Why does he need to be defended? Does he actually contribute to the issues he is concerned with in any way that doesn’t also benefit his brand? How would any streamer, regardless of their professed politics, be worth anything to a revolutionary process? Why is he not a mere spectacle?
The opportunity cost is that we waste time on streamers, corporate discourses, and it often centers imperial actions instead of the futures we actually need to figure out how to make. But I agree that if we are going to basically give people pacifiers that they should had least not be laced with poison.
If Hasan were “Thanos snapped” out of the equation, it would be a reach to think that the people watching his stream aren’t going to up and read Lenin or find their way here or join their local Marxist org.
We’re not giving people pacifiers that are/aren’t laced with poison. Bezos is giving people pacifiers, and one of them is significantly more left than the others. If we had the means to stop Hasan from speaking, his audience are not going to get up off their couches. They would just tune into other (likely further-right) influencers. Don’t interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake.