I think everyone who has been paying attention saw this coming. Now so-called “socialist” Hasan Piker is putting out CNN level liberal propaganda. Even western polling had to admit that Putin enjoyed an approval rating above 80% just prior to the election, but of course when you have demonized Russia to this degree you have to resort to reality denial to explain what you see.
We need to start using the term “red liberal” to describe these “leftist” political streamers and YouTubers who mimick the aesthetics and language of leftism while feeding into imperialist dogma and liberal assumptions about the world. Hasan also continues to deny the Donbass genocide that had been taking place since 2014 before Russia finally intervened, refuses to accept that Russia had legitimate reason to take action to stop NATO eastward expansion, and downplays the Nazi nature of the Kiev regime.
Now after he made fun of all the dumbass chuds who insisted in 2020 that the US election was stolen and made up all kinds of conspiracy theories to try and justify it, Hasan himself engages in the same kind of behavior when it comes to Russian elections. This is the kind of “socialist” who will act like they are not Democrat shills by superficially criticizing Genocide Joe yet continue to advocate that you vote for Democrats as the “lesser evil”.
It is good though that since 2022 all of these sheepdogs for liberal imperialism have been exposing themselves. Now we know where the lines are drawn. Once again Lenin’s words ring true:
“We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!”
I do agree, his postures on Russia are indistinguishable from a lib, him saying that Navalny would’ve been better than Putin for russians is absurd. That being said i think he has to be very careful with his words in this specific subject because he lives in the US after all and his livelihood is tied to it, he could easily end up in jail for saying something not allowed by US media.
They don’t put you in jail, they disinvite you from corporate media, demonetize your YouTube channel, suppress your Twitter reach, etc.
Look at the history of Chris Hedges’ career. Ever since he questioned the arguments for invading Iraq, he’s been banned from all corporate media. And when Russia became the enemy du jour, his RT YouTube account was deleted and his years of content purged. Now he lives on Substack donations. Hedges: On Being Disappeared
Let’s not exaggerate, the US isn’t yet on the same level as Germany. There are plenty of people in the US in alternative media who have a much less anti-Russian stance than Hasan, some are even openly pro-Russian. They get harassed yes, but generally if you are a big enough public personality there is not much that will happen to you. Hasan himself even got away with telling the truth about 9/11.
This is more accurate. He has a vested financial interest in continuing to toe the liberal pro-imperialist line. He would indeed lose a good chunk of his audience and perhaps advertiser contracts if he did not go along with the anti-Russia talking points. This just indicates that he is a self-interested coward who is more worried about keeping the millions flowing in from subscriptions and advertisements than in actually using his platform responsibly and bringing (unpopular) truth to his massive audience.
I’m sorry but when you have a platform you also have a responsibility. He is not some working class regular Joe who out of self-preservation needs to shut up or else fear losing his job and his home. He has made a choice to support the propaganda narrative that is leading us down an ever more slippery slope of escalating war with Russia. “Putin is a tyrannical dictator”, “China is genociding Uyghurs”, “Saddam Hussein has WMDs”, these are the kinds of lies that lay the groundwork for wars.
In addition to serving the pro-war neocon agenda this kind of rhetoric is also putting Russians living in the West in physical danger just as anti-China propaganda puts Chinese people at risk. Already there have been people who have been fired from their jobs for admitting that they voted for Putin. In other countries people have been investigated by police and even arrested just for posting “pro-Russian” opinions online.
Hasan has both the money and the clout to be able to safely speak out against this atmosphere of paranoia and persecution but chooses to feed into it instead.
He is easily the most influential leftist figure, maybe it’s just me but if i was in his shoes i would be very careful with my words because the US does have an history of minecrafting dissident figures. Another point, his audience is mainly baby leftists filled with liberal propaganda, if i was in his shoes i’d take it step by step, avoid talking about some topics while focusing on others that might be more important like China.
We definitely should call out the liberal propaganda he spews, so people ready to outgrow him can find the criticisms, but lets pump up the brakes a bit with calling him a sellout, he is doing this 24/7 and is bound to eventually say stupid shit, IMO he is a very important part of the communist pipeline.
Well then Hasan is perfectly safe. You’re not much of a dissident when you repeat state department talking points about the US’s geopolitical enemies.
He is part of a pipeline alright, i’m just not sure it’s a communist pipeline. More like a pipeline leading baby leftists away from anti-imperialism and back into system-compatible radical liberalism.
This argument would make sense if he was actually avoiding talking about it. He could have kept his mouth shut about the Russian election if he didn’t want to be accused of legitimizing Putin, but instead he chose to speak on it and basically call it rigged. And again, i have to stress it’s not that i am against saying that an election under a liberal democratic political system is, in a certain sense, illegitimate. It’s that he doesn’t ever say the same thing about elections in the US and Europe. He would never speak about Western elections in the same condescending, dismissive tone.
