I think it's been overall pretty good but what is everyone else's thoughts?
I still think it was a dumb move. A lot of work had gone into branding the website and that all went in the trash. Our name wasn't a reference to the podcast, it was a reference to the subreddit.
I honestly still think some people here underestimate how notorious the subreddit was, and also how niche the podcast is. If you're not on the left in the US chances are pretty good you've never even heard of the podcast, but r/CTH was a big bad bogeyman for basically all of reddit - which is what, like 400 million users a month?
What's done is done, but I think it was a dumb (and undemocratic) move.
r/CTH was a big bad bogeyman for basically all of reddit
For this reason I preferred the old name.
(and it pissed off a certain pod host :capybara-theorist:)
r/CTH was largely notorious because of brigading and other disdain for Reddit's rules.
As long as we do lots of brigading from here, that notoriety will build back up again.
Sure. My point is by changing the name destroyed all the cache we had, and we only have like 5% of the users we used to to do it.
I never cared for the hexbear meme, and it's completely meaningless except to maybe 20-30 people who were on r/cth in its final days who then migrated here, of whom there are maybe 5 still regularly posting here now. That being said, cth as a podcast is all a bit whatever now, and its sole value is the odd source of meme and injoke material. The best content peaked with the publishing of The Chapo Guide to the Revolution book, and with the final nail of the American left firmly hammered into its coffin, there's little to offer except media analysis which is covered by umpteen million other content creators. With more and more people cancelling them for shit takes or just not listening to them for whatever reason, it seemed sensible enough to shed the label entirely. Forcing Hexbear on the sole basis of the domain name being already bought and paid for seems like a silly whim, but whocare.
Honestly given that the site has no real focus except crude lefty shitposting (and that's a good thing), it would actually make more sense to have renamed it to shrekland as the formal site name.
and with the final nail of the American left firlmy hammered into its coffin
I really don't think "the left is over because succdem grandpa lost" is a useful take, though.
Succdem grampa's defeat has ultimately destroyed the electoral left in its entirety. The only remaining course is direct action, and given the massive hurdles to overcome, every single small victory is marred by massive looming setbacks that occur within the legal/electoral framework of the state that further entrench the difficulties already present. There is no hope for America, or the American left, nor for any left within the core.
There was no "electoral left", in any case. Bernie was barely left of center on domestic issues, and 2 degrees from a moderate neocon on foreign issues. There's plenty of hope for America and the American left, especially once those spoils of empire start drying up in a multipolar world.
I agree. There's still hope for the American Left and the Worldwide Left. One defeat means nothing. We just need to pick up the pieces and continue our work.
You are correct the Bernie was barely left of center. But in a nation as rabidly fascist as the US, he may as well have been Ho Chi Minh. The multipolar world we so long for doesn't represent hope for the American left so much as for the International, global south left, and if anything, is a return to the cold war-era status quo, marred as it was with constant proxy wars, coups, interventions and economic strangulation of states that represent an alternative to the US and neoliberalism. So, no real change from today, except now the empire, slighted in its extremely fragile ego, has no choice but to pursue the most aggressive possible policy to have its way in a dying planet ravaged by climate disasters.
The global south needs help from those in the imperial core, who can help, to help in any way they help. Just expecting the most exploited people in the world to carry the revolution alone seems like a bad strategy.
I don’t think that most people in contemporary America actually do have the economic or social power to be able to make meaningful moves against our own Imperial State.
What do you define as "meaningful"? Something that threatens to overthrow the State, or something that weakens the State? If the latter is meaningful then I'd say there's a lot that run-of-the-mill people can do.
being against something, but benefitting from it. Basically the American proleriat is comprised due to benefitting from Imperialism.
Those who benefit from imperialism are almost exclusively the capitalist class. Transnational profits pay out the shareholders first and then pay out the grunts when pigs fly. The working class in America benefit from imperialism very indirectly, if ever. Plus, this has to be considered against the workers' own exploitation, where it's hard to say if they have any net benefit. Nor are they in control of imperialism; they are controlled by capital which may then use them to justify imperial ventures.
A Mao-style land reform would do more for the average American than any amount of military or legalistic plunder. I would reach to say that freeing the working class from their expensive dependencies and scams that the market floods them with would also be a superior improvement.
At the very least we shouldn't divide the working class; we should look for a solution that is broadly applicable (with minor tweaks) around the world.
You largely aren't wrong but we still gotta do what we can comrade, gotta keep pushing the boulder up the hill.
Succdem grampa’s defeat has ultimately destroyed the electoral left in its entirety.
Except for doubling the electoral left's representation in Congress, a bunch of prosecutors winning on decarceration platforms, a socialist winning the mayoral primary in Buffalo, etc.
It's only a matter of time until they disband Buffalo, NY and just incorporate it into whatever corrupt capitalist hellhole is closest.
