I think I dodged a lot of bullets over the years. Most of this stuff I've never even see once, unless someone like Hasan was talking over it. H3, though, that was a regular fixture in the house for a while. The goofs and gaffs started to dry up around the time they were going after Ryan Kavanaugh. It consumed so much air time, and at times it became funny, but the bits would just be ground into dust quickly. The nights they were not doing a show though, we were watching Hasan, and then eventually Leftovers. By that time, I was already very interested in learning about socialism and communism. Once those topics started getting more air time on Leftovers, it was obvious to me that Ethan wasn't someone who cared to learn anything. They specifically had an episode that was, to my recollection, pitched as "Hasan explains Socialism to Ethan", which actually was "Ethan plans on trying to win the debate about socialism against Hasan". That seemed to be the turning point for the show, and it definitely solidified my dislike for the whole H3 thing pretty quickly. Naturally, the fallout from Oct. 7th killed the show and made it even more clear that Ethan was a chud. That might have been the last time we watched any H3 content regularly. By then we were to busy being parents to keep up with either, but would catch Hasan videos on YouTube. I discovered channels like Second Thought and The Deprogram from there, and eventually that landed me here.

However, to say any of these people really played a huge role in the rise of leftist thought in my mind would be an exaggeration. That started with the 2008 housing market collapse, the release of the Bitcoin white paper shortly after, and eventually Occupy Wall Street, which, even though I wasn't on the ground, the surrounding messaging got its hooks in me. I remember all the discussions about turning the internet into a public utility, the "internet blackout" protests against the SOPA and PIPA laws, the death of Arron Swartz, all getting my gears spinning. Eventually, it was the Sanders 2016 fuckery, Hillary Clinton replacing him, Trump winning the election, BLM, Covid, Biden, Oct 7th, the Kamala campaign losing to Trump, and now. That all played, a much more significant role in my radicalization than any of these YouTubers. If anything, I ended up a Hasan watcher because of these events, and not the other way around. I remember, after the Sanders thing and Trump winning, having discussions with friends at the time, where I was the only one who seemed to think these events could only lead to some kind of violent event. That the natural trajectory of Trump coming into office would eventually be some form of armed rebellion. Obviously, I was only half right, as the Jan 6th stuff was really more akin to a coup attempt and petty bourgeois revolt than anything else, but at that time I was still pretty uneducated.

Regardless, that was informed by the events of BLM, and the rhetoric coming out of that movement. I remember seeing an interview of a black woman next to a boarded up CVS, so angry she was in tears, telling the camera "You killed us in the streets … We played your game and built your wealth for 400 years, and when we built our own wealth in Rosewood, you dropped bombs on us, you came in, and you slaughtered us … so fuck your Hall of Fame, fuck your Target. As far as I'm concerned, I could burn all this to the ground, and it still wouldn't be enough. They are lucky that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge".