Stu Smith
@thestustustudio • 56,255 subscribers
Investigative Analyst @ManhattanInst 🏛️ Dragging radicalism & extremism out of the shadows and onto the public record 🥷 TCB⚡Views My Own 🧠
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I just finished watching The Odyssey, and I genuinely do not understand so many of Nolan’s choices. The combat was bizarrely slapstick, the dialogue felt far too modern, and the casting completely baffled me. Why was Odysseus played by a literal Jack Russell terrier?
Stu Smith170,797 Aufrufe • vor 2 Tagen
🚨 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 Smith4,539,320 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
🚨 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 Smith4,501,918 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
🚨 Bill Ayers and Princeton’s Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Mark July 4th With No Patriotism, No Borders, and “Fuck the USA” As you celebrate Independence Day, remember that there is an entire class of activists, including many embedded in higher education, who spend their days trying to dismantle the country. Take last night’s “250 Years of Resistance” event at the National Public Housing Museum, featuring Brian Jones and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in conversation and introduced by Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers. The event was framed around the 250th anniversary of America not as a celebration, but as “250 years of resistance.” Ayers recalled a 1976 underground press poster declaring “200 years is enough” and said, “Now it’s 250 years, and I kind of feel similarly.” At one point, Professor Taylor even acknowledged the vibe in the room, joking, “This audience is all like, ‘Fuck the USA.’” Taylor rejected patriotism outright, saying, “We have to reject the idea of loving a nation state, which is what patriotism is.” She called the nation-state “destructive,” said “borders are deadly” and “borders kill people,” and later declared that the nation-state “should not be revered” because it is “a tool of death and destruction” that should be “the object of political struggle, not embrace.” She also said, “I want nothing to do with claiming the United States in some patriotic fashion,” before joking that when someone handed her child an American flag at the airport, she did not set it on fire, though the thought “may have crossed my mind.” To put this into plainer English, when Taylor says the nation-state should be the “object of political struggle,” she is talking about delegitimizing the nation-state itself and advancing a worldview that would dismantle the United States as a sovereign country. No nation-state means no real borders. No real borders means no meaningful sovereignty. No sovereignty means the people have no country left to govern. This is the old Marxist fantasy of a world where workers are not bound by nations, borders, or citizenship, but are free to move wherever they want. In practice, it means dissolving the country out from under its own people.
Stu Smith713,002 Aufrufe • vor 15 Tagen
Calla Walsh recently sat down for an interview filled with many of her usual talking points, but two moments stood out. First, she complained that people try to “pathologize” how she became so radicalized and militant rather than acknowledge that millions of young Americans supposedly share her views. Then she explained that she was named after the calla lily, a flower that became associated with the IRA after the Easter Rising. So perhaps Walsh is less a case of political radicalization than nominative determinism 😉
Stu Smith28,962 Aufrufe • vor 12 Stunden
Zohran Mamdani played the “I’m focused on NYC” card when asked about foreign policy during his campaign. Meanwhile, DSA ally Claire Valdez is out here backing a United Ireland. Apparently foreign policy stops at the Hudson for Zohran, but reaches Belfast for Claire.
Stu Smith1,190,387 Aufrufe • vor 28 Tagen
🚨 Media figures rushed to fact-check Trump by insisting Democratic Socialism is not Communism. But a majority of DSA’s national leadership is shaped by Communists, Marxist-Leninists, and members who see the org as fertile ground for radicalization. My latest for City Journal!
Stu Smith624,725 Aufrufe • vor 18 Tagen
Iran is currently plastered with massive “Kill Trump” posters while hostilities with the regime continue. And Mamdani’s top international affairs official still thought this was the right moment for an official meeting with Iran’s UN ambassador. Stunningly bad judgment.
Stu Smith324,349 Aufrufe • vor 10 Tagen
🧵 What a rough night for Nithya Raman. Hasan Piker put the LA mayoral candidate and DSA member through a full-on struggle session over her record, repeatedly pressing her to explain where she had fallen short of the movement line. And honestly, even as a conservative, I felt bad for her. This was brutal. One flashpoint was a DSA criticism over Raman’s role in a city resolution tied to the UTLA BDS fight. But the exchange was bigger than that. This was not a good-faith interview. It was an ideological audit. Raman mostly tried to answer politically. She came to DSA through housing and homelessness, said this was not her area of expertise, said she had learned more, and promised she was “committed to learning more.” Stick around for more, because by the end of this even Hasan’s chat wanted his head.