Nothing is ever an acknowledged possibility until it happens. Every great step of progress was unlikely.
I see this cliche repeated often, usually with reference to how the average person could never realy predict the 1917 revolution would happen etc.
But I think this is a fallacy in the same vein as nobody considers the opposite. If I were a leftist in Germany in the 1930s and believed there was no hope for a resolution or change of path in European fascism before it is too late(it was already too late?) then I'd be right, in the end we had to go to the very end game bottom of the barrel biggest disaster in history in order for things to change.
If someone is predicting the American future I'd bet on being closer to the inevitable path of European fascism in 1930 then whatever the Russian farmers were hoping for in 1910.
Both are possible but it is not 50/50 at all.
This is closer to my own interpretation of the now; the parallels are not 1:1, but modern America feels more and more like 1920s/30s Germany, where we're all just waiting for that one final election to initiate the beginning of the end, but it must be noted that for fascism's unsustainability, Italy's lasted for 20 years until it was forced out, Gemany's lasted 10 until it met the same fate - Spain and Portugal remained fascist all the way to the 70s as they had the good mind to stay out of the war. The smaller players of the axis (Finland, Hungary, Romania, etc) all had their fascism forcefully removed by the influence of the USSR.
The difference here is that there is no USSR this time, there is no grand antifascist alliance coming together to slay the dragon. The USA is and will be a monstrosity of which the Nazi state couldn't even have dreamed of in terms of its ability to inflict untold suffering and initiate military apocalypse. We are entirely on our own. Any change will have to come from within and from a porous border with the global south.
If fascism is a reaction to the failure of liberalism, liberalism in crisis, or what have you, then I'd say liberalism is in crisis right now. And the liberals have no other option to keep their class advantage.
So what should the American left do? Not a whole lot. If you're in any position of luxury to do so, emigrate as soon as you can. Deprive the state of as much labor-power, brainpower, and economic power as possible. Deprive it of potential suckers to stock its war machine to the point it needs to reinstate the draft. If you can't do that, then lie flat, organize your workplace, go in the woods and create a lefty militia and try not to be immediately assassinated, vote republican in an attempt to accellerate - it doesn't matter what you do because there are mechanisms in place to counter those effects.
Can't help but wonder if the other old hats who got banned are still around, too.
I've changed accounts and probably will again, but I came here from /r/CTH.
maybe 20-30 people who were on r/cth in its final days who then migrated here, of whom there are maybe 5 still regularly posting here now.
Reporting for duty :possum-mama:
Shrekland would have almost definitely resulted in a cease and desist.
of whom there are maybe 5 still regularly posting here now
I'm J*hn K*rry, and I'm... reporting for duty :07:
i would have vastly preferred modelling around chapo2 and making this a garfield themed website
I didn't care then and I don't care now. This is the only correct take.
I still type chapo.chat in protest
Edit: I honestly don't even listen to the podcast anymore, but the "chapo" subreddit developed its own identity which I appreciated.
I never listened to the podcast... but like I still liked the chapo branding
:warf-wtf:
For what it's worth, having a connection to the podcast, would sometimes make it harder to talk to actual organizers or communists of color. I remember one time trying to reach out to some folks about the book club and without anything other than the subreddit name in the link they replied with "they don't fuck with chapo".
One of the roasters on Chapo's 500th ep said them using the Gucci Mane theme song was the only black person they ever have on the show.
Sounds like a bonus. The type of person for whom a nominal (literally nominal in this case) association with a leftist comedy podcast is a complete dealbreaker is the kind of person who's not going to be organizing or interested in learning. They're going to be making demands and ultimatums. At least that's been my experience with DSA type people IRL. It would be different if CTH were notorious, but it's a milquetoast leftist podcast that has done great work as a pipeline into socialism over the past 5 years.
yeah, i tend to agree. why the fuck would you be that sectarian when the left is as tiny as it is in the US? like sure, have disagreements or whatever, but work together for now. having a LARP-ish power struggle when you're barely a blip on mainstream culture is cringe.
The DSA near me goes through one leadership team a year or so for this reason. Absolute joke.
People might not be aware, or remember, some of the early controversies around Chapo Trap House. First, there is always the fact they are making millions of dollars with a nominally leftist take on politics but they do not disclose where their money is going (except for joking about cocaine and ketamine, which...ya know). They also made a joke about the MOVE bombing being justified — this is a tragedy that reverberates to this day with survivors still in jail, or being released at the ripe age of 70 or 80 years old, and their children's bones recently being found at Penn U. They posed next to Bill Cosby's hollywood star and made light of his rape allegations. Felix made some controversial statements on Twitter regarding SA. And they had incredibly shitty takes regarding the summer 2020 uprisings, and the movement or calls for defunding the police and having Matt Taibbi to shit on critical race theory (which it's not even taught in schools, so please shut the fuck up). Personally, chapo helped radicalized, it got me reading more theory and history and renewed/rekindled my interest in politics and social justice, ironically enough; but other people are allowed to criticize the podcast, their ideas, their tropes, and their takes and I have a genuine interest in intersectionality with comrades of color and it is a bummer to try and advance a project of political education and have it meet a fucking wall because of the CTH brand. But that's just me...
but other people are allowed to criticize the podcast, their ideas, their tropes, and their takes
Cool, absolutely not the same as refusing to have anything to do with that name near it.
