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Hasan Piker interviews Cuban journalist (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 days ago by pete_link@lemmy.ml to c/worldnews@lemmygrad.ml
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43545612

cross-posted from: https://expressional.social/users/Peter_Link/statuses/116111218052321484

Saw this on Facebook
https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2703083266
#BellyOfTheBeast's Liv Oliva Fernández #Interview with #HasanPiker

#Cuba #NuestraAméricaFlotilla
#OilForCuba!
#EndTheBlockadeEmbargo
#CubaSolidarity
#LetCubaLive
#EndSanctionsAgainstCuba #OffTheList
#VivaCuba #CubaSí #AbajoElBloqueo #SolidaridadConCuba
#PetróleoParaCuba
#LatinAmerica #Caribbean
#news #politics #USpol #BellyOfTheBeast
@cuba

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[-] leopardseal@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 days ago

Hasan Piker should be a Marxist-Leninist.

[-] Red_Scare@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 4 days ago

I've been watching belly of the beast for quite a while now, no idea who the interviewer is but he's suddenly all over lemmygrad lol

[-] SNAFU@lemmygrad.ml 21 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

He is an Opportunist who streams daily on Twitch, who unironically shills heavily for the Democratic Party and Social-Democrats. If you take a moment to actually watch him, and when he actually does goes over theory or reasoning, it is very easy to tell he has no idea what he is talking about. To me, he exudes massive amounts of Bernsteinism (in regards to his defeatist apathy for the Statesian proletariat, unironically leads himself to thinking that voting for the Democratic Party is the most positive/"harm reductive" action- literally incrementally trying to apply socialism).

*sorry for rant.

[-] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 3 days ago

He is an Opportunist

Maybe you're using the word differently than I understand it, but in my understanding of it, he does not appear like an opportunist. He appears to me like someone whose heart is in the right place, who started moving left around the same time some of the rest of those in the US were doing so, but is in a way a victim of his own success.

The nature of his position will implicitly motivate him to do a certain amount of watering down, holding back, and courting mass appeal over taking unpopular principled stances, in order to stay popular, grow in viewership, and avoid being deplatformed; in other words, the nature of his position works to stunt his own political growth. Suppose, for example, that some principled MLs really got through to him in a big way and he started talking like one, framing everything through an ML lens, defending AES states boldly and blatantly as successful socialist projects, and so on. Would Twitch even allow that, given his audience size and scope of influence? Would his audience allow that or would it start shrinking and turning on him? Would any value from him being positioned where he is to drag people away from the far right become weakened as a result of him being "left" to an unacceptable degree?

The important question to me is, is he actively harming people's ability to move past his positions to principled ML ones? Or is he helping pipeline them, whether intentionally or not? If he's doing more corralling than pipelining, that's a problem for the USian left and others that he reaches. But if he's helping pipeline, while staying wishy washy liberal enough to avoid getting deplatformed, that can have value.

He's not the ideal, but I think it's important to be clear on whether he's overall "not good enough" or "actively harmful", which is a difference.

[-] SNAFU@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 days ago

I am not saying he is a malicious actor; it could be that, or just a genuine failure on his part to understand. An Opportunist can also mean those who sacrifice long-term gains or principles to gain short-term gains, an example would be Bernstein. In a sense, impatient. It should not even be an argument at this point. Hasan has said it multiple times that he believes that the Proletariat (in the United States) is incapable of real revolutionary political struggle; he instead pushes for the incremental approach to 'transforming' (somehow) the Democratic Party internally to serve as a vehicle for socialist implementation. Somehow, instead of educating, exposing to the proletariat what Socialism really is; he wants to conflate it with simply "Plowing the roads", "running the trains"; as if people themselves cannot understand their class interest inherently lol. I apologize if I seem mad, it's just crazy to think there is still an argument when he himself will admit revisionist tendencies- and openly too.

[-] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 days ago

Opportunist can also mean those who sacrifice long-term gains or principles to gain short-term gains, an example would be Bernstein.

Well that makes more sense to me. Again, wasn't sure what definition you were using.

I apologize if I seem mad, it’s just crazy to think there is still an argument when he himself will admit revisionist tendencies- and openly too.

The problem is, and this is something I thought about mentioning in response to Red_Scare saying "I shouldn’t have said anything, I know nothing about internet personalities" as a way of being understanding about it: people like Hasan stream for hours on a regular basis. It's genuinely hard to keep up with what exactly they are doing and profile them accurately unless they say or do super obvious problematic stuff that's easy to point to and is impossible to argue as meaning anything else in context.

Like part of why I've been careful in how I chime in here is because even though I've watched some recordings of him at various times, it's a drop in the bucket next to the entire picture of it. So maybe I'm being way too forgiving on account of not having seen enough, or not watching the right moments to pick up on what you're picking up on. I may have seen other facets of him and got a picture that would cause me to have a higher opinion of him.

For example, I know from things I have seen that he does have people who will take what he says out of context and there are times he's gone to great lengths to address misrepresentations (like literally hours of going over stuff, which is kind of absurd to me). This does not mean you're wrong about him, but it's one of the reasons I am perhaps more wary of painting him in a way that I would consider means we should be outright recommending people avoid him.

The content form of it also makes it hard to break down what these kind of people are saying in detail and do responses to it from a more ML perspective. We can link a NYT article here and do a response in the process that goes over its reactionary, colonizer nonsense. It's hard to do that with somebody who's going on for hours.

I honestly don't know what to do about this from a logistical perspective other than telling people "be wary of streamers".

[-] big_spoon@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 3 days ago

your post certainly is true, but that doesn't refute totally the idea of opportunism...because he wants the big money of being a dancing monkey for a streaming platform having a relatively controversial act to stand out from the masses of booba streamers, vtubers and magat worms, but feeling like some kind of erudite on marxism at the same time

[-] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 3 days ago

Well this is why I wondered about the use of the word, if it is being used in some way I don't follow on the meaning of. Because unless you have things you can point to that he's done or said that would suggest he's insincere, I'm not sure opportunist is the right word for it. People can be true believers and still do harm, so it's not like he can't also qualify for criticism even if he's not an opportunist.

I can say that the way I tend to interpret the word: an opportunist is someone who seizes on a moment for personal gain, even if (or especially if) it's at the cost of harm done to others; the aim is to play whatever part needs to be played in order to "get theirs" without really believing in it or taking it seriously.

I don't think this is the same inherently as acting on your material interests, even though the two can overlap.

At any rate, I'm more interested in whether he's overall doing harm or good to the cause than whether he's fully sincere about it.

[-] big_spoon@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 3 days ago

maybe you're right...the word is not totally appropiate to define his actions, but we can't ignore the material conditions: he's a streamer who gets big money from a streaming platform in capitalism, owned by people that surely don't appreciate marxism or too militant leftism

[-] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 3 days ago

Oh I agree completely on that. It's important to take that kind of stuff into account and be wary of those who are, by their position in life, incentivized to act in various ways against the interests of the international working class, the marginalized, etc.

To use myself as an example: Even though I'm no petty bourgeoisie streamer, I would expect an ML analysis to have some wariness pointed at me because I live in the imperial core and so my conditions are going to incentivize me to be more protective of the status quo than someone who lives in an imperialized country. That doesn't mean I'm de facto a less trustworthy person, or that I must necessarily have a worse understanding of the world than people in an imperialized country, but it does mean that broadly speaking, it makes sense for international efforts and analysis to take that dynamic into account when considering how to organize, where to put the most attention, and so on.

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 3 days ago

I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Unfortunately everything you said is true.

[-] Богданова@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Okay, but what can we actually do to influence him to do better? Otherwise we're just wasting time on screaming into the void.

If there's a well thought out critique of Hasan to be made, let's at least make video essay or something and get him to watch it.

