What happens when you try to squeeze a muscle-bound Twitch streamer into a precise measurement instrument like the Gurometer? And can it even function when it encounters this level of left-wing nodulation? It's an empirical question and since the Gurometer recently had all its oil replaced, we decided to give it a go.This is also a reminder that we do Gurometer episodes for ALL the Gurus we cover and you can find the back catalogue over on the Patreon, if so inclined.The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (44 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus
And welcome to Decoding the Guru's Gurometer Edition.
We are putting Hasan Haikar, revolutionary online leader, into the Gurometer after that interminable episode of him interviewing the Hutt Whoopi,
who in subsequent interviews that I've looked at has disavowed that he is...
You know, it's all very ambiguous.
Like, he's just a fan.
He just really likes their work.
Yeah, and Matt, I released the episode on the main feed just now and already got a nice response.
I'll just read it to you.
Please do.
This is the Hassan episode.
Well, I hope you're as generous to him for doing clickbait as your audience is to this bad faith effort.
I've been a subscriber for years until recent months where your liberal apology just got so defensive and weak.
Cognitive dissonance is strong.
W-U-2 with you too.
So that's it, Matt.
We were good.
The method worked.
We were all right.
But as is inevitable, as we started to look...
At people that you like, you start to realize it doesn't actually work.
It doesn't apply to people that you might be fondly disposed to.
Then the whole thing just crumbles and you realize actually we're bad.
We're bad guys.
It's true that.
Like our paradigm, the whole thing.
Like it works on...
Purported centricity liberal types, you know, taking the piss out of them.
And it works really well on right-wingers.
Really good there.
The whole spectrum, in fact, is covered.
Except for the extreme left.
It just doesn't, it breaks down.
Our system does not work on those characters.
And then our biases and our prejudices and our political blinkers.
Agenda.
Our agenda.
It kicks in.
Our mad neoliberal agenda.
The mad neoliberal agenda.
We want to live in a techno-utopia where we're basically the worst of Elon Musk, Lex, Friedman, and Jordan all combined into a neoliberal techno-utopia.
We just want cruise missiles, forever war, and late-stage capitalism.
As long as the military-industrial complex can profit.
The institutions are without any criticism.
I'm fine.
That's all science agreed to me.
Science agreed.
So, yeah.
Although I would like it if you made the healthcare free because, you know, I like the NHS.
So let's see what we can do.
So it doesn't really apply.
We get that.
It doesn't work.
But we're going to try and put Tassan into the grommeter because, you know, we may as well.
But yes, we understand it.
It doesn't really make sense.
So let's...
Try and soldier on anyway.
So the first feature on the Grometer is Galaxy Brainness.
Claimed polymathic ability and willingness to venture opinions on a constellation of topics.
How does Hasan do, Matt, in this regard?
I think on intellectual grounds he would score very low there, right?
Because I don't think he...
He seems to be...
He's a political commentator.
So to the extent that being very politically, being one of the true believers, being very convinced of a particular political worldview, to the extent that that informs your opinion about literally everything, then yes, but that's a pretty weak bar.
So I think I'm tending on the low side.
What about you?
I would disagree.
I wouldn't say that he is...
In the highest range on this characteristic, but I basically don't get the feeling that he has any hesitation as soon as he finds out about a topic to immediately venture very strong opinions on it.
And maybe he doesn't, you know, cover all of the available range like he is.
You know, politically focused, right?
And maybe like anime and streamer focused and that kind of thing as well.
But I feel it isn't because he lacks the willingness to wrench your opinions.
It's just purely that people haven't asked him.
So I put him, I think, at like 3.5.
That's where he'd go for me on this.
Yeah, sorry, I was muted.
However, I thought you were just really...
Thinking at first, it's a good.3,.5.
But you can go lower, Matt.
You're usually lower.
You know, do whatever you like.
I will go lower.
Yeah, I'll give him a couple of points just because, yeah, he'll shoot from the hip on literally anything with the first thing that pops into his head.
It wasn't really, that behavior wasn't really what I had in mind when I thought about Galaxy Brain.
But, you know, I'll give him a point.
So I'll give him two.
Okay.
The next feature.
