How do you figure they’re least lib? They softballed Yang and allowed Williamson to lie that she would “be marching against Biden the day after his inauguration right there with you!”
I haven’t listened to too many episodes but all the ones I did seemed like they were safely in the ‘stomp your feet and say “bad!”’ bounds of civility liberalism. BJG straight up says it’s the sort of podcast you can tell your mom you listen to competed to the uncouth CTH.
We as posters have different goals than podcast hosts though. Our goal is to be confrontational because we don't care about media capital (because we don't use it to pay our bills). We can afford to be standoffish pricks who just berate people at the first opportunity. We like bullying libs. We think it's part of our duty as good leftists. But if you're a person who has conversations for a living, that won't get you far. You have to learn to put up with people you disagree with and to pick your battles. You have to sit through someone saying something bad or wrong so you can move onto something more productive. To be fair, this is a skill you need as an organizer too. If you go to someone's house for campaigning or any kind of outreach, you might have to listen to a chud or a lib say something you know is wrong. You don't pick an argument with them and then call them a doo doo shid head lib who should get the wall. You behave with tact.
Someone might ask how having conversations for a living on a podcast helps the left, and it doesn't really. It's just media. It's kind a good for information. It's mostly good for entertainment. It's not supposed to be the center of the movement. We actually don't want to live in a world where the center of the left is a podcast. That's cringe and can't actually change anything. So it's okay if podcasts hosts don't tattoo that Mao quote about disregarding civility. Just listen to it if you want, don't if you don't like it. Keep an appropriate sensibility about what media is and what it can do. Even if the Brie or Virgil thinks they're doing something productive, I don't think it matters.
I don't listen to BF but Virgil's interview on Chapo with Yang was delicate confrontation. He started off slow, worked inwards, and backed off if he felt Yang was getting frustrated or they were at dead end. It's a soft-soap at first but towards the end Virgil managed to get Yang to basically admit he had no idea how to do his "Everyone gets $1000" plan. That wouldn't have been possible if he called Yang a genocidal lib at the first point of disagreement.
Yes, as an entertainment product BF is enjoyable for a certain crowd. Good point about how one can't be a hardliner all the time when organizing, although I don't think there's much else of a comparison between podcasting and doing on-the-ground stuff.
But considering that Yang probably walked away completely unchanged from the interview and then went on to act like a dipshit in the NY mayor's race who would have actively hurt people if he won, I can't see it as much of an accomplishment that Virgil landed an extremely gentle dunk. It comes across like two people play-acting a drama where they're careful not to offend each other and I can't get down with that. But to your point, that just means I'm not the sort of liberal who enjoys that particular show.
Oh I'm sure he didn't change or learn anything. He's too well-off to do that. Everything he thinks has worked out well for him. The material connection between what his life is and what he thinks is too strong to be changed in an interview. I guess you could then ask why it matters to interview him at all and I don't think it does. I think some of this isn't so much a podcast platforming them, but them platforming the podcast. Someone like Marianne has way more followers and people who listen to her than the things she usually goes on. So you as a host have a chance to reach someone new, even if you can't change the guest's mind. But how much that actually moves a needle, I don't know. I don't think anyone was going to vote for Yang in the primaries who also was a regular Chapo listener so landing that dunk only reaffirmed our suspicions more than had an influence on the election. I don't think them being more aggressive would have hurt him in the primaries either. It's just a big luke warm nothing that we attach meaning to depending on what we believe about the nature of media and culture.
you are mistaking being polite for being lib. She goes out of her way to act pmc so she can get the big names.
She called Chomsky wrong to his face, she had an episode about how class consciousness is more important than race consciousness. The fact that she wants your mother to listen and be radicalized more praxis than the chapo libs have done since Bernie. It would have been cathartic to have called out Williamson, but that style would eventually cost her the media capital she has. Despite it being cathartic it wouldn't change anything.
I don’t think that podcast is radicalizing anyone. Discussing class consciousness is good but anyone worried about preserving their media capital sounds extremely lib to me.
