For centuries, capitalists ruled the world. They crafted a dystopian healthscape and commodified everything.  Facing extinction, a rebel group emerged to challenge the capitalists. The online left, a group of deviants, zoomers, and millennial misfits devoted to shitposting their way to a better world. One tweet at a time. Will they put aside their hatred of one another to defeat their capitalist common enemy? Find out now on dystopian times. Folks, welcome to the event of the century. It is the season finale of dystopian times. And for this very special occasion, I wore my best Zelda shirt. You can't really see it, but it is based. I'll let you all take a moment to kind of like soak that in. Very, very proud of this. Well, folks, listen, I'm going to bring together the greatest minds on the internet to solve the biggest issues, the answer, the biggest questions that the left is asking today and fighting about.  But without further ado, let's go ahead and bring in our panel. First and foremost, folks, we have the absolutely brilliant Spencer Snyder Spencer. Who are you? What do you do? And where can we find your content? Hey, Mike, thanks so much for having me on. So my focus is media criticism and media literacy. So I do a lot of videos on manufacturing consent, the different things that branch off from manufacturing consent, the whole theory of unworthy and worthy victims. I just wrote a piece for fairness and accuracy in reporting. So I'm getting into some writing too. But mostly it's on YouTube and you can find my videos where I do insane things like watch a whole day of CNN for 18 hours straight and rant about it. That's dedication. That's dedication. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Well, I'm glad to have your perspective here. And yeah, really, really looking forward to chatting with you. The next individual, folks, is a Riverboat Jack. How's it going? Who are you? And where do you come from on the internet? Which corner of the internet are you from? Hello, I'm Riverboat Jack. And I come from, I have a really weird career path story. But in a nutshell, I was a game journalist for a nonprofit that helped sick and injured kids across the United States and Canada for about 10-ish years, seven to 10 years somewhere in there. And then I started streaming on Twitch because our world is in trouble. And I think we need everyone to pitch in and do whatever they can and, well, talking is about one of the only things I do really well. So, yeah, you can find my content over at twitch.tv slash Riverboat Jack where I stream every weeknight at 8 p.m. Central. Well, thank you so much. I'm so glad to have you. By the way, folks, I'll have links in the description box. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you're watching this on Means TV, you will have to seek out these folks. But I mean, I'm sure that you will be able to find them pretty easily. Well, the next person that we have on our panel today, it's been a long time, but I'm so glad to have this person back. It's Hector Oseguera. Hector, how's it going? Hey, Mike, thanks so much for having me back on. Yeah, what have you been up to? So you ran for Congress. What has life been like for you now? Well, life has been pretty exciting ever since I ran for Congress. Basically, I've been up to pissing off the local Democratic establishment here in Hudson County ever since then. Specifically on the issue of abolishing ICE, we've been hitting them pretty hard, them being the local Democrats in Hudson County who love ICE money and currently are suing. We have a lawsuit going against the county executive and the county government, a bunch of officials having to do with us protesting abolishing ICE outside of his home and subsequently being arrested for that. And so, yeah, I've basically been up to my old agitating ways ever since then. Well, that's the best thing that you can be doing. I love it. That's awesome to hear. Well, glad to have you here, Hector, and really excited to have your input on these really important issues, especially from your perspective, someone running or who did run for Congress, who's deeply involved in electoral politics. I think that your perspective, you're kind of like going to give us a really, well, you know what? I'm not even going to talk about that yet because I haven't given the viewers what the question prompt is, even though the panels know, but you're going to be very valuable, as will everyone else. Thank you, Hector. Okay, folks. The next person that I have on is Dan from the Internet. Dan, how's it going? What do you do for a living on YouTube? Hello, humans. Hello, Mike. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for finding me at youtube.com slash Dan from the Internet, as you can see from my name on here. And I do a number of things. I've most recently started a show called Power Report. It's basically just the idea that we can look at news. We can jump out of the news cycle, focus on what really matters and also have a little bit of fun, but also the idea that you can have a left that is intersectional, big tent, ready to agitate, ready to be really just like powerful and a force and that none of these things have to be mutually exclusive in any kind of ways. I used to work as a producer at the Young Turks. I was a host from time to time, very sparingly. But yeah, that's sort of my background. I've done some other work at some other like publications from here and there, but yeah, striking it out independent in the biz. And yeah, super excited to be with y'all in this conversation. I know you're teasing it, but this is a really, really good topic that I'm excited to get a number of diverse perspectives on. Yeah, yeah. Same here. Same here. Well, I'm so glad to have you. I'm so glad that you just started your show because I've known about you and I've seen you on like TYT panels, but then I realized you have a show and I'm like, wait, did I not know that Dan had a show and I'm like only now finding it?  I like to be very low-key until I'm not. That's kind of my trick. So you can sit yourself on the ground floor. Hey, well, that's great. That's great. Well, folks, the next person that I am bringing in, I really appreciate this person so much, perhaps more so than anyone else on the panel because she had to get up early to be here. And I don't even do things like that, folks. From Downunder, it is Pix. Hi, good morning. Good morning. It's early for me. It's 11 a.m. It's not early for me. Oh my God. Oh my God. Hello. I'm Pix. I generally cover the news. At a very insomniac American time at about 7 p.m. Australian time AST over on Twitch at Pixels Mixel. But I got here in a very interesting way. I was kind of like an Uber Neopets capitalist as I was growing up. I was like, you know, playing these online games being absolutely ridiculous at 14 being like if I just buy it from the shop for this much, then I can resell it and I'll be out and make a profit. And then I ended up doing a degree in forensic psychology and started playing video games on the internet. But I felt really stifled by, I guess, trying to appeal to brands as a content creator. And there was a day that came and I was just, no, I'm going to be very loud about my opinions and I realized I had a pretty good news reader voice and from there it kind of just spiraled into a lot of like, I guess, political edutainment and just general edutainment which has been incredible. So, yeah. Well, that's awesome. That's so good to hear. Yeah. No, you're like part of the wave of new like Twitch streamers along with Riverboat Jack that I just discovered this year once I jumped on Twitch. And it's so nice to see like so many new voices. Like I thought that there was like only three people that do politics online. Apparently, there's like a whole other world on Twitch. So it's really nice to hear your content or hear your voice on your platform and I'm glad that you're here now to give us your perspective especially because you have the Australian perspective. So it's nice to bring in like international voices. But this is my segue into the next panelist, another international voice, a neighbor from north of the border folks. It's Hilda Beast. Hilda Beast, welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. I am so, so, so, so excited.  I've been a fan of yours for so many years. Mike, so. Oh, thank you. I mean so much. Well, it's honestly true.  No, it's just true. I am a third generation anarchist. I'm raising a fourth currently right now. I stream politics and horror games and I build two meter cakes and I do all this on Twitch. It wasn't what I had gone to school for. I went to school way long, long ago back in the olden days as my kid calls it. And I had a very successful dental practice and what I did was I moved up to the Arctic and I gave five years of my life and I gave five free years to the communities up in the Arctic of dental treatment. Didn't matter who walked into my clinic. It was all for free. And because I'm an anarchist and because of that background, I have always felt Medicare for all dental for all hearing for all optical for all everything for all. And so when I got on to Twitch and I found that there was this little niche for politics. I left all of the American politics for all those people that can do it way, way, way, way much more better than me. But I thought that there wasn't a lot with respect to Canadian politics. And so I thought, well, that's what I will do. So when I did that, I also realized there wasn't a lot that I could do without basically climbing the walls. So that's why I've done more of a variety thing. So I do the cakes, I do the games and I also do the politics and I have a lot of fun. That's awesome. I have a lot of fun. That is incredible. I am an amateur baker. So I will have to check out your cakes that you designed. I'm not very good. They taste good, but they look terrible. But I'm very curious off to check out that aspect of your of your online life. Well, it's so great to have you here, Hilda. All right, folks. Well, we have two panelists left to bring on one half of another show that I love. It is actual Jake from Hannah and Jake and also Twitch Streams. Yes. How's it going? Good. It's going well. Yeah. So I'm actual Jake.  So anyone that you ever heard that made a really shitty video on the online, I probably held them. I probably debated them at some point and I don't know. I've been on YouTube forever started with the old timey Bible reloaded. Ended up changing to Hannah and Jake. We met made a more political sort of lefty thing. And now it's just it's pretty much just politics that I enjoy most. I have a background in education. I went to school to be a teacher. Lot of lot of issues with teaching in America. It wasn't as appealing. And so I ended up getting, you know, I have a skill for it, but also I'm very lucky and fortunate to have been able to make a career on YouTube for almost a decade. So well, and and Twitch now, which is more recent. But yeah, so we do a lot of mutual aid. We do which is a huge part of the stream. We do a lot of, I don't know, sort of community building, a lot of a lot of weirdly for a cis straight white guy. I have a huge LGBTQ plus community.   So I see that and then you might see the corn thing or maybe know me because I'm sometimes in a corn suit. It's because it's a whole inside joke, but doesn't matter. Chat pays me to do that because they're weirdos and they like that stuff. But it's sort of turned into a dog whistle for positivity and stuff. So you see the corn thing on Twitter. It means like a good thing. And then because of that, I guess wheat is a bad thing. So it's a bunch of that. So yeah, if you see a corn Twitter, they're good people. So the corn suit, I just I love it so much and folks if you if you see me wearing like some sort of a suit like, I don't know, a dinosaur suit.  I'm ripping off Jake 100%. It's so great. I love it so much. Well, Jake, I'm so glad to have you on. Super excited that you have the corn suit in the back. It's just like it's good vibes with the corn suit. I love the corn suit. Thank you. Well, folks, certainly last but not least is an absolute behemoth in the field of politics, history, academia. It is Professor Harvey J.K. who I will be calling Harvey with his permission throughout the duration of the stream. How's it going, Harvey? I'm very excited to be here. I've got to be, I don't know, at the least twice the age of just about everybody else here and maybe more. Maybe I'm even tempted to say three times, but that would be probably an exaggeration. No, no way, no way. Anyhow, I but I can tell you this. I'm I'm decidedly from another generation. My media claims go from doing television and radio and in fact, I've done some TV commentary for down in Australia and radio commentary in Australia. I mean, I could connect everyone. I've been on T. Like T. Any number of times. I have good friends in Canada, some of whom I mentor my, you know, I'm from Northern New Jersey Hector. So I growing up, I spent a fair bit of time in Hudson County. And yes, so, but I'm out here in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Now I've been I until a year ago, I was a professor for 42 years with the title Ben and Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Democracy and Justice, which every time I went on a radio show, they say, wow, how did you get that title? And I'd explained in this, well, how did you keep the title given Scott Walker was governor of Wisconsin, that kind of thing. Anyhow, my politics are decidedly on the left. I'm in certain quarters have reputation as a Marxist and other places merely a social Democrat depends on where I am at the time. I do stuff with Jack had been I do stuff with no Mickey cons. I was very close to Michael Brooks. In fact, we were talking just the day he passed away. I was that kind of thing. So, you know, I've been around where most of you were probably heading. I'm only a consumer of Twitch on occasion. I know Mike because I've done a show a number of times and I was very impressed by the just how bright you are. And when I saw your name and I said, my goodness, this is going to be this is going to be an interesting crew. I think I actually tweeted it. I'm very active on Twitter. I think I said an amazing crew or panel of people. And as I told my former students who I stay in touch with, I'm definitely the old man in this crowd. So we'll see how it goes. Well, one thing that I love about you, Harvey, is that you are on Twitter like you're super active, but yet you're not like terminally online.  So you'll have to teach me because I try to use less Twitter. Well, I always get a kick out of it when my phone tells me how much time I've been on my phone in a week versus last week. So right, right. All right. Well, folks, just one last confession before we start one last confession. Oh, a confession. Okay. Yeah. So I don't know how many people know, you know, Mike, I've written a lot of books. I've edited a lot of books and I've written a lot of commentary and columns. But for the last several months, I have been binging fantasy series from everywhere from Australia to Turkey and I just yesterday I finished another one from Brazil and I said I was waiting for a book to arrive today. There was I was going to break the addiction and they decided that the book wouldn't be released for another month. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do for the next few weeks. There's my confession. Well, if you've not read any Brandon Sanderson, you should you should check it out. Oh, this is a great this is a great series. That's okay. Okay. Okay. I just started reading Andy Weir's Hail Mary and I I'm addicted to it, but I'm we're going to like I'm going to take us down some weird path and we'll start talking about like video games and like Dungeons and Dragons. So I will I don't know about it, but you know, I'm I'm always down to have nerdy conversations and I kind of like put that at the hierarchy of like the nerdiest conversations with love because I I love their culture and stuff. I didn't mention that, but we also do that on my channel. We do Dungeons and Dragons lefty style. So same. Very cool. Very cool. I love it. Well, okay folks, so let's get down to business here. Okay. So there's a lot of issues right now going on when it comes to leftist politics and I brought all of you on because I think that you have really interesting and unique perspectives. To me, the question that I'm about to ask, I feel like there's no right or wrong answer. There's just a lot of gray area and it's kind of messy, right? So the answer has to do with the extent to which electoral politics matters. This is, you know, something that we'll see discussed from time to time on the left. It even gets relatively divisive. So the question that I want to pose to the panel is should the left after losing in 2020 and 2016, should we focus more so on direct action and mutual aid as opposed to this hyper focus on electoral politics? Or should we focus on actually obtaining real political power, getting involved locally, running for Congress, actually trying to build power, or is it a combination of both? Do we need to recalibrate to make sure we focus more on one or the other? So this is a question that I think is really interesting and I don't really have a strong answer. My instinct is to say both, but I think that it's a lot more nuanced than that. And I kind of want to take some time to play around in the gray area. So the first person who I want to go to is Professor Harvey J.K., because you always kind of ground your political ideology and history. And I think that that's really important because if you want to know where we're headed, you know, you kind of get a little bit of a roadmap by looking at where we've been. So what is your take on this issue of electoral politics, Professor? I can't imagine an either or to this. I really can't. I can't. I can't imagine a political party system that isn't propelled for better or worse, any number of directions by anything less than serious social movements. I mean, it's very hard to imagine otherwise. But in those terms, I'm not going to talk very long. I'm going to just lay this out because this is kind of old left view, but it's the I'm a labor unionist. I've been a labor unionist for many, many years and I and I still believe that however much we can run into unions that may well be obstructing of what we would think of as a left agenda, that there will be no serious left until there is a serious left labor movement. And I'm absent and I can face that on historical arguments and contemporary arguments. In fact, I'll even go so far as to say that on occasion recently on various shows, I do a weekly thing with a guy named David Feldman, his one of his shows. And I've been saying recently that no labor movement, no left. And I've even gone further and said, I don't even know if there is a left right now. I know there are lots of diverse lefts, but I don't know if there's a left. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen a lot of factualization. I mean, that's kind of for part two of the panel, but yeah, it kind of seems like no, no, I think that that's really important because it feels like we're kind of all going into separate directions. And this is why I really wanted to ask this question because we all have different ideas. Like for me, I am a news YouTuber. And so I'm almost hyper focused on electoral politics to the detriment of direct action and mutual aid, whereas folks like actual J kind of do a combination of both. You talk about current events and whatnot, but you also have this really strong focus on mutual aid. So what's your take on this? Because what I'll what I'll usually see is people will say, Mike, you focus too much on electoral politics. It doesn't matter. Stop talking about politicians. Stop directing people how to get involved locally, nationally. What is your opinion on this? Because it's kind of hard to walk that fine line. Yeah, I definitely think we can do both at the same time, like walking through bubble gum sort of thing, because you you have to there are situations where someone needs $300 by the end of the week, not Medicare for all in two years. You know what I mean? Like, and that's that's super important all the time. So, you know, in my community, not just my community, there's tons of lefty communities, not even, you know, even liberal communities that do some form of at least charity stuff. Usually it's for like sick puppies, but you know, we also try to like pay rent here. But yeah, I think I think electoral politics are frustrating and slow and it's very deliberate and we live in an age where we can be very, very quickly satisfied via technology and from pretty much everything else. And so it can feel especially for our generation or younger that things just move incredibly slowly. But I have to remind people now, I don't have Harvey's background here, but I am also I went for history and you know, I dabble. I'm not I'm certainly not, you know, I didn't pursue a master's or anything, but and I just just the trends do show that like life does improve and we do slowly win ground all the time, especially socially. Now, obviously, this isn't like the goal. We're not trying to just barely dig trenches for like World War One and get 20 feet forward. We want to win, win more often. And so I think really the answer is if we want and I know this is sort of a little bit of the next conversation, but it applies to this as well. If we agree pretty much that both are very important. We need apparatuses that deal with both of those things kind of at the same time regularly. So specifically like for a politics, we need to figure out what's the next the next thing we need. What is the next like leftist thing that will help the most? And I think that's probably healthcare, but you could also make a very strong argument right now for housing. So one of those two things probably needs to needs to topple. And we need to win that one. We need to focus on that in America, specifically. I don't know about Canadians and what your problems are over there or Australians or anything because we are very American centric here and we have a lot of problems. But I think we can talk about a lot of the other stuff. We can talk about what specific leftism we want to end up being when you're an anarcho communist or whether you're I don't know a sock down. It doesn't really matter because we all want the first basic step. So we have to start there first in my opinion. I think we get ahead of ourselves a lot of the time like what's the ultimate goal? Well, we can't get there. We don't have healthcare. We can't get there if no one has a house. So that's kind of my thing. Yeah, you know what I kind of notice is and this is just this is maybe projection because this is my feelings is you know I overall I focus more on electoral politics myself in terms of priorities. But depending on my mood, I'll kind of go back and forth. Like for example, you know after Bernie lost in 2020 that was where mentally I'm like alright waving the white flag. What's the point? It's just there's so much disappointment. There's so much distress and distraught. But then I think, you know if I focus only on mutual aid, that's that might solve some issues maybe in my area, maybe online. But then we're still not solving the structural issues that need to be addressed. So it feels like almost a cop out to to go from one to the next. And really to me, this is about like trying to do both but in a healthy way. And I wanted to go to Hector who has kind of been on both sides here, right? So you ran for Congress. That's how you and I first met and now you're doing a lot of direct action and mutual aid in your community. So how do you find that balance if you do believe that both are necessary? Yes. So echoing what a lot of has been said is that I don't think this isn't either or where I see the genesis of this question coming up is that in a lot of left spaces, you have people who question the efficacy of participating in electoral or giving energy to electoral specifically when there are so many people with immediate needs right now, right? Who need things they can't wait. Like you said for Medicare for all, they can't wait for a jobs program to get them somewhere. They have to take care of things literally today or tomorrow or they'll be evicted or they'll be homeless and they'll have, you know, food insecurity. And so to me, I think it is about having a healthy balance where we're not deep prioritizing one or the other. I think there has to be a healthy getting both done at the same time. And I guess what I always want to say is that we can't deep prioritize one or the other. There is utility to participating in electoral because we need a long-term strategy. We need things to look forward to and that's what I think the utility that electoral participation has. You know, I'm honest with people, although I do, you know, I'm all for direct action. You know, like I said, I was like arrested a couple months ago for a direct action against the county executive in Hudson County, which Harvey will tell you is not a safe thing to do in general. But at the end of the day, I am trying to get you to vote. I am trying to get you to participate in local politics. One thing that I'll say just sort of to end my thing is that I look at a lot of vote totals and when you look at an election result, you always party. You see that the top of the ticket always gets the most votes. The president gets more than the senator who gets more than the congressman who gets more than the mayor. But the fact of the matter is that your mayor has more of an effect on your life than any president will ever have. So if we had the sort of leftist participation that I'm trying to foster is it would be reversed and your mayor would be the person getting the most votes and less people voting up the chain because those people don't have a direct action on what your life is going to be like. Can I ask a follow-up question there? Sure. I'm wondering if a part of electoral politics and the problem of it in America specifically is the way we vote. Like obviously there's a ton about voter suppression stuff but what is like just because of your view on it, what do you think the most effective way to actually vote is it can't be how we do it now. I feel like it's rank choice but at all levels pretty much but how you feel. Yeah. I mean at the end of the day I love that question because we need a lot of Democratic reforms to make the system more responsive to people but right but we have a problem of like our participation level is so low that those things would be nice but it's not going to fix the problem. What we need is like 80% participation which is a ridiculous number right like I'm just like shooting for the stars but if we had 80% participation our government would look so much different than what it looks like right now. So to me we have this huge flood of people who have just given up on the system. Another another sort of like kind of touching up on that things that I've seen of people who are so cynically like disgusted with the system that for New Jersey during my election we had all mail in right so every single person got a mail in ballot right. Great thing. Some people wrote the most ridiculous things in the right end.  We have to fix that problem of like people just don't have any faith in the system itself. Yeah and one thing that I've noticed is covering politics is when it comes to just views and I use views as a gauge for how engaged people are especially young people because my audience is usually younger. So usually during election times you see lots and lots of people tuning in for the first time ever getting involved in politics. And then when the election is over views kind of fall off a cliff and I view that as an indication of people losing interest in politics more general. Some people just need a break. I totally get that but I feel like there's a lot of people that kind of like they jump in and then they jump right back out and my question is because it really seems like the panel is gravitating towards so far with who we've heard that you know you definitely need a healthy dose of both but it's really easy to become you know just overcome with cynicism. And so the question that I want to ask to Riverboat Jack is like if you're like a newer person because your audience I'm assuming is super young like if you're a newer person and you're super excited about a candidate Bernie Sanders and then they lose our entire movement like just burns out in spectacular spectacular fashion. How do you keep them engaged because this is a question that I've been asking myself and I genuinely have no idea like I try to hello fellow kids them as much as I can throw in fun memes and stuff but at the end of the day sometimes it's just like too painful in a way to like be aware of all the horrible things climate apocalypse global pandemic. So like what do you do as a as a Twitch streamer to try to keep people engaged because I find this to be one of the most difficult things ever. So first off I totally relate with the Bernie Sanders and like feeling hopeless because that's basically where I was in 2020 after he got knocked out of the primary and you know I went and voted Biden and whatever but like inside I was like man this was really our last our last shot to like really avert some bad stuff that's coming down the pipeline and and I realized my options were either to sit and essentially be inert and not do anything or to get off up my butt and actually put my money where my mouth is you know take take the jump do this even if no one's going to listen and turned out a lot of people wanted to listen and it's not just young people who come to watch my panel I have I have older people across the spectrum I have parents who watch me who talk about their struggles raising their kids and I have you know members of my mod team who are you know in in their 60s and the the amount of support that I have seen around this community blows me away and I think what it really comes down to is tapping into what fundamentally made Bernie Sanders so powerful and influential and that's giving somebody out there hope because fun like like to what Hector was talking about a lot of people are just absolutely crippled by hopelessness and despair and they don't think there's anyone out there who's going to help them or who's going to care about their struggles and what I found is building these communities where people can talk about their problems where people can get both emotional support and if if needed you know financial support to like there are members of our community who've talked about how they've gone like a week without food and my community comes together make sure that those people get fed you know and so the important thing is that in in this world where we do have a climate apocalypse where we do have kind of this rising specter of fascism is to be able to correctly identify those problems but then to give people actionable things that they can do that that are going to make a difference either in an electoral sense or in a mutual aid sense which is why you cannot disconnect these two things the mutual aid is important to mobilizing electoral support and the electoral support is key to getting mutual aid support these these two things feed each other and when we're when we're talking about that I mean if you can't get people to do something as simple as going out to vote it's going to be a lot harder to get them to do things that are harder and a lot of mutual aid is really hard so you got to be able to do both things and different people are good