Episode 85 - The Appropriators feat. Shuja Haider (2/22/17)

sirs please link to the rap

N

White kids being woke and complaining against cultural appropriation and insufficient POC reinds me of atheists demanding secularisation by claiming to protect religious minorities from being offended by Christianity, whereas people of other faiths are fine with the presence of Christianity, and its just atheist religious intolerance of Christianity that wants it banished from public spaces and popular culture.

Patrick Holt

Very good episode. "cultural appropriation" is complete nonsense

Ubarlin Gizbar

I’m re-listening to it — you’re way off, they delineate quite clearly the line between exploitation (cultural commodification) and cross-pollination in art and culture. It’s one of the best episodes and shows to me they’re aren’t afraid to ruffle feathers, which is something I was concerned about — I police my own speech and modify my views in public forums, the online mob is scary! I think they left this one to members specifically because if it were public it’d be easy to take out of context and Clintonians could bash them with it.

Joel Taylor

I think Chapo should UN-LOCK this one — the negative comments are a testament to how blurry and generally misunderstood “cultural appropriation” is — the blending of hip-hop and punk scenes in NYC in the late 70s/ early 80s that Keith Haring emerged from was “cultural appropriation” unchained, a social stigma against that kind of cross-pollination stifles the normal development of art and culture.

Joel Taylor

Wow what a trash ass episode. More about rebelling against the popular train of thought than focusing on the commercial commodificiation aspect of it (which was only mentioned ONCE).

Daniel K

'Virtue signalling' can also be levelled at liberals from the left, in the 'MORE FEMALE OLIGARCHS' sense

Christopher Snape

I re-listen to this often, cause I don't hear this perspective often enough

Brandon R

He doesn't say that the De La Soul example is the same as the Elvis Presley example - he suggests that De La Soul's sample of Hall and Oates is a case of subcultural 'appropriation' whereby one "samples" other cultures to define a new subculture

Will Hall

You should make this one free. Having a hard time explaining it to family members

Jack Wright

It's interesting that addressing the material conditions for the most exploited, numerous, and fastest growing segments of the working class both in North America and globally - i.e., the very broad category of Not White Men - is dismissed as 'pseudo-religious pieties' while your disproportionate and frankly misplaced concern over a narrow and shrinking demographic - working white dudes who voted Trump - is somehow a better angle. Just looking at it from a practical standpoint, which group encompasses more people and is therefore a more viable foundation for a leftist movement? Even Chapo have admitted that the 'white working class' Trump supporters are an over-exaggerated and useless demographic to pursue compared to at least half the US, who felt either too disillusioned/jaded with the system to vote or went with Clinton out of fear. My point is that a fuck ton of those people really do care about these issues because they are directly affected by them in a material way, and that socialists have to meaningfully address those concerns if we want to grow the movement and actually help people. But by all means, focus on the white male Trump supporters, in what is ironically a transparent and counterproductive appeal to identity politics...

Lena

Make it a jailable offense then - All whites who shotgun tecate are subject to 90 days. That's the endgame here - that's what these scolds really want.

Jason

these people can't let up on it for fucking one second

Jason

"People have to be sold on political movements, you can't just act like someone is obligated to accept them if they don't feel represented or listened to. " *Right back atcha* Please keep in mind that for many, many, many perfectly well-represented white male workers, this type of interminable recitation of pseudo-religious pieties is precisely the reason those same white workers turned to Trump...

Jason

Chances with Wolves

you can disagree with the kind of broad caricature being presented in this episode and still generally agree with the Chapo crew.

Asa

I'm surprised people who are offended by cultural appropriation would be paying money to listen to Chapo Trap House in the first place. These guys are pretty open about being brocialist shitlords.

Tim

We are planning to have him on the show when he's in the area. -brendan

Chapo Trap House

The one thing that did actually bother me was that you mentioned R.L. but didn't have him on in the show or give any indication of trying to make that happen. Me and like seven othe people from a Facebook thread a few months ago are waiting with bated breath. WTF Will?