[-] SNAFU@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 days ago

Just spend your time going over theory, organizing, anything better than this. You [we] can't transform this dude, anymore than we can transform- I don't know- AOC. He flat-out contradicts Leninism a lot of the time, and when pushed on it; will spew some rhetoric or get angry (at the chatter). He's a streamer, just let him stream but give up on the idealism that he will shift towards Marxism-Leninism. I swear he has gotten worse, especially with all the Platner bullshit (again, another ardent democrat).

[-] cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

I share criticism of Hasan, but a lot of what you’re saying is not really true. He’s definitely not a shill for the Democratic Party despite being friendly to DSA candidates. He even openly criticizes them whenever they lend support to the Democratic Party rather than focus on building independent socialist organizations. He also constantly accused Kamala and other democrats of supporting genocide and never told anyone to vote for her. He even has good things to say about orgs like PSL and supports China as a socialist project. Of course, I agree that he doesn’t see any revolutionary potential in the US in the near term. However, that’s an accurate analysis of the conditions in the US. It also doesn’t preclude any sort of long term revolutionary horizon nor does it imply that he’s a reformist.

His main problem is that he is a media figure covering American politics. Being in media tends to make people idealists and Hasan isn’t an exception. American political coverage also tends to focus on topics that liberals care about. Since he primarily reactions to liberal media all day, his coverage is geared towards liberals. He also isn’t really involved in organizing in any way himself. That makes him less effective as a propagandist that should be steering people towards socialist orgs.

[-] chinawatcherwatcher@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 3 days ago

i think there's some truth to what you said, but i think his primary issue is that he's simply not educated enough. being scientific socialists takes a scientific rigor that he simply does not possess, and since he's constantly reacting to liberal content like you mentioned, i don't think it's possible for him to ever become developed enough on his current trajectory. it's a shame, since his audience is so large and he could be an important educational force, but watching liberal reactions from a very left liberal for hours a day is anything but educational

[-] cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

I think I agree with that. Although it’s not so much that I think he’s not well read. He’ll quote Marx and Lenin from memory. He just has no experience putting any of what he’s learned into practice which is a necessary part of educating oneself. I think it leaves his audience pretty unprepared for the shit show they’ll encounter if they join any of the orgs he promotes.

[-] chinawatcherwatcher@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 days ago

it's true that because he hasn't put things into practice his viewpoint is limited, but i think it's fundamentally more than that, too. he's clearly gifted with a prodigious memory, and he reads things, but i don't think that's the same thing as rigorously studying something such that you have a thorough understanding of what it is and therefore how to change it. if he did, i don't think he would be employing the strategy and tactics that he is now, quite frankly. and, whenever i've seen him explain things like capitalism he seems to flounder, despite how well-read he is. of course i very much doubt his philosophical development is anywhere close to sufficient either. another red flag for me is that he refuses to politically label himself, as if labels have no meaning or value.

the very first step for i think everyone of our political leanings is to seriously, meaningfully educate and develop themselves, and others, in groups and individually. i get the sense that his development is hollow, and this and his material interest are the main reasons why he would choose such a fundamentally flawed educational strategy i.e. streaming. worse yet, it gives the impression to both himself and his viewers that his work is more education than it is entertainment. i think that's the primary reason why it leaves his audience unprepared, is because not only is it interpreted as educational when it's primarily not, but it gives the false impression of knowledge and understanding to the viewer.

[-] MasterBlaster@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

He also constantly accused Kamala and other democrats of supporting genocide and never told anyone to vote for her.

Hasan is both a DSA shill, and also part of the reason the Democrats lost the election, owing to his criticisms of Kamala.

I'm too old for streamers, I really don't have a horse in this race, but it's not lost on me that Hasan has actual, monied interests propagandizing against him. That's the only way you get silly narratives that appeal to 'both sides' like this.

[-] cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

He is a DSA shill but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The org generally doesn’t try to herd members back into the Democratic Party. It even has an ML cochair and ML and Maoist caucus. The problem is they don’t have any way to discipline their members who run for elected office. That’s how you get opportunists like AOC and Mamdani joining just to try and siphon off some free volunteer labor for their campaigns. Hasan only superficially engages with DSA which is why he trusts these candidates but then gets surprised when they act like democrats.

this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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