Interesting to hear that two of the three think of the foreign policy of China as dog shit and the other one (yugopnik, I think) seemingly disagreeing.
Pretty good episode imo and I am excited to hear more
Naah, the Chinese foreign policy has been shit since the 60s. This is even well-know among the tankiest of tankie circles.
China made some mistakes in the context of the Sino-Soviet split, in particular their intervention on the wrong side of the Cambodia-Vietnam conflict, and a few other things, but the root causes of the split were the much worse mistakes made by the Soviet Union in their behavior toward China (stemming from the CPSU’s historical-nihilist revisionism). Since the dissolution of the USSR i think China has had a fairly pragmatic foreign policy and they did the best they could under the circumstances they have been facing.
Well, you are currently in a circle that largely disagrees I think.
From what I gather of the most principled ML’s here the take is usually that their foreign policy is unsatisfying, but calculated, safe and effective.
More evidence that the podcast unfortunately leans heavily to the ultra-left/白左 side.
This is a batshit take lol. Ultras? What a joke. Spoken like someone thats never interacted with the actual podcast or it’s content. If anything they try to keep a lighter tone to hit a wider audience. You know, to try and bring in comrades that aren’t as far along on the communist train. Not to mention of the western facing communist podcasts, few show as much support to China. They argue against the “China not real socialism” take many times over the course of the show. Being a ML and disagreeing with a policy of an AES state, while otherwise showing high levels of support for said state does not make one an ultra. That’s insanity.
I am not sure if you have listened to the episode, but that is a very unfair takeaway imo. A large portion of the runtime is spent on debunking ultra-left criticisms.
I’m not sure what the other evidence is that you’re referring to in general. I haven’t really noticed much aside from them not pushing back enough against a couple sus guests, one of them I vaguely remember saying they regretted how it went.
Tangent
While I don’t really listen to it as much anymore, I think the podcast gets treated too harshly here on the 'Grad. It is an ML podcast that is easy to get into, and the hosts repeatedly make themselves very clear to the listeners that they should be moving on to more advanced material and to get organised (while avoiding common pitfalls especially in the west). They speak often about how their listeners should outgrow them and that their strategy is to “move people further down the funnel”.
I’m not going to get too much into it. I actually wanted to make a discussion post about the topic of podcasts, videos, tiktoks, and other “content” at some point because I’ve seen quite a few comments on Lemmygrad over the past year that I believe have a wrong read on this topic.
I’ve said it a dozen times on here and I’ll take the downvotes and say it again, The Deprogram has done more to further communist thought online, and in person then any of the people on here that complain about it. All three of them have some of the best edited and well made videos spreading knowledge and debunking western propaganda. Any one single of them has actually DONE more to spread communist ideals then any of the armchair purity testers on here.
It is legitimately pathetic to me. There is no comparison to good vs bad because they know if they did they would look like pathetic purity testers. It truly feels the same way as when liberals pick the one bad thing some AES countries does and uses it to justify ignoring all the good that has been done.
It really is my biggest complaint about people on this site is their rabid hate for any and every communist influencer out there. These guys have a mountain of good takes but you see so many on here with a magnifying glass looking for the pebbles of imperfection. The hypocrisy is apparent. We will excuse flaws of past communist figures and leaders. And excuse flaws in AES countries. Citing that the good is greater then the bad. And it’s good to do that, it is right to do that, but then we see a communist influencer make one comment of a hundred that’s a bad take, or make one critique of an AES country and we scream to the hills about it? Nah.
It is ok for a ML to critique a flaw in another ML, or an AES country. It is not ok to go full Lib about it and demonize them or use it to distract from the good they have done.
I have no interest in downvoting this, I just think it misses the point a bit of why podcasters/streamers/etc. receive the criticism that they do. There are several elements I can think of off the top of my head:
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The long format makes it hard to keep up with what they’re saying and judge it thoroughly. Like literally, logistically, if you are not a chronic “consumer” of their “content”, how are you supposed to develop a thorough picture of what they’re doing and saying? Doing so can require sinking in hours upon hours of your life and otherwise, you have to trust people at their word who do (which can be a problem when we get to point 3).
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The often casual format of podcasters/streamers is at odds with rigorous, disciplined analysis. It’s more like people shooting the shit than working through things in a detailed manner. The problem here is obvious. It reinforces the belief that we can work through international scale issues with some casual discussions and that rigor is for nerds or whatever.