William Juhl

It could have used more Matt rants. The only thing I think you failed to hit explicitly is that cultural "appropriation" such a shitty political meme is because it's just a nebulous and ill defined label for whatever bothers people. Cultural commodification is one of those things but I don't think it's the only one. I think the concept of "cultural appropriation" is popular for the same reason a word like "problematic" is, it allows people to say that something is bad with having to understand or articulate why. It might be commodification, racist caricature, expressions of privilege that inspire resentment, or whatever. A recently woke person can just call it appropriation and shift the goal posts however they need to to save face if challenged. Ultimately it's just not a good framework for understanding anything. Lots of things that are labeled appropriation are genuinely fucked up for other reasons and things that would be appropriation but are given a pass as "exchange". I think the pragmatics of how it's used are more important than the ersatz logic behind it. This episode was pretty good but where you slipped up is in trying to "by your logic" liberal nonesense was never terribly sincere in the first place.

William Juhl

You obviously didn't hear wardel

tong

Hwere thr fuck is the next ep im about to riot

Charles Paynezworth

now

Robert Sellers

Second that, I am get DT's, I need my next Chapo fix ASAP.

CJ Canton

Hey folks where the fuck is the next episode

Kevin Beteta

i feel like when you say that, that makes the grievance somewhat relate to the idea of someone's exploiting cultural artificacts for profit, but that isn't my primary concern in terms of what I'm Saying here. My issue is of cultural othering, which is acheived through a variety of means, including and also beyond cultural commodification

Kevin Beteta

And indeed your response is a niceness microcosm of what for arguments sake I'll call "white socialism" which is dismissive, condescending, and overly simplified. I'm aware it's inelegant but it's a fucking comment section on a podcast bro not fucking debate club. Also for the record what you call "anecdotes" i call "empiricism" sorry you have no lived experience and have to rationalize your way through all your beliefs you pretentious chode

Kevin Beteta

Dude you were so close, It's not reducing Mexican people to an oddity. It's reducing them to a commodity. That's exactly the point Matt was getting at. All the true grievances behind appropriation are better explained by commodification. It's the repressed hatred against the bullshit marketing machine which takes meangingful cultural artefacts and strips them of all context and sincerity.

P L

good episode

zachary tuller

This response is a nice microcosm of IdPol (that a thing now) thinking generally - scattered, anecdotal and poorly structured.

Maxwell Hansen

Class consciousness cannot be achieved while it continues to be obfuscated by race and to be quite honest you cannot expect these things to happen on their own. I don't know where you or the rest of the people who disagree with me happen to live, but perhaps I can fill you in on my own experience. I do not have the luxury of living in some enlightened metropolitan bubble like Brooklyn. I live in Mississippi. It is the most racially diverse state in the Union. Despite that fact, the governor of this state is Phil Bryant, the nephew of Roy Bryant, one of the murderers of Emmett Till. This state is still run on and by white supremacy, totally. Cultural appropriation AND commodification are both acts of cultural othering. You cannot love what you consider "other" you only love what you at some level can identify with. That might seem ridiculous to us woke folks, but that's because I think you would agree that we tend to see all people as human beings like ourselves. Racists do not. They view themselves as the top of a pyramid of civilzation and everything else as this sort of primitive curiosity. It's not just frat bros wearing sombreros, it's tourists breaking statues to take a selfie with them. It's Jennifer Lawrence knocking a pohaku loose with her ass ("lol sorry about your magic rocks"). My dad refused to learn spanish from his parents and gave me an Anglo-irish name like Kevin because of how self-conscious he was of his own ethnicity. He literally grew up, despite having immigrant parents, feeling embarrassed by his heritage, idolizing people like OJ Simpson for their ability to transcend race and be with all the white people. That's a very dangerous idea of success! that to be successful is to be accepted not only by white people but as a white person! And that perpetuates this cultural norm that to be white is to be normal and to be otherwise is to be something else. That white people are the default template from which all other cultures must be compared. These are real things that happen, real internal struggles people have to face because of our ideas about race. I'm not saying i have a solution, by any means. But when people like you or our Glorious Chapo leaders assert that it isn't even a problem, i feel compelled to disagree.

Kevin Beteta

Not sure why so many people are saying this was their worst episode. Matt was quite right when he said that a big part of the problem is cultural commodification, (and the culture industry in general), but that most contemporary IdPol never gets to that. People don't like their identities being turned into a bunch of costumes or affectations or two-dimensional caricatures by the same capitalist machine that's constantly putting a boot to their necks -- that much we can all agree on. But we'll never get to that kind of analysis if we're just focused on the intangible concept of privilege and whether or not mediocre Australians are allowed to make gangsta rap.

Leon

lol that guy sucks

Andrew

I looked it up on Twitter. Yep, I'm just going to take this L. Fuck everything

alejandro sosa

[extremely Alex Jones voice] Virtue signaling isn't a Nazi thing. It's a tool of the *rationalists*!