Stu Smith1,902,206 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
This moment from Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast is one of the cleanest arguments against communism and socialism you’ll hear in under a minute. “It's important to study communism, because all, you know, the youngsters these days, they think it's far out and fly... It's not. It usually results in about 50 million people dying.” “It starts with the seizure of private property. That's f*cking crazy... It's built on the government taking everyone's property. What the f*ck? The government's terrible. I don't trust them with anything.” Comedy podcast or not, Matt and Shane basically nuked the entire ideology in under a minute.
Stu Smith1,204,598 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
🚨 Meet the National DSA Leader Defending a “Community Force Under Communism” Hazel Williams sits on DSA’s National Political Committee, formerly co-chaired California DSA, and helped craft the language in DSA’s new platform calling for “steps towards abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state.” Williams makes clear that “abolish the police” does not necessarily mean no enforcement structure ever. It means abolishing police as a force of the capitalist state. In her own words, she does not mean abolishing “some community force under communism” that can “hold each other accountable.” The leaders from the “Commie Caucuses,” DSA’s own internal term, are often the ones pushing the organization further and further left, while the media still debates whether DSA really means the radical things it says. As media talking heads rush to condemn Trump for calling DSA electeds Communist, have they bothered to look at DSA’s board of directors, its National Political Committee, which is now majority Communist?
Stu Smith347,235 Aufrufe • vor 17 Tagen
🚨 Teamsters Turn San Diego Card Party Into a $150 Union Toll Booth Card-show vendors at San Diego’s Card Party say they were charged $150 just to roll their own inventory into the event on carts. These vendors are not giant corporations. They’re mostly hobbyists, collectors, and small business owners trying to bring boxes and cases of cards to tables they already paid for. They expected loading-dock rules. What they say happened instead is that the “anything with wheels” rule was allegedly enforced at the front door too. This is union power running wild — a $150 toll booth for ordinary people trying to move their own inventory into a show they already paid to attend.
Stu Smith1,160,641 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
🚨 Earlier today, protesters swarmed the Warren E. Burger Federal Courthouse in St. Paul after 15 Minnesotans were indicted for allegedly conspiring to impede or injure federal officers and violently oppose immigration enforcement. I am very pro-police getting involved here. You can protest. You can criticize ICE. You can be furious about federal charges. But you cannot swarm a federal courthouse and try to intimidate the justice system in real time.
Stu Smith538,604 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
🚨 Rutgers professor and DSA member Eric Blanc kicks off a discussion with Jacobin's founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara and Labor Power Publications' Ramy Khalil by declaring that the Left “needs” a socialist presidential candidate in 2028. Blanc says that candidate could be AOC or “somebody else” and predicts that planting a clear socialist flag could help DSA grow to as many as 500,000 members, rooted in a stronger labor movement. Sunkara says AOC could fill the role, but only if she maintains “distance and confrontation” with the Democratic Party and presents herself as an outsider. Otherwise, he argues, the Left may be better off with a labor-aligned outsider who has a less developed socialist program but is not perceived as part of the political class. Khalil, identifying himself as a Marxist, says elections are not the primary way to change society. “Social movements and revolutions” are. Still, he argues that a presidential campaign could spread socialist ideas to millions. The question of who will carry the socialist banner in 2028, and whether AOC can still fill that role, is quickly becoming one of the most heated debates on the American left.
Stu Smith83,681 Aufrufe • vor 7 Tagen
🚨 BREAKING: “Death to America” Comes to Virginia Tech At Virginia Tech tonight, Mohamed Abdou opened his “Death to the Akademy” speech by declaring, “We are in a war, a racial religious war since 1492.” He told students America is “the larger monster,” praised “General Sinwar,” called October 7 the “blessed day of Al-Aqsa Flood,” and said jihad can mean defending life “using the sword.” Then he praised students as “a branch of the resistance” and said they were recognized as “a branch of the mujahideen.” And when he explained “Death to America,” he was explicit. “When we say Death to America, we mean, and loud and clear, a total end to U.S. empire. The destruction of this crusading settler colony, their entire project.” Virginia Tech spent the last few days insisting this event was not happening. It happened. And this is what was said. Stick around, because there is a lot more to unpack. We are not even halfway through his speech yet.
Stu Smith956,823 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten