The Dirtbag Left & the Six Degrees of Adolf Hitler

The Pepe Silvia meme featuring Dirtbag Left podcasts with a photo of Hitler. [1]4,057 words

Well, it looks like the honeymoon is over for the Dirtbag Left. And as Counter-Currents’ official Dirtbag Left correspondent, I’m here to tell you about it.

I’ve always pushed back against people who accuse the Dirtbag Left of being “controlled opposition.” Sure, they are cucked on race (although some are semi-woke on Jews). They do have some serious structural critiques of neoliberalism and wokeness. They are not “redpilled” in the way we are redpilled, but they are conscious of the fact that we are in a Matrix.

They are more genuinely anti-establishment than Black Lives Matter, who just want more concessions from the current system, or QAnon, who just want personnel changes within the current system, or Antifa, who are unwitting pawns of the current system.

Certainly, the establishment considers White Nationalists to be a greater threat than Marxists for the simple fact that you can always buy off a Marxist. You know, the ol’ “We love what you’re doing and would like to help you get your message out. I can pull some strings and get you on TV and get you a book deal, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut I’m gonna need you to lay off X, Y, and Z.” And the commie will think “Well, I’ll still be able to get some of my message out and to a much larger audience!”

But you really couldn’t do that with white nationalists. You can’t say “Mr. Anglin, we can get you a six-figure-a-year job writing for National Review and regular TV spots on Fox News, but you can’t talk about Jews, race, or women.” That wouldn’t work for reasons that I don’t think I need to explain to the readers of Counter-Currents.

But I’ve been saying for a while that once the “Far Right” was wiped off the internet, the “unwoke Left” would be next. For all their flaws, they are simply not “with the program” — and in the end, our overlords cannot allow any genuine opposition.

The Dirtbag Left has endured some censorship, albeit not nearly as much as we have. Chapo Trap House [2] and Cum Town [3] have both had their Reddit pages nuked. Brace Beldon of the TrueAnon [4] podcast has been banned from Twitter for years, but it’s pretty much an open secret that he still tweets on his podcast’s Twitter page. Nick Mullen of Cum Town was banned from Twitter a while back. And, of course, you have Aimee Terese, by far the most censored person in the Dirtbag Left, who is currently on her 37 millionth Twitter account.

Another interesting incident happened back in January. Anna Khachiyan of Red Scare was banned from Twitter for a couple of weeks, almost immediately after a Red Scare episode where Khachiyan and an extremely stoned Dasha Nekrasova unambiguously endorsed the January 6 Capitol storming. The podcast in question [5] is well worth a listen. I’ll give those two some credit. They really went to bat for our guys and the establishment was not amused. But the ban turned out to be temporary; presumably a warning shot.

Alexander Reid Ross for the Daily Beast: "These 'Dirtbag Left' Stars Are Flirting With the Far Right [6]

Earlier this week, ex-SPLC writer Alexander Reid Ross [7] launched a full-on assault on the Dirtbag Left in the Daily Beast called “These Dirtbag Left Stars Are Flirting with the Far Right [8].” In it, Ross name-drops nearly every prominent “Unwoke Left” personality, then proceeds to methodically six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon them to “the far right” — whatever that means, but my inference is that Mr. Ross thinks it means “bad.” Basically, he just accuses the entire Dirtbag Left of being crypto-Nazis.

The article’s purpose is obvious. It is an unambiguous call for mass deplatforming and demonetization of the Dirtbag Left. As far as I can tell, most of the people in the Dirtbag Left are shrugging this article off as a clickbait smear job. Later on, I will explain why they are doing this, and I will also explain why they should take the article seriously — not its content, which is indeed ridiculous, but the fact that it exists at all, which is somewhat ominous. All will be explained later. 

But for now, let’s talk about this article.

First of all, I’m in it. Well, sort of. Ross doesn’t mention me by name, but he talks about and links to an article I wrote where I said nice things about Sean McCarthy [9] of Grubstakers [10] and Aimee Terese of What’s Left [11]. Pure guilt-by-association. You see, I write for Counter-Currents, which makes me basically Hitler, and I said nice things about them, which makes them Hitler too.