You don’t have to like Putin (i certainly don’t, and i am reminded of that every time he shittalks Lenin) to acknowledge the reality that he is just more popular in his own country than any Western politician has been in theirs in a long time. An ostensibly leftist political commentator like Hasan could choose to have a productive discussion with their audience about why that is and try and understand the political dynamics inside Russia from a materialist perspective and gain some actual insights. But instead, like liberals typically do, he refuses to even entertain the idea that another country’s leader that he doesn’t like can actually enjoy a considerable degree of support from the people of that country.
Liberals project their own likes and dislikes onto the rest of the world and assume everyone secretly thinks like them and just needs to be “liberated” by the enlightened West. Here is where that condescension and dismissiveness of other people’s cultures and political systems comes in. This same applies not just to Russia but to other countries whose leaders are demonized by the West and labeled as “autocrats” or “dictators” even when they win elections and available evidence shows that they have a pretty good approval rating.
I might be biased and have a soft spot for him because i used to watch him religiously. But to raise another point, does it really matter if liberals demonize Russia?
Don’t you think that its in our best interests that the west focuses its attention on Russia, an ideologically aligned state, than in China?
It matters when so-called “leftists” participate in and encourage that demonization. It matters when it is done against any country that the neocon psychopaths have set as a target for their destabilization and warmongering efforts. It matters when it is done to Syria, it matters when it is done to Iran, it matters when it is done to the DPRK, and it matters when it is done to Russia.
This kind of rhetoric is not harmless, it is the kind of rhetoric that lays the groundwork for wars and murderous sanctions. The same kinds of lies that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the bombing of Yugoslavia, the dirty war on Syria, etc. Each time they claimed that the leader of the country was a tyrannical despot who needed to be deposed, and each time a certain section of complicit “leftists” helped them to solidify and legitimize their narrative.
What did Hasan say about 9/11?
The truth.
He said that amerikkka deserved it, which is the truth.
He doesn’t just have to worry about US authorities, but his platfom as well.
The guy has to perform a balancing act of not pushing too far against the narrative or he gets cancelled and then nobody is listening to him.
It’s why Western streamers are ultimately controlled opposition, and there’s only so much they can do to defy that control.
By that same logic you could argue we all should have stayed on Reddit and continued to self-censor our opinions.
There are alternative streaming platforms you know…
… like what?
Don’t get me wrong, I do agree there’s plenty to criticize Hasan over, but what’s the alternative streaming platform besides YouTube?
You mean an alternative to Twitch? Because on YouTube at least there are still channels that are being allowed to be “pro-Russian” (or at least what Ukraine supporters would call pro-Russian which most of the time just means still living in reality instead of delusional fantasies).
Of course we don’t know how long that will last so it’s good to start finding alternatives now. For videos there’s platforms like Odysee, and i’m sure similar alternatives for streaming will pop up eventually too if enough people are forced to move away from the mainstream platforms.
YouTube is not that different than twitch, if anything they tend to be much more restrictive, so it’s not really a good alternative. And yeah, I meant live streaming. There are no real alternatives atm besides shit like kick/rumble which are basically infested by nazis.
Well there you go, you mentioned Rumble, that’s an alternative platform. Rokfin is another one that comes to mind. And yes many of these alternatives are infested by nazis because they’ve been kind of forced out of the mainstream platforms, and when that happens to anti-imperialists and communists then we’re likely going to have to move to platforms like that too, even if they do have less moderation and are kind of cess pools filled with all kinds of reactionary low lifes and idiots. It’s either that or be censored/banned by the liberal dominated big tech platforms. Unless leftists create their own platforms like we have done with Lemmy (although by now it’s already sadly been infected with liberals) we’re probably going to end up sharing platforms with people that we despise. It’s just something we have to live with. It’s not like that doesn’t happen on YouTube and Twitch already.
But if these alternative platforms suddenly saw an influx of some really big content creators like Hasan then they could start to change for the better and push the more unsavory types into the background. Content creators who do make the move would bring with them a good chunk of their sizeable audiences
It is a kind of stepping on a mine thing in the US. You just cannot agree with Russia or against Ukraine or you will be deplatformed and branded a Russian shill. I’m not convinced Hasan is a principled Marxist but on this he has two choices which are shut up and say nothing or say this. Any other choice would result in Twitch likely demonitizing him, his sponsors leaving him, much of his audience leaving him and a good chance he gets straight up banned from Twitch at which point his influence and livelihood would be done, over, gone forever.
I personally in his position would just stay mum but he either does believe this as well or wants to cash in on the views from saying so. Though in his position I admit not talking about it would be seen as odd given what he discusses.
I don’t trust Hasan as he and many others could be part of the swerve strategy, recuperation, etc but this is the least surprising thing ever.
They kicked Roger Waters off his record label for understanding Russia. No one who is not a billionaire with their own media distribution (Musk) is immune from being cancelled over this and even Musk is the type who can have pressure applied given his position he could be dragged in front of congress and screamed at, humiliated, just in general harassed by the government. So while it’s true they almost certainly wouldn’t kill him, that’s because they could just ruin his life instead.