at different things you know what is your skill set you know and that's what I talk about on my channel a lot you know think about what you can do and how that can benefit people and if that's more on the electoral side you know there are ways you can get involved here like x y z here are things you can do to get involved at a local level or even higher levels and if your skill set is more like I don't know like cooking ribs or something like there are ways you can do that too to help in your communities yeah and so it's just giving people things that they can do that give them a sense of agency and a sense of hope yeah it goes back to what Harvey said before about unionization you know there's there's really no strong left without unions and I feel like in a way these communities that we've all kind of built individually either online or on the ground they kind of serve that social role that unions and like more community support served before where you know it's helping at least a little bit we're in a way we're also like somewhat isolated in our own bubbles but I do feel like leftists have built communities they're relatively fragmented but at the same time I do think that that that is a really important and insightful thing that you that you mentioned Revolt Jack I wanted to bring in pics here with the Australian perspective because we talk about like people jumping into elections and then tuning right back out and this always kind of brings me back to how do you increase participation and to me I feel like the number one way to do that is to model our voting process after Australia is more so when it comes to compulsory voting so in Australia you have to vote so I mean can you explain what does that do like what effect does that have because I know you have a higher participation rate in your country but do people kind of just like vote and then tune back out or do they stay engaged because of them being required to vote like can you speak to this here because I'm trying to think about like what does keep people engaged just forcing them to stay involved in politics help if so then maybe we can advocate for that like what's your thoughts on this you know it's actually really interesting and it's a bit of a spectrum because while it is kind of compulsory voting you have to enroll to vote when you turn 18 if you don't enroll it kind of just like goes under the thing but a lot of people even though there is compulsory voting are still extremely disengaged and we'll still do the kind of generational voting thing where it's just like my parents voted Labour so I will vote Labour that being said we do have a actual Labour Party here in Australia which is kind of centre-left but even though there is kind of a pretty strong there's a stronger union movement here in Australia I think then you see in America it's still a very divided left right because we have the Labour Party and we have the Greens Party and all over the spectrum in every state there sometimes can be a Greens person that is more progressive than a Labour or there can be a very progressive like Labour Senator or you know there's all sorts of kind of mix and match throughout all of the parties so even though you can be engaged to like a specific level you have to be really following it to like learn about the policies of these people I think one of the things where we get really lost in regards to like electoral politics in general is the frustration that people feel that their vote doesn't matter right even if it's a compulsory vote people still go in and they're like that's the same it's the same side of a different coin which is why I appreciate everyone's opinion on this panel so far because I think what is key is the motivating of people to really feel like they are engaged in their community and in order to be able to do that there does have to be this sense of hope for change and I think by encouraging people to really commit to at least politics on a community level is something that would be really important going forward in an American context through mutual aid through electoralism but it's really focusing it down to the community level where things are tangible where you can see differences maybe you're affecting the environmental policy in your local area and I think that helps people stay involved a little bit more than what you see on the internet where we're all having these big global conversations that are also divisive because it's so good for the algorithm for people to have strong opinions on different things whereas you know we're all arguing for the same you know 95% of things we all want the same but we get really you know kind of different so I just love the nuance here and I think that you can't leave power on the table but in order to motivate people to be engaged you have to kind of participate in mutual aid kind of organizations yeah yeah no that's that's really insightful oh wait one more thing one more thing you can also basically just bribe people to vote with a democracy sausage which is kind of what we do here you go down to vote you go down to vote and it's like vote and you can have a snag here you go well okay I was gonna say we should incentivize voting I would be more enthusiastic that that was exactly what corrupted American democracy in the 19th century people would show up to vote and they'd get a beer before they voted well he gotta give it to a lecture obviously yeah I wanted to get Hilde's perspective as well because you're from Canada I know there's an election taking place currently and you've kind of always done both you've done direct action you've also participated in electoral politics what's your overall take in this because you've raised you're raising a new generation of anarchists like you said that you came from multi generations of anarchists so what is your take here on this? well I live in Helbert, Canada so my perspective is a little bit different it doesn't really matter where my heart lies it's because the the writing they're called writings in the United States you have districts in my writing it is always voted conservative so really my vote really doesn't count and that's because we have first passed the post system and it's it's broken and I have done both the the mutual aid absolutely there is a place for that and I fully endorse that with respect to direct action yeah it moves the needle I get it however I feel and despite having value in that I feel though that we should consolidate our efforts in both but I think I would lean towards more to strategically place people in key positions whether it be school trustee city councillor get on any types of boards councils be a mayor get in the legislative assembly be a member of parliament any one of those things get appointed as a judge those are key positions and basically stack the deck it takes so so many leftists to apply to get elected so that one person can actually be sitting at the table there's right now going on anti-abortion groups who are incredibly organized incredibly strategically motivated they are putting people in all of the parties because we have a multi-party system it's not like United States where you basically got your Republican and Democrat you know you're both right wing that you choose we have a variety here they're almost all right wing with the exception of one that's basically all that we have so the left in Canada has literally nowhere else to go and with these anti-abortion groups that are getting together and placing people strategically in all the parties or in municipal election so that they can sit on council so that they can be mayors so that they can be on swim boards or hockey boards or what have you that is incredibly terrifying to me because you guys in the United States will remember oh back when in the olden days when the tea party was in and the damage that that did people were motivated years before the tea party came in that's going on right now there's a lot of anti-abortion and basically when voting comes down to the nitty gritty it's always on the portion and so I think we need to be smarter on the left by doing this I think that we need to be more aware we need to engage more we need to rub elbows with those that are doing the direct action so that we can put ourselves in specific and strategic places of power nearly there's a poll that came out nearly 40% of the federal conservative party of Canada that were elected for nearly 40% were endorsed by these anti-abortion groups and these anti-abortion groups are incredibly funded they are very motivated to get monies and they will back a lot of people whether it's somebody who wants to be a mayor candidate and I mean right now it's it's so depressing living in Alberta it really is it's so so so depressing and in fact just last night I was contacted by one of the parties and I was asked for their support and they said you know what we need we need you to back us by maxing out your credit and I'll use that in quotes because that's a direct quote maxing out my credit and I'm thinking where have we gone this is not right the right is basically not playing the same game that the left is playing we need to get in the game and we need to be strategically smart about it otherwise we're going to lose because we've been losing for a long time yeah that dynamic that you're describing is super familiar here to me you know in the United States and I wanted to bring in Dan because you know there's this question is the conservatives everywhere just better at politics like I mean the fact that we're having this conversation about does electoralism matter and to what extent doesn't matter when like basically a hundred percent of Republicans they all believe it matters and they still participate they're still effective like is there something that I'm missing here like our conservatives just out politicking us like what's your take on this because I feel so frustrated and I feel like if we could replicate what the right did albeit on the left then maybe we you know could be successful but then like to replicate that we'd need what they have which is capital and we just don't have that so I'm like it feels relatively hopeless kind of speaking to what like Hilda was talking about well what's your thoughts on this Dan many thoughts I think the kind of the answer to you the first part of your question about why is the right getting so powerful I was just talking about this on power report with one of my regular guests a brilliant person Yasmin Ali Akhan and she was talking about how in Texas on the state level Republicans have just been running a war path and it's not just like in Texas as a alone in this there's a lot of states where on the state and local level Republicans have just gone gangbusters politically and so not only are they like doing gangbusters politically but they like you alluded to have the capital to be able to any time they need to bus protesters to a given area to protest any little bit of leftist action they're able to do so and of course they have the police behind their back and as we mentioned earlier of course they have the local state and local officials behind their back and so of course this isn't I'm not teaching this panel anything because we've all kind of got this pretty clear but the idea of the dichotomy between do you do electoralism versus direct action I've got news for you no Republican ask themselves that question they do it and that's why they're effective and one reason though I think one romantic reason that's partially true about why because I wrestle with this all the time and people on camera and off camera wrestle with this all the time of like why is it so hard for the you know the left to accomplish what the right is accomplishing right at least in gaining political power and the romanticized answer to that is well on the left we're coalition based and we very much care about our coalitions and on the right they're willing to fall in line they don't care if Donald Trump isn't a real Christian and doesn't live very Christ like Mike Pence can still build coalition with him and won't say a word about it and won't talk about the blaring hypocrisy there because everyone in the evangelical side is supposed to understand the political gains that can be made if you just let Donald Trump kind of in for example right is supposed to say oh well we're not that coalition we focus but I think to criticize the left a little bit sometimes ego gets in the way of our ability to see the chessboard and like kind of where we are on the chessboard how badly we're using the game here and I think I'm very much an and person I'm glad we have this conversation of it can be both electoralism and direct action but I think there has to be a balance of not sacrificing anyone's status or a marginalized groups or individuals like abilities to have their say and have their voice but also being able to realize okay we need to be strategic and certain times with how we gain power because ultimately we do want the same things we want to achieve the same things and achieve a more equal just society for everyone and so in coalition building like that and putting our individual egos aside within those egos only then can we start to gain power because we like to consider conservatives is like being full of egos and things like that but at least they can set their own personal egos aside for the whole coalition to gain power and that's a tough pill to swallow for the left but I think that's the best at least I've articulated it as to where we need to kind of figure it out if that makes sense can I add a little bit to that to I was going to to go sure we talked a little bit about abortion and I think that there are fundamentally different motivators for the left in the right in this country and elsewhere to right like if you are willing to believe that your political opponents are killing millions upon millions of babies every year and you but you believe that with all of your heart right you're going to show up you're going to mobilize to do these things and I don't think we necessarily have the same kind of fire under our under our in our bellies you know that a lot of these pro-life people a sensibly pro-life people do right and like this this goes into how like the you know the southern strategy tapped into how that the religious fervorver and belief of evangelicals and that is something that has remained really elusive for the left to emulate in any way and I think it is worth having a conversation like can we can we do the same thing that the right has done and if we can I don't think it looks the same as the southern southern strategy you know like the left can't tap into QAnon you know like we can't pedal in conspiracy the same way which frankly hampers us because it links us down to a reality in a way that the right doesn't necessarily have to for its political figures it's also very uncomfortable to criticize the right because sometimes you feel the need to be like oh you're getting diddled by a conspiracy right and that comes off condescending so it's very much how do you even get on on a platform to have these conversations you know like they can kind of just go well and and I mean to a large degree some some people on the right have really been inoculated against arguments you know against their own conspiracy theories I mean to to river both point I mean if you really if you really feel that being pro-life as it or voting for Trump or whatever as a matter of I mean saving unborn babies you you can't just call these people crazy I mean you can and they are but you have to take into account that they they really truly believe that if you are watching Fox news all day and they're they're beating you over the head with this idea that you know actually critical race theory is super racist well you've been inoculated against any argument you know against