thereof, in America as well as the issue of organizing primarily around electoral politics. Socialist movements are mass politics. It’s not about specific people, it’s about everyone working together towards a common cause. Elections, and the media that discusses them, end up being more cults of personality. It’s great that we’re getting more leftists/progressives elected, but the way that gets portrayed focuses almost exclusively on the politician themselves as a charismatic figure with the right moral character rather than all of the work done by people to get them there. A similar thing happens with media. I think it’s just easier to follow and make a narrative around some individual than around a large ill defined group.
How do we fix that? Idk. It’s not like we don’t have any media which puts the focus on the broader movement activities, it’s just that they don’t tend to break containment to the broader public who aren’t super nerdy lefties or people directly involved with whatever is being discussed.