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The cult of personality that they tend to attract, and the parasocial relationships, makes it all the more suspect to take defenses of them at face value. Are we talking to someone who looks at what they do with a critical eye or someone who brushes aside where they go wrong basically because they like them as people? There are times I’ve said things in semi-defense of Hasan and I know for a fact part of it is because I like how he comes across as a person, not just the details of what he is saying. That doesn’t mean I’m trying to be dishonest in defense of him, but the fact that I like his persona biases how I talk about what I’ve seen of what he says. And there is no guarantee that his persona is even representative of him in day to day life in the first place.
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They are typically not affiliated with any kind of organized/disciplined party effort, so there is nothing to hold them to account other than each other or maybe the audience a tiny bit. On top of this, they hold a power of influence that the audience doesn’t. If I levy a criticism against a popular podcaster or streamer, maybe a handful of people see it. If a popular podcaster or streamer were to do the same toward me, thousands see it easily. There is no parity. This means that if they DO make a significant misstep, what is likely to happen? Odds are, nothing at all. Some audience members might voice discontent, the podcaster/streamer in question may or may not listen, and that’s the end of it. This is not conducive to navigating a shifting world where we need up to date analysis that reflects a rigorous, scientific socialist understanding. (In general, this leads me to believe that podcast/stream style stuff focused on history past is more valuable as instruction than commentary on developing news. Historical analysis can go and sift through what others have already done. Developing news has a lot of fog and psyop traps.)
Some of this may sound like high standards. I know some people get really shy about rigor on the internet, like it’s some kind of srs rl bizness that doesn’t belong here, but I don’t see why we should treat the internet as any less serious in its consequences. We have to learn to take power seriously and part of that means developing organized, rigorous ways of being. That does include being fair to what a podcaster’s analysis may be, where feasible, but it also means pointing out when they are not being rigorous and are encouraging sloppiness in others by way of example.
Starting this by saying this is not an aggressive rebuttal but a response to points I think you validly were concerned with. Also I start to ramble I think. I am recovering from a stomach flu, so since I made the original comment I have spent all day laying in the bathroom recovering a what I can only describe as a blitzkrieg on my gut the likes of which I have never experienced before.
I am spoiler tagging so people don’t have to scroll past a big ass wall of text if they don’t care to read. lol
spoiler
Firstly, Having a lot of content being a reason for some to not do any research on the person, and/or make knee jerk reactions and dogpile a comrade, imo, is not great reasoning.
As Moa said:
How often do we say this to libs? I feel no differently here. But to add to this, it is understandable that is would be hard for some. But we as comrades can learn the basics of something/someone quite easily though absorbing it from the community (there a word for this but I’m having a brain fart). It’s how communities work. We ask comrades that do know, or just read what they generally have to say. The Deprogram community is one of the larger here and is almost exclusively ML, very pro China, and fairly well behaved are they not? I would trust comrades to tell me about Soviet History if I asked. I would trust the community about a podcaster. I would trust their positive views over a random making wild claims without proof other than a comment about a video, they didn’t even watch.
You bring up Hasan at one point. I would say that my views are of Hasan not being that great. This is through contact of what the general populace here feels, and also his content gets posted enough to back up him being inflammatory and kind of a shit. It is also true he has good takes as well. Being critical when proof is present is valid and good. Being critical based on a vague accusation on a group one has little knowledge of, not so much. We rarely see bad takes from the Deprogram guys yet when we do once in a blue moon we always see someone trying to act like they are much worse then they are. The only really bad take we have seen recently was from Yugo raging out on Twitter shit. And the Deprogram community mostly agrees that was a bad take, but we don’t demonize someone on one or two bad takes. Cause if we did, we wouldn’t have any comrades at all.
Another point, one doesn’t have to review every podcast episode. Hell, we don’t even have to watch any. All of them also make YouTube videos. Almost all are quite well made, thorough, and professional. Almost all of it is a really good resource to use to teach others. Their episodes of the pod being more relaxed and “dude bro” sounding is just the flavor they have. That is the hole they fill. We don’t get a long running podcast like that without it being entertaining to a good sized audience. They cannot help that it does not appeal to everyone. They can’t do that. One podcast cannot appeal to everyone. It’s impossible. I don’t like comedy romance media. I don’t attack people for it or the media. It fills a void. It serves its purpose. Sometimes the Deprogram toilet humor gets old, but it’s their style. It’s not for everyone. It is not their responsibility to make sure there’s other podcasts to meet other people’s standards. Grover Furr books are amazing sources of information. They are also, drier then the Sahara Desert. I am not going to ridicule Grover Furr or his efforts because I have a hard time reading his books and they aren’t entertaining enough.