I don’t perfectly remember the Chomsky argument but as I recall, BJG was making a ‘withhold your vote’ argument which, if that was the case, seems lib to me
She was saying don't vote for Biden because he is useless or a monster. That is the opposite of lib shit.
It might amount to nothing, this is true. To the extent that it can amount to anything though having an outspoken leftist infiltrate the PMC and is a pretty good change for something to happen.
This is where we would disagree. I don't think BJG has infiltrated the PMC in any meaningful sense. I just see it as her getting a paycheck from producing a show that entertains radlibs. From the Chomsky interview:
At 6:18 BJG talks about a coordinated mass of voters, the same way unions have arranged voting blocks in the past but it strikes me as hollow because I can't even think of a time within the last few decades when unions leveraged masses of voters to win electoral benefits. But even if they had, this strategy will not scale against the accelerating horrors that the ruling class aims to deliver to us. So this strategy of organizing one's vote just seems like a facile attempt to get electoral politics to deliver results for the working class.
At about 35:20 BJG says
the democratic party and Joe Biden is saying no you have to vote for me because of the environment i reject your individual material personal concerns i don't see it as i don't see how you can tell someone like that that even if there is are these bigger concerns that they should abstractly be invested in that they should put those things before their immediate material circumstances ... why is it that Joe Biden and democrats more broadly are rejecting these programs and what does that mean for our ability to actually affect change down the line without doing something that's more radical and and perhaps and and valuing our votes enough to arguably withhold them at some point.
See right here she's on the verge of saying something redacted, but she quickly backsteps to conditioning / withholding the vote. I understand why. And I think that's my criticism in a nutshell: carefully limiting the scope of one's arguments makes sense when Biden says criticizing capital makes you a criminal, but it's also lib shit.
At ~47:10 she makes her closing statement and it's all about Biden offering something more to get people to vote for him. I don't have confidence in this strategy to lead to good change or for anything to happen.
That is an excelent critique. If I am right and she is hiding her power level to maintain engagement with libs that doesn't speak well of her capabilities. I suppose I am projecting my hopes for her project onto her more than the evidence supports. I maintain I would rather see a comrade grifting the libs than a regular failchild but in the end that isn't a huge get so you got me there as well.
You are correct that at this point there is no major progress to report back. I think though it is too early to call her a lib and her work doesn't support her being a grifter. I could easily be proven wrong with time though.
How do you figure they’re least lib? They softballed Yang and allowed Williamson to lie that she would “be marching against Biden the day after his inauguration right there with you!”
I haven’t listened to too many episodes but all the ones I did seemed like they were safely in the ‘stomp your feet and say “bad!”’ bounds of civility liberalism. BJG straight up says it’s the sort of podcast you can tell your mom you listen to competed to the uncouth CTH.
We as posters have different goals than podcast hosts though. Our goal is to be confrontational because we don't care about media capital (because we don't use it to pay our bills). We can afford to be standoffish pricks who just berate people at the first opportunity. We like bullying libs. We think it's part of our duty as good leftists. But if you're a person who has conversations for a living, that won't get you far. You have to learn to put up with people you disagree with and to pick your battles. You have to sit through someone saying something bad or wrong so you can move onto something more productive. To be fair, this is a skill you need as an organizer too. If you go to someone's house for campaigning or any kind of outreach, you might have to listen to a chud or a lib say something you know is wrong. You don't pick an argument with them and then call them a doo doo shid head lib who should get the wall. You behave with tact.
Someone might ask how having conversations for a living on a podcast helps the left, and it doesn't really. It's just media. It's kind a good for information. It's mostly good for entertainment. It's not supposed to be the center of the movement. We actually don't want to live in a world where the center of the left is a podcast. That's cringe and can't actually change anything. So it's okay if podcasts hosts don't tattoo that Mao quote about disregarding civility. Just listen to it if you want, don't if you don't like it. Keep an appropriate sensibility about what media is and what it can do. Even if the Brie or Virgil thinks they're doing something productive, I don't think it matters.
