Stu Smith
@thestustustudio • 63,799 subscribers
Investigative Analyst @ManhattanInst 🏛️ Dragging radicalism & extremism out of the shadows and onto the public record 🥷 TCB⚡Views My Own 🧠
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🚨 At the U20 Mayors Summit, Mamdani Says the Left Has Ceded “Quality of Life,” “Efficiency,” and “Fraud and Waste” to the Right This was one of the more interesting arguments Zohran Mamdani made today at the U20 Mayors Summit, and a reminder that he can be genuinely sharp when he drops the “central casting” routine. “In New York City, there are certain words that have taken on ideological associations.” “Quality of life has come to be seen as somehow a right-wing concern. Efficiency… has been taken on as a right-wing concern, rooting out fraud and waste, a right-wing concern.” Mamdani’s argument is that refusing to engage those issues actually helps the Right. “If you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency, and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say, ‘That’s who did it.’” The harder question is how much of the broader Left is actually prepared to follow the advice.
Stu Smith9,617,069 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
🚨 “The More Dysgenic, the Better”: Beatrice Adler-Bolton Says the Left Must Give Up the “Fantasy of Being Fitter Than the Fascists” At Socialism 2026, Adler-Bolton argues that “fitness is a measure of relative disposability under capitalism” and says the goal should not be to become “more useful to the ruling order.” She says the left should not try to beat fascists “at their own game” by becoming “fitter, more eugenic.” “In fact, the more dysgenic, the better, I think.” She closes by arguing that revolution is not “a contest between optimized and properly prepared bodies” and that the very idea is itself fascist.
Stu Smith13,069,722 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
🚨 Socialism 2026 Panel Debates Whether “Settler Colonialism” Is Too Imprecise and Needs to Be “White Settler Colonialism” At Socialism 2026’s “Ocean Deep Solidarity: Reparations, LANDBACK, and Collective Liberation” panel, Raven Schwam-Curtis invokes UVA professor Tiffany King for some galaxy-brain theorizing over whether “settler colonialism” is simply too imprecise. The argument is that Black people and white settlers should not be treated as structurally equivalent in relation to Indigenous dispossession, so perhaps the more precise term is “white settler colonialism.” And yes, Tiffany King is one of my “favorite” radical professors, so I was delighted to see her get a shoutout.
Stu Smith4,949,243 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
🚨 Da’Shaun L. Harrison at Socialism 2026 argues that the political deployment of GLP-1 drugs is “fascistic” because they exist in “a world fixated on genociding fat people.” “The political deployment of GLP-1s is fascistic, not because individuals take them, but because the conditions under which they become necessary are shaped by a world fixated on genociding fat people.” And to explain why that is supposedly fascistic, Harrison turns to Frantz Fanon and “Black flesh under colonial surveillance.” If GLP-1s are already “body fascism,” the dual and triple agonists are going to require an entirely new theoretical vocabulary.
Stu Smith4,055,360 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
🚨🚨🚨 Why is Cal State LA professor Melina Abdullah identifying a specific ICE agent, telling a crowd where he may be staying, giving the street address, and repeatedly saying to “fuck him up”? “Brian Palacios may be staying at the Hilton Garden Inn at 2000 Solar Drive… fuck him up.” She later urges the crowd to read Blood in My Eye and “study guerrilla warfare.” Abdullah later tried to broaden the meaning of “fuck him up,” saying it can include exposing agents or making them uncomfortable. But that qualification comes only after she names a specific person, gives a possible location and street address, and repeatedly tells the crowd to “fuck him up.” You can argue about the legal threshold. It is much harder to argue that this sequence would not reasonably be understood as putting a specific person in danger. And yes, this all happened at yesterday’s PSL-affiliated La Defensa del Pueblo summit.
Stu Smith2,315,232 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
🚨 Da’Shaun L. Harrison at Socialism 2026 argues that the policing of “Black fat flesh” is foundational to broader "entire systems of governance." “Without a population to discipline, there would be no BMI, no obesity epidemic, and no medical or scientific institutions organized around managing fatness,” Harrison says. Harrison argues that diet culture trains “obedience,” “self-denial,” and “discipline,” before expanding the framework into what Harrison calls “body fascism.” That includes state efforts to define which bodies are protected or erased, calls for sovereignty intended to maintain borders, and the treatment of Black flesh itself. Harrison then turns to Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs, arguing that the broader effort to treat fatness as a public-health problem cannot be separated from Blackness. At this point, I am genuinely at a loss for words.
Stu Smith2,068,234 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
🚨 Hasan Names Singham, PSL, ANSWER, and Code Pink in One Breath On stream today, Hasan Piker discussed the reported Treasury scrutiny and said the broader target is “probably Singham” and “his operation,” naming PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, and “anything that he has ever financed.” He then acknowledged that Roy Singham lives in China and has been “a funding vehicle” for political movements and activism in the United States. That is exactly why this matters. This was never just about one influencer’s Cuba trip. It is about the Singham-linked ecosystem, the groups it funds, the delegations it supports, and the political operations built around them. Hasan didn’t refute the network. He mapped it.