CTH, due to its reach, has done more for the "left" than any of the people who despise it.
ironically enough
It's not ironic. That's explicitly what CTH is good at. Making leftist politics not look like going to church with losers.
CTH, due to its reach, has done more for the “left” than any of the people who despise it.
I disagree but w.e.
As someone who doesn't listen to the podcast much, I like that it's officially an independent thing and not some kind of fan site. Nothing against the podcast, though.
Some rich Brooklyn podcasters name their show after a real life drug kingpin and get pissed and territorial if anyone else uses the same name
Come on now, they never stopped anyone using the name, they just talked shit on their podcast. If you get mad about that, just means you've been successfully owned
It astonishes me more and more as time goes on that people were unironically mad about the hosts talking shit about the subreddit.
It was on reddit, for god's sake!
I admit it annoyed me when they talked shit on the subreddit, I ended up cancelling my patreon subscription and I haven't listened to the podcast since. Yea the chapo subreddit was really stupid sometimes, but I was just starting to feel like the Chapo hosts thought they were better/smarter than their own fans and other leftists in general.
This was around the time they did that dogshit episode about BLM protests where they complained about people wanting to tear down confederate statues because they were doing things "in the wrong order" or whatever the fuck. So them gloating about the subreddit getting banned was the final nail in the coffin for me.
Like, the Chapo hosts have the gall to complain about how leftists are stupid and out of touch with reality (this was a common theme on the show at the time) when they make six figures doing podcasts for a living. Fuck em.
I feel like there’s a notable group on this site (ironically seeing where we came from) who seem to think of podcasts as almost an illegitimate form of entertainment? And therefor creating podcasts is not labor and paying people to create them is by definition a grift.
But it’s not like any leftist podcasters are claiming that by giving them money youre somehow supporting the leftist cause. It’s pretty clearly a relationship of “You enjoy the entertainment product we produce, if you pay us we can continue to live and produce more entertainment, and you will also get access to an additional hour of entertainment every week.” Paying people to perform labor to produce something for you to consume and enjoy isn’t a grift, it’s like, society.
I may be overthinking this, I just feel like I see a lot of comments on here that are just “anti-podcast” in general. Like, man I just want something interesting or funny to listen to while I do my job
I don’t pay for Chapo anymore but I pay for a few podcasts. I just listen to a lot of podcasts and I’m willing to pay for more of the entertainment product I like, like anything else 🤷♂️
Most are $5 a month so like $1.25 per hour long episode, pretty decent time to value for me tbh
This was around the time they did that dogshit episode about BLM protests where they complained about people wanting to tear down confederate statues because they were doing things “in the wrong order” or whatever the fuck. So them gloating about the subreddit getting banned was the final nail in the coffin for me.
I remember that episode and I stopped listening for a few months. I still don't listen to them frequently enough to care.
Making fun of redditors is deserved. But the alternative is being on twitter, which suchs so much ass. I used to see REBr0 trying to be funny on his twitter account; basically everyone wants to be dril but they can't pull off being funny and gross at the same time.
People literally repost tweets here for content. Without twitter, half of the site's posts would be gone.
as someone who cancelled at the same time but kept listening black wolf, you haven't really missed that much. some funny moments but Matt's solo content is better
bonus: Will is still malding and brings up the sub to shit on it every couple of months
bonus: Will is still malding and brings up the sub to shit on it every couple of months
lol
https://twitter.com/ByYourLogic/status/1421234126988906501?s=19
Where is he wrong tho?
“masks bad, muh freedoms”.
Not what Felix has been saying but whatever.
I admit it annoyed me when they talked shit on the subreddit, I ended up cancelling my patreon subscription and I haven’t listened to the podcast since.
lol. lmao
They also had the "cops are workers too" take which was just a :bruh-moment:
I have to assume a lot of it is zoomers who didn't grow up seeking out the most toxic online environments of the mid-aughts, and thus never internalized "U MAD U LOSE". Can't really fault, since the time I spent in those places probably did more harm than good in the long run.
bein a redditor, okay, fine, live and let live.
bein a redditor and getting mad when people mock you for it, lmao
I don't care what the URL turns into as long as i can type "cha" and have it autocomplete and get me to my stories.