DataShade

Poor whites don't identify with poor minorities, so we should combat that culturally-constructed racial chasm through identity politics that fundamentally essentialize racial identities. Good thinking, Kevin.

Maxwell Hansen

"Culture wars have replaced political debate... focus on particular personalities vomited up by the political system distracts the public from near total transfer of power into the hands of corporations." - Chris (the GOAT) Hedges

Connor

eh? i'm talking about this, aka grandstanding. be easy. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling</a>

alejandro sosa

virtue signaling is a nazi catchphrase my dude.

peepos

alejandro sosa

Okay this consent concept is very weird don't do this to my side of the argument

Kevin Beteta

Actually, any chance you guys can get Adolph Reed Jr. on as a guest? That would be a hell of an episode.

Mystery Island

I read all the critical comments here because I wanted to be smarter but I honestly still don't get it. This stuff seems way too theoretical, abstract, non-material to ever be particularly politically or socially relevant. I'm also stupid with no attention span so that might be it. But I still agree with the episode.

Sigh

I think that the overwhelming issue is that she IS taking someone's spot because that's how the music industry works. There could be an actually talented black person, who's actually tied to the culture, filling that space. Instead it's Iggy Azalea, who managed to come up because her bf at the time was a rapper, too. Iggy then got plastic surgery to get a big ass so that she could look like, on top of sounding like, a black woman. Iggy's whole sound and style is literally stolen from a southern black woman, and she is profiting from this and calling herself a slave master and not giving credit where it's due. That's where we're staying that she's culturally appropriative; if she rapped in her normal Australian voice with her own style and her body, nobody would be calling her out.

Josiah Quiros

Hasn't every day of national pride been turned into a drinking competition?

Ronnie Gardocki

Hm yeah, this was possibly your weakest episode, Chapo-boys.

Colin Hunter

IMO consent is implicated but that doesn't mean I'm proposing that artists need to ask consent of essentialized groups of people- not sure why that's being assumed. Obviously that's not reasonable and would be racist; that's why it feels like an unfair but crudely effective straw man. And this isn't just about creating art, tho personally it does affect the art I choose to make, just like my anti-capitalism affects it. TBH I think the answer oftentimes is that people shouldn't do something, not that they should ask permission. Life is full of things we have a responsibility not to do. Contributing to cultural erasure or exploitation, or refusing to consider whether one is doing so, is an example of one of those things. Like most anti-racism strategies it is best implemented internal to one's self, not via callouts or performative declarations. Accountability is an internal obligation. That is a thing that does seem to be often forgotten.

Tim Fitzgerald

How does an artist practically get "consent" from an entire racial group? The next time a musician I know wants to use a boogie woogie piano riff I suppose they'll have to roam the streets asking black folks if it's okay. Doesn't consent from a racial group assume they're a hive mind? Art is explorative. One discovers articulation in process, and often nothing clear or politicial is articulated at all. As a writer and a filmmaker if I had to ponder "consent" for every gesture I make I'd never be able to make anything. Consent would result in terrible art, I'm sure of that.

Kindrid Parker

Fortunately, ah, nobody has made that argument. Again, until someone arguing against giving a shit about how cultural diffusion plays out under white supremacy can do justice to the actual substance behind the issue I will remain unconvinced. If you don't like the approach, cool, I don't think anyone's nailed it either. But cultural erasure is happening at the intersection of white supremacy and capitalism and that's a real, legit problem.

Tim Fitzgerald

Requiring "consent" from predetermined cultural groups before any new cultural expression is fascist as fuck.

ah

Very well summed-up and argued. I particularly want to +1 the initial observation about the source of "identity politics" being the broader left, not liberalism. "Identity politics" as a term began as a smear *from liberals* in my experience -- in the early 2000s when I was introduced to anti-racism and anti-oppression praxis nobody called it that. It was only later that that term was introduced -- before liberals later went on to absorb some components of it and not others, fundamentally misunderstanding its importance. I think you could say that intersectional feminism has permeated liberal thinking to some degree, which looks to me like a win for left arguments, while class consciousness and anti-capitalism has had less uptake -- and now socialists apparently think that intersectionality comes from liberalism. No, and most people who want to apply an anti-racist, anti-white supremacist lens to politics also want to dismantle capitalism. So folks taking this hard anti-"identity politics" tack are actually fronting on their friends, not their enemies.

