Politics as Aesthetics
What I Learned Watching Political Twitch Streamers during COVID
Like most normies, I only became terminally online when COVID really hit in March last year. Suddenly, I had a lot of time on my hands to watch YouTube videos. And since I like to talk about politics, the algorithm finally led me to political Twitch streamers like Hasan Piker and Steve Bonnell III (aka Destiny).
These two in particular were having a massive spat at the time that produced some quality content. Unsurprisingly, the cheap addictive quality that once only belonged to reality shows on TV finally came around to relatively new platforms like Twitch.
I found it was a pretty good way to waste time listening to these guys squabble about the culture wars and stupid American politics while finishing up Breath of the Wild and Hollowknight (finally).
But after finishing up to 100 hours of these guys streaming videos on YouTube (I only ever watch the highlights; those who follow entire 8-hour streams of people on their computers are genuinely pathetic in my eyes), I noticed that these idiots actually had thousands of genuine fans that think that they’re smart. Fans that might be the faces of the future American electorate.
As many prominent opinion pieces have noted, people in general are getting their politics more and more from social media. Now this isn’t a crazy thing, since before people were getting their politics from TV not books. A social phenomenon that produced the edu-tainment dominance of mainstream news media today. However, I think these ‘political influencers’ are providing something different that can give all of us a glimpse into the future of politics within the imperial core…
Politics as aesthetics.
Who Are These Freaking People?
Now, I’m going to do something controversial and refer Aleksandr Dugin’s book The Fourth Political Theory seriously. In the 11th chapter, Dugin talks about how in the 20th century, politics meant a lot more to people. One was often willing to kill others for their political beliefs to become a reality. This attitude is encapsulated in what Dugin calls ‘the political soldier’: “The entirety of the Twentieth century was filled with political soldiers killing each other for their beliefs. They killed and were killed. Besides, very traditional society (for example that of Genghis Khan’s) was founded by political soldiers.”
Dugin then compares the political soldier to the ‘contemporary man’. The latter of which has no conviction, but rather just wants to see the world burn. He is a contrarian just for the sake of it. But in the end, he is an apolitical automaton motivated entirely by “his desires, emotions, moods, and inclinations…”.
The entire political Twitch sphere is filled with characters that can only be defined as contemporary men, never political soldiers. You notice this clearly when these streamers would take positions either because they know its controversial or because it fits into a particular aesthetic. Something that Vaush (leftie) recently admitted to during a debate with Destiny (neolib).
And that’s the important word here, aesthetics. As Dugin mentions, the fascist today is only a pseudo-fascist and the socialist today is only pseudo-socialist. Both take on these political positions to create an image of themselves either as the hyper masculine racist or the libertine socialist or whatever. The politics that you can take are like Fortnite skins, they are endless. And you wear them, not because you genuinely believe in them, but because they look nice to your eyes.
Recently, Caleb Maupin, a popular Marxist online, released a book on the BreadTube phenomena. An online movement that claims to represent socialists in the Internet. I haven’t read the book yet, but I have witnessed Maupin debate and discuss BreadTube personalities like Vaush. For old-school Marxists like Maupin, BreadTube is almost like a CIA-promoted psyop to undermine genuine revolutionary socialist politics. Because the overwhelming majority of BreadTube people are not genuine socialists. Most to Maupin are honest-to-God liberals who wear red just to paint themselves as radicals. You get into the meat of their arguments and all of it are just liberal talking points that they most likely picked up from watching Vox “…, Explained” videos.
Hasan Piker, the amateur model who likes to wear that Soviet hat every once and a while and wears pro-AOC shirts unironically? A liberal. Vaush who says he’s an anarchist and also that leaving Afghanistan would be a mistake? A liberal.
And I would have to entirely agree. When you take these people seriously, they don’t have much things to say that you can’t find in New York Times opinion pieces. However, to say that they’re all just liberals misses the point. It suggests that all that’s happening in the online political sphere is what happened in radical circles in the 60s and 70s. It misses what’s new about this time.
What Does this All Mean?
Politics is depoliticizing. Already we witnessed this with liberalism, the dominant ideology of our age that has taken us to a point where what are objectively liberal political positions becomes reality and vice versa.
But to assume that there’s an endpoint to liberalism, as many liberal conservatives would have you assume, is untrue. As long as people keep breathing, thoughts and feelings that shape social realities continue to develop. Liberalism will eventually reach to its natural conclusion, which is the contemporary man exhibited by political influencers becoming all of us.
No more are we to actually believe in anything. Be it religion or politics. We are simply existing to satisfy our own immediate desires. This is the reality we live in. The consequences of creating a reality where we are encouraged to put our egos before God or anything beyond us.
