I see a lot of terrible stuff in the progressive movement. I’m sure that you do too. Remember those “Bad Faith” people who were laser-focused on using elections—as opposed to activism—to move the Democrats left? A crazy idea, made exponentially crazier by the fact that implementing that strategy puts Donald Trump into office for another four years, perhaps with terminal consequences? Psychosis, silliness, and clownery have gripped the left forever, I guess, but time is running out for the left to get serious before there’s no left and no right and no politics because we’re all dead.
Years ago, I was driving with my brother, who’s a corporate guy. I turned to him and said, “You know, I think that everyone on the left is a clown except Noam Chomsky.” He laughed and said: “That’s so true.” There is so much profound truth in that statement that I made to him. It’s an exaggeration, but you need to think about it. Noam Chomsky commands respect from corporate guys like my brother because he is 100% smart and 100% serious and 100% mature, not a clown. Even if you don’t agree with Chomsky, you know that he’s not a clown. It’s a tragic comment on today’s world that a major litmus-test for political commentators is: “Are they a clown or are they a serious person?” Activists and organizers are overwhelmingly serious, I’m sure. I’m talking about commentators, though. There are exceptions: Dean Baker is serious, David Sirota is serious, David Dayen is serious. Others are too, of course. But there are very few serious commentators out there, and very few serious progressive commentators out there.
To say that someone is serious is not to necessarily agree with everything that they say, of course. I want to emphasize that.
Recently, I saw one of the best internet comments that I’ve ever seen in my life. It was posted on the “Krystal Kyle & Friends” Substack post for their interview with Noam Chomsky:
After watching the full episode, I think it’s really concerning that everything you guys say always leads to the natural conclusion of “it’s the democrats’ fault”. You completely gloss over the fact that Chomsky also talked about a failure of the left and the activist movement to organize, which presumably you and Krystal are part of? And yet Kyle, all you do in your videos is cynically bitch about the democrats. You never teach your audience about organizing. You never explain to them what “putting pressure” is even supposed to mean besides complaining on Twitter. You keep them angry and pessimistic...but completely fail to empower them in any way to do anything about it.
And that’s not even getting into the fact that you consistently get stories wrong and spread misinformation. Even here, you and Krystal smugly dismiss the American Rescue Plan as “$1400 breadcrumbs”, completely failing to explain that the bill is actually full of other far more important and substantial provisions and that we should be putting maximum pressure to get it passed.
Also, please stop talking about Gamestop. Almost everything you’ve said about that is either misinformation or fake news. All of the populism in it is fake. The hedge funds and the WallStreetBets leaders made a ton of money at the expense of regular people and they were always going to. It was a disgusting cult-like pump and dump that you irresponsibly supported.
Please have a bit of introspection. You’re not helping the movement.
This comment hit the nail on the head. It’s a tragic comment, by the way, that Matt Taibbi—is he a serious commentator?—dived headfirst into the entire GameStop narrative. Fortunately, Dean Baker was serious enough to see through it and not get caught up in it. Noam Chomsky didn’t get caught up in that nonsense, because he’s serious—like Baker is. You do your research first, and you think about things. You don’t just dive headfirst into a narrative that sounds good, or feels good, or gets you a lot of clicks, or gets you a lot of views. We’re in a sorry state.
The GameStop case prompts questions. Is there a fundamental conflict of interest when “content creators” depend on getting clicks—or views—for income? Or on selling books for income? Do faulty narratives get clicks, get views, make you more prominent, and make you more money? Does pandering to certain audiences—in the GameStop case, Redditors—get clicks, get views, make you more prominent, and make you more money?
Consider the “online left”. In my view, the “online left” gets way too immersed in labels and in putting people into different ideological buckets and in debating whether A/B/C falls into X/Y/Z bucket. And way too immersed in all sorts of things. Progressives should focus on policy and strategy and activism, and nothing else.
Consider Vaush (a prominent left-wing political streamer). Vaush was asked if he wanted to be serious (see 134:46, 140:55, and 181:18):
How can you toggle seamlessly between recognizing that Earth is burning and talking about [video games]?
