Wtf is the context of the 2nd tweet

Making fun of Biden for his remark about guns

People should have rioted over Epstein’s death and the people involved but instead some people just got mad on twitter. First time all people across all isles recognized corruption and called for retribution but absolutely nothing happened

currentaffairs.org/2020/06/debating-the-right-versus-collaborating-with-them

nathan robinson

he isn't wrong what he said just i would like krystal push back more then letting him speak all the time and normalising ideals from the right (dont forget his really good friends with Tucker Carlson)

i understand the sentiment behind it in theory but the guy is painting Saagar with a bit too broad of a brush. this would have been a lot more ground if Ball's co-host was like, a literal white nationalist like Nick Fuentes, or an actual fascist, as he tries to allude to near the bottom of the article. Saagar isn't a party sycophant, so I don't think painting him as such is quite exactly fair.

Nathan has shown a poor understanding of even what he is actually advocating at times - during a debate with Saagar he tried to frame governments investing in public infrastructure as what socialism constitutes and that's why people should support it. That's legitimately just mirroring what post-reagan republicans say; "socialism is when government does thing", which is obviously not true, and it already shifts the frame of what the debate is even about.

The real issue that Nathan is getting at is that Saagar's politics on a deeper level are a rejection of western liberalism. Nathan himself just can't fully scrap the comforts of liberalism from his own brand of what he thinks socialism is. In doing so, there's a bit more of a gap in debates - Saagar is definitely not just a right wing populist across the board. Rising is basically a show about social issues rather than economic ones, and the social axis of societal politics is differentiated slightly from the political one - there's not necessarily an overlap there, and trying to equate all social traits and facets of political theory is disingenuous. Like "oh saagar doesn't like weed so he isn't a socialist". Like, I get where he's coming from, but it doesn't really work that way? Saagar has bad takes on things sometimes but at the end of the day even framing Rising like Right v. Left is kind of just bad framing (which I realize is part of the show's fault in how it advertises itself). It's really just a show about social debate at the end of the day, and Saagar certainly isn't extremist enough socially to really warrant a disregarding label like fascist imo

OP really said "they couldn't do s*** about it" like epstein didn't ''kill himself''

Saagar said that CEOs got indoctrinated by critical theory on some cultural postmodern neo Marxism type bullshit

He's definitely a right winger, Tucker Carlson is his guy

There's no reason for anybody on the left to collaborate with reactionaties who claim (emphasis on claim) to be economically left besides specific legislation in government, other than that your engagement as a public figure should not go any further than debating them

The idea that leftists an rightists have anything in common simply because they both hate the center is so wrong lol

Dude is trash. Kristal needs to put him in his place more.

don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that saagar isn't a right winger, but i'm saying that nathan's argument is extremely poor, for two reasons - one, he's essentially arguing that anyone who doesn't hold liberal values can't be a socialist, when that's very clearly not the case - obviously. nathan's understanding of socialism is distilled down from an america-centric political compass which places liberalism falsely as centrism; thus he thinks socialism is just liberalism + left economics. nathan can't make an argument against Saagar without having to tap into liberal ideological facets; it's a misrepresentation of what the ideology actually is. two, rising isn't a show about economics, it's almost solely about social issues, which as I mentioned are essentially their own axis separate from the main political axis. the framing of the show is in part to blame for this, so nathan would have a point based on that, but his writing suggests he hasn't actually watched it - at its core, the show really isn't about united populism (despite the corporate tagline claiming to be), in practice it's really a debate over different polarized sides views on modern social issues.
(also as a side note, Ball isn't really a socialist, she's basically a liberal demsoc like AOC, so even nathan's claim of wanting to imply Ball is a socialist to begin with is off)

the issue i take mainly, outside of this, is that dumb political tests like the political compass or whatever have made us frame politics in arbitrary quadrants away from each other. like okay, the goals of paleoconservative aren't align anywhere near a traditional socialist, sure. but like, even the history of socialism has its own interior disagreement. like the claim over leftist/rightist is really "are you marxist inspired or not". but even then, is a leninist gonna agree with a trotskyist? is a strasserist gonna agree with a primitivist? is a baathist going to agree with a queer theory marxist? Even the cultural axis within what traditionally exists as a sphere of "leftist politics" beyond sharing a similar historical root don't really have common end-games beyond abstract theoretical ends, so it's hard to really draw lines like that without having to make assumptions based off of self identification. Similarly on the right, a paleconservative isn't going to agree with a neocon, or like, a theocrat with a white nationalist. A paleoconservative might end up unironcally agreeing with a Baathist more than they would a modern right wing party for example.

