Damn, so much Fauci dick-riding in the comments! Lol no but seriously, many of you are misunderstanding my point about populism. Others understand it and just disagree with it, which is obviously fine and I very well could be wrong. In any case, I think this is an important idea that bears expounding upon further than some offhand comments in an unscripted Q&A, maybe even in its own video. Here's the thing. Multiple things can be true at once. Anthony Fauci can be objectively right about the COVID science based on the evidence he had at the time, he can be justified in defending his reputation from scurrilous attacks, AND he comes across as pompous, whiney, and elitist - basically, on camera he reads as having the exact type of media personality that makes people distrust institutional experts. He may not come off that way *to you,* especially if you're liberal or left-wing and are still understandably angry at MAGA's COVID misinformation campaign, but if you don't believe me, watch the whole exchange of the hearing I clipped and scroll through the comments. ruclips.net/video/kz7OGxb9X6E/видео.html I'm not saying that Rand Paul was the good guy during these hearings. Far from it! Paul is a personification of exactly the type of slimy, cynical anti-intellectualism that my channel and others like it have been fighting for years. The question I'm interested in is, how do we most effectively fight that anti-intellectualism? Paul knew exactly what he was doing in that hearing. He made it personal, rudely interrupted Fauci, and gish-galloped him with outrageous untruths *with the explicit goal of riling him up.* He succeeded. Fauci shuts down and refuses to answer questions. He whines about how the "crazies" are after him (he means insane far-right conspiracy nuts, but the public hears normal conservative who might have doubts about the COVID response from watching Fox News). You know, I know, and everybody in that room knew the context of Paul's continued harassment of Fauci in public and the press, and that Fauci had a reasonable reaction. *But all that most Americans saw was a soundbite where a supposed "expert" had an irrational defensive response to an innocuous question.* Paul outmaneuvered Fauci because he's a great actor who understands how to play the game of political theater. When I say "embrace populism in public education" I mean that historians and scientists have to become great actors too. If you want to do public outreach in education in your field (and you should, if you are actually serious about fighting misinformation) it's not enough anymore to rest on the laurels of your expertise or your degree. You've got to learn the crafts of communication, of theater, of filmmaking, of storytelling. You've got to become an artist. Yes, it's a lot to ask. No, it's not fair that you have to do this. But the hard, unwelcome truth is that this non-strategy of just telling people "Trust the experts" and "Trust the science" just isn't working. We need to 1) bring high-level academic information to people *for free* in a slicker and more charismatic way than the peddlers of misinformation do and 2) radically reform our institutions from the inside to make them serve the public good rather than corporate profit. Easier said than done, I know - and obviously some institutions are better than others in this respect, but to continue on with the COVID example, I think a big reason COVID denial was so widespread in America is because institutions of public health failed the people so catastrophically with the opioid crisis. Pharmaceutical companies are literally the devil and they only care about making money. I mean, a health insurance CEO just got canoed and a third of the country cheered. "Trust the science"? Come on. Read the room. This is not a defeatist stance. POPULISM IS GOOD, it's is what we need right now - as long as it's the right kind of populism. We shouldn't embrace it reluctantly, we should embrace it joyfully. In 2008, the economy collapsed and the Wall Street vampires who were directly responsible got let off with a warning. It's no accident the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements sprung up right after. *At that time we correctly understood that the systems of power were not serving us. We correctly understood that the elites of our society play by different rules than we do.