The cult of personality is a thing that we really can’t do too much about. So concerns with it are valid, but I feel that is on the community as well as the influencers. I would say, through watching the show, they try not to promote that. Sure they sell merch and take patreon donation to keep the “show” running. But that’s the price of being a well developed podcast in a capitalist shithole world. So while the influencers can dissuade it, people are going to… People. People have been idolizing popular figures since the dawn of time, most of whom they shouldn’t, and none of whom were perfect. But I trust a group of mostly MLs to be more critical of influencers like them, then I would a bunch of hype guys. As far as I know only Yugo does Twitter? I do not follow any of that shit. IDC what any of these guys says on social media, but I see a distinct lack of it posted on the regular.
As for local orgs. JT did stuff with CPUSA for some time. Idk if he still does. If he’s like me he realized there wants much of a way to change it from the inside, and eventually accepted it as a loss. I think he dropped everything to focus entirely on the pod and YouTube channels because he could reach more people? But also, I don’t worship, nor follow their every move. As for the others, I’m pretty sure Yugo hides his face because he doesn’t want to get murdered locally, and Hakim is a full time doctor in addition to the pod.
I probably missed some point and definitely rambles so, sorry about that.
Also, none of this is meant to glaze these guys. Just give my thoughts and what I know. It’s merely my view that I feel that it is a regular occurrence to be unjustly, and overly critical of some on here that are not deserving, that we should think before “dog piling,” and that we should listen to comrades that…call out bullshit.
Starting this by saying this is not an aggressive rebuttal but a response to points I think you validly were concerned with. Also I start to ramble I think. I am recovering from a stomach flu, so since I made the original comment I have spent all day laying in the bathroom recovering a what I can only describe as a blitzkrieg on my gut the likes of which I have never experienced before.
I hope you feel better soon. That’s far more important than replying to what I said.
I will try to address what you’ve said, but please don’t feel like you need to go back and forth, especially while sick.
Firstly, Having a lot of content being a reason for some to not do any research on the person, and/or make knee jerk reactions and dogpile a comrade, imo, is not great reasoning.
In general, I get this to a point. Yes, we can’t research everything individually ourselves. We have to take others at their word to a degree. And I’m certain it’s a point I’ve been the one making before in other contexts. However, I do think there is something unique about the context of the podcast/stream kind of format that lends itself to gossip style discourse about them. I don’t know how else to describe it in this moment. When I see people talking about streamers and podcasters, whether it is defending them or criticizing, it often sounds a lot like gossip and gossip is notoriously untrustworthy and messy to manage.
In your case, I read it like you are going through this specific podcast in detail and I appreciate that. I am not saying your approach to it here is like gossip, but rather what the common take appears to be.
I will try to elaborate on what I mean because I know that’s kind of vague: gossip is like, he said, she said, did you hear what they did? did you hear what they didn’t do? Rumors get started through this kind of thing and it can spin out of control if left unchecked.
How can we approach this differently, in general? The most important point I can think of is to not over-generalize in one direction or another. What exactly are they doing? What did they do recently that is worthy of praise? What have they done that is worthy of criticism? I am not saying people need to have essay length back and forths every time they bring up a streamer or podcaster. The opposite if anything. A single sentence saying a thing like your, “JT [one of the hosts of The Deprogram?] did stuff with CPUSA for some time” is already more informative than “The Deprogram is trustworthy” or “The Deprogram is bad”.
You bring up Hasan at one point. I would say that my views are of Hasan not being that great. This is through contact of what the general populace here feels, and also his content gets posted enough to back up him being inflammatory and kind of a shit. It is also true he has good takes as well. Being critical when proof is present is valid and good. Being critical based on a vague accusation on a group one has little knowledge of, not so much.
I think in a way this proves my point though about the difficulty of discerning. You can correct me if this is a factually incorrect read: From the way your describe it, your view of The Deprogram is based on watching them with a certain amount of thoroughness and getting a profile sense of what they are like. But your view of Hasan appears to be the opposite, one of having a vague impression based on how others talk about him and brief clips that people share of “bad takes”.
I find this to hold true with some consistency here from anecdotal observation, that those who watch a podcaster/streamer with regularity are more apt to defend them and those who only see them as a few clips and a brief impression are more apt to be critical. Supposing I am correct in that observation and it’s not just me falling prey to confirmation bias or something, what are we supposed to do about it?
Looping back to what I said before about straightforward information, it may be that we need to prioritize informing each other in simple ways, and from the other direction, trying to keep criticism to specific incidents unless we can make a thorough case against someone/entity. Maybe “so and so seems trustworthy” or “so and so seems like an ultra” is enough for a group of friends, but I’m not sure it’s enough for media entities and the like.
Not all of us are great at recalling specific details over general impressions, which may be part of the problem. But I think we still have to try.
I know that doesn’t address every point you made, but it seemed like the most important to go over and my response is already long.
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I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
