Mostly talking about stuff like breadtubers, chapo, and media personalities like that, I can kind of tell why people like Bernie and Jezza where they’re at. Is it the added wealth being a popular media personality gives you, the need to give a consistent product, the need to appeal to a wide breadth of people, and so on?
edit: also props to Brett at RevLeft for continuing to radicalise himself as the show has gone on
Pretty sure this is survivor bias kinda
We are here because we outgrew the talking heads, the majority of their followers don’t outgrow them but they don’t make it to chapo chat
It’s just where they’re at politically, not everyone radicalizes
We’re just the ones who did
Yes I think this explains why all of us here have this experience and that is not universal, but what I think I’m trying to understand why there is at least a segment of their listeners that move on, and they (and I guess the majority of their other fans) don’t. Makes sense that all of their listeners have not moved on because then they would either be forced to shift as well or disappear.
maybe it just means i’m an asshole too, but I still haven’t gotten that riled up by the shit amber says. Makes the Amber memes extra funny.
The “cops are workers” one was horrendously bad
I listened to episode 435 after people here were denouncing Amber and Matt Taibbi for it, expecting the worst, but I found the attacks on them horribly misguided. Like, trigger-happy witch hunt misguided. They were discussing difficult issues, bringing up valid points, but their critics ascribed the worst motives to them for no reason.
Unless I missed some line, Amber actually said there’re “non-White cops” and Taibbi said that working-class people become cops. (Not that “cops are workers”!) They were saying that condemning all cops as White supremacist thugs is a bad argument, one that resonates badly with racial minorities and the poor. Because the experience of those groups with police is contradictory, not black-and-white, no pun intended. While many experiences with police are extremely negative, those groups are also disproportionately affected by violent crime and want police attention on violent crime - not simply no police. And they’re also the demographics from which cops are hired - becoming a cop is a way to earn a living for many poor families. You won’t win hearts by shitting on people’s relatives.
Taibbi, Will, and Amber repeatedly acknowledge that the police is an anti-proletarian institution at its roots, and American police is corrupt and bloody etc. in the episode. Their argument is that the movement for racial equality and against police brutality will not attract mainstream support (and thus political success) if it leads with “All Cops Are the KKK”-type rhetoric. (This rhetoric is good for mobilizing radicals, but not for mobilizing regular people.)
I kinda think i get where she was coming from on that, maybe?
Specifically, I was listening to a recent episode of trillbillies, and there was a segment where they were reading some police union guy’s letter to other cops in the union or some shit (I’m hazy on the context). Anyway, the hosts noted that throughout the letter, in the way they talked about themselves and to each other, there was a clear sort of quasi-working class solidarity and recognition of themselves as workers (at least relative to the administrative figures they shit-talk throughout the letter).
Now, the trillbillies made a more more plainly useful point with that observation, specifically that their solidarity helps makes their police union strong, and god fucking damn look at the shit they can get away with because of that power. Amber seemingly wanted to… … … suggest that they have some inner hint of genuine working class sentiment? or some shit? I dunno, that same letter they read on trillbillies had tons of talk re-affirming the occupier perspective cops have towards other people they’re supposed to serve. So, yeah… I forget if I had some fucking point here, done typing this bitch, post
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
Breadtubers/podcasters/other media types got into it for attention, and for money. And frankly the pursuit of money+attention kinda overrides everything else. As an example from the Chapos perspective, why rock the boat, why change yourself, why push yourself to be better when you’re making buttloads of money making fun of op-eds?