* Forty years of top-heavy neoliberal economics had left us all broke and exhausted and we were ready for a drastic change. In the States, after Bernie's 2016 campaign collapsed, Trump was the only viable populist movement left. And he told us that the badly paid intellectuals and academics in STEM and the humanities were part of the "elite" that we should despise (all while making the actual elite, the billionaire class, richer than ever by cutting regulations). Now we can't hear the end of how "Big Archaeology" and "DEI history" are indoctrinating us with pro-government propaganda and turning our kids gay. Why did this resonate with millions of people? It's simple. The right-wing (fake, insincere, corporate-owned) populists told a story that was more compelling than the story that the academics and intellectuals were telling. That's it. When Graham Hancock released his Netflix show, a bunch of archaeologists signed a very sternly worded public letter wagging their fingers about how platforming pseudohistory is dangerous. No one cared. Netflix certainly didn't care - the show could be about Hancock walking the Nazca lines in clown makeup farting into a microphone, and as long as they make a boatload of cash from it, they'll renew it for another season. But when Milo Rossi, a charismatic and relatable young guy with media savvy, crested the hill at sunrise on the third day and charged onto TikTok and RUclips talking about how Hancock's evidence doesn't square up (and crucially, while having this populist attitude of "why are we falling for all these fake conspiracies when there are actual real government conspiracies to worry about"), all of a sudden the forces of pseudoarchaeology were in complete disarray, issuing desperate hit pieces about how Milo hates puppies and likes pineapple pizza and accidentally leaves the tap running in the bathroom of other people's houses (it's okay Milo I forgive you). Now, I don't think that debate and debunking is usually the best way to fight misinformation, and have no desire to get into the "should we legitimize assholes by engaging with their ideas" discussion, that's a whole other topic. My point is that we've got to tell a better story, and the best way to do that is marry scholarship to art. We've got to use social media as a tool for public education and be smart and calculated about how we use it - we've all seen academics and historians on Twitter who gain a following, very obviously get addicted to the app, and then get into undignified spats with N@zis and weirdos and end up looking as foolish as Fauci did in that hearing. In show business, we understand that perception is reality. What you say is not as important as how you say it. Don't get lost in the Fauci example - think about the big picture. We all listen more to influencers we have a parasocial relationship with than we do strangers with a bunch of letters after their names. That's just the truth of where we're all at. A million people watched the stupid low-budget film where the N@zi warlock fights the witchfinder with a lightsaber, cried at the end, and said "This changed my life. I'm no longer a racist." 90% of these people have never read, much less heard of, Gary Gallagher or Charles Dew or Charles Royster. We ignore this new paradigm at our peril.
This is just as true for teachers in the classroom. We have to compete for attention with not only kids wanting to be kids, but their social media, movies, music, cultural framing, and all the baggage they bring from home. You're right. It's a tall order, includes long hours low pay, and criticism from every corner. But the rewards of this challenge are there for people who care about others, knowledge, and the future. I appreciate you going into depth on this topic. Better understanding and acceptance of the situation helps motivate me to add to my repertoire and skill-set. Also, I'm looking forward to you Revolution period work next year. Perfect timing in so many ways. Peace to you now, and in the coming year! 💜🐈⬛🐾
👏 YES!!!!! Art and Scholarship MUST unite if both are to survive! The Internet is an ally, not an enemy! RUclipsrs and other online filmmakers, reach out to local academics! Academics, find out RUclipsrs to spread the word about your research and the current state of the fields!! THAT is the future! Older generations are wedded to mediating institutions: schools, broadcasting, publishing, museums. These are all good and have their place, but direct contact will change more minds than an article in an obscure journal ever will!
@@AtunSheiFilms, wait, can I get some justification for calling Rand Paul slimy cynical anti-intellectual and whatnot? Especially when considering he was going against Fauci, whose own correspondence showed he was being, to say it nicely, less than honest about some REALLY important issues…
I always found it weird how libertarians defend the Confederacy, slavery severely violates the non-aggression principle which is central to that ideology (at least those who take it seriously). I can understand the states rights argument in its pure form but when that is used in order to subjugate other people then it's null and void.
Libertarians exist in contradiction with themselves. Capitalism is brutal and exploitative but it's the peak of human development in their eyes, in spite of whatever lip service they pay to liberty and freedom. They want the freedom to exploit others, but in a way they can claim is "earned"
I've found that most libertarians are in fact not libertarian for all. Just themselves. They will send their children to public schools and drive on public roads yet they get angry over taxes and regulations.
