I think h3 is kind of a hidden nexus of fringe->main stream internet culture throughout the last like 15 years. Every wave Ethan has ridden has never been the main thing, it’s always right on the periphery of mainstream internet culture. That way he has cultivated a tiny amount of fans from every wave but never enough to get him into the public eye, and as a result everyone who knows him thinks they know someone “under ground” and he doesn’t shy away from that branding.
I don’t think it’s Machiavellian. I think it’s more just that Ethan has always held incoherent views (like everyone in the world) and his brand is to be unapologetically opinionated, so now that he’s dug his heels in on Gaza there’s no moving him until he has fully crashed and burned.
I mean he’s Jewish and his wife is from Israel, they have family members or at least know people personally who are in Israel and have their whole life, so the propaganda they’ve been fed is ingrained in their family identity.
It’s not an excuse, it’s sad to see, but as you pointed out he’s always declared himself a “capitalist” and has taken some pretty right wing positions. It’s just to say it’s not intentional, just a stupid dude who doesn’t work to hard to form opinions about stuff. I wouldn’t say this about every grifter, it’s just that H3 started out much more innocently and I don’t think they spent a decade keeping up a ruse like that I think it was genuine. I mean you really think he was doing Vape Nashe videos concocting how he was going to infiltrate internet culture to push right wing propaganda?
Not only that but I haven’t seen a single actionable demand by the advertisements for this campaign. It’s a hollow, confused threat that simply doesn’t make sense.
Ironically I haven’t spent money anywhere today but that’s just because I spend most of my life trying not to pay giant chain retailers.
If someone wanted this campaign to work they would have united the whole thing under a banner or a brand, declared that this was not the first protest they would be staging, say something like: “this is only a threat, if companies don’t do X in 3 months we will organize a week-long blackout. Then if they don’t do anything after that week-long blackout we’ll do another one for two weeks or a month.”
That makes sense. That’s negotiation and it’s how you demonstrate the power the people hold.
The X should be something policy-based and actionable. It can be a huge sweeping demand but it has to be actionable. It should not be a laundry list of long term demands. Then, when you get that first demand met you can delay action and keep pushing later since you’ve proven the tactics work.
Compare that to what this protest is doing. It’s pretty far-cry.