I listened to Chapo Trap House for years. I own the book. I have the other book, too. I still think their Call of Cthulhu episodes are some of the best entertainment for the money you can download for free on your favorite podcast app.

If you’re like most Americans, you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. If, on the other hand, you’re part of the 11 percent who uses Twitter, you might be assuming I’m everything that’s wrong with the internet and my name is in a Culinary Union local leader’s inbox. You’re also probably assuming that I’m as intersectional as a cul-de-sac, a worse ally than Italy in a World War, use various problematic slurs in light conversation and have untreated anger issues.

Let’s get something out of the way right here and now — my anger issues have been treated by a professional. Meditation, exercise and sleep helps.

Less facetiously, I am a product of my generation and the cultural influences that I was born and raised in and among. My parents enjoyed Monty Python — even the 178 hours of it that is neither funny nor memorable. All five books of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy were bedtime stories growing up. I have a copy of the Principia Discordia, The Book of the SubGenius, and somehow own two copies of the Illuminatus! Trilogy at home. 

I remember when The Simpsons reminded everyone that it was always possible to make cartoons that weren’t toy commercials — and yes, still sell lots of merchandise, too. I watched South Park religiously for a while and remember watching the movie when it first came out in the movie theater. I have a copy of Cannibal! The Musical and Orgazmo in my collection; it will come as no surprise to learn I’ve never been above enjoying BASEketball. I’ve played the opening theme of Team America: World Police in my car after nailing a job interview - and yes, I saw The Book of Mormon at the Pioneer Center in Reno last year.

Point being, I love dark humor infused with poisonous levels of irony. So, when I first learned about Chapo Trap House and their irreverent “dirtbag” humor during the 2016 election, I knew at the mitochondrial level that it was for me. Frankly, I didn’t like Hillary Clinton, either.

For the benefit of confused Alanis Morrissette listeners, “irony” is defined in Rhetorical Style, The Uses of Language in Persuasion as making a claim by saying the opposite, with the further stipulation that the speaker uses this mode intentionally and expects the hearer to recognize it. Ironic humor, then, leverages irony for humorous purposes. There are, however, two fundamental problems with ironic humor, especially in the age of the modern internet. 

First, the audience needs to recognize ironic humor as irony and not as an earnest expression of straightforward intent. This is challenging in an environment where people’s words are frequently quoted out of context. 

Second, and most importantly, the humor actually needs to be ironic and not an earnest expression of straightforward intent.

Put the two problems together and you end up in the very sad and predictable world that we live in today. On the one hand, you end up with a set of audience members who are incapable of parsing irony and sarcasm because they lack the context to do so — and react accordingly. On the other hand, many of those same people are disingenuous halfwits whose opinions are so noxious they can only be expressed “ironically” in most social situations.

For a while, the latter group liked to call themselves “Libertarians”. Eventually, when that stopped being edgy enough, they called themselves the Alt-Right. Now some of them call themselves “socialists”.

To understand why, we need to recognize Chapo Trap House’s mission. One of their goals is to convince the sort of people who would normally be attracted by the Alt-Right’s edginess and irony to adopt politics that are less nakedly misanthropic (or at least a bit more to the left) than the nihilistic, insecure politics of the Alt-Right. Instead of chanting “Jews will not replace us,” why not see if that same audience will chant “Eat the rich” and bully anyone who doesn’t advocate for Medicare For All instead?

As far as business plans go, it’s been a runaway success. Chapo Trap House is the most successful Patreon in history, grossing over $160,000 per month. As far as political strategies go, however, it’s fatally undermined by the same dynamics that led the Libertarian Party to abandon them and ultimately led to the decline of the Alt-Right.

The trouble with this target audience is that it is fundamentally made up of a class of people who have never been directly touched by politics in their lives. For these people, the only time they have any meaningful interaction with the government is when they visit the DMV or are pulled over for a traffic infraction. 

Someone versed in leftist theory (the sort that Chapo Trap House tries to guide their audience towards from time to time) will rightly point out that this describes a narrow band of the American population — for the most part, affluent straight cis white males (like myself, to be clear). Women, even affluent white women, have their choices constrained politically in ways that men seldom do, with access to birth control (will their local pharmacist fill their prescription or opt-out on “religious freedom” grounds?), protection from sexual harassment and access to employment frequently restricted or denied on political grounds. People of color are, of course, still routinely oppressed within our cities, our countryside, and our borders.

Yes, things are better than they were during the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s, but even a cursory glance at prosecution, conviction and incarceration rates, including at the federal level, quickly reveal an obvious bias. Being any sort of lesbian, gay, or bi, meanwhile, was illegal within living memory and even now sometimes subject to official and vigilante violence. Being trans remains functionally illegal in many places and spaces, especially wherever bathrooms or a change in government identification might be involved. 

For a lot of people, in other words, their mere existence is political. 

Where this analysis breaks down a bit, however, is that the population it describes is overly broad. Yes, it’s true that an apolitical existence is enjoyed by a minority of Americans, but it’s smaller than even leftist activists think. If you’re affluent enough to consider building anything — a business or a building, for example — your existence rapidly becomes political. No, it’s certainly not existentially political the way oppressed populations’ existences are political, but if you’re affluent enough to build something, you’re affluent enough to learn who your city councilor is and how your municipal planning commissions operate. Politics affects the daily lives of the affluent and their ability to do whatever it is they want to do, which is why they spend so much time and money on “making a difference.” For the affluent, just as for the oppressed, politics is not a game observed at a distance. It’s a method of directly acquiring power and resources.

