I don't listen to podcasts, but I do keep a lookout for those who stick their fingers in the eyes of the political establishment. That's why this article denouncing Chapo Trap House brought them to my attention.



On a recent episode of the popular podcast Chapo Trap House, co-host Will Menaker used a memorable metaphor in addressing calls for unity on the left. “Republicans in control of politics, that’s the problem,” he began. “However, to the pragmatists out there and the people who don’t like purity in politics, yes, let’s come together. But get this through your fucking head: You must bend the knee to us. Not the other way around. You have been proven as failures, and your entire worldview has been discredited. You bend the knee to us and then let’s fucking work together to defeat these things, not with fucking means testing or market-based solutions but with a powerful social democratic message.”

Chapo’s many foes seized on the phrase “bend the knee.” Because the show has often been accused of sexism, the phrase “bend the knee” was interpreted by some listeners as a sexual remark aimed at humiliating Hillary Clinton supporters.

Except "bend the knee" obviously has nothing to do with sexism, and this article even admits it. To put it another way:



-We all agree this is not what Chapo meant, at all.

— However, doesn’t this sound like a bad thing somebody could have said? Couldn’t you imagine that happening?

— So, in conclusion, we have proven Chapo did something terrible.

The New Yorker did the same smear, but in a more subtle way.



Their argument is inextricable from the way in which they make it. But when an ethos of vulgarity is enthusiastically practiced by a group of white men, this will sometimes translate as chauvinism. Particular strains of “Chapo” invective can be hard to take—people are “pussies,” or they’re “retarded.” Botanical gardens are “gay,” Hillary Clinton is “a freak.” The caricature of the “Bernie bro”—an aggressively disaffected white guy who hates Clinton ostensibly because of her neoliberal incrementalism but deep down because of her gender—occasionally seems to apply. The very name of the podcast—as well as its theme song, a vaporwave remix of Gucci Mane—suggests a dismissive attitude toward identity politics. They are, after all, three white guys.

This smear tactic just happens to be exactly the kind of bullsh*t identity politics that has made Chapo Trap House popular to begin with.

And when I say popular, I mean very, very popular.



A given Chapo episode sees the hosts yukking it up at the expense of hacky mainstream media op-eds (New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is a favourite target of the gang’s derision), or critiquing the limp, liberal identity politics of the recent, and much-lauded, Wonder Woman movie. With its bricolage of trenchant political commentary, obscene inside jokes, absurdist comedy, socialist boosterism, and giddy vulgarity, Chapo became a kind of citizen’s band radio frequency for leftists isolated by the pervading online culture that practices sanctimony over solidarity. It currently receives more than US $66,000 a month in listener donations, nearly triple that of other top-earning podcasts fan-funded through Patreon. “I think people are just relieved to know they can be socialists without being humourless, sanctimonious or pious,” says Frost. “We let people have fun in an atmosphere where it’s hard to laugh.

Where more orthodox forms of leftism are marked by defeatism and self-seriousness, Chapo is shot through with irony and self-deprecation. It emboldens the left not only to criticize itself, but to laugh at itself. See, for example, the very embrace of the term “Dirtbag Left.” “[It] speaks to a lot of people who have been dismissed or chided by liberals for embracing vulgarity, eschewing sanctimony or piety, and refusing to be civil to the right wing,” says Frost. “The libs have no principles beyond good manners, so I think ‘Dirtbag Left’ says something positive about what we do believe, and what we’re willing to ruthlessly fight for, regardless of established etiquette.”

Their slogan could be, “When they go low, we go into the gutter.”

-- New Republic

Chapo Trap House has been accused of being the Leftwing Breitbart, despite the fact that they don't invent news.

And then there is this lesser-evilism.



How do you feel about the hatred neoliberals get from the left? Do you think it's justified?

I think it's foolhardy and counterproductive. Trump-ism is a five-alarm fire that everyone on the left (defined broadly) should be uniting to oppose. Chapo Trap House–ism is convincing lefties that their true enemies are the people who agree with them 75 percent instead of the people who disagree with them 100 percent. If fighting Trump can't unite the left, nothing will.

I can think of something better to unite the left: socialism, or fighting for anything rather than against a person.

“If you sleep on a mattress on the floor and fuck in a sleeping bag, then you just might be the dirtbag left! If you’re the only dude at a function not wearing a pocket square in a linen blazer and adulting like a boss, then you’re in the dirtbag left!”

-- Will Menaker

These guys are exactly the sort of people who would get banned on the GOS.

Not that they would have ever gone there to begin with.

However, their real crime isn't being anti-PC. Their crime is not being liberal.



At first blush, the most obvious model for this iteration of the millennial left is the New Left of the 1960s — young activists who attacked the hypocrisy of liberals with similar tactics. And indeed, Chapo could easily be mistaken for the Internet Age version of the Yippies — the Youth International Party, led by 1960s left-wingers Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, famous for theatrical political high-jinks. In 1968, the Yippies playfully advanced a pig for president, “Pigasus the Immortal,” and advocated group joint-rolling and nude “grope-ins” for peace.

But actually, the Chapo left advocates for Old Left socialism.

The hosts are aligned with the Brooklyn arm of the Democratic Socialists of America, who by coincidence has tripled their membership in the past year.

What we are looking at is a leftwing “counter-reaction” against a liberalism that has effectively surrendered to neoliberalism.



“It’s the feeling that the new liberal agenda resulted in a whole generation of young Americans being shafted, locked into a gig economy, loaded down with student debt and no access to healthcare,” he said.

“So there’s been a building a reaction against Democrat politicians of the 90s who tried to make a compromise with corporate capitalism and then defined liberalism around cultural issues of diversity, immigration, women’s rights and so on, while riding along with the shafting of the working class.”

In an interview first drafted for the Harvard Crimson ahead of an appearance at the university in April, Chapo host Christman criticized Ivy League universities for being “perpetuator[s] of privilege, obviously, but also … perpetuator[s] of the fantasy of meritocracy, which is what justifies the privilege”.