I had never watched a moment of his streams until well after Oct 7th. If anything I was inclined to have a negative view of him based on what I had read but had heard he had good takes on Palestine so I was curious. And I have to say, I have been pleasantly surprised by him and am inclined to have a favorable view of him.
First off, he has only good takes on Palestine and right now is maybe the biggest pro-Palestine voice in the US right now. That alone should put him on the nice list, full stop.
I guess the main criticism I see laid on him is that he’s at best a democratic socialist and not a hardened M-L, based on his critical support for socdems like AOC and Bernie. After watching him for a while I think I understand this criticism but I also think it misunderstands him a bit. The dude is a political commentator and talks politics for like 30 hours a week. That’s like twice as much as the old talk radio political commentators like Rush Limbaugh used to do. If your entire analysis is “politics don’t matter in a bourgeois state”, then that’s gonna get boring fast. I think a lot of time he takes off his commie hat and is doing more straight political analysis, which gets misconstrued as support.
But I also think that, right or wrong, he sees politics and socdem politicians as a way to improve our lives somewhat. And I gotta be honest, I’m an M-L but at this time and place I don’t know, I have a hard time criticizing this. Like, it’s one thing to understand the democrats are shit and won’t do anything for us (even the socdem ones). It’s another thing to see this shithole country just get worse and worse every day and not want to latch onto hope that the working class could get just a bit of relief through political means, even if the current political structure does not offer this.
He’s not as good as I’d like on Ukraine/Russia as I’d like, but he’s also not as bad as the libs. He does think Ukraine should actually try and work something out instead of doing what they are doing (marching towards suicide). But tbh I’m not really cool with making Ukraine a commie litmus test like I would with Palestine.
I had never watched a moment of his streams until well after Oct 7th. If anything I was inclined to have a negative view of him based on what I had read but had heard he had good takes on Palestine so I was curious. And I have to say, I have been pleasantly surprised by him and am inclined to have a favorable view of him.
First off, he has only good takes on Palestine and right now is maybe the biggest pro-Palestine voice in the US right now. That alone should put him on the nice list, full stop.
I guess the main criticism I see laid on him is that he’s at best a democratic socialist and not a hardened M-L, based on his critical support for socdems like AOC and Bernie. After watching him for a while I think I understand this criticism but I also think it misunderstands him a bit. The dude is a political commentator and talks politics for like 30 hours a week. That’s like twice as much as the old talk radio political commentators like Rush Limbaugh used to do. If your entire analysis is “politics don’t matter in a bourgeois state”, then that’s gonna get boring fast. I think a lot of time he takes off his commie hat and is doing more straight political analysis, which gets misconstrued as support.
But I also think that, right or wrong, he sees politics and socdem politicians as a way to improve our lives somewhat. And I gotta be honest, I’m an M-L but at this time and place I don’t know, I have a hard time criticizing this. Like, it’s one thing to understand the democrats are shit and won’t do anything for us (even the socdem ones). It’s another thing to see this shithole country just get worse and worse every day and not want to latch onto hope that the working class could get just a bit of relief through political means, even if the current political structure does not offer this.
He’s not as good as I’d like on Ukraine/Russia as I’d like, but he’s also not as bad as the libs. He does think Ukraine should actually try and work something out instead of doing what they are doing (marching towards suicide). But tbh I’m not really cool with making Ukraine a commie litmus test like I would with Palestine.