Six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon: Ross links Chapo Trap House and Cum Town back to me because Matt Christman of CTH and Nick Mullen of Cum Town once did a podcast with Sean McCarthy who once had nice things said about him by me, who is basically Hitler. Six degrees further: Ross links Bill Maher back to me because he once spoke to Nick Mullen, who once did a podcast with Sean McCarthy, who once had nice things said about him by me, who is basically Hitler. Another six degrees: Mike Recine [12] of The Sit Down [13] podcast is linked back to me because he once did a podcast with Nick Mullen who once did a podcast with Sean McCarthy, who once had nice things said about him by me, who is basically Hitler.

It all leads back to Hitler. And by Hitler, I mean me.

Don’t believe me? Sounds too ridiculous? Well, I’m not exaggerating. Read it for yourself. Here’s the passage in question:

This is, of course, the tip of the iceberg. Far-right blog Counter-Currents noted that @kantbot hosted another “unwoke left” podcaster, Aimee Terese, who was praised by white-nationalist group American Renaissance for retweeting Bronze Age Pervert and supposedly rejecting “the war on white heritage.” Counter-Currents further appreciated @kantbot hosting Sean McCarthy, of the “Dirtbag Left” podcast Grubstakers. McCarthy in turn hosted Chapo Trap House’s Matt Christman on Grubstakers for a two-part episode chatting about QAnon for hours, along with another of their cohort, Nick Mullen. (Neither Terese nor McCarthy responded to requests for comment.) Mullen is fairly notorious for his controversial podcast Cum Town and his use of racist slurs, including dropping the n-word multiple times in a conversation discussing Bill Maher. Mullen also joined The Sitdown podcast to talk about pedophilia in Hollywood back in 2018, on which a host introduced him by saying, “We’re here to talk about probably the biggest cartel that I know of, and it’s full of Jews.”

Pepe Silvia [14]

Poor Aimee Terese has been six-degrees-of-Kevin-Baconed to two white nationalist outlets! I guess they felt that slanderously six-degrees-of-Kevin-Baconing to her to just one white nationalist outlet would not be enough to slow down Teflon Aimee.

Anti-fascist researchers appear to be big fans of mine. This is the third time I have been quoted in one of their hit pieces in order to guilt-by-association someone. The other two times were when I said nice things about Nick Fuentes (see here [15] and here [16]).

I would like to take a moment out of this article to say a few words about Daily Beast writer Alexander Reid Ross.

I think I speak for everyone in the white supremacist community when I say that Daily Beast writer Alexander Reid Ross is undoubtedly one of the finest journalists in America. I and all my white supremacist friends like to talk all the time about how inspirational Alexander Reid Ross’ work is to us.

Not many people realize this, but writing anti-racist hit pieces is just a paycheck for him. I mean, the guy’s gotta eat. But I have always got the impression from Alexander Reid Ross’ work that he is secretly on our side. His work is filled with ultra-esoteric white supremacist dog whistles that would go over the heads of most normies, but to the super-secretive inner circle of elite-of-the-elite white supremacists (of which I am, of course, a member), we hear these intensely racist and wildly anti-Semitic coded signals loud and clear. Like a written wink and a nod.

“What signals,” you ask? You want examples? No way! I’m not going to publicly reveal to you all of our secret handshakes. Lemme just say that they don’t call him Alexander “Reid Siege” Ross on the message boards for nothing!

With that out of the way. . . .

The whole article is just like Ross’ above screed, but more drawn out. His main targets are Jimmy Dore, Red Scare, Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House, and TrueAnon, who each get a few paragraphs slandering them and spuriously connecting them to Hitler (not me, the other Hitler).

Jimmy Dore [17]

Jimmy Dore

Jimmy Dore is the big fish here, the guy they clearly want to take down the most. Some have quibbled over whether or not Dore qualifies as “Dirtbag Left,” but that’s beside the point. Of all the “unwoke” class-based Lefties, he’s the biggest. 

Dore interviewed Magnus Panvidya, a guy from the Boogaloo Boys, whom Ross describes as “far right.” Sigh. . . I know what you’re thinking: “But the Boogaloo Boys are libertarian cucks and don’t claim to be anything else,” and indeed, Mr. Panvidya did not say anything all that inflammatory in the interview. But don’t worry. The Daily Beast has you covered.

