this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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The Deprogram
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"As revolutionaries, we don't have the right to say that we're tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We also know that when the people understand, they cannot but follow us. In any case, we, the people, have no enemies when it comes to peoples. Our only enemies are the imperialist regimes and organizations." Thomas Sankara, 1985
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Starting this by saying this is not an aggressive rebuttal but a response to points I think you validly were concerned with. Also I start to ramble I think. I am recovering from a stomach flu, so since I made the original comment I have spent all day laying in the bathroom recovering a what I can only describe as a blitzkrieg on my gut the likes of which I have never experienced before.
I am spoiler tagging so people don't have to scroll past a big ass wall of text if they don't care to read. lol
spoiler
Firstly, Having a lot of content being a reason for some to not do any research on the person, and/or make knee jerk reactions and dogpile a comrade, imo, is not great reasoning.
As Moa said:
How often do we say this to libs? I feel no differently here. But to add to this, it is understandable that is would be hard for some. But we as comrades can learn the basics of something/someone quite easily though absorbing it from the community (there a word for this but I'm having a brain fart). It's how communities work. We ask comrades that do know, or just read what they generally have to say. The Deprogram community is one of the larger here and is almost exclusively ML, very pro China, and fairly well behaved are they not? I would trust comrades to tell me about Soviet History if I asked. I would trust the community about a podcaster. I would trust their positive views over a random making wild claims without proof other than a comment about a video, they didn't even watch.
You bring up Hasan at one point. I would say that my views are of Hasan not being that great. This is through contact of what the general populace here feels, and also his content gets posted enough to back up him being inflammatory and kind of a shit. It is also true he has good takes as well. Being critical when proof is present is valid and good. Being critical based on a vague accusation on a group one has little knowledge of, not so much. We rarely see bad takes from the Deprogram guys yet when we do once in a blue moon we always see someone trying to act like they are much worse then they are. The only really bad take we have seen recently was from Yugo raging out on Twitter shit. And the Deprogram community mostly agrees that was a bad take, but we don't demonize someone on one or two bad takes. Cause if we did, we wouldn't have any comrades at all.
Another point, one doesn't have to review every podcast episode. Hell, we don't even have to watch any. All of them also make YouTube videos. Almost all are quite well made, thorough, and professional. Almost all of it is a really good resource to use to teach others. Their episodes of the pod being more relaxed and "dude bro" sounding is just the flavor they have. That is the hole they fill. We don't get a long running podcast like that without it being entertaining to a good sized audience. They cannot help that it does not appeal to everyone. They can't do that. One podcast cannot appeal to everyone. It's impossible. I don't like comedy romance media. I don't attack people for it or the media. It fills a void. It serves its purpose. Sometimes the Deprogram toilet humor gets old, but it's their style. It's not for everyone. It is not their responsibility to make sure there's other podcasts to meet other people's standards. Grover Furr books are amazing sources of information. They are also, drier then the Sahara Desert. I am not going to ridicule Grover Furr or his efforts because I have a hard time reading his books and they aren't entertaining enough.
The cult of personality is a thing that we really can't do too much about. So concerns with it are valid, but I feel that is on the community as well as the influencers. I would say, through watching the show, they try not to promote that. Sure they sell merch and take patreon donation to keep the "show" running. But that's the price of being a well developed podcast in a capitalist shithole world. So while the influencers can dissuade it, people are going to.... People. People have been idolizing popular figures since the dawn of time, most of whom they shouldn't, and none of whom were perfect. But I trust a group of mostly MLs to be more critical of influencers like them, then I would a bunch of hype guys. As far as I know only Yugo does Twitter? I do not follow any of that shit. IDC what any of these guys says on social media, but I see a distinct lack of it posted on the regular.
As for local orgs. JT did stuff with CPUSA for some time. Idk if he still does. If he's like me he realized there wants much of a way to change it from the inside, and eventually accepted it as a loss. I think he dropped everything to focus entirely on the pod and YouTube channels because he could reach more people? But also, I don't worship, nor follow their every move. As for the others, I'm pretty sure Yugo hides his face because he doesn't want to get murdered locally, and Hakim is a full time doctor in addition to the pod.
I probably missed some point and definitely rambles so, sorry about that.
Also, none of this is meant to glaze these guys. Just give my thoughts and what I know. It's merely my view that I feel that it is a regular occurrence to be unjustly, and overly critical of some on here that are not deserving, that we should think before "dog piling," and that we should listen to comrades that...call out bullshit.
I hope you feel better soon. That's far more important than replying to what I said.
I will try to address what you've said, but please don't feel like you need to go back and forth, especially while sick.
In general, I get this to a point. Yes, we can't research everything individually ourselves. We have to take others at their word to a degree. And I'm certain it's a point I've been the one making before in other contexts. However, I do think there is something unique about the context of the podcast/stream kind of format that lends itself to gossip style discourse about them. I don't know how else to describe it in this moment. When I see people talking about streamers and podcasters, whether it is defending them or criticizing, it often sounds a lot like gossip and gossip is notoriously untrustworthy and messy to manage.
In your case, I read it like you are going through this specific podcast in detail and I appreciate that. I am not saying your approach to it here is like gossip, but rather what the common take appears to be.
I will try to elaborate on what I mean because I know that's kind of vague: gossip is like, he said, she said, did you hear what they did? did you hear what they didn't do? Rumors get started through this kind of thing and it can spin out of control if left unchecked.
How can we approach this differently, in general? The most important point I can think of is to not over-generalize in one direction or another. What exactly are they doing? What did they do recently that is worthy of praise? What have they done that is worthy of criticism? I am not saying people need to have essay length back and forths every time they bring up a streamer or podcaster. The opposite if anything. A single sentence saying a thing like your, "JT [one of the hosts of The Deprogram?] did stuff with CPUSA for some time" is already more informative than "The Deprogram is trustworthy" or "The Deprogram is bad".
I think in a way this proves my point though about the difficulty of discerning. You can correct me if this is a factually incorrect read: From the way your describe it, your view of The Deprogram is based on watching them with a certain amount of thoroughness and getting a profile sense of what they are like. But your view of Hasan appears to be the opposite, one of having a vague impression based on how others talk about him and brief clips that people share of "bad takes".
I find this to hold true with some consistency here from anecdotal observation, that those who watch a podcaster/streamer with regularity are more apt to defend them and those who only see them as a few clips and a brief impression are more apt to be critical. Supposing I am correct in that observation and it's not just me falling prey to confirmation bias or something, what are we supposed to do about it?
Looping back to what I said before about straightforward information, it may be that we need to prioritize informing each other in simple ways, and from the other direction, trying to keep criticism to specific incidents unless we can make a thorough case against someone/entity. Maybe "so and so seems trustworthy" or "so and so seems like an ultra" is enough for a group of friends, but I'm not sure it's enough for media entities and the like.
Not all of us are great at recalling specific details over general impressions, which may be part of the problem. But I think we still have to try.
I know that doesn't address every point you made, but it seemed like the most important to go over and my response is already long.