The Confederacy wasn't even libertarian for free people, let alone the enslaved. Mark E. Neely has written a superb book on it, Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism. Basically, his argument is that the Confederacy was an authoritarian, centralised state with many features that were already commonplace in Tsarist Russia. Citizens required a passport to move between states, freedom of speech was heavily restricted, imprisonment without charge was routine, and much of the South was effectively under military occupation.
Because American "Libertarians" are nothing of the sort, they're just confused (or dishonest) Objectivists. Everywhere else in the world Libertarianism is considered left-wing.
I know you formatted Checkmate Lincolnites like you did because the lost cause myth is a view that some modern people actually have, but I think that sort of format where you have 2 characters meant to be explicitly from either side of the conflict is a great way to teach about history and focus on the differences and similarities that people at the time percieved there to be. I'd love to see your future videos on things like the revolutionary war formatted in a similar way, like a loyalist soldier and patriot soldier discussing the war.
Appreciate the kind words but Im not really interested in that format anymore. While incredibly entertaining it’s also super limiting in terms of imparting information and invariably becomes a “debunk” video or at the very least an attack/defense of a certain viewpoint.
@@AtunSheiFilms "or at the very least an attack/defense of a certain viewpoint" Isn't that kind of a good thing though? The "let history speak for itself" kind of approach seems, in my view, to allow the people who wish to perpetuate myths like the lost cause the wiggle room to continue buying into the narrative that they like without any real sense of push back. Never mind the abysmal rates of literacy in the US and how many people fail to pass reading comprehension above a 5th grade level. I get that the format might not be satisfying anymore and I appreciate wanting to do something different. But I wouldn't be so dismissive of the... didactic nature of what it presented. It seems to me like we need more of that sort of thing, not less.
In my opinion, the debunk genre is not a good thing for public education. It's a defensive and ultimately losing strategy. Debunks put you in the confrontational situation of having to say "No, you're wrong" when honestly that's better left unsaid. The best way to persuade someone of something is to gently guide them toward a conclusion without ever explicitly spelling it out - if you've framed your arguments right, the person will come to that conclusion on their own without feeling condescended to or preached at. What the debunk genre does have going for it is its reach. Smackdowns are undeniably entertaining, and the algorithm favors them because negative emotion keeps people on social media for longer than positive emotion does, and companies like RUclips make more money from ad revenue. This is imo the singular most important reason for Checkmate Lincolnites' success. That, and the Lost Cause is frankly a very easy target that is already evolving out of the zeitgeist anyway. I filled a niche that someone would have eventually. Final thought. I think social media outrage farming, which is inevitably what shows like Checkmate Lincolnites devolve into, is ethically wrong. The show was successful in its function as a nail in the coffin of the Lost Cause (and as a springboard for my career), and with that accomplished, it can go the way of the dodo.
@AtunSheiFilms What I really appreciated was the use of comments in earlier videos to avoid making a strawman. I think you can take elements from the format and evolve them if you feel that the format itself is too preach-y or outrage-y. It also may contribute to the education value by feeling like you’re talking to an audience and not a character. I’m also not a RUclipsr and not you, so my take might be completely worthless.
You were the primary force in my changing views regarding the lost cause myth. You really opened my eyes to the lies perpetrated in defense of that myth by historians and I wanna thank you for opening my eyes to that!
I remember my sister winning something like a united daughters of the confederacy writing competition. She was in northwest florida in early middle school I believe in the 90s. It's not hard to get brainwashed when your role models that share a passion tangentially have an ulterior motive. Can't imagine she would've gotten recognition if she wrote a brilliant piece criticizing the confederacy. She is quite progressive now.
To be clear it was a private nonprofit group and i think she won something like a savings bond. It was similar to a science fair for writing. Seems totally benign on the surface, but they were created in 1894 and propogated the lost cause and fund raised for quite a few confederate monuments
@@rogerkeleshian2215 Yes. A MUCH more deeply rooted one than the Puritans and the Frontier and Columbus and even the Lost Cause . It’s based on ignorance of British Constitutionalism and the Loyalists, as well as European history, generally.