Tim Fitzgerald

Agree with many comments. You guys really need to get someone on who actually can articulate the radical anti-racist argument at the root of the idea of cultural misappropriation. Y'all strawmanned on this so so hard, and I think it's a shame. It has nothing to do with being against "mixing" or believing that race is legit/biological. It is about consent, impeding the mechanics of white supremacy, and abstaining from cultural imperialism. The only people I have ever seen state the argument the way you did are socialists presenting this shitty straw man. Please stop calling this a liberal idea - it isn't, it is from intersectional feminism - and please stop calling it "against mixing". Or at least don't do it while claiming to be giving the background of the issue- it's just not accurate. This ep is like a showcase of why socialists need to develop their analyses beyond class to actually be ready to make change.

Tim Fitzgerald

I have and it doesn't apply

Kevin Beteta

It's almost like you haven't read Marx/Engels exploring this exact problem in the context of British/Irish workers.

G W

Coming back to this hours later and now it's so bad that it's funny. Good episode, guys.

Josiah Quiros

I'm glad you pointed out that the opposite of cultural appropriation is in fact cultural segregation.

Deidre House

My Korean roommate (whom I've been encouraging to attend DSA East Bay meetings) had the exact same reaction at that party. What happened to Shuja re: the virtue-signaling white person who obliviously erases the PoC sitting right there in the room sounds supremely annoying for sure. But in my case, I've been hearing from my roommate and other PoC that they just want to see themselves better reflected in the membership. I really think we can achieve that through serious good-faith outreach without being cynical or tokenizing.

ck

Kinda wish this ep was free so I could duct tape all my knee-jerk conservative friends to a chair and force them to listen to it. So many brains turn off the minute a buzzword gets mentioned.

Brent Figiel

Uhh, wow, this episode was a mess. I fucks with y'all, but I gotta agree with the overwhelming critiques here. Shoutout to y'all in the comments. Good shit.

Josiah Quiros

To quote Lena up above "yes minimum wage workers should have a living wage, ... but what if trans people can't even get hired in the first place?" Your comment is exactly I think the issue we are talking about here. A material analysis is all well and good, but it can't be the only dimension from which you're approaching these problems. I think Matt brought up an interesting point when he mentioned how the BPP thought the best way to attack racism was to attack capitalism because it's inherently exploitative. What you are missing however, and what Matt is missing, and if I may be so bold what even Huey Newton is missing, is that poor whites do not identify, at a class level, with poor minorities. In WEB du Bois' black reconstruction, he talks about the paradox of the attitude of the white working class in the era of slavery. When slavery was widely practiced it was immensely difficult for white workers to find work, because almost all work for which you would have to pay a white man would be done by a slave for free. It was even an argument for re-opening the slave trade; as the economy grew and grew, it was harder and harder to fill all ones positions with slaves and landowners were annoyed that they were starting to have to pay for labor. Poor whites had a very strong material interest in the reduction and abolition of slavery. Blacks could never hire out their labor. Whites could, but only at wages repressed by enslavement. There seems a clear common interest for the construction of a revolutionary coalition. Instead the opposite happened. White labor became the labor of the overseer and the slave-driver, and they voted the slavers into power and eventually even fought a war to preserve the institution. And the reason for this is, as WEB duBois put it, is that slavery "fed his vanity because it associated him with the masters. Slavery bred in the poor white a dislike of Negro toil of all sorts. He never regarded himself as a laborer, or as part of any labor movement. If he had any ambition at all it was to become a planter and to own “niggers.” To these Negroes he transferred all the dislike and hatred which he had for the whole slave system. The result was that the system was held stable and intact by the poor white." The white racist does not comprehend that he is of the same class as the negro because he sees them as a fundamentally different class of human being. Class consciousness cannot be achieved while it continues to be obfuscated by race.

Kevin Beteta

Here's what I mean when I talk about cinco de mayo; it's not just matter of them drinking tequila and wearing sombreros or a matter of like some gringo profiting off of perfunctory understanding of another culture; if that were the case, I would concede that it was cultural commodification and nothing more. But people are using an actual Mexican national holiday as simply a pretext for conspicuous consumption. It turns a day of national pride in the Mexican victory over the French into a fuckin drinking competition. Also I don't think Iggy is necessarily CA. I think people get upset because she puts on a ridiculous accent and also is openly racist but i don't think that means anything beyond "she is an asshole." like they say on the podcast nobody actually likes her but people who wouldn't like good shit anyway.

