Let me tell you about a podcasting phenomenon.
A show that, within three years, grows from
lo-fi youtube live stream into the most popular
podcast on Patreon, a million-dollar behemoth
with over 100 thousand listeners per episode,
that sells out live shows all over the world,
and secures endorsements from celebrity comedians
and journalists.
What does this vital new voice have to say?
Welcome to the world of Chapo Trap House.
Birthed during the 2016 primary battle by
three twitter friends, bonded by an enthusiasm
for Bernie Sanders, Chapo updates the socialist
manifesto for alienated millennials.
Its tenets: Jobs are evil.
Entrepreneurs are hucksters.
You are owed a life of pure leisure.
Chapo is trying to sell you their adolescent
entitlement as enlightenment.
The collapse of communism and the spread of
capitalism has wrought unprecedented improvements
in global well-being, with a billion people
lifted out of desperate poverty over just
the last 25 years.
But...
I mean, hey, Will was lonely and bored at
his job at a boutique New York publishing
house, so I guess we have to smash the system.
Chapo Trap House has nothing but acid hatred
for the Democratic establishment.
And they’re gunning for total domination
of the party.
Chapo’s polemical style is sourced straight
from twitter, where progressive clout is measured
by your ability to insult strangers on the internet.
Civility is for suckers.
Civility retains the oppressive capitalist
status quo.
Why not mock an autistic man’s appearance?
Chapo’s politics is gleeful tribal warfare.
So, tune in to hear them fantasize about assaulting
a sitting senator.
And justify mass looting.
Chapo’s scorched-earth strategy is intended
to terrorize people into compliance, to terrorize
people into silence, to terrorize people from
making videos just like this.
They’ve raised a massive online mob to viciously
harass critics.
To bombard people with threats of violence and death.
This is a bumper crop of young radicals that
see cruelty as a virtue, and that seek nothing
less than total domination.
This is about as radical as you can get before
you start picking up bricks.
