Exiting The Vampire’s Arsehole

Nerbie Dansers
Jul 20, 2017 · 7 min read

Lately, everybody seems to have to have a hot take on the hit leftist comedy podcast Chapo Trap House. Founded by trio of minor Weird Twitter figures, and based on their social media presence, on select days it’s the only thing The Discourse seems to be able to discourse about, at least through the dirty window of my own limited perspective.

I’ve never listened to it, but I’ll get to why later.

The most recent waves about Alpo Chop House emanate from an article centering on its hosts published in the Canadian magazine, Maclean’s. In it, author Jeff Poutine heaps praise on what is described as the irreverent and insurgent comedic and political sensibilities of the podcast’s hosts, a #Brand supposedly characterized by what its hosts feel is a critical elevation of “social solidarity” above an ossified “sanctimony” supposedly pervading a political Left too petrified of its own shadow to embrace liberatory class politics.

The cachet ascribed to Drago’s Dick Mouse is certainly impressive. A prime source in the article is one Angela Nagle, whose recently published book Kill All Normies purports to describe the rise of the Alt-Right from its internet environs as a transgressive shitposting factory into a sort of Frankenstein’s Monster of “political correctness,” “social justice warriors,” and “wokeness.” The semiotic mutual masturbation on display is intense, as Doggo Doo Spouse is mentioned in Nagle’s book, and Nagle herself has appeared on the podcast as a guest. One gets the impression of a circle-jerk on a grand scale, with financially interested parties complimenting each other in a sort of formalized dance meant primarily for public consumption, rather than the pursuit of a critical discourse.

The next domino to fall in this display of endless discursive dick-rubbing about Crapo Out House was a pair of tweets by noted centrist liberal stooges Sady Doyle and Marcus “smoothkobra” Johnson. Highlighting a line in which host Will Menaker demands that the engineers of the discredited consensus behind the Democratic Party “bend the knee” to the left, Johnson made the case that Menaker’s dialogue was an implicit demand for people of color and women of all races—who as we all know are the only people to ever vote Democrat—to submit to a somehow essentially white and male socialist agenda. As if to hammer the point home in the most brutal fashion possible, Sady Doyle followed it up by quote-tweeting Johnson’s tweet to suggest that the hosts of Crock O Shit Ass regularly demand that women both symbolically and literally submit to their domination in the form of oral sex.

A series of fires great and small proceeded in all directions from this spark. To many, it was yet another discursive incident in a long line of similar incidents, an unfair critique which served yet again to discredit liberal feminism and the cynical election-year maneuver to claim anti-racism and anti-sexism by the Democrats at the expense of meaningful class politics.

To others, the paltry nature of the defense was revealing in its own right.

Take this example. Sady Doyle is quoted here as an indictment of a liberal feminism which is willing to trivialize sexual assault for cynical political ends.

Then take this, a tweet in which Zappa Snodgrass host Felix Biederman jokes that ostentatious “‘woke’ white guys invariably have the desires of Uday Hussein”—you know, one of Saddam Hussein’s sons, the ones with the infamous “rape rooms”?

Clearly, something a little different than perfectly principled discourse is going on. If broadly accusing people of sexual assault on the grounds of their politics is the problem, then the fault seems to lie with both sides rather than just one.

The same day as the Doyle/Kobra tweets and the defense against them, a more troubling piece of behavior emerged. A series of tweets between Nick Mullen (that guy who made the cutesy-racist joke about Obama being a chimpanzee) and Felix Biederman was found which seemed to mock liberal blogger Melissa McEwan for talking about being a victim of rape.

“big veal hand”

So far, most people have met this screenshot with the twitter equivalent of a sort of stunned silence. A few, in my experience, ignore it completely.

Many factors produce this reaction: the mean-spiritedness of talking that way about people discussing rape; the nauseating focus on McEwan’s body in the form of “HONK HONK” and the sheer inventiveness of the butcher-like phrase “veal hand”; the fact that they both had to go out of their way to engage in this mockery; the sheer delight seemingly taken by so many in the discussion.

To their credit, few Harpo Ass Facts fans now seem interested in defending this behavior, except through externally mitigating factors, like “this doesn’t show up in the podcast” or “this isn’t a pattern in Felix’s behavior.”

The central fact remains unchallenged, however. In the middle of 2016, in an environment positively overflowing with discussions of misogyny, these two (then roommates) decided to mock this particular person in this particular way, and they most certainly decided to dehumanize her in such stark terms because of her politics.

Remember how I said I don’t listen to Vorpal Snack Zouse? This is part of why. For all the hosts like to talk about the sabotage of solidarity by sanctimony, implicitly playing up the virtue of their idea of what constitutes irreverence, its hosts choose to pursue such alienating notions that the idea that their politics are at all important or relevant fades quickly from the mind. And, frankly, they’re just not funny enough to be worth it.

Unfortunately such alienating rhetoric and behavior is not confined to isolated incidents. People notice such things in the moment and remember them long after, and they pile up.

Take this discussion featuring one of the podcast’s hosts, Amber A’Lee Frost. Some may remember that during the Presidential campaign, candidate Trump at one point held up an upside-down rainbow flag, upon which was hastily scratched “LGBTs for Trump.”

Submit your essays on radical queer politics to amber frost at current affairs today

The irony of the symbolism was too rich for words. It’s hard to imagine why any politically active LGBT person would make the writing upside down relative to the flag itself—an upside down flag typically means that someone is in distress. One particular person, however, clearly embarrassed that he didn’t know which way is up on a rainbow, went on a rant declaring that people who notice the obvious slipshod nature of the display are in fact as reactionary as the typical conservative idolater of the ‘Murican flag.

The context makes Amber Frost’s decision to use a cutesy slur, “Flaggots,” to describe LGBT people noticing this even worse: the cynical and absurd cooptation of so-called “Identitarianism” by US politicians is supposedly the villain in the moral universe propounded by these avowed Leftists.

The popularity of this kind of discourse is as predictable as it is alienating.

One last note. Consider the following. Are our beloved podcast hosts and associated thinkers examples of the notoriously non-existent “class only” leftists?

Turns out it actually is politically incorrect to talk about race.
Nagle repeatedly agrees with reactionary epistemology, without a citation in sight

It seems that in the universe of the jubilantly rude “Dirtbagist,” the only unacceptable rudeness is to frankly discuss the white supremacism and misogynistic ideology endemic to what we think of as “The West.” In fact, the major mechanism they propose for the power of racism is nothing more than mere symbolism. So much for historical materialism.

#WhiteGenocide

Conclusions

The hosts of the Snacko Treat House podcast now make money at a rate of roughly $100,000 per person per year. This financial position leaves them so comfortable that they apparently donate $50 dollars a month to Eric Garland of “Game Theory Thread” fame, presumably as a joke. In exchange they pursue a self-consciously anti-politically correct agenda, a notion derived from histrionic right wing thought along the lines of the famous “ivy covered North Koreas” speech, on the basis of the popularity of the idea that their stupid heterosexual faces can get away with making fun of rape victims and queers, indefinitely.

Instead of the idea that kicking left against marginalized people is transgressive, and a powerful basis for liberatory class politics, I propose the idea that it is in fact reactionary, and that the luster of their politics appeals to the side of their audience that is secretly a ten-year-old kid discovering South Park.

Response to Likely Objections To This Article

Fuck Off
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    Nerbie Dansers

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