He’s also controlled opposition. His criticisms of the democrats are not as sharp as other popular radlib left figures, so being an outsider and an insider at the same time is equally useful for Hasan and for the democrats, who give him access and then at times shoo him away at times to maintain his cred. He also plays the game of being both friendly and hostile to the democrats from time to time.

I can see that watching the repeated failure of pushing Dems left can be a radicalising experience. Not sure how long term of a strategy it can be though

I’m not suggesting “constantly appealing to the majority opinion”. Your other questions are valid. The answer to both is “whatever will effectively communicate a leftward viewpoint”.

Hasan connects his audience to content that is more left than him through collaborations and open shout outs. Next step is for others to produce content like this that is now directly critical of him. Nothing Hasan does pushes his audience rightward, they have the opportunity to like AOC and Bernie and either stay there or move on.

I also would never take someone seriously about hating Bernie from the left, if they never liked Bernie at some point pre-2020. “Being normal” is more effective propaganda than “being right”. The trump era shows clearly that nobody gives a shit about the facts. If you want to build a left, it means having some sort of mass appeal. This can be done without sacrificing core principles.

Double commenting cause I wanted to tie this to real life: since November I can pretty confidently yeah Democrats for their failures to stop Trump when talking to my local liberals. I can also safely recommend they watch Hasan who does the pipelining that I already explained. I can also confidently say to them “yeah I don’t agree with everything he says, but he makes good points and stuff”. Of course, I’m coming at it from the other side, but it will produce good discussion opportunities. This is effective propaganda.

I can’t say that I’ve seen him adopt any reactionary positions as yet. In 2020, while in lockdown, I started watching Hasan, and since then, I’ve actually grown beyond some of Hasan’s public “takes”. Now when I watch his content, I do find myself being critical of what he might have to say, or who he is engaging with. I, too, am not interested in hearing what Sanders and AOC have to say at this point. I view them as a lightning rod for revolutionary energy, to redirect it into the ground. That being said, they are also attracting people, potentially younger people than me, to the same train of thought that led me to my current positions. Movement building doesn’t happen overnight. I took decades for people like Ho Chi Men, Mao, and the Bolsheviks to build their parties and undertake their revolutions. When revolution came, they had built dual power in their countries, they had gathered support from within their militaries, and were in prime positions to sustain their revolutions. The Bolsheviks formed by splintering off from the Mensheviks, the Russian Social Democratic Party of the time. Obviously, the Russian context in the early 1900s is very different from the American Context now. However, though, in America, we do not even have a party of “Social Democrats” to fight against Republicans and Democrats alike. We can call the Democratic Party the “moderate wing of fascism” all we want, but let us be honest here, there is no “moderate wing of fascism” in America, there is just Fascism.

So with all that being said, as long as the critiques of Hasan are coming from the left, that just presents as opportunities for viewers to consider those positions, and potentially move further left. I can’t say one way or the other, as an outsider, what Hasan’s intentions are with brushing up even closer with the Democratic Party. It could be argued that due to their current internal crisis over the response to Donald Trump, that now is the right time to agitate in such a way that moves people to Independent or even 3rd party choices. Could Hasan be attempting to insert himself into this crisis as a means of pushing that line? Is he simply trying to become a functional asset to that movement? His actions make me speculate that could be the case. However, I have no way of really knowing. What I do know, though, is that Burnie has found himself in this position, yet again. He is building popular support for a popular message, using working-class framing. He clearly believes this is the path forward. Likewise, he is on record saying people should consider running as Independents instead of Democrats, so even he isn’t fully committing people to the Democrats here. Still. From 1990 to 2024, Sanders has raked in a cool $80,000+ from Pro-Israel interest groups, $800+ in 2024 alone. AOC over her lifetime in office sits at $387. It’s difficult to ignore.

Could a rise in “Social Democracy” eventually lead to a rise in support for “Socialist” movements? I have no idea. I do know that America is ideologically far behind in that regard. Because we’re faced with these realities every day, I feel like we lose sight of the long game. We want things to change now, or next week, when we (as in American Socialists) do not even have the same level of support we’ve historically had in the past. At it’s peak, that level of support was 5% of the population. I don’t know what building that movement would look like. I often look into Socialist parties in the country and find that every Socialist has some critique, complaint, or issue with every other Socialist party. Some are material, like being a cult, some seem to come down to a meme, like being a Trot with a Newspaper.

The binary of the Burnie Bro and its consequences are in full display. The collapse of Burnie’s campaign in 2016 pushed people into both left wing, and right-wing populist circles, leading us here and now. We couldn’t capture all those Burnie Bros on the left then, but it should be worth trying to capture them this time around. Maybe this is the calculous Hasan is making, who can say.