I don't listen to BF but Virgil's interview on Chapo with Yang was delicate confrontation. He started off slow, worked inwards, and backed off if he felt Yang was getting frustrated or they were at dead end. It's a soft-soap at first but towards the end Virgil managed to get Yang to basically admit he had no idea how to do his "Everyone gets $1000" plan. That wouldn't have been possible if he called Yang a genocidal lib at the first point of disagreement.
Yes, as an entertainment product BF is enjoyable for a certain crowd. Good point about how one can't be a hardliner all the time when organizing, although I don't think there's much else of a comparison between podcasting and doing on-the-ground stuff.
But considering that Yang probably walked away completely unchanged from the interview and then went on to act like a dipshit in the NY mayor's race who would have actively hurt people if he won, I can't see it as much of an accomplishment that Virgil landed an extremely gentle dunk. It comes across like two people play-acting a drama where they're careful not to offend each other and I can't get down with that. But to your point, that just means I'm not the sort of liberal who enjoys that particular show.
Oh I'm sure he didn't change or learn anything. He's too well-off to do that. Everything he thinks has worked out well for him. The material connection between what his life is and what he thinks is too strong to be changed in an interview. I guess you could then ask why it matters to interview him at all and I don't think it does. I think some of this isn't so much a podcast platforming them, but them platforming the podcast. Someone like Marianne has way more followers and people who listen to her than the things she usually goes on. So you as a host have a chance to reach someone new, even if you can't change the guest's mind. But how much that actually moves a needle, I don't know. I don't think anyone was going to vote for Yang in the primaries who also was a regular Chapo listener so landing that dunk only reaffirmed our suspicions more than had an influence on the election. I don't think them being more aggressive would have hurt him in the primaries either. It's just a big luke warm nothing that we attach meaning to depending on what we believe about the nature of media and culture.
you are mistaking being polite for being lib. She goes out of her way to act pmc so she can get the big names.
She called Chomsky wrong to his face, she had an episode about how class consciousness is more important than race consciousness. The fact that she wants your mother to listen and be radicalized more praxis than the chapo libs have done since Bernie. It would have been cathartic to have called out Williamson, but that style would eventually cost her the media capital she has. Despite it being cathartic it wouldn't change anything.
I don’t think that podcast is radicalizing anyone. Discussing class consciousness is good but anyone worried about preserving their media capital sounds extremely lib to me.
I don’t perfectly remember the Chomsky argument but as I recall, BJG was making a ‘withhold your vote’ argument which, if that was the case, seems lib to me
She was saying don't vote for Biden because he is useless or a monster. That is the opposite of lib shit.
It might amount to nothing, this is true. To the extent that it can amount to anything though having an outspoken leftist infiltrate the PMC and is a pretty good change for something to happen.
This is where we would disagree. I don't think BJG has infiltrated the PMC in any meaningful sense. I just see it as her getting a paycheck from producing a show that entertains radlibs. From the Chomsky interview:
At 6:18 BJG talks about a coordinated mass of voters, the same way unions have arranged voting blocks in the past but it strikes me as hollow because I can't even think of a time within the last few decades when unions leveraged masses of voters to win electoral benefits. But even if they had, this strategy will not scale against the accelerating horrors that the ruling class aims to deliver to us. So this strategy of organizing one's vote just seems like a facile attempt to get electoral politics to deliver results for the working class.
At about 35:20 BJG says
See right here she's on the verge of saying something redacted, but she quickly backsteps to conditioning / withholding the vote. I understand why. And I think that's my criticism in a nutshell: carefully limiting the scope of one's arguments makes sense when Biden says criticizing capital makes you a criminal, but it's also lib shit.
At ~47:10 she makes her closing statement and it's all about Biden offering something more to get people to vote for him. I don't have confidence in this strategy to lead to good change or for anything to happen.
That is an excelent critique. If I am right and she is hiding her power level to maintain engagement with libs that doesn't speak well of her capabilities. I suppose I am projecting my hopes for her project onto her more than the evidence supports. I maintain I would rather see a comrade grifting the libs than a regular failchild but in the end that isn't a huge get so you got me there as well.
You are correct that at this point there is no major progress to report back. I think though it is too early to call her a lib and her work doesn't support her being a grifter. I could easily be proven wrong with time though.