Kevin Beteta

I think the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural commodification was pretty clearly explained in the episode. I think some of the complaints brought up here - like Iggy azalea and cinco de mayo - are issues of cultural commodification. There should be nothing wrong with respectfully engaging with other cultures and art forms. It's when that engagement amounts to exploitation of the culture as little more than a commodity that people get upset. Unfortunately ID politics as it is commonly used argues that the error or injustice is in engaging in a culture that isn't your own in the first place - which is a very conservative notion. Really the injustice is the cynical exploitation of another culture as a commodity.

Dan Nancarrow

"Do better"? Really? That kind of comment just signals to me that some folks were not interested in hearing reasoned counter arguments to their positions, which this podcast had several of, and more interested in finger wagging. I'm nowhere near as anti-idpol as Adolph Reed, but he's certainly got some sharp insights into the current political culture of the left, and I hope Chapo gets a little more into that, actually. It's a healthy conversation too many people avoid.

Mystery Island

Isn't all culture 'appropriated' in some way? Who can definitively claim that a particular practice or whatever belongs to a particular culture? People have been adopting things they like about other cultures FOREVER. God, why is this such an obsession on left? The average person is worried about keeping their job and feeding their kids. Outsourcing and automation are decimating the middle class. Can we start talking about how to offer solutions to the average person about how to improve their economic circumstances, so the U.S. does not become a one-party country?

Jevon Clement

I thought the episode was good and I liked your guest and the opinions in the episode also. Sorry

Sigh

dude is def a logic bro, but most of his arguments are 🔥, so no big

Angelica

I agreed with essentially the whole podcast, but I think it's important to make sure your movement attracts PoC. I was at an Oakland DSA fundraiser at a bar recently, and I do have to say that seeing almost universally white faces at an Oakland event was strange to say the least. That said, I doubt it's a problem of nefarious white bro leftists not focusing on identity politics but rather a problem of outreach, and perhaps even fear of joining a radical organization in the current climate of racial hostility and police brutality against PoC. Idpol and class is a false binary, imo. We need to find a way to elegantly intertwine the two beyond appeals to a liberal "intersectionality" (e.g., "classism" is bullshit because class as a category needs to be totally abolished). I hope the conversation will continue beyond this ep; kudos for tackling it!

Sam Bein

The appeal of policing cultural appropriation and dabbling in identity politics is that you can do it from the couch while continuing to loath working class people. Having worked in machine shops for a decade and construction sites before that, I can assure you that the people that you need to organize if you want to create revolutionary change don't give a shit about cultural appropriation or Iggy Azaela. In my experience people are concerned about pay, their precarious economic situation, rent, racism on and off the job, sexism on and off the job, police abuse, etc. They would call frat boys in sombreros on Cinco de Mayo what they are, racists. They would also acknowledge that there are bigger and more immediate problems in this world than Iggy Azaela and douchebag failsons. There is a reason that identity politics has come of age at the exact same time that American liberalism has moved sharply to the Right and the American Left has largely melted away.

Brian Platt

All the Idpol apologists are making me depressed

Allan Castellon

EVERYBODY READ VIEWPOINT

Zeith Fleischer

Is it cultural appropriation when the said appropriation really has nothing in common with any purported culture? By that point I believe it's gone off the deep end into absurdity and should have no relevant bearing on the culture it attempts to "appropriate". There is a problem then in assuming that these acts of absurd ridicule have any relevancy to any culture whatsoever. It may be a sign of ignorance on the part of bystanders who may even take part in the appropriation, but any harm done to any culture large or small is only perpetuated by those claiming harm since cultural identity is mostly driven by perception issues. The culture itself, if it is a thing, will continue to live on in the physical prospects of the place and time it is found in like the people that define it.

