Hasan is a slightly-left-of-AOC streamer doing the "we can push them left" thing, where the "them" is imperialist social democrats/left liberals. The place at which his followers arrive is, "I will only reluctantly vote for Kamala Harris" and, "I wish I could vote for AOC 2028". He occasionally arrives aa socialist positions and language like a toddler finding a new toy. He learns the toy, plays with it for a while, talks about it on stream, and then discards it. He wants to be on the edge of mainstream. Can't let the toy get in the way of that.

This is only good and useful in the same fashion that Bernie could be thought of as useful: some will be inspired by the toy, the appeal of possibility and pointing to (mostly) correct culprits of oppression, and then their disappointment at nothing changing may help radicalize. But many, probably the vast majority, will be led back to the Democratic party and liberalism, as Hasan neither offers them an onramp himself nor points anyone to next steps. He just returns to stream about electoral politics, Trump, the next elections, etc. And his audience follows him there.

Hasan should be considered situationally useful. We should be there to pick up the disaffected, as he is not pointing them to us. And doing it through our organizations. If we are not, then he is not part of any pipeline to developing more socialists, but just creating more Bernie-adjascent electoralists that sit at home and will be susceptible to most propaganda.

[–] grym@hexbear.net 1 points 12 minutes ago

I don't know how you arrive at this assessment on him but alright, that's fine by me. I don't agree at all with this analysis, it seems kinda fashioned out of nothing. It doesn't align with the few positions i've seen him take, at least recently. I never really watched before a couple months ago and most of that has been about the palestinian genocide, his anti-zionism and coverage of israeli crimes, so idk.

[–] Tabitha@hexbear.net 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I think Hasan deserves more credit than that, I dont know anything about his content from 6+ months ago but these days he has the unique ability to mention that sometimes China good without a 4 hour but-at-what-cost qualifier, infact he openly mocks the trope that most liberals can't mention China at all without also stating the official NATO party line (Uyghur genocide, mao bad, tiny man square, etc.).

[–] CarlMarks@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 hour ago

He can have some positive influences while still being the same thing I described. For example, Bernie focusing on vulgar class analysis and making socialism a more acceptable word (despite bastardizing it) were both useful things and yet Bernie is a pro-genocide chauvinist that sheepdogs for Dems. If Hasan's pattern holds, his takes on China will be, "China somewhat bad but USA worse and targeting it with nonsense" while trying to humanize actual Chinese people. His pattern is based on a vaguely left-liberal-with-socialist-language anti-racist internationalism of having empathy for people that the imperialist state seeks consent to do violence to. It's a good and useful thing to have voices opposed to that. But under his pattern, what will be the call to action, implicit or explicit? It will be to try to "push left" some Democrat imperialists and keep the focus on dead end electoral reformism. The only positive outlet for that is the same as for Bernie: disillusionment that we can build on for recruiting.

It is possible that he might give up on the electoralist angle eventually, which would also be useful if his audience is large. But I don't see that as his current trajectory.