Link: Baby Steps up the Ramparts (The Chapo Guide to Revolution Review)
Editor’s note: as I am feeling rather ominously under the weather, I’ll keep this brief. I’ve made my way back to my book and literature blog “Can’t You Read” this afternoon and published a long overdue book review of “The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason” by the lads who host the popular Chapo Trap House podcast. Please keep in mind that I’m not here to fight a three-sided culture war about the Chapos; I’m just here to review a popular new(ish) book, ok?
A Better History Book For Budding Socialists
As I note in the review you’re about to read, it is utterly impossible to discuss anything about the hosts of the Chapo Traphouse Podcast without being asked to engage in a larger debate about their place in American politics and their role in the online left community. Truthfully however, none of that really matters when you’re trying to decided how to spend your hard earned budget for books about socialism, does it? The answer is no; so I sat down to write a book review about The Chapo Guide to Revolution that specifically takes this work out of the online social context and just examines it as a volume of history and rudimentary political theory.
Did it work? Well, no spoilers, but I think the Chapo “My Little Revolution” guide is a surprisingly weighty tome of political analysis with a very specific target audience in mind:
“The truth however is that if the Chapo Guide to Revolution was merely just a funny book, I wouldn’t be reviewing it here today. No, the reason this book is worth writing about at all lies in the fact that underneath all the jokes, taunts and “half-baked Marxism” lies an objectively brilliant work of historical analysis, cultural critique and left wing political theory – albeit an unfocused theory that borrows heavily from half a dozen functionally incompatible left wing thinkers and literary giants, but a fundamentally serious work of political philosophy nonetheless.”
To check out the review, simply click on the title header or the image below:
Baby Steps up the Ramparts: the Chapo Guide to Revolution Review
- Nina Illingworth
Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog
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