Nathan Barton

MY DOG ATE MY HOG. STOP THE LOLITA BOURGEOIS ID LIBERALIST POLITICS --- DO BETTER WILL AND JEREMY

jacob

I'm a leftist who really cares about policing cultural expression around "organic" boundaries.

ah

Reading these comments I really want an episode where Amber goes full Adolph Reed Jr.

ah

im glad the left still having our language games and morality jockeying identity politics while the right rapidly grinds us into paste, good shit

fedsmoker

gotta agree with the preponderance of comments here. Something I learned in college—just because there exists a facile liberal version of some belief doesn't mean it deserves to be universally dismissed as liberal. I'd love to see you guys have someone on the show representing leftist identity politics—especially how left idpol has transformed marxism over time. Also i'd point out that "culture wars" have been very useful for conservatives, so denying a very salient instance of commidification e.g. americans on cinco de mayo its cultural power seems imprudent. Please rethink this, chapo we love you, do better, etc etc

guy incognito

Did shrugees exist in 1860s London

Bea Arthur Death Cult

TOO ON

Daniel

s/o to all the way smarter people on this comment thread for articulating my ire

Daniel

Iggy azealia is cultural appropriation, guys

Danny Perez

i saw somebody on the TL angry about white people using sage smudges and I thought about this episode. there is nobody i could hire in my area to smudge my house if i wanted to, nobody who can't smudge if i do, and nobody to know if i did short of me admitting it somewhere in public. schrodinger's appropriation. so what part of the liberation is that?

Clancy Clark

I agree that some critiques of cultural appropriation go too far and are counterproductive. That said Iggy is definitely CA.

Daniel J Lynch

Good post. I mainly hope that Shuja and the Chapo boys don’t divide issues of economy and culture or politics so discretely. Not to say that they are being “class reductionist” in any absolute sense, but concepts like “cultural appropriation” are not by necessity the field of neoliberal apologetics or just virtue-signalling your “wokeness”, or whatever it may be. I enjoy the example of diluting Mexican culture down to sombreros and tequila. In my experience, at least, it is very easy for people to be racist or to consider certain groups as trivial when you make a cartoon of people’s lived reality. To make a caricature out of cultural practice, frequently through commodification of certain symbols, is both intuitively experienced by the individual of such cultural background as a transgression, and often operates as the reduction of a group of people’s subjective experience to cheap, commodified symbols for the one who is consuming them. Any theory of appropriation came after the felt disrespect and dehumanization of the act of appropriation being observed. It’s an attempt to reassert sincerity as a human being to someone who has created a model of certain cultures as kitsch. I’d argue that precisely in the taking seriously of lived experience can you identify people as a vast swath of individuals, because only through the repackaging of lived experience as phony symbols does one feel totally assured in cheap group facsimiles of those people, as well as a total certainty in their own culture’s primacy. That it is sometimes used as a means to politically market to good neoliberal subjects shouldn’t set it aside as totally useless. In fact, the real anger that is felt at seeing cultural appropriation acting through the marketplace is a decent door through which injecting capitalist critique is possible, for those who are more aware of cultural appropriation as some sort of struggle totally divorced of capitalism as a whole. Aside from this, I think Shuja made a mistake in thinking this rested on a bed of racism. It is racist in itself to believe culture is essentially based in racial categories. I can understand that this may be less a claim on the part of Shuja and more an observation of how the concept of culture operates, as in it is common to think of cultures belonging to “white” people or “black” people. But this is precisely what should be rejected for its power to dehumanize, and I think it is what is reinforced by the easy and unconscious commodification of culture. Mexico, for example, can be reduced to a couple of symbols as a fake cultural commodity, but as you know has a large variety of internal cultural differences based on geography, ethnic history, superficial ethnic differences, historical material relations etc. I think a good example of this is in the phenomenon of weebs objectifying Japanese pop culture in their minds as some kind of lived experience in Japan, and being disappointed to find that real people live in Japan, which is a society with its own problems. So while the capitalist system may create the conditions in which culture can be commodified, the unconscious commodification of culture also creates the conditions in which the racist belief that the cultural commodity is representative of real people rises, thus creating division and racial antagonisms rife for distracting from capitalist critique. Allowing it to continue without critique or sort of devaluing it as a liberal distraction seems to be counterproductive.

Cowman

tbh this episode was dumb as a big ol' bag of hammers

Daniel

This episode is surreal. Lena made most of the points I would, but I I'd like to add that I really doubt the complaints Shuja got from non-Nazis were "mostly from centrist liberals" or that he could possibly even know that. See thoughtful comments above. Also IdPol is not confined to debates in the freshman dorms of elite campuses. I want to believe that the guest and the Chapo crew know and consult a diverse array of black people outside of twitter (I focus on black folk bc much of the episode referenced cultural appropriation of black culture) but the absurd straw-manning around cherry-picked instances of rather minor bourgeoise complaints that only register with bourgeoise people on twitter, without any reference to the arguments registered here which are far more salient among POC leftists makes that a hard belief to maintain. Matt did the best job of trying to start that conversation but got shut down.

