I gave Haz & Co. critical support at the beginning, only to see them get worse and worse and worse. Early on, when they were associated with CPI, their tailism was absolutely a strategy. They would say all kinds of offensive things, and pepper their speech with any number of right-wing memes and dog whistles, but you could tell that it all rested on a basic Marxist worldview. One can disagree with such tactics (I do), or find them stupid and counterproductive, but it was almost certainly sincere. Since early 2023, however, the predictable has happened, and Haz, Hinkle, etc. have become prisoners of their own brand. Now I don’t see them as trying to do anything other than a sort of 4chan with Stalinist aesthetics.
It’s a good cautionary tale, though with an obvious moral: don’t try to do all your organizing online.
I gave Haz & Co. critical support at the beginning, only to see them get worse and worse and worse. Early on, when they were associated with CPI, their tailism was absolutely a strategy. They would say all kinds of offensive things, and pepper their speech with any number of right-wing memes and dog whistles, but you could tell that it all rested on a basic Marxist worldview. One can disagree with such tactics (I do), or find them stupid and counterproductive, but it was almost certainly sincere. Since early 2023, however, the predictable has happened, and Haz, Hinkle, etc. have become prisoners of their own brand. Now I don’t see them as trying to do anything other than a sort of 4chan with Stalinist aesthetics.
It’s a good cautionary tale, though with an obvious moral: don’t try to do all your organizing online.