Stu Smith4,549,310 görüntüleme • 4 ay önce
🚨 BREAKING: Hasan Piker addressed the reported Treasury investigation on his livestream, and even he admits the news is “not great.” “I’m not gonna lie to you guys. It’s not great. The news is not great, OK? I mean, it’s bullshit, but still not great that they’re after your boy. They’re up my ass.” He then joked with viewers chanting “free me,” responding: “Free me, free me. I can’t believe I’m saying that.” For all the bravado, Hasan clearly understands this is serious.
Stu Smith4,509,173 görüntüleme • 4 ay önce
You have to watch every second of this to fully appreciate it. Genuinely one of the best tributes to Dolly Parton ever.
Stu Smith1,278,678 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
![🚨 “Death to America” at the Claremont Colleges: Mohamed Abdou Urges Students to Emulate Hamas, Organize Underground, and Wage War Against the “Great Satan” One of the more alarming events I attended this week was Mohamed Abdou’s October 7th talk, “Re-Igniting Student Organizing Against Settler-Colonial Amerika,” organized by a student-run group at the Claremont Colleges. Abdou’s central thesis was effectively that student organizers should emulate Hamas, particularly the small, secretive groups. He drew a direct parallel between Hamas’s clandestine preparations and the students in attendance: “Sort of like you organizing today in a small tight-knit group.” “Organizing requires secrecy. It requires deception. It requires being quiet, going underground.” Abdou even compared the clandestine organization of the student event itself to Hamas’s preparations, declaring, “It’s the same thing with the mujahideen.” He later made his message explicit. “We need to become like Al-Qassam. We need to become like Hamas, like Islamic Jihad.” But Abdou’s message went considerably further than organizational tactics as he urged revolutionary confrontation with America. He spoke of an Islam that “hates America,” declaring that Islam, indigenous values, and the black radical tradition are “antithetical to American values.” Abdou then asked whether the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim diasporas wanted to become the new “brown face of empire,” like Barack Obama, or pursue a different path. “Or [do] they want to take war to the enemy? Do they, are they willing to wage war on behalf of justice? Against injustice, which is what America stands for. To deal with Great Satan. To deliver a blow and death to America. For something better.” There is a really nasty anti-assimilation message here. Abdou portrayed participation in American politics as complicity with empire, while presenting revolutionary confrontation and the clandestine methods of Hamas as alternatives for his student audience. And in a harrowing conclusion to a talk celebrating the third anniversary of October 7th, which Abdou called the “3rd blessed anniversary,” he told attendees, “I look forward to many, many conspiratorial events to do with you.”](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2108977983721460089/amplify_video_thumb/2108976704383242241/img/Ss70YKMU11k5Wd_K.jpg)
🚨 “Death to America” at the Claremont Colleges: Mohamed Abdou Urges Students to Emulate Hamas, Organize Underground, and Wage War Against the “Great Satan” One of the more alarming events I attended this week was Mohamed Abdou’s October 7th talk, “Re-Igniting Student Organizing Against Settler-Colonial Amerika,” organized by a student-run group at the Claremont Colleges. Abdou’s central thesis was effectively that student organizers should emulate Hamas, particularly the small, secretive groups. He drew a direct parallel between Hamas’s clandestine preparations and the students in attendance: “Sort of like you organizing today in a small tight-knit group.” “Organizing requires secrecy. It requires deception. It requires being quiet, going underground.” Abdou even compared the clandestine organization of the student event itself to Hamas’s preparations, declaring, “It’s the same thing with the mujahideen.” He later made his message explicit. “We need to become like Al-Qassam. We need to become like Hamas, like Islamic Jihad.” But Abdou’s message went considerably further than organizational tactics as he urged revolutionary confrontation with America. He spoke of an Islam that “hates America,” declaring that Islam, indigenous values, and the black radical tradition are “antithetical to American values.” Abdou then asked whether the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim diasporas wanted to become the new “brown face of empire,” like Barack Obama, or pursue a different path. “Or [do] they want to take war to the enemy? Do they, are they willing to wage war on behalf of justice? Against injustice, which is what America stands for. To deal with Great Satan. To deliver a blow and death to America. For something better.” There is a really nasty anti-assimilation message here. Abdou portrayed participation in American politics as complicity with empire, while presenting revolutionary confrontation and the clandestine methods of Hamas as alternatives for his student audience. And in a harrowing conclusion to a talk celebrating the third anniversary of October 7th, which Abdou called the “3rd blessed anniversary,” he told attendees, “I look forward to many, many conspiratorial events to do with you.”