the idea that you actually are are supporting racists and when people call you out or say you know I think you are racist or I think you are at least amenable to racist then they say well you know what Laura Ingram warned me that you were going to say that and this is actually true that I'm right yeah we have a we have a big problem also with letting letting like the idea of like the perfect candidate getting the way of like a really good one we get super super picky and I don't understand that at all like I like sometimes there's people that are shitty and you know want to be part of your movement because they you know they're just bad people but like you know Bernie Sanders having a summerhouse is not one of those things that we need to worry about yet that is that comes up when he runs so like I don't I don't know why that's a thing that that we engage with I think there's a there's a big problem with branding as well I think just like the way gritty of like like I don't know Marxist like theory with people that don't even understand like the basics of capitalism and yet are still like like I'm a full capital like we need to calm down on some of the stuff that we we think we know about like we feel like we're smart and a lot of us are very smart but like we really want to tell people we're smart and I don't so to the ego thing like I don't know what that's about use scary words like the like the idea of anarchy what do people think of when we say I'm an anarcho anything they think Molotov cocktails and frankly maybe they ought to but sometimes but sometimes that's not beneficial to the to the idea of just being like oh I'm I'm pro anarchy like and I think most people if you tell them what it is like if you didn't give them the title they'd be like oh that sounds like kind of fine this sounds like a nice beauty and whatever but like we have a huge problem with messaging Republicans have like this vast news apparatus I mean just conservatives at large where where they they're kind of always on the same message and they do this thing where a lot of us consider it a grift and it is definitely down once you get down the YouTube level but like Ben Shapiro will make a video and then everybody in the daily wire will make that same video and then everybody on Fox News will pick up that video and then everybody on Twitter's talking about that same topic and so you'll see no kink at pride discourse for a month and it's like this isn't important this is obfuscating like the actual important things meanwhile they go and they pass like like really harmful things and in National Congress or or the Texas bill that no one was really talking about that until it happened like we were like oh this might come down the pipe we're worried about the supreme court and stuff like when Trump was there and then it sort of went away for a little bit because people get complacent and really what arm of the Republicans whether they realize they're working for them or not it's like we could get by CNN is not doing it you know I mean MSNBC is not doing it for leftists definitely not so yeah to kind of quickly just like sorry just real quick in there you you had a really good point about you know Bernie Sanders House you know makes him not a good candidate and it's just I think that part of the rhetoric that a lot of people on the left engage in overly focuses on hip hypocrisy because it makes us feel really superior to be like ha that Republican just did something very hypocritical and it's you know it's funny and like a Twitter ha ha sense but like it has gotten to the point where it no longer feels really real to people like it's not like a real criticism and it feels abstract from reality and because it's not proposing like an actual criticism other than ha you said one thing and did another and we need to make things real for people whether that is in the conversation about direct action and mutual aid and how it relates to you know electoralism whether it is in our rhetoric for trying to reach liberals or unradicalized folks or whether it's talking about Republicans you know like we need to move away and improve our rhetoric and critique in these regards what I was going to throw into the conversation is like Mike you asked why is it that Republicans have held on to so much power for so long and the left seems to have this intractable nature of like not being able to to be as successful and I think that Hilda really hit the nail on the head as to where the left goes from here and what the future holds for us and like for where Bojack said is like we have to nail it down to reality if you look at your community there are all these like really unsexy positions on your zoning board on your school board on your like I myself after the election was able to get appointed to the planning board in my municipality there I can fight for affordable housing I can fight back against developers who are gentrifying that's how the right was able to hold on to power like we need to send the left into your communities and take over all these local board positions and 10 15 20 years down the line all of a sudden now we have a left this government because we've been sort of getting in at the ground level of all these places and that's where I think personally the left goes from here and that's how we get the power in the future that the right seems to have now yeah really I just really fast on that like I while we're focused on what the left doesn't have and what we're talking about and just as Hector was coming into what the left can actually combat with this because I love presenting solutions especially in this space where we have audiences when we're talking to them on the internet we love these audiences but ultimately it can feel like it's just us the person on the other side of the screen in the screen we want to kind of give them solutions at least I want to try to and what I sort of going towards local action direct action this is now the before times but for folks who are on the panel who have done door-to-door knocking and canvassing and things like that you'll actually understand there's something beautiful in the fact that no American has any consistent political opinions like they're all over the place like or I think maybe the same thing is true across the board like no one fits neatly usually except for extreme hyperpartisans in a left or right box you can kind of talk them into any sort of direction when you like kind of remove the least crazy people from you know the Fox News and SMBC CNN echo chambers because in reality these echo chambers Twitter's only used by 3% of Americans the best night of Rachel Maddow or CNN is still half of like a boring sports sporting event and reality not many people are paying attention to this so you can kind of use the leftist opportunities as a blank canvas to show people like by doing school board by doing any kind of local thing like that how leftist government can actually work so that people have a living example to go against the propaganda that you see online and also just like the connection between mutual aid and people say oh mutual aid direct action do this Venmo this person cash out this person it's kind of less about what you're doing online it's all important because like these people's lives are tangibly improved by this but when you when you are visible in a community and you're helping them out whether you're like passing out frozen water bottles to unhoused people in the like hot summer whatever you are visible in a community and you're building trust with that community so when you come back around and you keep helping them and then when those times you come back around and say hey there's an election happening I know like we've been like hanging out and we start gone to know each other and we start to know about the things you care about do you trust me on supporting these people who I trust and will make your lives better that's where the mutual aid the direct action starts to combine with the electoralism and you can actually do both so I encourage anyone watching this convince other people like that's the connection that needs to be made to turn the tide with these things yeah one more tiny little one more tiny little thing is also the language that we use like the language that we use is so important because sometimes conservative language is so much easier to digest right it's fear-based it's it's simple and sometimes I feel like there are people who aren't overly engaged in leftist discourse who who might not even know what the term mutual aid or direct action even means which is basically just like helping those in need that's it right so we really need to focus on like simplifying the language and I think that's something that Bernie Sanders was attempting to do in the Democratic primaries like he really did simplify his language and that's why Trump was so appealing to the Republican party because he was speaking to a group of disengaged people who could understand what he was saying in very simplistic terms I mean we were sitting there going like what sorry but a lot of other people were sitting there being like oh okay that makes sense to me I can understand that and I feel like sometimes on the left we get lost in the theoretical and don't focus on the practical enough yeah I also think maybe getting into politics at a local level can feel daunting to a lot of people especially on the left like especially the the you know leftist a lot of us are labor like laborers like some of us are streamers we're very very fortunate and to be able to do this job but a lot of people that agree with us are like you know poor and and I was very poor and that's kind of what radicalized me and started to send me down this path is like this is a shitty system this does not work I also think this might not be very popular opinion maybe we should stop using words they're scared of like socialism and maybe just use words like labor like maybe I and just just to warm them up a little bit to the idea because when you say that America I don't know how it works other places but we say in America they go nope that's the that Mao killed people and it's like what do we talk what are we talking about I'm not Mao do I what like I'm talking about a totally different thing I'm talking about like this specific like here's what I want and you're like just out of sounds like a thing that's bad and so like I think if we form it like there's already labor movements in the United States in a lot of ways like I live in Michigan which is a huge union a lot of the Midwest is sort of like that a lot of factories and stuff although you know dwindled over time but people like United Auto Workers Union Union the UAW is very strong here to different efficacies but like just just the idea of like having a workers union or a labor party like the idea of that and maybe branding it as as you know because it really is it's about labor and about the the you know the the interaction that labor has with capital and all the things that work its way up so I don't know I just and I also think it's like I said like it's just a daunting aspect for some people to think about the idea of like all the stuff that's on their plate they're working like at least one job maybe more to make ends meet paycheck paycheck to paycheck to maybe run a political campaign to be like their comptroller like so well it's I don't know how to get them all to do that the circles background to something I briefly mentioned which is like play to your skill set you know like if you know how to grill that makes a lot easier to go out and grill for people like in the wake of a disaster you know people need food or like if you if you have an affect that is really resonating in more conservative areas more rural areas then maybe you're you're a better candidate to talk to one of those people then I am as a trans lady you know like there are there are people who are better or worse at different things and we should play to our various strengths because I I think the left has a lot of diverse strengths and I like just as as off the top of my head like bow of the fifth column there's a really good job at reaching like rural more conservative types and it is through his his word choices and his affect and that is really successful and something I couldn't do even though we both do similar things and so it is okay to play to your strengths I think and to let people play to theirs yeah we're kind of like almost I feel like this conversation is very productive because you all are kind of offering solutions to people and that's it's hard to you know it's hard to get people motivated like I always say that like trying to get leftists to do anything is like hurting cats like it's really difficult and so the final person that I'm going to bring in here is professor Harvey this is the question that I want to ask to you has it always been this difficult like you are a teacher of history has it always been like this has there always been like this I don't know motivation deficit on the left or is this like a new phenomenon that is you know the take on this are we kind of just seeing history repeat itself or is this like a uniquely new thing for this era in terms of like people having to really be remotivated and and talked up to get involved in direct action what have you well the first thing to understand is that this is social media is very late to this whole question I mean what we've seen has been underway for I'm going to use around number 45 years of nothing less than class war from above that was very effective back in the 70s in in mobilizing as well Christian evangelicals in particular so and there are ways in which that you know I that's a whole lecture basically but you gotta believe me this goes back well back into the 70s and what's really kind of interesting is that there are many public statements and records as that doesn't require a lot of research there was a declaration of war to war issued essentially in a number of ways between 1971 and 75 which actually named the targets okay for example it named poor people's movement it named the labor movement it named especially public employee unionism it named young people it named the women's movement it laid out every single movement that came out of the 60s they laid out as a the sort of grand problem and it was put very most effectively in a little thing called the crisis of democracy and somebody mentioned conspiracies before there was no conspiracy here it was a group called the trilateral commission was made up of literally every single major figure political and business from Western Europe the United States in Japan who was not at that time currently holding office and this included George H. W. Bush Jimmy Carter it was put together by David Rockefeller as a big new Virginia this was a major public organization and the the section basically it was sort of authored from the American perspective by a man named Samuel Huntington a professor at Harvard and he said we have a crisis of democracy because we have an excess of democracy and we what we have to do is we need to reduce democracy and as I said he pointed out all the culprits now out of this kind of declaration of war which had nothing to do by the way with but in the course of that decade the Democrats were so utterly emptied of any kind of real politics by way of Jimmy Carter that you had the emergence of both this called a corporate democratic politics as well as the right wing Republican party immerse so this all begins back in the 70s long before anything called social media how I remember in the early 90s or 80s whatever was being fascinated by the facts machine I don't think it's a matter of that I think what it is is that literally they targeted I'm I don't mean to sound like a broker they targeted labor in the 70s the fastest growing enterprise probably in the 70s was the union busting law firm and at the high point of that or the culmination of that was the patco strike which was 40 years ago this year that in which Ronald Reagan fired the the thousands upon thousands of air traffic controllers who who are on strike it's a whole tragic story in itself but you've got that that war basically on the working class that began in the 70s and it it literally was articulated in a way that it included the war on voting rights it included a war on women's rights to control their own bodies I mean they really were very a very effective and what was the left well it was in fact splintered identity politics splintered it young and old splintered it I act I'm I've been a member of DSA for as long as I can remember but I sure as hell wouldn't run around saying vote socialist because it's just not going to win the day but I do think and and by the way I think Bernie Sanders blew it when he said when he insisted on calling himself a Democratic socialist I also think he blew it because he he literally was an FDR Democrat and ignored the whole tradition what I'm getting at is that the left is such a mess it is such a mess and I'll just close because you guys are the young ones who are the young left media the young left media is failing itself somebody talked about the message goes out and there's it what is it called you know the message goes out in every right wing voice every right wing voice says the same thing whether it's whether it's Ben Shapiro or Hannity it's all the same okay now on the left is so much diversity on the left which is in itself great but it's also the case that there's no there's no there's no vision coming out of the left yeah okay look I think everything will single thing all of you have said is true I mean I wouldn't it take issue with any one of them but it's also the case tell me what the vision of the left is what is the vision for the left what would be the good America or the good Western world the good global picture and I haven't even talked about the climate crisis which literally fuck us all right yeah I actually I actually think we're fortunate to have the one thing Americans desire most from a politician's mouth and that's the word freedom I think we offer the most like just livable freedom from our politics that's out there whether it comes like like just the idea of of just the healthcare issue the freedom to go to any hospital to any doctor in any network that wouldn't exist at any time for any reason without cost out of pocket is more freedom than having a very specific limited insurance and in your specific doctor in your specific space so even to that I think we have this thing the idea of freedom that's been co-opted by the right that I think we could rally around to some extent most left disagree I think that if that was our for lack of a better term like one of the 10 commandments of whatever we want to run as if that was like number one up there freedom to live however your life is and this goes to the trans argument this goes to this goes to a gun ownership you know leftists aren't necessarily against being able to have guns so that's not even really a thing we have to like rest from from you know it's not like a liberal thing it's not like Joe Biden ergo they're going to take our guns like okay have your guns then but but sort of the the black communities sort of the gay communities and so does everybody else and you can't bully these people so like there's lots of there's lots of things that I think we could get out of just co-opting that word yeah I mean look I I'm I'm going to make a point by way of please do and you know the United States literally led the way in social democracy I mean we don't even think how many people were ever told that public education is the first major social democratic initiative in the world and it started here how many people were ever told that national parks are social democratic because in most other countries they were royal parks right it begins here I mean it's over and over again this kind of lack of a better way of putting of this kind of amnesia but it's also the case and and this is what I'm going to hold against your generation no less is the fact that literally there is no talk of what should be the talk and that is that there is that what makes America America in its better sense as opposed to its darkest sense of this dystopian moment that really you know I asked myself dystopian I don't really think of this as dystopian because it's happened before but that just means we've had a lot of dystopian moments and for vast numbers of people dystopian dystopia was the state of the land okay and remains but it is the case that look I mean we literally have seen tremendous historic this not just historical but historic victories and and how dare the right hijack history ever since Reagan and where is it where where is the left in terms of taking back the story that I'm look I'm not looking for a Pollyanna story what I'm looking at is and I'm not going even I'm not even going to deny the worst exploitation and oppression I that's part of it but the real story that needs to be told is that struggles do matter a filib you know I think it was a filibrand you know nothing is or Frederick Douglas may have said at first nothing is one without struggle you know or as a Philip Randolph said freedom isn't given it's one I mean and but you have to remind people but by the way I'm correcting myself about something Walter Benjamin of the Frankfurt School once you know basically it's not a vision of the future that that will motivate the struggle it's it's seeking revenge for one's grandparents and what they suffered that's the thing that was checks my arguments okay but it is the case that that that history is a very powerful intellectual and rhetorical weapon and we just aren't wielding it yeah well folks what I want to do now is we'll give the panelists a 2.5 minute break we're going to cut to our featured content creator of the week the final featured content creator of the show and then we will get to our last question and we're kind of like headed here right like this is kind of gravitating towards a critique of the modern left I'm included in this we're all included in this you know we're we're definitely including ourselves but yeah we'll be right back folks this is our featured content creator it is Christina no my name is Christina a.k.a. Christina and I am a twitch streamer a lot of stuff that I stream on twitch is mostly political I also dabble into talking about pop culture music movies comics just about anything pretty much just chatting I also dabble into cosplaying I like showing off my cosplays and I want to encourage people to cosplay more the reason why I'm doing this twitch streaming is my is because my father died from lung cancer back in May so it's just my mother and I and we have full-time jobs we clean houses we're living and we cannot do that forever my mother shouldn't have to do that forever she should be able to retire even before she reaches the retirement age so I'm doing all this for her she doesn't understand it completely but she's getting there and I do hope that I create a community that's very inclusive friendly I really want a lot of leftist to get to know each other to connect and that's what I really hope for I do hope to make this my full-time job eventually I'm still new I'm still starting sober I'm going to get there though I just got to keep pushing to keep trying it hasn't been easy but things are looking up I also like to talk about my mental health a lot because I really want to make sure that people feel safe and that they know that they can depend on you know each other and also to I like to show off my cat Frankie he's meowing right now because he knows I'm recording a video lastly I would just like to thank Mike for platforming me and giving me a chance yeah I don't know what else to say besides just you know feel free to follow me on Twitch or even maybe if I'm if you think I'm going up you can feel free to subscribe I try to stream almost every day and yeah hopefully you know you like what I put out folks that was Christina there will be linked in the description box you're watching this on YouTube her streams are fantastic she just did a um a cosplay of who is it Harley Quinn that's the Batman character right yeah yeah Harley Quinn I I'm doing that's like my favorite character in Batman but she did a great Harley Quinn cosplay I mean all around a phenomenal person for a pizza also on point so um what was that sorry that's hard okay so folks oh no there we go there we go okay so be sure to subscribe to and support um Christina so I want to move on to the second topic this is kind of what we all touched on in the first part of the show and this is a question that's incredibly awkward and uncomfortable but I think it's really important that we address this because we're all thinking it but not a lot of people are saying it or they're saying it but they're kind of like pointing the finger and too dysfunctional to succeed without leadership because we all know that after burning 2020 the left has been a mess as as Harvey said there's been nonstop in fighting grifters pseudo leftists have risen up as de facto leaders of certain leftist factions there's disagreement on strategy disagreement on policy priorities there's even disagreement on voting if you vote for you know Joe Biden or if you vote third party are you an ally are you a comrade all of these questions have become so divisive and this is why I ask the question are we able to accomplish anything and unite at all without a leader does there have to be like some sort of a leader that rises up be it Nina Turner AOC or do you think that as grown adults one day we'll be able to come together and recognize that the apocalypse is near and we might want to get our our shit together Spencer I want to go to you first because you focus a lot on media critique and a lot that the media itself has done as a terms of in terms of like leading to leftist disunity but one thing that I was kind of thinking about is do you think there's any and I'm kind of asking you to psychoanalyze leftists but we're all doing this here do you think that like this idea that leftist feel excluded from the mainstream like you know there's the Democratic Party and the Republican Party both right and center right but leftists are kind of left out on their own so do you think that this sense that like we're outcast has anything to do with it and this sense that like okay well if my identity is outcast then I'm more outcast than you I'm more left than you I'm more this than you give me your take on this because my my thoughts are scattered and I feel frustrated and even when I try to recommend leftist do something good like touch grass and I include myself in that that's even taken as like an attack so what are your thoughts on this because I feel like it's it's really discouraging to see what's what's taking place I think for for one thing your view of politics and what the left is is probably very different if you aren't ever on Twitter so that's one thing so true there does seem to be this game of on the left where you know the core project is like proving your intransigence and whoever can be the most intransigent you know is the most left you know if if as a leftist you can talk about how it's hypocritical for Bernie Sanders to have you know a nice house then you've you've won the game and that's that's the real project that's politics but yeah I mean I I think there's definitely a sense that leftists are left out of mainstream media I mean I remember when rising came on the scene and Crystal Ball was being compared to Rachel Maddow she was you know the lefts Rachel Maddow you know can can these movements ever really get off the ground without a serious media I mean I don't know and then that kind of comes back to the the question of journalism and local journalism just being gutted I mean newsrooms are like half capacity in the last 20 years a lot of counties and districts don't even have local papers and then sort of going back to the previous question I I want to I want to flip the prompt a little bit from should we focus more on electoral politics or mutual aid and direct action I what do people think about phrasing it more as focusing on federal or local because I think local politics state and local politics and city politics the direct action and electoralism are much more intertwined you know I I don't know how DSA works in other states but for New York New York DSA has gotten a lot of wins and that's all been on the state and local level I mean in Albany there are six socialists and they call themselves socialists for city council and you know New York City Council district in New York has a hundred thousand people in it so that's no joke there are at at least two at least two socialists I mean people who call themselves socialists who are going to go to City Hall in January and they're very New York DSA they're very judicious on who they about who they endorse and the races they get into I mean they were involved in Bernie obviously whoever runs in 2024 I mean unless it's Rashida Tlaib I they're they're not going to be interested in they focus on on races that they you know can feasibly win and they've done a lot of work and then those races and and the issues that those people are involved in you know are necessarily local so I would say and I'm sorry I guess this is really answering the the last question but I I would say if you have the where with all if you're watching this I would say feel free to ignore federal politics other than you know voting for not Trump I guess yeah yeah know that I think that's a good point about the federal versus local I think that that is a really important distinction and it's important to kind of like draw those lines for people who you know don't necessarily know any better better or they tune in and then tune back out yeah yeah there's my thoughts on the issue in terms of leftist infighting it also does go back to electoral ism where there's this sense that you know if somebody is focused on electoral ism that's negative or if they're only focused on on direct action that's that's negative and I feel like we have to be really open about doing this in a number of ways right like I kind of in for this kitchen sync approach where we throw everything at the wall and see what sticks let's just try everything so we can try to be successful direct action electoral ism everything we possibly can do but it's kind of getting to the point where leftist factionalization has almost become a hindrance and I'm wondering like to what point do we really turn into our own worst enemies like one one thing that I've really been concerned about is like are we making ourselves look bad to the normies because if I see like and don't use the right normie yeah my my help don't I I promise I won't use it outside of this context but it's like we want average more I'm like you people you rubes yeah I mean it's like when I see some of the discourse that takes place on Twitter and don't discourse on Twitter as demon mama says don't ever do discourse on Twitter but when I see it happen I think Matt if one of my normie like liberal friends leftists are absolutely fucking insane so I just I kind of feel like we all need to give ourselves a pep talk and Hector you've like you've stayed busy and above the fray as the left leftist kind of like shit the bed everywhere like what what's your take on this because my again my thoughts are really scattered and I'm just trying to like find some way to like unite leftists that are still on the left that are well intentioned and I don't necessarily know that there's any one magic bullet but in your opinion like what would help do you think that we need a leader or is it or is it like