this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
1815 points (99.3% liked)
Political Memes
7606 readers
3091 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Serpentza is compelling and interesting on a cursory glance. And I don't know if he is consciously racist or how far his biases go. The bigger problem is that there are "algorithmic forces" shaping content and content creators.
The content creators wants to make money, needs to make money. They will experiment with various things. They make compelling content, don't have time to deeply study history or sociology or economics, only enough to project an image. Psychological needs from narcissism might make them unable to resist rationalizations in exchanges for clicks.
There have been quite a few cases with supposedly liberal or leftist icons suddenly turning to reactionary rhetoric. It's hard to understand and somewhat traumatizing. Recently TYT. I think the moral of the story is that much of it is subconsciously performative and not well thought out beliefs. And economic reality makes ideology a lie.
I think Serpentza fits in there somewhere, if he's not outright paid indirectly by the state department to spread propaganda.
I think he realized the US's turn towards fascism and amp up the right-wing rhetoic to secure his adjustment of status. AFIAK, he is still a citizen of South Africa, and I'm not even sure if he has permanent residency in the US, or just some visa. I think he's bootlicking to make sure he doesn't get deported to South Africa.
And he's a cishet white man, so this spiral into fascism doesn't affect him, which is why he's too blind to see the shit that's been happening.
And its also the fact that he criticized South Africa and China too much, he just has to keep his mouth shut about the US to stay out of trouble, kinda similar to how Snowden went against the US, and now he is in a situation where he can't criticize the Russian government.