But anti-racism and pro-LGBT stances are not "liberal", liberals have only recently come around on these issues, much later than most leftists across the globe and definitely in the West.

And the show is not just about social issues? They debate everything concerning American politics, much of their coverage seemed to have been Saagar and Krystal both s***ting on establishment Dems. The fact that Saagar talks about "workers" and "corporate dems" shows that it definitely touches on economics.

And it's not about whether you share the exact same ideology, but whether you should act like you share so much of the same political interests with people of a certain ideology to the point where you should act like political actors from said ideology can be seen as reliable allies. There cases where MLs can form alliances with Trots, or even with anarchists and socdems at times, but leftists have no business partnering up "social reactionary, economic progressive" type people.

These social reactionary but economic left type people have never come to power, it's an ideology with zero historical precedent. The only time it had any influence whatsoever was when it was used by Nazis to draw in support from German workers until Hitler decided to wipe the Strasserist wing out. It's only useful been useful for fascists to allure workers into supporting them, whether that is Saagar and his type of "right-wing populists" intentions are irrelevant, because that's the function that they ultimately serve.

Israel. Nobody even touching her.

with your first point in my opinion you're confusing historical and philosophical precedent imo. marxism is not egalitarian obviously. Liberalism may not have been egalitarian in practice, but the philosophy behind liberalism is (I understand it's more complicated than that but I'm not gonna go on a massive historical/philosophical pretextual discourse rant here). also I mean, not all marxists believe in gay rights - nor is gay rights a qualifier to be a leftist despite popular belief - that's just a modern revision. a good chunk of marxists believe the end-goal of marxism is biological essentialism (like deontological ethics means no capitalism = easier fulfillment of biological duty, which is ultimately having kids). Whether or not this is "true marxism" isn't the point; I know Lenin was very pro-gay and there were openly gay bolsheviks. There were also openly gay strasserists, and openly gay fascists. It's just something which has nothing to intrinsically do with the ideology.
marxism is fair in that the political end-process of marxism is not the tenure of systematic racism or the like of course, but in order to recognize marxism through the dialectical system proposed by Engels & Marx, there is some level of fundamental inegalitarianism - including racial inegalitarianism - which is fundamental to the belief system, which is the most controversial part of Marxism I see talked about the least. I don't want to go too in depth with this because honestly I don't want to write a massive wall of text and become a leftie meme, but much of Engel's discourse (as I'm sure you know) was basically "biological non-egalitarianism is why capitalism is unfair to begin with, because not everyone can actually achieve their imperative under a meritocracy", which he more or less chalked up to a form of racialism - however, his lack of mentioning black people specifically (Engels's biologicalism was often focused on the Irish) is why it's not as remembered. After all, Marxism is a Darwinist ideology (albeit not social darwinist).
social reactionaries have never come to power to a degree, yes, but I mean, that doesn't mean the ideology doesn't exist in a separate vacuum. they aren't just always bait for further right reactionaries. that's another case of historical pretext vs philosophical abstract.

i understand the sentiment behind it in theory but the guy is painting Saagar with a bit too broad of a brush. this would have been a lot more ground if Ball's co-host was like, a literal white nationalist like Nick Fuentes, or an actual fascist, as he tries to allude to near the bottom of the article. Saagar isn't a party sycophant, so I don't think painting him as such is quite exactly fair.

Saagar definitely has some pretty out there right wing views. Whether he's an actual fascist is of course another thing, but he's probably more right wing than most people would believe.

Nathan has shown a poor understanding of even what he is actually advocating at times - during a debate with Saagar he tried to frame governments investing in public infrastructure as what socialism constitutes and that's why people should support it. That's legitimately just mirroring what post-reagan republicans say; "socialism is when government does thing", which is obviously not true, and it already shifts the frame of what the debate is even about.