Explaining the appearance of Panvidya on Dore’s show, one former Boogaloo Boy speaking on the condition of anonymity noted “of course, there are a lot of these guys trying to rehabilitate the image of the movement. Any of them jockeying for attention will say whatever they think will make people sympathetic or take a softer view of them. So I don’t doubt there is gaslighting going on.”

Get it? “Don’t believe what the Boogaloo Boys actually say. Believe what I tell you they think. Because they’re lying. If you don’t believe me, here’s an anonymous ‘former Boogaloo Boy’ who will back up my narrative.”

I think this “former Boogaloo Boy” is about as real as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or my Canadian girlfriend.

I always knew they would eventually come for the Dirtbag Left, but I wasn’t sure what angle they would use. They don’t engage in your classic “hate speech,” so then what? Maybe declare criticism of Israel anti-Semitic? Or criticism of “white privilege” theory racist? It’s too early in the game for woke enforcers to go to those lengths. For a while, they ran with “the Dirtbag Left is a fash pipeline,” but the evidence for that hasn’t emerged. All that’s left is “Right-wingers like some of these guys, so they must be bad.”

Take this paragraph:

Jack Posobiec, a far-right media figure who spearheaded the Pizzagate conspiracy theory — which insisted Hillary Clinton led a pedophile cabal run out of Comet Pizza — reposted Dore’s tweet, in which the populist said he was “completely floored” by his interview with Panvidya, and commenting simply, “Exactly.” On another occasion, he reposted a tweet to Telegram calling Dore “a Jack Posobiec Democrat.”

As if Jimmy Dore has any control over who retweets him! 

Wait. What’s this?

Travis LeBlanc, "Exactly." quote tweeting Alexander Reid Ross. [18]Uh-oh! It looks like Alexander Reid Ross gets retweeted by white supremacists!

But then again, why wouldn’t he? As I said, Alexander “Reid Siege” Ross is a legend in white supremacist circles. I don’t want to say too much, but trust me, there’s another side to the guy. I know it might not look like it from this article, but once he punches out at Antifa Inc. and goes home for the day, he lets his hair down and tells you what he really thinks. I wish I could tell you more, but I cannot reveal things told to me in confidence.

However, a former Daily Beast employee speaking on the condition of anonymity told me “Bro, Reid Siege Ross is redpilled as fuck. There are a lot of these Daily Beast employees trying to rehabilitate their image. Any of them writing poorly-written hit pieces on the Dirtbag Left will say whatever they think will make people less suspicious of the fact that they are, in reality, totally based. So I don’t doubt there is gaslighting going on.”

Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova of Red Scare [19]

Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova of Red Scare

Anna Khachiyan gets in for a kicking, but you would expect that in an article of this kind. She has been getting accused of being a cryptofascist for years. Khachiyan dislikes the term “contrarian” and denies being one. I believe her to a certain extent, in that I do not think she says things she does not believe just to get a reaction. But I have always sensed that she doesn’t exactly dislike ruffling feathers.

Khachiyan is not a Right-winger per se, but despite having come up in Left-wing circles, she will occasionally show some reactionary leg by either saying something uncharacteristically conservative for a Leftist or by speaking positively about Right-wingers. Recently, she has acquired a taste for thinkers like Mencius Moldbug and Bronze Age Pervert. In a recent interview with comedian Tim Dillon, she declared that “socialism is over.” [20]

As you might expect, Antifa’s dossier on Khachiyan is longer than Sargon of Akkad’s Kiwi Farms thread. She has a long list of spice quotes to choose from, but the one the Daily Beast ran with was her talking about Bronze Age Pervert on a podcast: “All of the good fiction writing now is self-published essentially and coming from the so-called ‘alt-right,’ and my haters can quote me on that.”

You might say that Khachiyan has always been asking for trouble. But with that quote, she was literally asking for trouble. Kind of a disappointing pick, if you ask me. She has much better damaging quotes out there. 

Anna Khachiyan on Twitter: "Let's be clear on one thing: I am not and have never been a liberal or a leftist. I'm a cryptofascist, and the "crypto" is being generous. [21]

But the point of the article is to play six degrees of Hitler, and this quote does that. Ross also talks about how Khachiyan had Steve Bannon on her podcast — himself Hitler — and he once worked for Trump, who is Hitler times 100. Once you’ve connected Anna to Hitler 102 times, your work is done. Throwing in extra quotes about Anna’s avowed support for arranged marriages would just be overkill.