"The amazing thing about modern life is that you can connect with nature any time you like. It's called camping, you numbnuts! Oh, I'm sorry, is your objectively amazing modern life getting you down? Then go hike the Appalachian Trail!" - Atun-Shei
The only addendum I'll add to that is that in order to support our objectively amazing modern life, industry and capital are destroying nature at a terrifying and unprecedented rate. So don't just hike the Appalachian Trail, fight for it by getting involved in climate justice and eco-defense.
@AtunSheiFilms We speak for the trees because they've been here longer than you and me. Living in Montana it feels like we've been in a long and losing battle defending our public lands, but honestly it's a fight worth taking to the end.
Aren't all the criteria for "objectively amazing life" ultimately dependent on subjective results? If literacy made people miserable it wouldn't be objectively amazing anymore.
~11:20 I really don't think Dr. Fauci sounded like any sort of a pompous asshole at all.. He sounded like someone who is not very media trained in a way that's relevant to our current climate, but the way that his character was (and continues to be) distorted is actually reprehensible and would drive most people, particularly people who have devoted their entire lives to public service in their field, totally insane.
Yeah, I don’t see what Andy’s talking about either. Maybe it’s a surfeit of knowledge about what he went through, but I just feel bad for him in watching that clip again.
Certainly the clips he showed were not of him being pompous. Just the opposite, he was pleading for mercy after staying steady in the face of horror. Maybe Andy expects him to be a polished politician.
I'm not sorry to disagree with you here 25:40. The tolerance paradox is not the unsolvable problem so many make it out to be. Tolerance cannot exist while intolerance is allowed, but it's only a paradox under the assumption that society is incapable of self-enforcement. More to the point, you don't have to already have a perfect, logistic oriented, solution to a problem in order to present it as such. To use a metaphor: You see a fire, but no one else does. Do you still shout fire even if you don't know where the alarm/extinguisher is? Yes, of course you do, there's a fire.
yeah, I really only think it's a "paradox" if someone is deeply committed to a liberal, "values-neutral" approach to regulating political speech. which I guess is one thing (even if I disagree with it) inside of a philosophy department. but such a thing _has never_ existed in real life, and _will never_ exist. so it seems rather moot. any ruling class in a society (no matter how large or small, egalitarian or hierarchical, permissive or repressive) is going to set limits on the political activities of people hostile to it. I'm not a liberal, I do not care about the rights of fascists or other violent bigots. they've made it quite clear that they want to harm me and others like me, and will do so given the opportunity. if I had the political power to do so, I'd be fine with forcing them to keep their hate to themselves, at g*npoint if necessary. paradox resolved.
@million_unalived_CEOs Well put, and I agree with you. The sort of hyper-neutral stance you're referring to is a very easy one to take, from a place of privilege. Not so easy if you're among those being persecuted.
The "tolerance paradox" only exists if you view it as a moral absolute, which it isn't. Tolerance is a social contract, and always has been. You have to accept people who are different from you. If you don't do that, you have broken the contract, and like any other contract, it is the person who broke the contract first who is liable for the breakdown and should suffer the consequences.
Heh. Hopping from a Miniminuteman Q&A where he recommended you as one of his favorite RUclipsrs to seeing you also put out a Q&A. What a delightful day
It’s crazy to me that Fauci was seen as out of touch. But maybe we non-Americans only saw his public health statements and not his congressional hearings.
Nah just a bunch of people believe fake news like Newsmax and Fox News which lie to their base because they need to feed the conspiracy mindset or else their viewers stop watching them.
16:12 Hard agree on this. I moved from the rural Midwest to Massachusetts this past year and the amount of people out here that don't understand how poverty affects people is mind boggling. People who have never left New England for their entire lives don't understand how problematic certain government policies can be because they've never had to worry about a world without them. I'm loving it out here, the people are great, it just definitely feels like its own bubble.