climate change like is it a policy like what are your thoughts on this sorry that's that's super broad but it's just there's so much like with this topic no and I see a lot of the same discourse that you see and I'm frustrated by it as well and like ostensibly the answer to your question in my opinion is that yes react that's a movement is when there was a strong leader there in 2016 2020 when Bernie was doing it even 2018 when AOC was running for the first time that's when I really saw the left act in a way that your normie friends would be like wow these people look like a legitimate political movement that's on the rise and the thing about the left and we touched on this before for who those leaders are we're not going to fall online to the extent that the right does and say well we can sell this person off enough to the normies so let's stick with this person our leader whoever it is will and and I think that it'll have to be something just because of the way the left is it'll have to be people transitioning and we won't stick with one leader for too long because the brand on one person for too long it's almost like if you had like a left this like infinity gauntlet and like you wanted to give it off to one person like they can't keep it forever and eventually you'd probably want them to give it to somebody else and and that's just sort of the way I see it working but honestly I do think that the best we've ever been is when we had somebody who was like you know at least like vibing enough to movement behind them it left us infinity gauntlet implies a left us Avengers so that's kind of my opinion is not necessarily a leader but leaders like like the civil rights movement MLK is like who we think of but there was many there were so many people just for that movement which obviously led into a broader leftist movement and I think maybe that would be a good way to go where you have people like you know a Bernie Sanders in there that sometimes is like you know clearly like the the top person that we're excited about but would it be the worst thing to ask for these any major leftist organizations to like get together at the in the same space and do a thing and like actually make a broader movement because I feel like you know we're all very disparate and we interact with each other in ways and I mean even on in the smaller versions of this like Twitch communities or YouTube communities like this kind of thing happens time we end up yelling at each other so like right what what about like a summit what couldn't we do something to that effect like I mean I'm I'm small potatoes as far as like actual political like people things happen but we know enough people around to like help that out in like a part of the appeal that I think our politics have is that we do speak to people that are are online and have found out these politics through this way and we could support these politicians through the kind of virility of social media and Twitch and things like that like that could be the way we work but I think in real life it needs to be like actual major people getting together does that make sense like we don't have we don't have and also like we don't the resources are really disparate so we don't have money so like if that happens that's a way to like pool it's collectivization is like the core of it so why don't we actually do that with politics why don't we practice what the whole thing is about yeah I'm wondering right something yeah I don't know how it would work I'm just saying like is this a viable thing could left con be a thing I don't know somebody put a comment about left con I I'm trying to find it now shout out to that person but yeah I mean like something right sorry Dan I kind of cut you off go ahead and jump in here no I I really want to give folks space but I mean I just have so much to say about this especially because what we're reflecting at is as time on the left where there we just there's a vacuum essentially of a thing or movement I kind of felt like this post occupy occupy was kind of my kind of radicalizing moment but after that you sort of how you know you had your media figures here and there from it who had eventually become your like 10 pools etc. But then you kind of had like no sort of direction as to wear this coalition this motivation of seeing oh yeah left us were organized and put together but without any sort of avenue to put that energy you you get yeah like like in and real when real politics when you get a power vacuum somewhere you get a lot of bad actors who take advantage of that power vacuum and use their advantage and real politics it's like military groups with oftentimes like religious undertones and on YouTube is Jimmy door but the main the anything I want to get out is like just as Democrats for example is like a good instance of hey let's use some lefty media prowess I mean it was started with jank Yuga and Kyle Kalinsky in mind and I'm gonna dot dot dot that there and let people Google the rest of that history but like it was the idea of let's bring on the progressive community on YouTube and on the internet this is like 2016 2017 2017 is to ultimately bring on candidates like AOC and Corey Bush and Jamal Bowman et cetera Rashida Tlaib like that so we call the squad now came out of justice Democrats it was this idea and again without while letting people do the research on how that has ended up you've gotten some great pros and great cons like on the one hand that's built tangible power you've gotten people into office on the other hand I don't think it's that connected to the online space and being able to mobilize that and honestly for better or worse I'd like justice Democrats to be as far away from the left online as possible right now because it's not great and I don't want that I don't think it's a good thing politically to show off but I think we've done that and justice Democrats is also the other point is going to make is kind of like the exception to the rule because not to call out any particular entities any more than I already have let's say but um there are different movements and I'm going to stop right there but there are different groups out there that put together political parties and groups and try to coalition build but they usually miss out on that they usually overway one thing they way on oh we're a bunch of YouTubers and pod casters therefore we have the influence in the cache to bring about a bunch of crowds all across the get them to mobilize on something it's it's usually you're missing both sides of it and I will give credit like janky you're Kyle Kalinsky the other folks um where he'd say he'd like within justice Democrats did a really good job of melding the online strategy with the political strategy but you've really got to do both smartly and you have to again check your ego and not thinking one is two more important than the other in order to power I think yeah I wanted to kind of Oh sorry go ahead I was gonna actually I was gonna bring you in Hilda because you you kind of have your feet in both camps right so you're you're online but I don't think like you're not terminally online like you don't come across this terminally online to me so it's like is are we um are we over emphasizing like the online left impact in your opinion or is it really an issue that does kind of have real world consequences I'll let you go ahead it does have real consequences after the 26 election when Bernie lost it was like a punch in the gut for all of us that were left just in Canada because whatever goes on in the United States will domino into Canada so we were hoping with the discussion of Medicare for all we were hoping that that finally would happen for the Americans because as Canadians we like to think that we are just better than the Americans we like to pat ourselves on the back we're not we're a bunch of shit weasels here also we really are as long as we are just a little bit better than you that we can basically turn our nose up in touch book or birds in the air but then when Bernie lost in 2020 that was not only just a punch in the gut but that was like a mixed martial arts kick to the gut it was horrific it was horrific and so we do need people that are charismatic who are this beacon as a leader the only reason why Canada got the Medicare for all or what we call the Unicare you know uh universal healthcare is because of Tommy Douglas he was the leader of the NDP party he successfully got it passed through the House of Commons he was not even the Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson was the Prime Minister and fun fact um Keeper Sutherland that Tommy Douglas that was his grandson there so I mean okay interesting it was it was just that there was this beacon of hope where this got passed and it did have a lot of strife with respect to the doctors the doctors were all arguing oh no we're going to be bringing in all these people from out of the country no it didn't happen and then when that didn't happen for us when the 2020 election when Bernie lost we're thinking oh well maybe with a pandemic that might kick it in the high gear for you guys and sadly it hasn't happened for you so sadly that's not going to happen for us and for people that aren't aware of the Canadian healthcare system it fucking sucks it's horrific it's awful I mean we we can go to the doctor sure we can pick any doctor we want to sure but our dental is not covered so if you happen to need filling well I guess you know that's just not an option for you if you happen to need glasses apparently vision is optional in our world over here if you happen to need prescription drugs that's not covered either mental health isn't covered physical therapy massage therapy infertility I don't know about you but I I think people need to be able to populate in order to make the world go around home care is not covered long-term care is not covered again I could list the number of things that aren't covered but as Canadians we like to get on our real high horse here and take a victory lap because we think that we are just a little bit better than you guys but another thing that was striking was in 2020 there was a poll where 75% of Canadians were very proud of their healthcare and here is where it gets sideways and wonky because we feel that it is not as bad as what the Americans have we have I mean if that's your bar exactly we have a hole in the ground lowered the bar covered it up you know and gently walked across it with our you know horse that we're riding on but we you definitely need to have some sort of a beacon a person Tommy Douglas was that for us in the 60s and see I'm I'm oldest fuck I was born before anyone landed on the moon I can remember how awful it was and so this beacon of hope with Bernie it's not there anymore we don't have a Nina Turner in Canada we don't have a Bernie Sanders we don't have anybody on the left at all that is this beacon all the left in the can in Canada is doing is trying to drag us across the centerline onto the right there is no reason why we shouldn't be yanking them over to try and have that discussion with us which goes back to the original points that I was making in the previous section where we need to put people in strategically placed positions of power we just we really do and I mean this isn't controversial people need to be able to live it's not a radical idea and so right now because Canada's in this what we call the erection of election mode meaning we're erecting all of our signs and you know getting ready and people are measuring themselves against who the other candidate is but unless we have some leader to unite us then we will not be able to focus and amalgamate and consolidate all of our efforts for the greater good we just won't yeah what I'm wondering is it seems like the consensus so far with everyone who's who's spoken on this is leadership is really important I mean one thing that I always go back to is occupy as dan brought up and how you know that without any leader I mean sure it's admirable that it's horizontally organized but at the end of the day you do need somebody to kind of be the face of that movement and so my question to Harvey is like do you think that absent of some sort of an actual like left a super star can unions can organizations do the trick or do we actually need someone to be like the face the icon for the movement like I I don't want to be like putting too much stock into celebrity worship but it really felt like having Bernie like this idea of him being president really united a lot of people and so I just don't know like that we're going to get that again at least in the near future so is there anything else like a lower standard that we can try to hit lower to like lower see you know what I mean like it is now it is fascinating to consider the fact that between Bernie who turned 80 today I think it is yes today right happy birthday Bernie okay and the squad what who's the oldest member of the squad probably believe I'm all the she not to be prying into her personal life but can't be 40s yeah I mean yeah mid early 40s think about the gap there okay and I don't know how all row comma is but you think about in the Democratic Party at least there's this increase is amazing sort of age gap between the most prominent left figure in America and the rising stars now the fact that we're on the verge of dystopia becoming apocalypse leaving that aside for the moment the prospects to the left are great if you think about young people you think about your generation I mean the prospects are great so the question of leadership is crucial okay for what it's worth I you know I should have said this of the outset my campaign my crusade for some years now maybe not as many as I think has been to try to get younger and older politicians in America to start talking about something like an economic bill of rights that FDR proposed that Bernie tried to resurrect a bit but didn't do it enough and and it's I can tell you and you're not going to you haven't heard a lot about it but here in Wisconsin it's definitely becoming a possible cause it may well become that in California in the next couple of years so so I mean there are things on the way now in terms of leadership I mean I've already made clear that I don't think the left can ever redeem itself without the labor movement redeeming itself I'm quite serious about that but I also think that if we're going to think in terms of personalities and I don't mean personalities in the sense of the best face for the movement but the energy that would be involved I think Sarah Nelson of the airline flight attendance literally could be the next the next major figure on on the left not as an electoral not for the electoral voice but as a a working person's left figure and the only question is whether the labor movement opposed to splitting into their respective you know trade unionism versus industrial unionism versus service unionism I mean but but she is incredible absolutely incredible and and there are other folks around labor movement like that now um again in politics I'm you can see this younger generation emerging but there's that real I mean who's there in there in there 50s say because that's kind of a prime moment to emerge as a major political figure I don't know oh by the way can I just go back and make one comment we were talking before and I was whoever said it I remember was Hector or or Jake or whomever and I was thinking yeah so Bernie was this angry old guy and AOC was this sort of talk about uplifting kind of figure okay I mean I'll never forget I thought chief it's the shame if to edge but Bernie served an incredible purpose again for all of what I think it was failings and and AOC it's become this thing where even people on the left find it imperative to pick on her I mean you know I use the F word the F bomb before I don't know for supposed to be doing