I sometimes see New Atlas videos popping up, and I have often needed to have the same struggle session with the poster of the video. So my problem, being an old fuck that I am, have been following Brian since the late naughts. Back in 2009-ish, being an internet nerd meant Indymedia, Blogger, and Geocities created webpages. He was a pretty open reactionary before Twitter and YouTube became big. He tied his wagon pretty solidly to Inforwars around 2010.
Brian Berletic used to go by the name of Tony Cartalucci. The original Tony C used to write HEAPS for Infowars [example] [example - he cites Paul Joseph Watson] [example]. Sadly the Wayback Machine doesn't have a search name feature, but you can still find Infowars when you type his name in. The message was very globalist, George Soros kinda stuff.
I hear you saying, hey ButtBidet, that was in 2012. Maybe the guy has grown in the last twelve years. Hey, many of us started out as libs.
To which I answer: with the name change to Brian Berletic, he's distanced himself from the Infowars garbage and gotten a better message, but he's still far right as fuck.
For example, he did the antivax thing hard during 2020-21. He's done a lot of climate change skepticism pretty recently. Lastly, he's very clearly pro-monarchy.
I see that he writes from the maybe Russian funded journal NEO (according to Wikipedia which I'm too lazy to verify). Honestly I couldn't care less if Russia is funding him, but I just assume that he's an intellectual for hire.
With Haiphong, he seems to be pandering to an audience but he doesn't seem to be genuinely Marxist imo. There isn't one thing that I can point to as a very clear sign that shows that he's sketchy but I remember him making a post, I think it was a YouTube community post, asking what people's Top 5 Revolutionaries are and he gave his which included Gaddafi and someone else which was a really odd decision.
I can't recall who made it to his list but it was enough for me to wash my hands of him. I'm not saying that everyone has to have their Top 5 as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Sankara and Castro or something but a Top 5 is a tough pick when you have people like Ho Chi Minh and Giap, Luxemburg, Che, George Jackson, Huey P Newton, Allende, Maurice Bishop etc. but if Gaddafi is getting a look in on your list then that's really weird imo. And it wasn't like it was some "I'm special and an individual so I'm going to choose people off the beaten path like Simone Weil and Toussaint Louverture" kinda thing either. He has said things that have made me stop and ask if he was really a Marxist but nothing ever egregious, instead it was just a series of little "Hm, that's a bit odd" moments.
This isn't some purity test either. For figures like David Harvey and Richard Wolff I have a lot of disagreements with them but there's nothing that tells me that they haven't read or that indicates anything sus in the sense that they're on a grift. But Danny Haiphong gives a different vibe imo.
Honestly this isn't meant to be a comprehensive list and I had to rack my brain to even remember Daniel Dumbrill's name. I haven't been looking at Norton since the days of his split with the Grayzone after Blumenthal was courting the Jimmy Dore audience and went hard into anti-vaxx territory so I didn't feel right in making a call Norton today as I genuinely don't have a read on him now, same for people like Katie Halper.
There's this pattern that plays out, as it did with Blumenthal, with Eddie Liger Smith, with Jimmy Dore and Russell Brand and plenty of other figures. Even Joe Rogan used to have a pseudo-progressive angle before he went hard right. They start saying some things that are critical of the system and they get attention, then they start criticising empire or challenging common western narratives and they develop a following so then they start talking about socialism or revolution in very broad terms. Then the baby leftists and the unseasoned leftists start getting excited because it feels like it's really happening - radical views are finally going to break into mainstream discourse and this is the moment we've been waiting for, Russell Brand is going to be the spark that kicks off the revolution!! And then they drop a patreon and maybe release a book and they go on late night TV talking a big game, if they can manage to score an interview. It's really happening!! Then these figures, who lack a theoretical basis and who adent materialist and haven't done the reading end up getting lost in the sauce and they take a rightwing turn. It plays out over and over again.
Lots of people are too young for this but Roseanne Barr literally had her own fairly-left, very progressive political arc where she was very critical of the system. Jimmy Dore did it too. Believe it or not Bill Maher was also once part of a sort of vanguard of progressivism that leaned radical in the sense that he used to touch on topics about the prison system and American imperialism. (Even Doug Lain made an attempt at this but failed pretty dismally lol.)
These days that left demographic has most shifted a lot further left and so you'd scoff at hearing Bill Maher being mentioned as ever representing a left-ish zeitgeist, even if you heard what he used to say back before he went full chud. But that's because of the leftwing overton window having shifted left a staggering amount since those days.
I've just seen this same pattern play out too many times. You could accuse me of being jaded and maybe you'd be right to but I'm deeply skeptical of "thought leader" type figures who aren't forward about their politics or at least who don't make very obvious and intentional tells to their audience about their political beliefs, if they are aiming to be part of a left pipeline but they don't want to spoök the baby leftists.
I still get my info from a broad range of sources and I listen to people who I have major differences in politics with but there are people whose politics I genuinely respect and who I look to for my own political development and then there are people who I am very skeptical about because, basically, I'm waiting for them to take a Max Blumenthal or Eddie Liger Smith turn. That doesn't mean they are necessarily going to take one or that I believe they're a PatSoc just waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves but when they demonstrate a lack of theoretical underpinning to what they say then I know they are going to end up being led astray sooner or later.
I could lay out a playbook for how to grift the left because there's a pattern that exists but I really don't want to hand thd people who want to follow their own SpaghettiKozak grift a guidebook on how to go about it since that would be a kicking a big own-goal.
Look, ultimately I could be wrong about some of these figures or they could develop in a genuinely radical direction. The problem is that there's no telling with 100% certainty until a figure takes a reactionary turn, although with Eddie Liger Smith (and even Haz to a lesser extent) there have been a lot of tells for a long time and the people whose politics I respect have been sounding the alarm about them for years and years now (yet in the more broad left spaces I still see people shocked and in disbelief about Eddie to this very day even though he's been telegraphing it for, what, two solid years by this point). I'm not saying you aren't allowed to like those figures I've mentioned above or that you cannot appreciate their takes, I'm just airing my serious concerns in a space amongst comrades because I do not trust them. You aren't obligated to agree with me and if there's a figure you appreciate on that list I'm not going to rub it in your face if it turns out they are a grifter or they slide to the right, I'm just saying be careful about which figures you put your trust in.
If we really want to get controversial about it, I'm concerned that Gabriel Rockhill and his atelier is courting the PatSoc audience. Rockhill has absolutely done the reading so he should know better. He's affiliated with the PSL. And yet he has collaborated with the Midwestern Marx group multiple times, in recent history where Eddie in particular has been pretty overt about what he's doing. I could understand being an academic a couple of years back and just skimming Eddie's stuff and assuming that it would be okay to work with him but in more recent times? Either Rockhill isn't being diligent about vetting people at all or he's also intentionally distorting the left. Which is bitterly disappointing to me either way tbh since I sincerely respect his analysis and his research. It would really suck if his politics turned out to be trash. The reason why I bring this up is because it stings to talk about it. I'm not saying these things to try and inflict suffering on others out of malice or because I'm trying to become a thought leader in my own right, I'm just speaking from experience of a person who has been duped by figures like this before and if I can encourage others to be more aware and more cautious about this then it might spare them from making the same mistakes that I have in the past.
In the famous words of Helen Hywater: be careful who your friends are.