As a US-based commie, I think we have such a long row to hoe in terms of developing class consciousness here. Decades of propaganda plus comfortable living conditions based on exploitation of people and the environment make even suggesting a socialist alternative to people makes them look at you like you have a horn growing out of your head. Hasan does good work in normalizing these ideas among young people, thus making positive contributions to developing class consciousness. Someone who isn’t as “pipeline-friendly” but more ideologically pure probably wouldn’t have a fraction of the viewers Hasan has.

Also, while I think the “crisis of masculinity” in young men is overblown, the reality is that the right wing has an entire ecosystem of people like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson who can sell young men on a false idea of a very unhealthy masculinity, and it’s been incredibly effective at pushing them to reactionary politics. Hasan is a great antidote to that as I think he (and others - I think Mamdani embodies this as well) provides a more positive version of masculinity that in itself I see pushing men leftward.

I moved out at 22 (went away for college at 18) and I do sort of regret it. I get on great with my parents despite some of their religious and political ideas. I could lived with them for years and been pretty happy. But I moved out because that was just what you did (this was the mid 00s).

To many of us, socialism is simply the opposite of capitalism rather than its negation, therefore socialism must be the absence of the most hated features of capitalism in our experiences and opinions.

I have been thinking about this since I read it a couple hours ago. Brilliant insight, thank you for sharing.

I really enjoyed reading Socialism Betrayed. But I did take note of the page or two when they talked about contemporary China. They did kinda say “this sure seems like what the USSR did wrong under Khrushchev only on a much larger scale”. But that book was written in 2004, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for western Marxists to come to that conclusion, albeit incorrectly, at that time. Not to mention the authors did approach it with some humility, not outright saying China was doomed but still pointing out it sure seemed the same as revisionism the USSR in 2004.

This is a very reasonable take.

The US government did not remove Nelson Mandela from their terrorist list until 2008.

I hate how everyone buys into the myth of “the government budget should operate how a household budget operates”. It’s not the fact that it’s wrong that bothers me the most, what really bothers me is how it’s nearly impossible to explain why that analogy is bad. I read a whole book about MMT in part so I could explain why that analogy is wrong, and I still basically can’t do it well. When I try people just think I’m full of shit because the analogy is so easy to understand and the real explanation is not intuitive if you don’t have a solid grasp of economics (which is maybe 5% of the population at best, and most of those people, even liberals understand why the government isn’t like a company or a household).

(FWIW I’ve fallen back on the Keynesian “deficit in a recession and surplus in a boom” even though I don’t actually believe it. That seems to be something people can grasp better)