So this I mostly agree on although we can certainly find things that would allude to the idea that nathan's politics go deeper than this. Nathan is a dem soc as you know so for him socialism is essentially a robust welfare state with heavy investment into public goods. His politics are a bit more complicated than that but this article does a good job reviwing some of his inconsistencies as well jacobinmag.com/2020/04/why-you-should-be-a-socialist-review-robinson

I haven't seen the debate youre talking about, but Nathan saying that shouldnt be a shock to anyone since he heavily advocates that all the time.

The real issue that Nathan is getting at is that Saagar's politics on a deeper level are a rejection of western liberalism. Nathan himself just can't fully scrap the comforts of liberalism from his own brand of what he thinks socialism is. In doing so, there's a bit more of a gap in debates - Saagar is definitely not just a right wing populist across the board. Rising is basically a show about social issues rather than economic ones, and the social axis of societal politics is differentiated slightly from the political one - there's not necessarily an overlap there, and trying to equate all social traits and facets of political theory is disingenuous. Like "oh saagar doesn't like weed so he isn't a socialist". Like, I get where he's coming from, but it doesn't really work that way? Saagar has bad takes on things sometimes but at the end of the day even framing Rising like Right v. Left is kind of just bad framing (which I realize is part of the show's fault in how it advertises itself). It's really just a show about social debate at the end of the day, and Saagar certainly isn't extremist enough socially to really warrant a disregarding label like fascist imo

So it is mostly a show about social debate but from what i've gathered the main thing here isn't the show, but instead the book he and ball wrote which is certainly much more than social debate. Saagar is certainly very closely aligned with the politics of right wing populism and he would likely call himself one if asked. The book makes that very clear.

This is a pretty good response and I mostly agree with you. I only bring up the fascist label because Nathan slightly alludes to that regarding Saagar. I agree he has some questionable views which I find hard to defend, such as how he is vehemently anti-marijuana to the point of almost militantly so. He is very close to paleoconservative but sometimes arbitrarily chooses his views on things like what he thinks the term "personal liberty" applies to. To be clear as I said, I wasn't trying to say he wasn't right wing, just that he doesn't fall into the broad brush of right wing Natahn attempts to paint him in (in my opinion).

I know Nathan's politics go deeper than just that. I also obviously do not actually disagree with the idea of infrastructure investment (I don't think a lot of people do unless they're like straight up an-caps or something, or there's some nuance like private companies are the ones being paid for it). I just find many of Nathan's points to be disingenuous and he doesn't correctly using terminologies sometimes. I find often that the issue with DemSocs is they attempt to balance liberal ideas next to socialist ones and too often it ends up leaning liberal. This is just my opinion though - others might see his views differently. I just get a bit miffed with debates happen over teminologies that don't really constitute correctly the context of what's actually being said.

For the last thing, I definitely agree, again, Saagar basically identifies as a right wing populist anyway. My point was less that he wasn't and more that the disagreements at the end of the day are ultimately along a social axis more than anything - which differ in importance between people. Paleconservativism is almost wholly a social belief. People like Carlson have straight up said "I don't care about capitalism. We can get rid of it.", and I assume with how close they are Saagar agrees. While being anti-capitalist doesn't inherently make you socialist of course, I just meant to get at the fact that social axis issues are more of what the debate is, which isn't as intrinsic to the ideology Nathan is arguing in favor of as he thinks it is, even if such is compatible

I mean I would likely agree that Saager himself is not a fascist, but I think Nathan's overall point or at least what he should have argued is that the idea of normalizing right-wing populism by certain leftists like Krystal Ball (ppl who are in all honestly prolly to the right of Nathan) only serves to miscontrue exactly what it is, and leads way to fascism in a sense. Based on what i've seen Nathan say of their book, it's not a good look for Ball to basically lend credence to the idea that right wing populists and left wing bernie style populists should or can form an alliance, simply because both sides often levy the same critiques of the liberal establishment, which is true. Nathan is definitely correct in saying, which I'm sure you actually agree on, that socialists should not be looking to form coalitions with people like Saagar or Carlson simply because they can accurately point out the failings of capitalism and mainstream liberal politics. At least thats what I took from his two most recent articles.