Is cultishness, encouraging strong in-group boundaries, unhealthy parasocial devotions to a charismatic leader.
How's Hassan do there, Matt?
Oh, yes.
He's a bit of a bully, really, isn't he?
So, yeah, that streamer thing that we talked about during the episode, right?
Like, he's the boss.
He knows everything.
You basically listen along, do one and, you know, yes and him and tell him he's brilliant.
Don't venture your own opinions or you run the risk of getting slapped down pretty hard.
So, yeah, I'm going to give him pretty high on that one.
I think it's one of these virtual cults that people talk about.
Yeah, I give him five because, like I said, he reminded me of Stefan Molyneux in the audience interaction dynamics and that's not good.
Well, you was an actual cult, online cult leader.
So, five, Matt, for me, four from you, because you're too milquetoast.
That's interesting.
You're just drawn towards the center.
Drawn towards the center.
The three, or the 2.5, whatever it is.
It calls to me, Chris.
What's up next, Matt?
What's our next feature?
Anti-establishmentarianism.
Yeah.
What's that?
Well, it is what it says.
You're against the establishment.
All right, fine.
It's on the tin.
And, well, for this, I will say again, it's not really hard for me.
I'm going to give him five because this whole thing is that he's against the establishment, man.
You know, if the establishment happens to be Russia and China, he's a little bit more sympathetic to their plight and point of view.
But nonetheless...
The mainstream where he is located in the Western hegemony, he's firmly against that.
Against the mainstream.
Yeah, he is.
And it's not in a reasonable way either.
Everyone has problems with the establishment, right?
I don't like the peer review process.
You probably don't like the Tories, right?
There's all kinds of normal ways to dislike the establishment.
The establishment.
That's not what we're talking about with this.
It's that, you know, it's entirely corrupt.
It's entirely set out to undermine everything that's good and pure and good in the world.
So, yeah, I mean, I think his version of politics falls into that category.
And sorry, if you think, if you're, you the listener, if your creative politics happens to believe the same thing, that's fine.
But it is still anti-establishmentarianism.
I've said it before, Matt, but I grew up somewhere where the institutions collaborated with paramilitaries to execute members of the community that I belonged to.
And there were various forms of discrimination that were rife all over the society.
We're not going to be naive about institutions are always good, these things are always run perfectly.
That's not the message we want to send.
We're against knee-jerk anti-establishmentarianism and criticism of mainstream and institutions, which is, you know, it's just a reactionary, like the kind of mirror world of the right-wing reactionaries.
But you can, it should be critical of institutions insofar as they deserve it.
Yeah, which can be a bit of a subjective judgment, but at the very least, you can simply describe it, right?
So, you know, we are judging, we put it at different times, but you can not judge, just say, is there very strong blanket, knee-jerk, reflexive, anti-establishment sentiment here or not, whether or not you think that's warranted or not.
So, yes, there is.
So five, yep, that's easy.
Okay, grievance mongering.
Yeah, yeah.
I think he's like a lot of Twitch streamers.
He has a litany of feuds and personal grievances.
And he very often presents himself as a murdered individual, being misrepresented.
Everybody is trying to, you know, demonize him and take him out of context and blah, blah, blah.
Yes.
Sorry.
Grievance mongering.
Bye.
Top of the board.
You've hit the big time now.
Yep.
Well, you're more familiar with his back catalog than me, so I've got to take it on faith a bit.
Did he seem like someone in those contextual clips who would handle this agreement well?
He did not.
He did not.
He seems like someone who has got a lot of problems with you people and that you people could be literally anyone.
But, you know, I'll give him a four, partly due to your Influence.
So, just gotta...
I don't know what that means.
My influence should make you go up, but it made you go down.
But that's alright.
That's alright.
It went up from I don't know to...
Oh, I see.
I see.
Okay.
I just moved you up the midpoint.
Self-aggrandizement and narcissism.
Yeah.
I'm putting this pretty high.
Pretty high because...
Even if you only restrict things to what you know about the content that we covered, that was incredibly myopic and self-indulgent.
Maybe there's a little degree of self-deprecation in his content, which is common in the left side of the spectrum.
A little bit more ironic self-deprecation, but not much.