If anything, I was surprised that the article did not include the infamous photo of Anna’s Red Scare co-host Dasha Nekrasova hanging up an SS flag. 

Dasha Nekrasova hanging up an SS flag [22]

I mean, if you’re trying to connect these people to Hitler, how in the hell do you overlook that? Instead, Dasha gets connected to Hitler merely for using slang like “cuck” and “libtarded,” which is absurdly milquetoast. 

Anyway, for more on Red Scare’s history of controversy, check out these two articles: Red Scare Pod and the Crypto Nexus [23] and Red Scare Aftermath: Exiting the Crypto Closet [24]

Ross connects a lot of people to Hitler in his article: Kantbot, Matt Taibbi, The Movement for a People’s Party, the Perfume Nationalists. It’s not just throwing goyim under the bus. Some based anti-Zionist Jews like Brace Belden of TrueAnon and Norman Finklestein get raked over the coals. And Alex Rubinstein of RT. Now this is kind of funny:

Another reporter on the left, Alex Rubinstein [25] — who has reported for the Russian state-backed RT America [26] (which U.S. intelligence identified as a player [27] in Russian election interference in 2016) 

The word “conspiracy/ies” appears 22 times in the article. But then right in the middle of it, Ross invokes Russiagate, a conspiracy long-since debunked six ways to Sunday, as if it were established fact.

Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House [28]

Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House

One thing about this article that stuck out to me was its aggressive treatment of Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House — but otherwise leaving Chapo Trap House alone. 

Chapo Trap House is more or less the flagship podcast of the Dirtbag Left, and in my opinion, Matt Christman is “the talent” of CTH. People like to compare Chapo Trap House to The Daily Shoah, and if that were the case, Matt Christman would be Mike Enoch. He doesn’t tower over his co-host quite as much as Enoch does, but talent-wise, he’s on another level.

Ross, of course, is trying to get the people he names deplatformed and demonetized. The message I’m getting here is that Chapo Trap House can stay, but Christman’s got to go. Maybe the establishment still has some use for Chapo Trap House, or maybe it’s too big that deplatforming would create too much backlash. But this Christman guy is a loose cannon. He’s too smart. Too original. Too much of a wild card. He’s got to go. 

More articles like this will be written in the future. Once the deplatforming starts to heat up, there will be increasing pressure on Chapo Trap House to ditch Christman to avoid the ban hammer. Maybe I’m wrong. But that is the message I am getting.

The response to the Daily Beast article was overwhelmingly negative except among diehard Antifa purists. The Daily Dot reported [29] on the reaction and Reid Siege Ross’ reaction to the reaction.

“In short, making it seem like I’m in some conspiracy to smear people on the left is, in fact, an unfounded conspiracy theory meant to discredit me and smear the groups I work with,” he told the Daily Dot via email, noting that he was speaking in his personal capacity.

“It’s irresponsible and baseless,” he added. “But at least it goes further to demonstrate the paranoid style of those who have a lot of difficulty coping with honest journalism.”

But this is my favorite part:

Ross believes the attacks on him, which he says range from “off-base to hateful” and have also been directed at his friends, are indicative that he’s onto something.

Ahem.

“Hey there, Siege. Travis LeBlanc of Counter-Currents. Big fan, by the way. I have a question. Just hypothetically speaking, how do you think a truly innocent person would react to being wrongly smeared as a crypto-Nazi? Not saying you did that. Just talking hypotheticals here. Okay, now how would that reaction of our hypothetical innocent victim differ from the reactions that you have actually been getting?”

I have pretty good sociopath radar, and Reid Siege Ross’ comments there just set my radar on fire. Let’s dig a little deeper into this character.

Alexander “Reid Siege” Ross [30]

Alexander “Reid Siege” Ross

Alexander Reid Ross is a geography instructor at Portland State University who first rose to national prominence in 2017 with the release of his book Against the Fascist Creep.

From Ross’s Wikipedia page:

Ross published the book Against the Fascist Creep in 2017. In it, Ross defines the phenomenon and term “fascist creep”, “the crossover space between right and left” through which “at least in its early stages, fascists often utilize ‘broad front’ strategies. . . to gain access to mainstream political audiences.” This can take the appearance of individuals who attempt to position themselves as outside of political divides. In practice, this takes the form of rightwing movements appropriating the language of the left, such as attempts by the right to infiltrate the radical environmentalist factions of the left. The book also describes how the right weaponizes detached irony to break taboos against far-right politics.