Stu Smith159,146 görüntüleme • 10 gün önce
🚨 Socialism 2026 is now defining “health fascism,” and yes, Make America Healthy Again is apparently part of it. Beatrice Adler-Bolton, co-host of the left-wing Death Panel podcast, says “health fascism” is not simply bad or overly harsh health policy. She defines it as a political logic in which “health, fitness, productivity, and bodily normalcy” become measures of “moral worth and political belonging.” Under this framework, she says fatness, illness, disability, “racialized difference,” dependency, and even perceived “degeneracy” are treated as evidence of “social rot” that needs to be excised. And then she gets to MAHA. “The Make America Healthy Again project makes this quite explicit,” Adler-Bolton says, arguing that MAHA draws on “eugenic, anti-Black, anti-fat, ableist, racist, productivist traditions.” And stick around. We are nowhere near done with Beatrice Adler-Bolton.
Stu Smith767,045 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
🚨 At Socialism 2026, Hasan Piker lays out the three issues he sees as especially promising for the left right now: tenant organizing, opposition to data centers, and fighting “mass surveillance,” including Flock cameras. What especially catches my attention is the pairing of data centers and Flock. The Singham network has fingerprints in both organizing spaces, which makes me think some of the recent outrage around these older technologies may be getting artificially amplified.
Stu Smith719,213 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
Did you know Hasan Piker was planning to attend the protests in France? He says people reached out encouraging him to come, but he was ultimately too busy to make the trip. "It's LFI. They're good." "Have you not seen Mélenchon's rallies? 20,000 people attending..."
Stu Smith39,036 görüntüleme • 2 gün önce
🚨 At tonight’s Harvard Medical School event, artist-in-residence Roxane Gay responded to a question about the health insurance industry with “Free Luigi.” Minutes earlier, Gay admitted she uses concierge medicine after deciding to “throw money at this problem” and “buy my way out” of ordinary healthcare. Gay, incidentally, is former Harvard president Claudine Gay’s first cousin. We all know Harvard is morally bankrupt at this point, but this was a great reminder.
Stu Smith294,949 görüntüleme • 20 gün önce
🚨 At Socialism 2026, Georgetown professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò says that when he takes off his “commie hat” and puts on his “normie hat,” even he struggles to make police abolition sound convincing. He recalls young people in Los Angeles who had been “on the wrong side of law enforcement” telling him that if police disappeared, "that's crazy" and “shit would go left immediately.” Táíwò’s response is remarkable. Even if abolishing the police immediately proved disastrous, he says that still would not make abolition as the ultimate goal wrong. “Even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean abolition as the horizon isn’t true.” Táíwò admits the real problem is explaining what happens next week, rather than offering people “the long march towards dialectical materialism.” As Táíwò struggles to explain what comes next, NYU professor Chenjerai Kumanyika jumps in with the ideological lifeline, “The answer is revolution.”
Stu Smith597,715 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
🚨 Angela Davis at Socialism 2026 says today’s movement has to recognize the “complexity and the vastness” of the struggle for liberation. She expands that beyond “human liberation” to “the liberation of the planet” and “the liberation of other animals,” before saying activists are “rethinking the breadth and the depth of our struggles.” Davis then points to the normalization of Palestine solidarity within social movements, saying it is now “as important to fight for solidarity with Palestine as it is to struggle against racism inside the US.” She calls that shift “a major victory.” Note: This is AI-modified only in the sense that I cleaned up the audio for them. They finally gave her a standard microphone.
Stu Smith614,423 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
🚨 At Socialism 2026’s “Liberatory Spirit, the Spirit of Liberation” panel, Rev. Jinzu Minna Jain warns that even left-wing spaces can accidentally reproduce “health fascism” through the language of healing. She says organizers need to be careful about what “healing” means, because sometimes people are not looking to “get better” or “move past” trauma at all. Instead, she argues, what people may need is collective support while “sitting with the cracks,” “sitting with the bones,” and “sitting in the horror together.” I’m not especially sold on the whole “Woke 1.0 vs. Woke 2.0” framework, but if even “healing” can now be ideologically objectionable, then we have entered some truly rarefied territory.
Stu Smith508,505 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
🚨 DSA Co-Chairs Squirm When Pressed on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua This is a longer clip, but it captures the best parts of a broader discussion DSA national co-chairs Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer had with The Moment hosts Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos. Jorge repeatedly presses them on whether Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are dictatorships. They repeatedly avoid giving him a direct answer. Romer eventually responds that “Cubans have access to their democracy in a way that we do not,” pointing to Cuba’s 2022 Family Code referendum as evidence. That referendum was only four years ago, making it an especially curious answer to Jorge Ramos repeatedly pressing her on decades without multiparty elections. Ashik Siddique fares little better. Asked whether Cuba is a dictatorship, he pivots to the U.S. embargo and the state of American politics, responding that “it’s hard for us to judge other countries being dictatorships when we have Donald Trump as president.” Paola eventually steps in and identifies the problem at hand. DSA can be anti-imperialist without becoming apologists for these regimes. They should still be able to recognize and explain what makes them authoritarian. When it comes to international politics, DSA is often at its most revealing. Siddique and Romer are not even among the organization’s most die-hard internationalists. This is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how radical DSA’s international politics can get.
Stu Smith800,262 görüntüleme • 2 ay önce