So Caleb Maupin is now labelled a Nazbol. That seems to be the newest buzzword that means ‘bad person’ And i say that, because if you go look at the comments, not one person mentions anything that he did that is nazbol-ish.
And now Thought Slime, the Serfs, and now apparently Luna Oi, and Noncompete are attacking or cancelling or cutting ties with him.
So, opinions? On Caleb, or the others?
I value your opinion as communists, because something similar happened to me, involving alleged communists.
he sucks
YouTube does tend to platform grifters and some truly heinous people, MLs not excluded.
Maupin has the potential to improve, but until he gets past his own ego ( check out this vid of him bragging about being trumps favorite reporter below), I don’t see him improving.
My biggest gripe with him tho is that he pushes for “US with socialist characteristics”, rather than decolonization, balkanization, and overthrow of the imperial core. He consistently rejects and tells people not to read settlers, divided world divided class, and dismisses the concept of US metropolitan labor, putting him ultimately on the same side as vaush and all the other US chauvinists when it comes to the colonial question.
Again, he could improve in the future, and I hope he does.
deleted by creator
Exactly.
I honestly think a lot of MLs saw Caleb defending actually existing socialism and immediately thought the guy is a well educated marxist.
One couldn’t be farther from the truth. The guy shares the CPGB-ML misunderstanding of what materialism is (mistaking materialism as naive empiricism/scienticism), misunderstands what dialectical materialism, and is generally VERY badly read.
As you mentioned earlier, he is shit on everything touching national-liberation struggles. He also is shit on anything touching issues analyzed from a marxist standpoint but not directly related to class: gender, feminism, anti racism, decolonization, etc. All of which all have a solid corpus of materialist and marxist analysis that are crucial to know and implement in your praxis and organizing, as a communist.
That and his questionable ties and frequentations (his dogshit interview of the CPGB-ML leader is an example), makes it very easy for people to go from: “ok this guy is a bit of a grifter who is way less well read than I thought and with an incomplete theoretical groundings, and somehwat of a chauvinist class essentialist with a big ego” to “ok this guy is a nazbol”.
I disagree with that step. But I do agree Caleb really needs to work on his shit. I totally understand why someone like Luna Oi would be very skeptical of Maupin.
Also quick question, this guy is not part of ANY ML parties in the US isn’t he?
Nope, he used to be active in the World Workers Party, but he left years ago. He pushes for going “out of the movement, into the masses”, being generally dissatisfied with all the US socialist parties and views the movement as having been going nowhere. So nope, he’s not in a ML party right now and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to be either.
deleted by creator
I mean, Caleb hangs out with NazBols or at least attends the Nazbol convention, so he at least doesn’t hate them. And theres no doubt his stance on Transgender issues are a bit sus, but that certainly doesn’t make him “not a leftist”. He certainly isn’t a valuable voice on the left, what kind of Leftist praises Trump and is seen with Aleksandr Dugin?
I read a tweet a while back that went “tankies have no power: all the best youtubers are varying shades of anarchists”
Which just about summed up their entire petit-bourgeois, individualistic and faux revolutionary world view
If youre not in a communist party then you have no political power anyway and no amount of youtube celebrity (only a slight step up from Youtube comments) is going to change that
Im sure there is a definitive question of who is right and wrong in this ‘struggle’ to which i reply they are both worse
Which just about summed up their entire petit-bourgeois, individualistic and faux revolutionary world view
That sure clarifies things. Thanks.
So i googled the first on your list as i had a bet with myself hes plugging a patreon like so many other ‘left’ grifters
Oh what a surprise
Workers should be compensated for their labor. Yes, that means that communist and anarchist YouTubers could, and I think, should, have Patreons. Especially if you refuse to run ads, which Thought Slime does.
How are you supposed to make leftist content? Running ads? That seems hypocritical. Working a day job? That’s fine, but you’ll but have less time to make content. Honestly I think Patreon is probably the best way because everyone gets the content for free, the creator gets compensated for their labor.
Of course, once we live in a classless, moneyless, stateless society, then the conversation would be different, but YouTubers got rent due every month, too.
Ive got no problem with anarchists or communists being paid for their labour
But in the workers movement there has always been a petit bourgeois strata that has always wanted to make a ‘living off being a marxist’ and in doing so set about organising their life about selling their petit booj views out in a book (or YouTube channel in this case)
My comments in this thread is only to say that people shouldnt care what these people say and if they were serious about organising for socialism they would organise within their communist party, funnel their funds to their communist party and seek an average workers wage from their communist party like…Communists always have
It speaks to their individualism that they dont
And thats fine…but communists shouldnt take them seriously
I just think people should be evaluated by what they say. Like, I tried looking up Michael Parenti’s net worth, and it seems to be somewhere upwards of a million? Although I only found two sites that gave a number without me enabling javascript, so idk how reliable that stuff is. One site said $1 million, another said $8 million, I dunno, it’s a lot, whatever the number happens to be. And I don’t mean to elevate thought slime to same level as Parenti, or equate book sales to Patreon subscriptions, so this is a very loose analogy, but the point is: people can make bank and still be worth listening to. Not all the time, but Michael Parenti shows that it’s true at least once. I just find it distasteful to screenshot someone’s patreon links to discount them. Whether or not someone is a grifter should be determined by their words and actions, not just their income. But being wary of grifters is good.
deleted by creator
I mean, he doesn’t ask for donations, but also he doesn’t give out his books for free. (Unless he does, if so, lemme know, because I want a physical copy but don’t very much want to pay for one)
Do you think a better model for monetizing content would be to put videos behind a paywall? To make the analogy more 1:1 with book sales. From an ethical perspective, I mean. I think you’re likely to make less money by charging for videos than giving them out for free and asking for donations.