Okay, so he has written a book on Left-Right crossover, and it apparently received rave reviews among anti-racist media outlets and activists.

Shortly afterward, Ross started writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center, oftentimes promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory. Playing a little too fast and loose with his speculations and accusations as to who was and who was not secretly working for the Kremlin, the SPLC was facing a massive lawsuit by Max Blumenthal. At that point, the SPLC deleted all of Ross’ articles and issued a public apology. Blumenthal has some pretty interesting things to say about Alexander Reid Ross in these two Twitter threads, here [31] and here [32].

Despite the SPLC fiasco, Ross had accumulated enough anti-racist clout from his book that he was still able to land a job at the Daily Beast. But more than that, he has started working with The Network Contagion Research Institute [33], an anti-hate organization that is partnered with the Anti-Defamation League [34].

Now, a lot of Dirtbag Lefties have been laughing off this poorly-written, error-ridden screed by a guy who previously had his articles deleted for being poorly-written, error-ridden screeds full of unsubstantiated accusations.

People who do so misunderstand Ross’ intent.

Ross did not write this for clickbait. The article is an appeal for mass deplatforming and demonetization. They just need something in writing that they can show to tech platforms, advertisers, media, activists, influential big-shots, and others.

The people this article was made for are not going to go through and fact-check every little thing. They are not going to listen to a few podcast episodes of the people smeared and make up their own minds. They are going to see the name “Anti-Defamation League,” they are going to see that the author has written a critically acclaimed book on Left-Right crossover (the theme of the article), and will assume — bad writing aside — that this guy knows what he is talking about. They will take this article seriously even if you do not. The SPLC fiasco can be explained away — so what if he got carried away with the whole Russiagate thing? So did Rachel Maddow. So did 80% of the Democratic Party. I wouldn’t count on the SPLC affair to offer anyone any reasonable doubt.

When it comes to tech censorship, the ADL, as the blacks would say, ain’t no fuckin’ joke. If someone affiliated with the ADL is writing hit pieces on you, you should take that seriously.

It was only a few years ago when people wrote such articles about the Dissident Right. We all laughed at how dishonest and poorly-written they were. But then a week later everyone mentioned in the article starts getting banned all over the internet.

The hammer may not come down on the Dirtbag Left right away. The Dirtbag Left has a few things going for it that the Dissident Right did not. For one, they have some powerful friends and celebrity fans that would be willing to stick up for them if Big Tech tried to wipe them off the internet. The Dissident Right has its share of famous fans (I’ve heard stories. . .) but none that would be willing to stick their necks out for us. That would be career suicide and probably futile anyway.

Ross’ article is laying the groundwork, mentally preparing people for the deplatformings to come. It may take a few more articles and hit pieces like this before the public is sufficiently convinced.

It must be said that if the ADL’s goal was to prevent a theoretical “red-brown alliance,” the stupidest thing they could possibly do would be to deplatform the reds. Nationalists and socialists tend not to collaborate mostly because Leftists are worried that rubbing shoulders with nationalists might result in them getting deplatformed. But if the ADL wants to go ahead and deplatform these people anyway, then there would no reason not to do livestreams with Richard Spencer on Bitchute.

Okay, maybe that’s a bad example. Even without the threat of deplatforming, there are still a million other reasons not to associate with Richard Spencer. But you know what I mean. 

I would recommend reading Ross’ article if for no other reason than to find new, interesting people to follow. I had never heard of Perfume Nationalist before, and plan to check them out soon.

I personally find a lot of socialist analysis useful. Socialists are very good at dissecting structures of power and identifying all the moving parts. It helps give me some insight into how Shlomo’s machine works. There is some value to class-based politics as political theory. I just don’t think it works as political theory. When you get down to it, the primary difference between the Dirtbag Left and the Dissident Right is that the Dirtbag Left thinks the best chance for defeating neoliberalism is a multi-racial coalition of the working class, and the Dissident Right thinks it would be a multi-class coalition of whites.

Well, the fact that all these Dirtbag Leftists have a lot more white nationalists listening to their content than they do working-class POC should give you an idea as to which strategy is more viable.

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