Just ask Elon Musk or the Oakland Raiders.

The families of white suburban wage workers, like myself, however, sometimes get away without thinking about politics at all. Though political action affects us, it seldom does so directly. Consequently, it’s something we can watch on TV or follow on social media, like sports or reality shows. The difference between Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or Vermin Supreme seems like merely a difference in content, like a surprise guest in a sitcom. 

Consequently, our families — especially our teenage children, who are even further removed from the direct consequences of political action — frequently consume politics as entertainment. Some of us become fans, in other words, of whichever college football team fictional universe gaming platform AAA franchise political movement we find most entertaining and engage with it accordingly. We watch it on TV. We watch fan breakdowns of what we saw on TV on YouTube. We read analyses of what we watched on YouTube on blogs, or in our favorite online newspaper’s op-ed section (thanks for reading!) or wherever. 

There are two significant problems with fandoms that we need to be mindful of, though. 

First, they only tolerate absolutes. You’re either with the fans and their object of obsession or you’re against them. You can’t be a fan of Star Wars and Star Trek — you have to pick one. You can’t be a fan of DC and Marvel — you have to pick one. You can’t be a Nevada fan and a UNLV fan — you have to pick one.

Second, fandoms must be exclusive. There must be fans and there must be normies (normal people who don’t care about the object of fan adoration as much as the fan). Gatekeeping — the practice of identifying who the fans are, privileging their voices, and silencing the rest — is accomplished by each fan racing towards the ludicrous edge of their fandom as fast as possible and by shaming anyone who can’t join them. Thanks to social media, it’s possible to gatekeep faster and more toxically than ever, as fans of Steven Universe, one of the most charmingly endearing and earnest shows on the planet, found out a few years back.

These two characteristics, however, make politics, which requires compromise and inclusion, categorically impossible. That’s why each and every political movement that has had to suffer through being the next political fandom has distanced itself from its fans. This was true of the Libertarian Party, who quickly found that these fans were far more interested in hurling abuse at each other online than making phone calls or knocking doors. This was even true for President Trump, who eventually showed Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon, two of the most prominent fan figures of the Alt-Right, the door. At some point, no matter where your politics lie, you just don’t need to be in the same room as the sort of people who resurrect thoroughly discredited ideologies of slaughter because killing those who disagree is the ultimate act of gatekeeping. 

This (finally) brings me back to Bernie Sanders’ extreme online supporters and their attacks on Culinary. 

To be clear, the Culinary Union and its leadership has every incentive to make this into as big and serious of a deal as humanly possible. They even successfully tripped up the careful reporters of this very publication. Culinary hasn’t approved of Sanders’ proposed health care measures from the beginning and doesn’t want its membership moved into Medicare (and off of its union and management managed health fund, which is undoubtedly managed free of charge by said management, I’m sure). However, thanks to the successful efforts of Chapo Trap House, who are visiting Las Vegas for business and politics, the current political fandom of Socialism in One Country has turned an organization that should be a villain to most leftists due to its lack of solidarity into a sympathetic villain. 

This is, to use a term the Chapo boys would recognize, a self-own. 

The good news, such as it is, is that it’s a perfectly predictable self-own, one that’s been endured by several political movements, including the one I belong to. Consequently, there are well-documented and successful methods that can be used to combat this sort of behavior. 

Anarchist circles, for example, have had to combat “manarchism” and authoritarian entryism (of both the tankie and fascist flavors) for generations and have learned, over and over again, that the most effective way to keep them out is by applying maximal responsibility to everyone. This means being willing to both identify the bad behavior and the person committing it publicly, over and over again, until accountability is achieved. Libertarian circles have adopted similar methods, albeit a bit more subtly; generally we’ve found that naming and shaming the ringleaders and mocking anyone willing to take them seriously gets the job done. 

The key each and every time is to be willing to engage in a bit of gatekeeping of your own. Define who you are and what you stand for. Just as importantly, define who you’re not and what you won’t stand for. Then stick by it. 

It even works for furries. Seriously.

It’s probably a bit late for Bernie Sanders’ campaign to fully hold its fans accountable, including Chapo Trap House and its audience. That’s a shame since I have several friends who earnestly support his campaign and, though I disagree with most of their policies (Medicare for All might achieve some of their goals in an alternate universe where fifty states with their own agendas aren’t responsible for implementing Medicare), they’re good people trying to make the world a better place. They’re not the sort to threaten anyone anywhere, not even on Twitter.

The question Nevadans will ask for the next week, then, is this: Will Bernie Sanders listen to his supporters or to his fans? If Chapo Trap House wants Nevada to make what they think is the right call, it would probably help if, after their Las Vegas show, they stopped knocking doors and went back to Brooklyn.

David Colborne has been active in the Libertarian Party for two decades. During that time, he has blogged intermittently on his personal blog, as well as the Libertarian Party of Nevada blog, and ran for office twice as a Libertarian candidate. He serves on the Executive Committee for both his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is the father of two sons and an IT professional. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [email protected].