"Leftwing Breitbart" feat. sexy Felix Biederman

The contretemps, which was picked up by the Washington Post in an article titled “The millennial left’s war against liberalism”, defined divisions in the American left that have been growing hostile as a new generation seeks to shed old influences.

Menaker and co-hosts Matt Christman, Felix Biederman, Virgil Texas and Amber A’Lee Frost all declined requests for comment. But their rollicking message has developed an enthusiastic audience, of supporters they call “grey wolves”. Chapo subscriptions have grown rapidly, now at 16,000 and bringing in $70,000 a month.

The hosts, who are aligned with the Brooklyn arm of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), met on social media, gaining followers with their offbeat humor and views on what is termed “Left Twitter”.

That led to a series of podcasts on the popular Street Fight Radio before the launch of Chapo Trap House, named for Sinaloa cartel head Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and the hip-hop term for a drug house.

One DSA member familiar with the thinking of the podcast producers offered the Frankfurt School of neo-Marxism as an ideological reference and said the spat with the New Republic illustrated the resistance of neo-liberals to warnings that a hard left turn is necessary to counter the rise of the so-called alt-right and avoid continued electoral defeat.

In one Chapo episode, the podcast’s hosts excoriated the 2000s TV drama The West Wing as an expression of the patronizing self-entitlement of neo-liberals.

“They are very anti-establishment,” said the DSA member, “and believe neo-liberalism as a doctrine has failed, and they want centrist Democrats to acknowledge that it was their failure that destroyed the working class and allowed this atrocity [the Trump presidency] to take place in the White House.”

John Mason, professor of political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey, said a leftwing “counter-reaction” has been building for a decade.

“It’s the feeling that the new liberal agenda resulted in a whole generation of young Americans being shafted, locked into a gig economy, loaded down with student debt and no access to healthcare,” he said.

“So there’s been a building a reaction against Democrat politicians of the 90s who tried to make a compromise with corporate capitalism and then defined liberalism around cultural issues of diversity, immigration, women’s rights and so on, while riding along with the shafting of the working class.”

In an interview first drafted for the Harvard Crimson ahead of an appearance at the university in April, Chapo host Christman criticized Ivy League universities for being “perpetuator[s] of privilege, obviously, but also … perpetuator[s] of the fantasy of meritocracy, which is what justifies the privilege”.

“All of these kids who are so brilliant just happened to be children of people who are in a similar social situation, but they went to Harvard – like Jared Kushner, for example! He’s not just some dickhead son, he’s a dickhead son who went to Harvard. For three million dollars. It’s basically laundering privilege.”

In a recent edition of the podcast, Jezz In My Pants, Chapo hosts cited the success of Labour Party leader Corbyn’s social democratic platform in the UK election last month as proof of the potency of “dirtbag” politics.

“It’s the beginnings, or the contours, of something else, like a shaft of light,” said A’Lee Frost. “If you run a real left candidate, the real left will win.”

Corbyn lost, although Labour did deny Theresa May’s governing Conservative party an outright majority.

Though the Chapo Trap House hosts have been lauded by Paste magazine as the “vulgar, brilliant demigods of the new progressive left”, divisions on gender and generational lines are becoming more apparent throughout the liberal side of the American political spectrum.

“Who is the most popular politician in the United States right now?” asked Mason. “Bernie Sanders! The ground has shifted and this is really the centre of the Democratic party. The people who have been marginalised, especially after this defeat, are those who belong to the Clinton-Obama wing.”

The far left, Mason said, is articulating itself in new ways. He pointed to a recent meeting of Sanders and Clinton vice-president Al Gore and the emergence of anti alt-right groups such as Redneck Revolt. Last week, the DSA published an electoral strategy guide; it anticipates strong or record attendance at its convention in Chicago next month.

If Chapo Trap House and its political brethren are the rising stars of Democratic politics, they bring anxiety with them. The battle within party could echo the fights of the 60s, which pitted the New Left against cold war liberalism, contributed to the chaos of the 1968 convention and helped open a divide that ushered in nearly a decade of conservative government.

“The fear is we’re going to do ’68 over again and that’s the argument the Clintonists will make,” Mason said. “That a battle within the Democratic party will help elect a conservative militia that will then, despite being a sociological minority, craft the institutions so they can remain a political majority.”

We're totally fucked.

That yellow tabby is gorgeous.

A good comment from the original article:

"If the focus is on resistance and being a bold, accurate and fact based voice, I welcome it. If indeed it is a "Breitbart" derivative it is exactly the wrong thing at a fraught moment.

For my entire adult life I've watched in disbelief as the left, whose core values are centered in a more human just society, makes misstep after misstep, primarily by being too anemic by half, so I truly welcome a ferocious push-back. That said, what we do not need is to adopt Breitbartian strategies grounded in lies, fake news, hearsay, and media stunts.

From the article, it sounds as if this is just a grossly inept and inapt analogy; if so, a real disservice has been done to these young men. If I were them, I would set the record straight. Pronto.

If nothing else, this election debacle has shown us that words matter. They need to be deployed mindfully and carefully, and, yes, forcefully. Going for the glib easy correlation does these young men no favors."

He has an instagram! Can't find any shirtless pics, but I also couldn't get through the ten billion photos in his Instagram, so I probably missed some.

Ok this one is really cute. I can't tell if he's gay or not, there's virtually no photos of him with women. I'm going with "likely gay".

no one wants these idiots

Nice dog, too.

Sexy? Felix looks a bit like Mr. Potato head.

It's a podcast. I hate podcasts.

When did "bend the knee" get a "gender" makeover? I've always associated it with an authoritarian demanding obedience.

Well of course the bernbots argue that Hillary defeated herself. "She was not who I wanted her to be, so I voted for a boutique candidate and Trump was elected her. And that's down to her" they say, without irony.

And that is millennials in a nutshell. The horrendous things they do are always someone else's fault.

Felix's older brother, Sam, is gay. And he's cuter, IMO.