First episode I listened to was a justification for Russian nazis and the second I listened to called childless people losers. I don't care to listen to any more of it. Is the name a joke or something? Why would you name your website after these losers? The people on /r/blackwolffeed are nothing but terfs and hate on identity politics and trans people. I don't feel like the brand of leftism chapo is selling is something I want to buy. It's like hey free healthcare but your not a woman and don't mention race exists. If mods are gonna ban me for hating on this podcast than do it, I don't want to be here if they support it. However if you fine people don't like the podcast, I ask you for your support to change the name, because I haven't found a raunchier trans space. I recommend John Waters Fun House, can this thread just be a struggle session of coming up with better names than one of a shitty reactionary podcast? Thank you.
My Spotify history shows I've only listened to 55 minutes of the podcast in the two years I've been involved with the community. Honestly, fuck the podcast. I'll go mask off and say I've been wanting to change the name for a M I N U T E.
Every shitlib here is so concerned about "br*nd recognition :angery:" while completely ignoring the fact that we're inherently associating ourselves with a br@nd of reactionary "leftism".
People are constantly shitty with this community and all the wrecker and spam shit we've been put through more than indicates that we're doing something right in striving to be different from every other shit-tier "leftist" community whose politics only seek to further marginalize people. I genuinely think it's past time for a pivot to our own identity.
It’s a basic principle of communist organizing to work with the working class as it actually exists and in the spaces it actually exists. This doesn’t mean you indulge bigotry, but this is the basic avenue by which you raise the political level—you connect the dots between ordinary people’s lived experiences and the broader historical struggle to which we all belong, consciously or unconsciously.
I’m not saying like proper communist organizing was taking place on the subreddit, but it was probably the most active left online space on one of the largest websites on the internet. This directly tracked the popularity of the podcast itself, which itself tracked a deep and massive shift in consciousness across the US working class following the crisis in 2008. Chapo traphouse, in podcast or subreddit form, became popular for broadly the same reasons that Bernie Sanders became popular.
Are any of these perfect expressions of a working class political project with crystal clear political consciousness?
No, obviously not. But people don’t immediately jump to conclusions that they have no experiential basis to draw.
These were the ideas and spaces that were available, and the growth in popularity reflected the growth of a layer of the working class that is looking for socialist ideas and spaces to discuss them.
On the subreddit, it was entirely possible to present a proper Marxist analysis of the futility of working in the Democratic Party to a receptive audience of hundreds or thousands of people. People who literally had not ever thought of the problem from a class perspective. Like for something as low-investment as internet posting, if you are a principled socialist you couldn’t really ask for a better place to “waste” a few hours.
I’m not talking about converting or coddling reactionaries here, I’m talking about engaging with people who are upset with the status quo and genuinely looking for an idea of the way out. Honestly the chapo name might not make much of a difference for this site’s trajectory, but my point is that it doesn’t hurt to cast a bigger net.
Believing that Chapo dictates people's political beliefs (ie turns them from a good leftist into a reactionary leftist) is the same kind of thought as the brand recognition people though. The brand recognition people think the aesthetics and the podcast turns people into good leftists. Both share the idea that a radio show is responsible for people's politics and what happens with the leftist project. It's ahistorical, not dialectical, and certainly lacks materialism.
That being said I'm 100% fine with a name change. arctic.chat would be cool because arctic means where the bears live, though it does also carry a connotation for the global north, which is a minus. arct itself just means bear. but arct.chat is a little weird.
If we're building a pipeline we need to build one that gets people out of this headspace of thinking the battle for the soul of the world is in policing media consumption. Even if Chapo was a literal Nazi podcast, it has absolutely nothing to do with what people are doing on the streets right now.
Fully agree.