Asa

A political project that pursues economic justice but doesn't respect and take on the more cogent points of identity politics is a dead end, and identity politics without economic justice is a farce. That's fairly obvious. What's not as obvious is how to meld the two into a larger project that addresses both sets of grievances with dignity. I think that's the goal, but it is going to take a long time to make something like that happen, and the process is going to suuuuuuck. This episode is fine, except for the end, which is trash--not b/c it's appropriation, which is fine until it's not, but b/c it's bad on the merits. The comments are good, except for 'do better' guy. YOU do better. I love all of you.

alejandro sosa

im all these people in the comments making long paragraph points

1

This is such a weird episode... It also seems awfully symptomatic of the issue people constantly accuse socialists and white liberals of having: they are not inclusive or accommodating to the same cultural and social groups they claim to be fighting for. A white guy standing up at a meeting and saying it's a problem there are no PoCs there isn't white guilt, its a pretty glaring indication that your ideology isn't attracting all kinds of people. Which, we all remember, was a problem Bernie Sanders had. Obviously love the show, and I appreciate the perspective, but I think Chapo is missing why idpol are so important in mainstream conversations and how effectively it serves as a gateway to deeper and more aggressive politics. Normal people don't wake up one day and realize the socioeconomic inequality that defines the livelihoods of black Americans, but they do notice when you point out there are no black people in Hollywood movies. I know it's a joke, but that's the kind of thing that actually makes normal people think about why things are the way they are. So the guy standing up saying there aren't any PoCs at their meeting is trying to acknowledge a deeper problem. It's not white guilt. It's a way ordinary people are trying to be inclusive and proactive.

Stagecoach

It's almost like Marx's class-based analysis fails to be intersectional because he didn't have any grasp on like how central racism would be come to oppression because it was like mid 1800's Europe Marx I don't think could have ever conceived of poor whites voting to get rid of Obamacare EVEN THOUGH IT HELPS THEM because it also helps poor blacks. I don't think he could have ever come with that in the future people would destroy themselves only to help destroy another group of people.

Kevin Beteta

This is very good. I'm also curious about "don't reduce valid concerns and critiques of the left to Twitter clapbacks and Beyoncé gifs," because that's not what I took from this at all. What I heard was that it was going to take work to address the valid concerns brought to the fore by ID politics and to extricate that from the shallow, deformed discourse that so much of it takes in the hands of libs and people online.

alejandro sosa

Do better, Chapo.

Day Moway

I would love the dryboys to respond to this

peepos

"People have to be sold on political movements, you can't just act like someone is obligated to accept them if they don't feel represented or listened to." That's 👏🏼 what 👏🏼 I 👏🏼 call 👏🏼 cogent 👏🏼 This kinda shit is why Hillary lost and it applies to democratic socialism just as well.

Kevin Beteta

I've got a fever and the only prescription is more nuance

Kevin Beteta

Love you guys but this episode was lacking. I agree with your overall points, but ultimately you're missing the mark on what identity politics are and why they exist in the first place. Concepts like intersectionality were developed in direct response to leftist, class-based movements that were consistently overlooking/ignoring/perpetrating oppression against the most marginalized members of the working class. Idpol actually did originally come out of material analysis. Movements like black feminism or queer liberation etc were specifically created to address material conditions that weren't being taken seriously in existing left movements. Minimum wage workers should be paid a living wage, but what about a black person getting shot by police on the way to work, or a trans woman who can't get hired in the first place? The average life expectancy for trans people in the US is in the 30's. If that's not a material condition, then what is? You can't except a trans woman of colour to organize with a white male manual labourer if she doesn't feel safe or that her specific concerns are being addressed, and unfortunately through socialist organizing I have seen this firsthand over and over again. Dems exploiting the idea of the BernieBro/brocialist was shitty and hypocritical, but the idea only has traction because there is some underlying truth to it. We as socialists have a lot to work on as far as making the movement inclusive and relevant, and to displace that responsibility onto people when they feel excluded by us is just not fair. It's exactly what makes them turn to these shallow neolibs and end up rejecting material analyses entirely. It's the same reason some white workers turned to Trump, which you guys have analyzed so well. People have to be sold on political movements, you can't just act like someone is obligated to accept them if they don't feel represented or listened to. Amber came the closest to saying that idpol and class-based struggle aren't incompatible, but in general we all need to reflect on why this divide exists in the first place. Hint: it was socialists being shitty to women and people of colour, not Jezebel writers posting khaleesi gifs. Just because the neolibs have cynically adopted idpol and removed the class/material analysis entirely in favour of representation, doesn't mean that representation is irrelevant. It matters precisely because of its relation to material conditions. Like I said, love the show, proud Grey Wolf but please don't reduce valid concerns and critiques of the left to Twitter clapbacks and Beyoncé gifs. That's like taking a Twitter tankie with an anime profile pic and saying 'this is what socialism is about.' It doesn't build the movement or help us get anywhere.