that you totally can okay what the fuck is wrong with people this is the that's promising figure imaginable on the left and I'll give you one example so when she after she was elected she arrived in DC and they did a number of interviews with her on all the major networks and she she she said something really interesting and I thought this could really make a difference she talked about Lincoln and Roosevelt as as really progressive radical figures in American politics we can fault them we can definitely fall that we can take anyone apart by the way that's something else the left has got to stay start taking apart heroes got to stop taking apart heroes okay that's like ridiculous but and what happened my own peers a couple of left historians criticized her for making too much of of Lincoln and FDR and talk about fucked I thought what what the fuck is this about and made the New York time they actually made the New York really yeah you know so we've got to stop going after heroes there you know there are no saints that's all there are no saints got to get over that okay I can't remember the only time I've ever voted and not held my nose is when I voted for Bernie but I still vote okay yeah now yeah I want to ask this question to river riverboat Jack because I've been trying to be introspective after 2020 and like I notice even myself like kind of to what Professor Harvey was talking about I even noticed myself like nitpicking politicians who I like where it's like they'll say something and it's not even necessarily that meaningful but I'll just in my mind it'll like trigger me and like my lizard brain will start like going all crazy and like the Red Alerts will be going off so I mean like do you think that the left does have this issue of really tearing each other down not necessarily like just leaders and like heroes if you want to use that word but like just each other as well like I think that that's part of the issue it's like we really tear each other down and even if we weren't political if the left was like some other amorphous organization around some other thing that would still be super toxic so do you think that overall this is a widespread issue of us just like ripping each other to shreds I think that it's a couple of different things right like I think it comes from the fact that a lot of a lot of people in the online left are extremely online and a lot of us are you know we're trying to claw for clout you know essentially because like it is our job they're like this is our this is our little fiefdom that we're building up right and a lot of us don't necessarily have like this unifying overarching goal right like we we agree on a few things right like Medicare for all but if like it doesn't look like we're getting traction on that well then the next best thing for for your clout is well I have a the controversial take on Abraham Lincoln the most beloved American president and that will get me a lot of internet clout right like that's going to further a leftist mission in attacking Abraham Lincoln right like really that that is an ego-building exercise it is a it online clout building exercise it's not something that's going to win you political support and if we're talking about actually making a difference then yeah we need to actually have this focus on our rhetoric and focus on our subjects and focus on these larger issues that we agree on right like we should we shouldn't be getting bogged down in the weeds we should be talking about you know labor organize how to how to organize a union how how to if you wanted to organize a Democratic workplace how to go out and make a difference and further the cause of Medicare for all we need to talk about these things in a way that actually furthers our goals rather than just uh ego essentially yeah I think that that's something that is lacking yeah I think that you know for all these these issues that we're bringing up it kind of centers on like the terminally online and even though that is a detriment like being online has a lot of negative side effects it also should in theory really emboldened the left I mean we have someone on from Canada Hildubbies we have picks from Australia so why isn't there this opportunity for like an international leftist solidarity movement and I really feel like Michael Brooks was trying to like force this all in that direction but something just you know people I don't know what it is picks do you want to weigh in as someone from a different country like seeing the shit show play out here and then you also kind of have your own shit show like what is it about the left that's just like incapable currently of coming together and doing anything I mean we have the easiest issue in my opinion to rally around currently is climate change because it affects all of us on the planet so I feel like that should like that's not this one insular thing like it's not oh well there's this community that doesn't have housing or there's this country without Medicare for all like this is the one thing that should in theory facilitate this building of an international left but it hasn't happened so like what's your take on that I mean it's hard to psychoanalyze everyone on the left but well I agree that I think there's a few things that come into play I think what we're really struggling with at the moment not only online but globally is our overall conceptualization of leadership so basically out our conceptualization of leadership still looks like a cis white strong male figure right and so on the left where you know generally we like to be very inclusive of you know lots of different oppressed groups who are fighting for their own you know dear cause right we in a place where we need the support of white men basically to lift up marginalized voices and to make sure that the left as a wider spectrum of people are also lifting up marginalized voices indigenous voices queer voices all of those things and so what I think ends up happening especially online is that we see you know if you look at the online political space which is where I am and you see the leaders in the space who are generally white cis males still right I think what ends up happening because of the kind of commodification of identity these leaders instead of focusing on bringing up the entire movement as a whole look for points of difference so that they can specialize their brand of leftist leadership over all of the other kinds of brands of leftist leadership which ends up in Twitter fights hate videos all of the things that you just see and you're like why um so there's so many things that are happening but I think what we really need to focus on as a cohesive movement because we we have major opportunities right now with our access to information the internet look at us all having a conversation right now it is easier to disperse the movement over a wide range of things and I think it's about inclusive language it's I I never used to engage I have been talking about politics for a couple of years now but I never used to engage in the panel space because I was like I am going to get it live this is a terrible idea like um but then my changing kind of my thinking kind of changed when I started to look at things from a more like intersection or perspective because if you don't see the space right both online and IRL as it exists right now any of the fixes that you're putting in place any of the leaders that you are putting in place aren't going to be what's needed like if you don't see the space as it exists you can't put the right leader in the right position and I think because we look it out there's something really comforting about kind of grouping down right into into factions which is what happens on the left because you know you see you see people who are really comfortable in a queer community you see people who are really comfortable in a black community an indigenous community and the thing is we really do have to work on like bringing all of those communities together while at the same time lifting up the voices of the most marginalized anyway that's really we need a new conceptualization of leadership which is inclusive of diverse voices yeah then that's that's really interesting part of it too I think is a lot of us you know since zoomers possibly might be more affected by this you know growing up with social media and the internet it's kind of easy to be introverted even if you're not like it's just the easiest thing to you know post videos by yourself and not engage with these panels I mean I doing these panels was something that I kind of forced myself to do after many years because it takes time it takes work and you know some people have social anxiety so you know you you might not necessarily want to put people in this position where they have to speak in front of a group of people and talk about complex things so it's you know there's a lot of things to consider but in terms of leadership the conceptualization of leadership is really important organizational individual but also something that Spencer touched on earlier was like a media leader since you know the left doesn't have that and my question to Spencer is is there hope I mean we've kind of touched on the egos on the left especially of like indie media personalities right we're always butting heads and doing attack videos on each other like is there a hope of like some sort of unified or larger like cohesive apparatus on the left that could in some way start to facilitate like leadership or be a leader in and of itself like what's your take on this because you you study a lot of mainstream media and I think that the issues that plague independent media are different from but there's still our issues nonetheless so what's your like overall prediction on like where the indie media movement is going to be like five 10 years from now like will it continue to factionalize or do you think there might be some sort of unity in the future you know Chris Hedges said he's not a Marxist because although he he agrees with Marx's writing he disagrees with the idea of having hope I don't necessarily have I mean hope for the future I think you know talking about leaders leaders popping up I mean it's the luck of the draw right and they very rarely get elected maybe maybe sometimes on the local level I mean like I said in New York you know we have socialists in Albany realistically you know Bernie was never going to get in because the mainstream Democratic Party was never going to let that happen as far as media I mean the thing with corporate media is that it's it's lubricated by money and advertising I mean that that is that is the glue that holds it all together there there is no necessary connection between individual indie media outlets so everyone can be factionalized and atomized and you know it doesn't necessarily matter to anyone's bottom line so it's never going to stop I I mean I I don't have hope I mean yeah you you you fight because you have to and you do what you can in movements or mutual aid or direct action you show up to protest to you know as as much as as much as you can you talk about the things you want to talk about because you know hopefully it's helpful at the very least it's cathartic I mean a lot of the topics of my videos are just things that I saw on TV and I felt annoyed about enough to do a video on but yeah yeah spite well and some some of the things like with with mainstream media is there's these certain incentives right like the advertising dollars the ratings you know which leads to a sensationalist bias but on the left I think that we should be more open about the incentives here and the incentives at it's been really obvious that like click bait and people is very very it makes you successful right like if I do a video where I talk about climate change you know nobody's going to click on that nobody cares about it but if I change that video to where Dave Rubin said this dumb thing about climate change people are going to click on that so it's tough and Dan like knowing that this is the case knowing that nobody is perfect knowing that a bunch of people will log on and they don't care about anything but success like deal with that like I'm I'm trying to teach my viewers like media literacy in some ways to like know what to look out for how to differentiate the grifters from the non grifters but it's really tough and you can see how easily people can get duped by like charlatans online so that's part of the reason why I think that the left is so dysfunctional um did you want to add anything to that because I feel like you know it's a lot of the faith in my opinion like I think that disagreements with the left who has high standards I think that's to be expected but like some of this is unnecessary people realize that some actors on the left like Jimmy door and other other folks are just like they don't care about anything but views and clicks it's hard because this was one of the hardest things I had to reconcile with as a producer at TYT which is I guess something that I think we all know as content creators but that yeah as you're alluding to climate change we can all agree that hands down like face value is like the most if not one of the most important issues facing us it's like a dire issue you make a video about it it's going to be your worst performing video and if you have a business to run or if you are trying to monetize your channel because you need to survive then it's weird but like you have to make that decision of like either I cover that video and take the monetary hit and at TYT at least you have the privilege of being at the scale where we could do that from time to time and that didn't matter as much or you decide to do the video with a spin that you know that'll help it get more views and other things like putting if it's a Trump video and if it's Trump talking about climate change then there it'll do well but so and I would often talk with friends and have like really like long drunken discussions at night about like why are you making all this content and I would kind of go why are you consuming all of this content I would very much loved and I would say that jokingly not of course like blaming the audience but like I would love for the platform to incentivize me to make other things um I want to like an ideal world would all love to make the exact things we want to make regardless of whether or not the platform prefers it but whether or not it fulfills us whether important information that we feel like leads them to whatever actually want them to have and we compare rent like we want to be able to do all those things but that isn't our decision it's the algorithms and kind of people's behavior and choices and so I wrestle with this all the time my next video is a climate change video but like like um it's the same issue where I've had to abstract the idea of climate change so far away from what the video is about that when it finally drops you're probably not going to realize the climate change video until 6 minutes in and that's kind of the trick is I'm using like a other I'm using like a flashier topic to try to appeal to an audience that doesn't usually think about politics but like there's I mean to give a little bit of the game away there's different communities on YouTube there's video game YouTube there's tech YouTube there's car YouTube and so by using one of those silos I can get people who are usually not thinking about politics and maybe kind of Trojan horse them into a political conversation political dialogue something that they won't know or maybe like they won't figure out from the first part of the video that I'm a like leftist political YouTuber but by the end of it they'll come out asking the questions that might leave them to left YouTube on other topics or you know so I'm I'm trying to almost as a creative exercise for myself because I think I also