Matt Christman

While the French peasants of the mid-1800s that Marx talked about were potatoes in a sack, these natural things pulled from the earth and still covered with loam, thrown into a bag, we are similar but different in the sense that we are the potatoes, pulled from the earth but then peeled, diced, processed, adulterated, reconfigured, fried, stacked mechanically, placed into the same isolation from each other but in a rigidly mechanical form, the way that we come into the world fundamentally incapable of relating to nature the way that these French peasants did; changed deeply by our relationship to technology and media. So we are not potatoes in a sack; we are, instead, Pringles in a tube.

Matt Christman is an American leftist commentator, author, and podcast host best known as one of the original and longtime hosts of the podcast Chapo Trap House. Before Chapo, Christman was associated with Street Fight Radio and was somewhat known on Left Twitter.

Christman has a unique style of analysis which blends Marxist dialectical materialism with other philosophical trends and modern historical research. He was a co-author of the Chapo bestselling book and has created several mini-podcasts and one-off episodes about topics like Mormonism, Weather Underground, Operation Gladio, the history of the United States presidency, and the Thirty Years' War, as well as a new podcast about the Spanish Civil War, whose first episode has just been released.

For several years, Christman has been regularly posting solo vlogs on the Chapo YouTube channel called "CushVlogs", which involve reviews of recent books on history and anthropology but also often feature Christman's synthesis of Christian mystical terminology and philosophy with the Marxist tradition to describe the new forms of consciousness created by 21st-century postmodern, consumerist capitalism.

On 22 September 2023, Chapo Trap House announced that Christman had "suffered a sudden, severe medical emergency that will require a significant period of recovery" and would be "out of commission for the indefinite future". The illness was later revealed to be a stroke. Christman was hospitalized for two months and was released on the 22nd of November. His colleagues and family have not announced the seriousness of his stroke or how long his recovery will last. Christman's wife gave birth to their first child while Christman was hospitalized.

External links

• Chapo Trap House YouTube channel, home of Christman's "CushVlogs"
• @cushbomb, Christman's account on Twitter