Not much, and really...
It kind of amounts to the same thing, right?
Like you said, I don't think they overtly self-aggrandize, but the entire setup is like they've got their little cult, they've got people talking to them, they're the one setting them straight, laying down the rules.
In his interview with this character, he was so totally self-centered, right?
Like he talked about the stuff that he liked and was trying to...
It was the opposite of what a journalist does.
It was what someone does who really mainly thinks about, well, how does this thing relate to me?
He wanted them to know about how he's been raising money and how they're fighting against the hegemony over here in America.
So really, the subtext for me was, for him, what was important was, what do people, like, how does this relate to me?
And what do you think of me?
You think I'm pretty good, don't you?
Like a comrade.
A revolutionary as well.
I don't think it's that much subtext and I think your lack of familiarity with the streaming world does your credit because they absolutely do self-aggrandize.
Some of them don't.
Some of them are more self-aware or reserved but there's a whole bunch of them that are Weinsteinian levels of self-belief and self-aggrandizement.
Hassan, I would say He's not the worst.
He's not, like, the most toxic in that environment, but I'm still giving him five because, like, the other people are, you know, Andrew T. style people, and they're also like that, but just in a different way, so.
Yeah, they blow the doors off the garotus, so, yeah, it saturates.
That's fine.
I just, like, like I said, I don't know his other materials so well, so I'm just giving him a cautious four because, you know, stuff that I don't.
Cassandra Complex.
Is he warning about the destruction of society, specialist knowledge that he has that others are failing to pay attention to?
This one is interesting because I think he would do that.
He would say, you know, that he's...
Providing a perspective that the mainstream is ignoring and that society is being destroyed by capitalist forces and stuff.
But I don't think it's a particular motif that he hits home, at least.
You know, like that bit with the Ukraine thing where he's like, you know, I seen it and I was telling everybody and all that.
I didn't get so much the Cassandra vibe.
I got more just that I'm right.
Like, it wasn't so much his ability to see.
Everything so clearly.
It was just standard narcissism.
Yeah, I think this is one of the legitimate differences between lefty gurus and right-wing gurus, right?
Like a lot of the right-leaning gurus, including the ones that say they're liberals but are really very right-wing and reactionary, they do often seem to be warning of an impending crisis.
There must be a list of 10 things that are in the process of destroying America at the moment.
Whereas I don't see that quite as much on the left.
Like, there is a kind of, like, resign, like, if I had to describe it, it's kind of like a resignation to the fact that the world is totally corrupt.
I mean, exaggerating for effect here, to get the point across.
But, you know, late-stage capitalism, globalism, you know, wealth inequality and stuff, none of these things are new things, right?
None of these things are some...
Possible event that is going to come from a left-wing point of view.
These are all there.
They're very sad.
It's very hard to do anything about them.
But it's not the Cassandra complex, right?
And it's different from the right-wing thing.
Yeah, so I'm going to not give him one because I'm sure he has made all these.
He must have done something.
That's what you're thinking.
So I'm going to give him two.
I haven't seen it that much in this content.
Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris.
Just before I forget, because, and since I'm on the topic of going off track, but talking about the difference between left-wing and right-wing stuff and how self-aggrandizment manifests itself differently across the political spectrum.
Like, right-wing people are upfront about it.
They go full ball, like Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Eric, Brett Weinstein.
But left-wingers, I think, are more like...
Oh, sorry.
Is this that famous anti-racist lady that we covered?
I forgot her name.
Robin DiAngelo.
Robin DiAngelo, right?
We rated her pretty high on self-aggrandizement, I think.
But it was very much a kind of moral grandstanding, backhanded kind of self-aggrandizement.
Like, she's doing the work.
She's listening and learning.
Very flawed, but she's always helping to do better.
But she is the one up on the stage telling you what's wrong with you and what you need to do to change, right?
And that's similar to that.
You give her a four, whereas I give her a three, which is rare.
Yeah, you see, for me, for me, see, I'm a psychologist, Chris.
I'm more attuned.
Yeah.
I notice these things.
I notice these.
It's a one-point difference.
Don't get up into that.
As long as you agree with me that there are different ways in which one can be self-aggrandizing and it isn't always the Donald Trump style of bloviating grandiosity.