Lena

"how come there are billionaires" I came

19jks94

Pat, This is appropriation of Eddie Griffith jokes

ah

Is AMber the "woke-ness" den mother?

Blake

Sounds like Brendan turned on his mic to ask a question and forgot to turn it off when he was done talking?

Casey Westerman

Cultural appropriation is a problem because as Adam Curtis would say, it presents an increasingly simplified view of a society and their history and society

Kevin Beteta

The issue with cultural appropriation is, in my opinion, one of communication. No one I think would ever accuse a white person enjoying say reggae music as appropriation of reggae music, because the music was made to communicate ideas that are being understood. However if Felix started wearing Jamaican flags and got white people dreadlocks, he is now communicating AS a member of that culture. He did not grow up around that environment so when he mimics the communication of that culture, he turns that culture from an organic means of expression that say Jamaican artists have inherited from their community and it becomes a costume for a white person. That was fairly inelegant. The best example I can think of is the American celebration of Cinco de Mayo because I've actually gotten into arguments with white friends of mine about it. Ignoring the whole "it's Mexican Independence Day" bullshit, the holiday is generally considered an occasion to go out and eat Mexican food and drink margaritas and corona and wear sombreros (and if you're really dumb, calaveras) While this might all seem fairly culturally impotent, what it does is reduce Mexican culture to an oddity - kitsch, essentially. It denies Mexican people of the dignity of their heritage, and this has significant political implications. By making Mexican culture seem ridiculous, kitsch functions to undermine sovereignty struggles in a very fundamental way. A culture without dignity cannot be conceived of as having sovereign rights, and the repeated marketing of kitsch Mexican-ness leads to non-Mexicans’ misunderstanding and degradation of Mexican culture and history.

Kevin Beteta

This ep set off the failsafes I can't seem to remove from my brain left over from when I was a liberal. I'm glad we're saying fuck identity politics but cultural appropriation can be a real bad thing, or so I've been led to believe

chili cheese a plenty

What happened to the audio towards the end

Noel Murray

I agree. They made good points against the more shallow understanding of 'cultural appropriation,' but I wish they had addressed the instances where it is actually a case of material exploitation or just outright disrespect. Just because the term is overused/misapplied doesn't mean the entire concept is useless.

Lena

Great cold open. Felix's Rogan impression is delicious

Steve Austine

brendan seems so pure

no

this seems like a good ep to make free sooner or later

Trim Heckle

Matt's Zizek reference was on point. IDK if I agreed with all of this one. If your local DSA branch is a fucking dryboy blizzard I think it is worth asking why women and PoC aren't attending the mayonnaise convention. Doing that without being a virtue-signalling jerkoff is important tho. And appropriation also requires that a person with power is using the cultural artifact in a disrespectful way. Like fratbros wearing sombreros on Cinco de Drinko. Which is chump af yo

Yung Pattawan

Classic Chapo ep. Good job guys.

Ralphie

Loving the skits LMAO!!!!!!!!!

Tony Brut

I think the chapo record label has found its first artist

Jordan Ramage

Basically Megacity 1 is a neoliberal utopia. And none of you fuckers even think about comparing me to Harry Potter libs. 2000AD was the original dirtbag left!

Robert Aitken

The point about equally distributed misery made me think of Judge Dredd where they've "progressed" to a point where everyone is oppressed equally (though some are able to acquire enough creds to live comfortably so long as they keep their nose clean).

Robert Aitken

Brendan's DeVos sounds like damn George Saunders

Stephen

"The way to nail this fucker to the wall is to attack his false premises." Y r uall letting logic bros onto ur show now?

Doctor Anal

Will's Betsy DeVos impression, lmfaooo

Patricia Pipkin

The goddam yds panel had me dying

Noel Murray