I'm not sure how disingenous they are as much as they simply aren't sufficient enough in actually advocating for socialism. But again, this is a demSoc thing where they actually aren't as concerned with completely eliminating capitalism as much as they are having a robust welfare state and maybe some worker coops. I actually have issues with the whole DSA types, especially the educated, often white side of it, because they seem to think, although never outright saying it, that they know best as to how the working class should be acting. I've seen quite a few, don't know if Nathan falls into this, admonish the toppling of statues as little more than symbolic victories that serve no greater purpose. It's basically the debate club guys you could say. Who are so concerned with winning in "the marketplace of ideas," that well crafted logical arguments are going to win enough people over to the cause so that all their electoral hopes and dreams can come true. I also do agree if youre making the point that demsocs are closer ideologically to liberals than they are to say an honest to god marxist or a maoist.

ofc. I mean we all want to think that our ideologies are morally correct, so Nathan believing that things he believes are morally good (which obviously are morally good, such as anti-racism, pro-lgbtq etc.,) are inherent to his ideology makes sense. But yeah, the social issues is where the main argument lies and why i agree with nathan's larger point about the fact that socialists should not be considering alliances with people who are easily to the right on most of those social issues. i think thats his whole overarching point. like, people like carlson aren't necessarily opposed to socialist economics as they are to those benefits being applied to people who aren't what he would consider the fundamental makeup of american values. white, christain etc.,

I agree this but only to an extent. The issue that Nathan is overlooking, ironically (despite being a demsoc) is that one of the main issues (or, to some, a main "'feature") with democracy is that it's impossible to get anything done most of the time without coordination between different ideologies. Democracy encourages big tent-style associations, which means that it's harder for populist candidates to win without carrying support outside of one coherent ideology. This is why these shows exist - because it's impossible for many candidates to be ideologically pure and also win elections without appeal to those who intrinsically disagree, since democracy is more about perpetuation rather than radical end-game change (hence the term progressivism to begin with). The modern practice almost inherently encourages false centrism, I'd expect Nathan to pick up on the irony there, but as it levies criticism to his own belief system, I can see it being something he'd want to ignore.

Yeah, I'm basically just saying he's closer to liberaliism than marxism - whether or not this is a problem is going to depend on the ideology of the person debating. Personally I dislike people who don't really know the terms their talking about in full and not only misrpresent but purport to be authorities. I also think far too often these people are too willing to fetishize what "prole" really refers to in order to self-project, but that's neither here nor there. I think we may also disagree on this because I do think philosophy is an important aspect of politics, but I think in principle we at least partially agree about his background, whether the term we use is disingenuous or insufficient either way.

Regarding the last thing, yeah, of course. I guess my point is more that people shouldn't confuse compatibles with intricacies of ideologies. I understand the modern left not wanting to court the right, sure, but my point is that it's just disingenuous imo in how he frames it. We might have to agree to disagree on that though.

Give me one text where racial inegalitarianism (or any form of racialism) was the focus, or even mentioned by either Marx or Engels as one of the core tenants of Communism. I've read some of Marx and Engels writings about the Irish and none of it ever mentioned any of that. Smells like bullshit to me honestly lol.

a good chunk of marxists believe the end-goal of marxism is biological essentialism (like deontological ethics means no capitalism = easier fulfillment of biological duty, which is ultimately having kids)

Define "a good chunk" lol, I've never heard any Marxist claim this. And the ones that do have apparently not even read Marx's writings about the family in the Manifesto.

"biological non-egalitarianism is why capitalism is unfair to begin with, because not everyone can actually achieve their imperative under a meritocracy"

This is just false lol. Marx and Engels a***ysis of capitalism show exactly how capitalism isn't meritocratic. And speaking of capitalism as a "meritocracy" in order to justify inequality didn't even happen until the mid to late 20th century. I mean the word didn't even exist when Marx and Engels were alive

Your claim is basically that Marx and Engels said that capitalism is unfair because some races are inferior, that's a bogus claim, but please do try to back it up with some of their writings though lol.