It can also be backhanded.
Yeah, yeah.
And especially, you know, in the context of living in Japan, this is very well establishing that, like, self-promotion will backfire.
But there are ways to self-promote still within the society that are culturally appropriate.
So, yeah, I get it.
I'm a good psychologist and anthropologist.
I got the best of both words.
So you say.
A self-declared cognitive anthropologist.
Am I?
Am I?
I'm not self-declared.
I have a doctorate in that.
And then I'm employed in the psychology department.
I'm inside the building.
That's true.
I'm educating your future psychologists.
I just realized you're an anthropologist that has infiltrated our discipline.
God knows what you're getting up to.
That's right.
I'm taking the time from the inside.
It's a long game.
You guys should have to wear like a patch so we all know what you are, like some sort of pink triangle.
No.
That's it.
That's it.
I agree.
A green question mark.
That would be more appropriate.
A green question mark?
Okay.
Well, revolutionary theories.
Now, this is an interesting one because, and I think this could also sometimes be a difference from, you know, the kind of, like you were just talking about, the different genres of gurus that we cover because I think in terms of,
like, political violence gurus, especially the ones on the left, like, you Highlighted.
They're not claiming to have developed a new version of Marxist analysis.
They haven't created historical materialism, version 4. Hassan's most revolutionary theory that I've heard is that the one-piece straw hat pirates are Anti-capitalist revolutionaries.
I don't think he scores this high in this either.
He is a fan of revolutionary theories, but he is not someone that claims to have developed his own.
I think that's true.
Revolutionary, haha, get it?
Yeah, yeah.
But setting that aside, yeah, like you don't have in left-wing ideologies like a profusion of different idiosyncratic heterodox figures coming up with their own kind of interpretation,
right?
Those people generally, pretty soon, if they do that, are no longer left-wing, right?
I think you're right, there isn't a lot of innovation.
A lot of it is pretty much, like this guy here, he's an idiot, but he is, to the extent that his worldview is informed by anything, it is informed by a conventional version of socialism, Marxism, social justice, whatever you want to call it,
critical theory, all that does, you know, it's all perfectly respectable.
Not his version of it, but...
That's the intellectual groundwork.
He doesn't create anything new.
So, yeah, I think that's another interesting difference between left and right.
Yeah.
So, what are you going to give?
I'm going to give two.
Yeah, I'll give them a two.
Because the right are different.
Like, the modern MAGA, weird, like, woo health, paleo, conspirituality type conservative reactionary.
They're just different from a Reagan-era conservative, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So they are mutating extraordinarily quickly, whereas left-wing stuff, it hasn't really changed much since the 1800s.
That's a dig.
I'm going to get in trouble for that.
I'm going to get in trouble for that.
But you know what I'm saying.
I'm exaggerating for a bit.
Jeremy Corbyn is the same now, largely as he was in the 70s, right?
Yeah.
Quite a bit.
Bernie Sanders hasn't gone stark grieving mad, to my knowledge, you know, advocating similar sorts of things.
I mean, you can have things where, like, parties, like, evolve, like, arguably left-wing centre parties, like in Australia and the UK, have evolved from being less revolutionary and more centrist, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that's what we're talking about.
We're talking about the kind of the intellectual ideas that feed into whatever.
Yeah, well, Hassan, though, is one, The possible thing is he's at least heading into the tanky wing, collaborating with people that have more extreme tanky perspectives.
And before he was more straddling, you know, like still far left or anti-capitalist kind of perspective, but not stepping into outright tanky waters.
But now I think increasingly he is doing that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What do we have next, Matt?
See that profound bullshit, Chris.
That's what we have next.
That is right.
Yeah, I mean, I can get this.
He doesn't rely on...
Okay, and that's where we'll end the Grometer episode there.
If you want to hear the full Grometer episode for Hasan or any of the other gurus we covered, they're all over on the Patreon and can be accessed for the low price of $2 a month.
There's other stuff over there.
If you're interested,
We just realized we don't really let people know that much that we have these episodes and extra content.
So we thought we'd make the general Audience aware of it.
And yeah, there'll be another episode out soon enough.
