That’s fair, but you’re basically calling me out also with the way you’re saying my suggestion to use this as agitprop is akin to recommending Vaush.

Criticizing the potential of John Oliver to be a left pipeline is not calling you out. Comparing his form of mollifying and laundering of reaction to V*ush is not calling you out. It might be disagreeing with one of your premises, but I didn’t assume.

They are very much not the same and it just feels like contrarianism at this point.

They’re the same in the ways and to the degree I said they were. Please try to stay away from personal dismissals.

I have been agitating for years

I assume all of us have been.

and clips like this one are often a great way to get those conversations started with liberals

Starting a conversation has a very low bar, so sure. But I can also say that about fascist media, harmful liberal media, V*ush clips…

One short decontextualized clip can be fine, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying every time a lib watches a John Oliver clip we move one step away from communism. But generally speaking, the content functions as a false catharsis for liberalism. An inherent feature of liberalism is to generate people that recognize systemic problems created by the liberal status quo and to then channel action back into supporting that status quo. It is an effective way to create a rightward pipeline from radicalizable potential comrades, to take the problem recognition that may be shared with some socialists and then marry it to milquetoast liberal theories of change, lest more people become organized opponents of capitalism. Oliver’s show is an examplar.

like I said we have to be the ones that push them further.

I wouldn’t say that the clip pushes left at all. It’s compatible with shit a neoliberal bourgeois acquaintance (who is also a landlord) has said to me. We’ve got:

• blaming NIMBYS

• blaming zoning

• “no one should have to face eviction without a lawyer”

• pass rent stabilization laws

Other lib “solutions” listed:

• pass laws to make landlords accept housing vouchers / make evictions not a black mark on being able to rent

• “housing is a human right” presented in pure idealism form. Literally saying that people agreeing with it is a solution. And that passing a law to say this is a solution.

This time, Oliver’s “solutions” are actually more nebulous than the usual liberal pap. No calls to action whatsoever, just references to capital-friendly reformist legislation needing to get passed. Not even a call to :vote:, it’s just implicit now lol.

Put another way, how is this more left than classical economics, i.e. classical liberalism? Do you even call that left? I don’t. There’s no power analysis, no critique of landlords as a rentier class, no critique of whether landlords should exist at all, no economic analysis of why rent is going up, no discussion of renter’s unions or decommodification or development authorities or even other countries or history. No call to action, nothing for you to do, no mass actions, no parties, no identification of enemies or material interests and how to combat them.