So when Haz wasn't even a thing yet, I remember seeing a suspiciously polished promo video for INFRARED that immediately set off alarm bells for me. Also strangely, I can't seem to find that promo video anywhere now.
I also remember not long after the channel started seeing a clip of Haz on a girl Twitch streamer's stream and the title was something like "Haz flirting with ____" and the whole thing struck me as overtly trying to appeal to lonely young men on the internet, in a similar vein as gamer gate, red pill garbage, etc. Basically following the Steve Bannon/Mercer Family social media manipulation playbook. I haven't really dug into it, but I'd be curious to see if there are any links with patsocs to people like Steve Bannon or Aleksandr Dugin.
He got recommended on r/chapotraphouse a few times, and because I don't watch streams or go on twitter, I had no idea who he was for like... A while into chapo.chat
It took us some time to work out the whole thing they were doing was sus to be fair. Initially Haz looked alright until the reactionary stuff piled up and up and up. Some of his early Stalin videos were genuinely good. Several of us, including myself, thought he was a good entry into the lineup of marxist creators at the time, Bay Area 415 was also suspiciously doxxed and taken out of commission at the time, there was a concerted influence and counter-influence op that was mounted against growing marxist influence at the time. That shitbag Beau of the Fifth too exploded during that period. And growth was explosive too but we countered him relatively well.
Haz and the patsoc crowd started getting attention for being reactionary and double and tripled down on it for growth.
My take is that they're fascists or feds. I wanna say feds because I don't think the fascists put the kind of effort in to read that Haz and patsocs have done. Haz definitely has engaged with marxist literature to some extent whereas the fash rarely have the attention span.
I would also argue that none of his videos were good, not even the first ones, and it's telling that the original gang of Infrared isn't there anymore except for Haz.
Hmmm I distinctly liked his Stalin one back in the day. I think what they were doing back then was trying to be shocking by supporting Stalin but it didn't have the effect they wanted (because we actually do) so they moved on from him to other reactionary behaviours instead. I think the goal was and always has been to coopt MLism and then to make MLs look bad, which ties in well with the entryism if you think about it.
If you work under the assumption of fed involvement it sorta demonstrates how an inexperienced team of liberal feds would approach things too. They would initially internally expect pro-Stalin things to be "shocking" due to unfamiliarity with MLs. Also they probably expected pro-Stalin content to have more of a detrimental effect if others saw it, that people on the wider web would see pro-Stalin stuff and immediately have a visceral negative reaction. Instead, people watched that content and softened their views on Stalin which is the opposite of what they wanted because they didn't want to help MLs they wanted to make MLs less attractive to the new growing waves of baby-leftists.
This experience for them led to adaptation of their methods and a change of direction.
Right. It adds up, along with the change in tactics after they rapidly learn that it doesn't produce the result they intended. Assuming there's a system of action/evaluation involved which any organised fed effort would definitely have.
So when Haz wasn't even a thing yet, I remember seeing a suspiciously polished promo video for INFRARED that immediately set off alarm bells for me. Also strangely, I can't seem to find that promo video anywhere now.
I also remember not long after the channel started seeing a clip of Haz on a girl Twitch streamer's stream and the title was something like "Haz flirting with ____" and the whole thing struck me as overtly trying to appeal to lonely young men on the internet, in a similar vein as gamer gate, red pill garbage, etc. Basically following the Steve Bannon/Mercer Family social media manipulation playbook. I haven't really dug into it, but I'd be curious to see if there are any links with patsocs to people like Steve Bannon or Aleksandr Dugin.
He got recommended on r/chapotraphouse a few times, and because I don't watch streams or go on twitter, I had no idea who he was for like... A while into chapo.chat
It took us some time to work out the whole thing they were doing was sus to be fair. Initially Haz looked alright until the reactionary stuff piled up and up and up. Some of his early Stalin videos were genuinely good. Several of us, including myself, thought he was a good entry into the lineup of marxist creators at the time, Bay Area 415 was also suspiciously doxxed and taken out of commission at the time, there was a concerted influence and counter-influence op that was mounted against growing marxist influence at the time. That shitbag Beau of the Fifth too exploded during that period. And
growth was explosive too but we countered him relatively well.
Haz and the patsoc crowd started getting attention for being reactionary and double and tripled down on it for growth.
My take is that they're fascists or feds. I wanna say feds because I don't think the fascists put the kind of effort in to read that Haz and patsocs have done. Haz definitely has engaged with marxist literature to some extent whereas the fash rarely have the attention span.
I know who doxxed BayArea415 given that I was an advisor of his.
Also, Haz and the PatSoc crowd initially were banking on fighting Maoism (which garnered them support) but ultimately they became right-deviationists.
I would also argue that none of his videos were good, not even the first ones, and it's telling that the original gang of Infrared isn't there anymore except for Haz.
Hmmm I distinctly liked his Stalin one back in the day. I think what they were doing back then was trying to be shocking by supporting Stalin but it didn't have the effect they wanted (because we actually do) so they moved on from him to other reactionary behaviours instead. I think the goal was and always has been to coopt MLism and then to make MLs look bad, which ties in well with the entryism if you think about it.
Good point.
If you work under the assumption of fed involvement it sorta demonstrates how an inexperienced team of liberal feds would approach things too. They would initially internally expect pro-Stalin things to be "shocking" due to unfamiliarity with MLs. Also they probably expected pro-Stalin content to have more of a detrimental effect if others saw it, that people on the wider web would see pro-Stalin stuff and immediately have a visceral negative reaction. Instead, people watched that content and softened their views on Stalin which is the opposite of what they wanted because they didn't want to help MLs they wanted to make MLs less attractive to the new growing waves of baby-leftists.
This experience for them led to adaptation of their methods and a change of direction.
The dots connect together rather neatly.
That's what a conservative would do, tbh.
Right. It adds up, along with the change in tactics after they rapidly learn that it doesn't produce the result they intended. Assuming there's a system of action/evaluation involved which any organised fed effort would definitely have.
True enough, but being a resident of Virginia, I can tell you that feds also have rivalries with each other and even sabotage each other.
And they're as dumb as rocks and a lot of them are evangelicals, at least here.
Dugin, yes. At least philosophically. I don’t know if his networks in Russia have any links to them in the US.
But Bannon, sorta. Peter Thiel funded right wing podcasts and ecelebs including Red Scare.
Oh yeah, good point