If you actually want the utilitarian justification for all of the things that I do, think about it this way. I would not be able to stream as much as I do if it weren’t for the fact that I could chill with video games. That’s very important to me, health-wise. I need to be able to relax because that’s an important part of what I do. And I think it develops a sense of community. And the stronger a sense of community we have and the more comfortable I am with streaming, the more I’m able to stream, which means that I’m able to engage in political content more often. And the more political content that I produce, the more I move people over to the left, and the more people I move over to the left—it all comes together....
Why don’t you encourage your audience to join activism so that we can stop global warming before it’s too late?
Nobody ever got to be a large community-leader by being preachy to their audience. What do you mean? Go knock doors? The online right has already demonstrated an effective model for radicalization. You make content that people find interesting and that people want to engage with, and then in it you implore people if they can to participate to the extent of their comfort. If you go past that, then you make people feel as though they’re being preached at, interest and engagement drops off, and you become too irrelevant to meaningfully affect anything. It may seem frustrating, but having a YouTube channel with 300,000 subscribers does not mean that you are a community organizer with 300,000 volunteers. What it means is that you have an audience. And to that audience you owe them entertainment and commitment, and they owe you nothing. You want to encourage them to do good....
How can streamers create a more serious and more activist streaming-culture?
I don’t want a more serious streaming-culture. If anything, seriousness pulls people away. I want a more effective culture of online engagement.
Vaush has an image of his content as being a pipeline that “moves people over to the left”. Isn’t that a very weird way to look at commentary, though? He’s trying to “move people over to the left”, but that’s not Chomsky’s goal. Chomsky is a serious commentator who tells the truth and helps people to think for themselves. Vaush wants to pipe people over to the left, as though people are passive objects to be moved around. Does Vaush want to tell the truth? Does Vaush want to help people to think for themselves? Vaush wants to move people over, through this pipeline, as though people are passive things to be moved. It’s very weird. It’s highly lucrative for Vaush because he says that he is “rich” off of livestreaming.
What would a serious livestreamer do? What would Chomsky do if Chomsky had a livestream?
Speaking of Chomsky, and speaking of seriousness, Vaush says wildly false things about Noam Chomsky. For example, here Vaush rants about Chomsky’s views on free speech (see 26:04):
This is a very bad letter. And I am disappointed that Noam Chomsky signed off on it. Chomsky has always been pretty much like a crazy [expletive] pro-free-speech duderino. The main reason for that being is that he is a leftist who lived through the Red Scare. He lived through the McCarthy-era times. He’s old as [expletive]. Which means that he is always going to be really free speech because he believes that free speech in its totality in every conceivable form of protection against consequence is something that bolsters the left. Chomsky probably doesn’t know how to run a [expletive] bathtub. Chomsky probably has like a wooden bucket in his house that he has like a handmaid pour water over his hair with. I love him. I do love him. Seriously, Chomsky’s work is pivotal to me. But Chomsky is not currently plugged into the online culture war. He’s not. He’s not. When Chomsky signed this letter, I don’t think he was thinking, “Yes. Now Stefan Molyneux can get his channel back because YouTube banning Stefan Molyneux’s channel was a violation of his First Amendment rights.” I think Noam Chomsky is very dedicated in the abstract to the ideas of freedom and free expression, and that’s a wonderful thing, but the language of this letter in the context of modern political discourse, I think, bolsters some very, very irresponsible positions.
Vaush didn’t fact-check this. First, Chomsky’s views on free speech predate the Red Scare and have nothing to do with the Red Scare. Second, Chomsky’s views on free speech have nothing to do with what effect free speech has in terms of hurting or helping the left. Third, Chomsky’s views on free speech have nothing to do with a belief in free speech “in its totality in every conceivable form of protection against consequence”. This whole rant was silly, and it’s one example of the silly things that Vaush says.
How serious are progressive commentators, generally speaking?
How can we make progressive commentators more serious by getting them to think about seriousness and by getting them to look in the mirror?
I want to start a conversation about this because the future of the world may depend on whether the left gets serious before it’s too late.