relate to it making doom content forever well yes like want to do like a different creative exercise but also yeah I have to wrestle with I want to make sometimes boring topics but topics I think are vitally important go as viral as I possibly can and that's a challenge that you have to weigh with the fickle nature of how people are but it's content creators like that's the challenge that we have to figure out like that's that one's on us to figure out yeah yeah absolutely get better myself included of course then I feel like the left overall at least the online left might be a little bit more I get stable is the right word I don't know it's it's tough right because we are a relatively new movement I mean Harvey talks about you know history all the time but for us this feels new because we all kind of jumped in 2016 others in 2020 you know our political awakening coincided with Bernie Sanders becoming president for a lot of young people so they it feels new to them and they're kind of finding their footing and there's going to be growing pains but I feel like it's all part of the process and the fact that we're having conversations about our flaws as a movement is really healthy especially like as content creators right because if you're a content creator like you really benefit from creating this cult of personality where you're like I was right about this this and this and I'm I'm never wrong inside of ourselves is just like people who talk on the internet I think that that there is value in that even if you know it's you know not necessarily conducive to monetary benefit as you know we were kind of talking about so I mean we kind of like it's hard to come away with any like concise message about the left but I think that it is really clear that some sort of leadership has to emerge if the left is going to be successful so I kind of just open this up to anyone else who has any closing thoughts on this about the left whether or not we can ever be successful without leadership or if you just had anything that you wanted to add in before we go to our our closing shoutouts yeah I mean I I think that one of the most promising candidates is probably gonna be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez I know she's really young but in 2024 I mean there aren't really that many other progressive options that could feasibly do it I think even if we're looking at like Rashida to leave I don't think Rashida to leave has the same amount of like social cache that AOC does AOC knows how to navigate platforms like Instagram Twitter even Twitch that is something that she can leverage to great effect and has in the past and I think that if I recall correctly there was a poll that came out during the 2020 election that showed like three fourths of Democrats would happily vote for AOC well and that's before she was even legally eligible to run for president so I think that she has the makings even if it's not in 2024 I hope it is because I'm not too thrilled by the other prospects but I think that there is a lot of the ingredients and makings there of a really powerful leader for the left that could go forward and I do think that while we could talk about a leader list sort of movement that would be great I think that having a leader for a movement definitely helps in our current kind of duopoly between a Republican and Democrat just the way our system is set up having a leader is really helpful yeah worried about her hopeium I do sorry go ahead Jake I have tons of hopeium but in fact in fact quite literally I do not allow people to do more in my chat but I was I was going to ask a question someone brought it up in chat and I thought that's actually kind of interesting just because of the way American politics works this is kind of a weird question likes like do we want Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to be like political her political uses you can't like go back into Congress after that right like is that good to use to be like this person is really really really young and then try to have her be president and hopefully she can be but mentioned she wins she's no longer in a career politician as a very strong progressive voice for 50 years she's there for you know eight is that reasonable or weird or I was just a question I never thought of until now I think that makes her more valuable to the left like I was my inclination to but it was an interesting question a young former president who can go out and stump and campaign this guy's name is Barack Obama that didn't work true well well I think I think Obama was largely defeated by Obama in that regard yeah yeah picks did you want to jump in with some Hopium I I have some Hopium and it's not that I disagree with Spencer in regards to having hope for fast systemic change or anything like that but left us politics at the moment are based on hope in order to motivate people there has to be a sense of hope otherwise it's too hard right that you have the right peddling fear-based rhetoric and it is very convincing right so generally what I try and tell people and where I try and help people kind of focus in is not on the fact that things are going to change quickly right sometimes these things are so slow and there are people out there that are hurting they are suffering and it is just so frustrating to see nothing changing and it's like I need this to happen now why isn't it happening now and you can see how they become extremely apathetic to hope based politics when everything that the future holds right now when you look at all the issues you're like well this is a lot but I think if you can focus on the idea that no matter where we go no matter the climate crisis no matter all of the things that happen over the next 20 50 100 years there are always going to be people fighting for good there are always going to be people out there in their communities trying to do the right thing for other people and like I think that is a human strength and I think it is a strength of the left that we should really focus on that we actually care about one another and we can take that going forward into anything yeah I've been around the block for I've been at a political junkie for about oh 50 plus yours and I see the waves and the cycles that come through and I echo absolutely with what Pixel says it's the the incredible highs come with incredible lows but then the hope that and the learning that comes from all of that is what pushes us and drives us to be better to do better and to reach out to others to say hey it's going to be okay we'll catch it next time and sometimes we do catch it next time sometimes we don't right now we really want to catch some good luck because we could really really use some and I know that in my chat it can get quite doomer which is why I have a like a a doctor who wine fridge in behind me I got to have that because there are days where it's so so so doomourish but we always have hope we always do yeah is that an infinite wine fridge by the way it holds three bottles of wine oh it's doctor who so I've already noticed the one thing I'd I'd add onto that is that failure isn't ever complete right like every failure is a chance for us to learn way more than we ever would have if we had won and so if you run for office if you get a group of people to help you try and get into office and you fail guess what you you just learned a whole lot and that makes you valuable you know if whether you're an individual actor or whether it's you know Bernie Sanders and his campaign a lot of talented people learned a whole lot about politics and are using those skills carrying them forward to make either local state national fights that much more likely to succeed so even even when we failed don't don't let that cause you to crash and burn again I think people forget the process you don't have to use the the hammer from the hammer and sickle just to smash stuff it's a build things with it to you know it's it's I think people people it's very very easy to be like that's too hard it's so easy to do that and it's not as easy to be like and here's how and I think I think for me in my community I feel like it's my responsibility to not let that attitude happen because it could we can we lead to complacency so quickly just as as a society especially Americans in general when things are difficult like we like to think we're like these blue collar hardworking people no we were whining a lot of the time we really want we have a very very comfortable living situation but you know we're to that point of living situations where it's like well here's all the other stuff that we've never been able to address and this is why we're so upset about it is because like now you're talking about like okay we're not just surviving we are quality of life is the question now and having to discuss quality of life issues like you know housing and food and healthcare and abortion and any of those sorts of things those are the really really divisive things and that's why I think we need to focus on wherever our lane is focus on on these things then try really hard to do stuff like this where you know we have people with with diverse background like I've never run for Congress I don't know anything about this shit I probably not very good at it but like you know Hector has done things like this Harvey has been out here teaching people for for years and years about tons of great stuff so like we need to we need to have everybody sort of again we need to collectivize we sort of set on our little islands and don't interact a lot and I think that's that's probably to our detriment even though we make more money when we're alone I certainly make more money when I'm alone but like you know I'm in a situation where my bills are probably gonna be paid I'm fine with that so let's let's try to like spread out and maybe not do things with capital gain in mind and I know a lot of us don't but I think we know some people some peers among us that that maybe do do that so yeah I don't I really appreciate this kind of stuff so I think it's been great yeah that's my hope I don't I hey if we can end on hopeium then that gives me the fuel to like go on for the next month it'll run out and the doomer is and we'll set back in but it's enough to kind of propel me forward for for a little while we just lost one of the panels but before we go I oh Spencer Spencer so hopefully he'll come back but I want to give each and every single one of you the chance to kind of give yourself shout outs let the people know what you're doing where you do it how we can support you if you have a patreon please plug that as well first of all thank you all so much like you all contribute such like incredible perspectives here the only thing that's about doing big panels is that not everyone has the opportunity to speak and I would love to like pick your brains individually for hours but unfortunately that's not the case so eventually we'll all touch bases again but it's just been so incredible so what we'll do is we'll start with riverboat jack please tell the people where we can find you and how we can support your your show you can find me over at twitch.tv slash riverboat jack where I talk about socialism decommodification collective action all that good stuff and you can support my work by just tuning in having a listen sharing your thoughts and consider dropping me a follow while you're there yeah well thank you so much Hector how can we find you and follow all of your activism and follow you pissing off people in your community who are corrupt so anyone who's into progressive politics and like Mike said generally overthrowing the Democratic establishment specifically in North New Jersey you can give me a follow I'm at also get a 2020 that's my last name 2020 on Facebook Twitter Instagram and yes it's been a fun ride we're currently suing the county executive trying to abolish ice and we'll be fighting for that until it happens so I hope you all join me for that ride and I know I'll speak to Micah sometime soon so thanks so much for having me absolutely and Dan from the internet Dan from the internet that is what it is youtube.com slash Dan from the internet I do power reports semi-monthly every two weeks the big-ass political show that hopefully of things matter hopefully you check it out as well as all the other wonderful shows that folks have on here that I'll definitely be watching and consuming and follow me on Twitter at Dan from the web while occasionally shitpost and things like that but yeah thanks for having me on that I've enjoyed seeing clips of the humanist report for a quite a while now so it's cool to like make the world's connect again Hey right on right on all right pixels mixle hi thank you so much firstly for running such an amazing discourse I feel like this was super interesting and super productive from everyone and I just think that's something really unique and special but I'm pixel pixels mixle everywhere I cover the news in the middle of the night American time so if you find yourself up too late you might see me live over on Twitch I have a pretty decent news reader voice like I know I'm a little bit more high-pitched here than I would be usually but yep that's a little bit of a shtick of mine we have really interesting conversations I do a lot of general education as well because I think it's really important for kind of a perspective on political things that are happening all over the world and I think the more perspective we have in our politics the the better and more intersection all they can be but yeah thank you for having me on and you can follow my Twitter to you could follow my Instagram you could follow me everywhere if you wanted but like you don't have to but you could but you don't have to absolutely actually you're required to I will be banning anyone who doesn't follow all of the social media accounts mods just make a note of that okay the next person is the great Hilda beast Hilda beast where can the people find you Hi everybody can find me on twitch.tv slash Hilda underscore beast just spelt exactly how it is below I am also on Twitter same name and I'm also on YouTube same name and I stream mainly politics Canadian politics I also stream horror games and I stream cake decorating great big massive two meter cakes and yeah I I'm a leftist and I love what I do I've been around for a long long long time and I look forward to chit chatting with everybody I run a pretty safe pretty safe community where people are free to present their ideas I don't tolerate with much I don't tolerate shit weasels I just don't there's a door if they can fuck off that they can go but most of we always have a good time and if if not there's wine there's always wine hey can I do I have permission to use shit weasel if I credit you yeah I have shit weasel emotes yeah yeah oh my God okay yeah weasel too because there's nothing to carry only pixel and I have basically got the the drinking emotes that's great that's great okay real quick so I we got a message from Spencer his computer froze so let me do his shout out for him so Spencer does basically media critiques he uses the manufacturing consents propaganda model from Chomsky he is writing an article for fair really really great well researched great presentations it was actually just the future content creator a couple of weeks to go here so please check out Spencer Snyder once the links come here we go you can find all these links right here there also be in the description box really great up-and-comer and I'm super excited to see where he goes and what he does with his platform okay professor Harvey J.K. I said I wasn't going to call you professor but I can't not yeah I noticed you couldn't give that up which is okay I mean it's very sweet I'm not a content creator in the same way as the rest of you people can go online and just look up Harvey J.K. the books