That's how it is in Seattle as well. Historically there hasn't been the type of poverty and communities of color that exist in other areas. As a person of color the white upper middle class liberals here have been less understanding and accepting of differences oddly to me than when I lived in florida. Its weird. They dont really understand communities of color either. Its what they want to believe.
I grew up rural poor in MA,and find that my life , and my values ideology are more closely aligned with rural poor people further south in Appalachia proper, or in rural Maine/ NH than with the "city /suburban Liberals" here in MA. I went to school at a University in an area that is considered super progressive, even by MA standards, and it was like going to a different country for me. Going to the greater Boston area is like that for me as well. I agree that they just do not ever understand a world without lots of government intervention, and where they see that as defacto a good thing, even when those government programs are bloated and distorted from doing any real good and that anyone who doesnt think like them is somehow just a backwards savage who needs to be ideologically colonized, . It ,for me drives home, that the greatest cultural differences in our country are found along a rural /urban split vs simply on things like party affiliation
I think the main issue with free speech nowadays is that people want free speech to actually be consequence-free speech. You can say what you want but people are also free to react to it however they want (within the law.)
Also not to mention that there is a lot of people acting in bad faith when it comes to free speech. Particularly on the right to where they'll champion Elon Musk as the arbiter of free speech even though he's always targeted journalists who are critical of him as well as to employees who don't have a union. Or like Trump wanting to outlaw flag burning even though that is a free speech demonstration
YES exactly. Being Dutch, we have religious liberty baked into our constitution. More specifically, it's called "freedom of education" and says the state will pay for schools controlled by the church. Next to schools controlled by the state. Nowadays, a lot of schools are pro-LGBT, even the christian ones, and will for example fire anti-LGBT teachers. This has caused extreme right-wing christians to yell "THIS IS unconstitutional! This is against article 23 (the article in question)!" Even admitting that "I guess article 1 (no discrimination) is more important than article 23." Which yes, yes it is. But these people wanna make article 23, freedom of religious indoctrination of kids 24/7, more important than article 1, no discrimination allowed in the country on any basis. So yeah, just wanna add this story to show that for them, it's all about consequences. In the Netherlands, where they can make it into a legal argument, they admit they don't care about free speech, but just about power. In America they still have to use the "religious freedom" argument. But please look at the Netherlands and how people talk about article 23, to know that for christians, it's not about religious freedom. But Christian hegemony. Personally I'd argue the left also wants to force their own opinion on everyone. Thing is, and I love how Contrapoints phrased this "I just want to survive. The facist's goal is to be the only standing." Whenever christians talk about "religious freedom", or in the Netherlands article 23, they make it look like they mean the first thing, but they actually mean the second thing. If you look at christianity and wokeism in practise, you can see wokeism is the first thing, and christianity is the second thing. (Although #notallchristians, but the christians who do the first thing are called 'woke' christians, so yeah.......)
I've never been a smart human being. It takes me a lot of time to change how I see things but it does happen. I completely disagree with your portrayal of the Fauci clip (as you showed it). People that spew nonsense gotchas tend to anger me and I can't see where they're coming from anymore and Fauci didn't seem as befuddled and standing on expertise as you portrayed. What did I miss? How do I interact properly with people that spew ignorant nonsense and refuse to see patterns and completely refuse to empathize with anyone not exactly in their same situation? I do love your work and expect no response from you. If any of our other comrades could explain to me, I'd be grateful.
Yeah he spoke about Fauci like this and it was... Just out of tune. Like Fauci was being sent literal death threats and being prodded by people who genuinely did not give a flying fuck about him or anything he said, saying he told nothing but lies and slander. Like no, it's not elitist or pompous to call out the bullshit like that. Like sure some people might say yeah he was elitist or pompous but those people are just wrong and upset that someone who is genuinely smarter than them disagrees with them.
Fauci didn't go hard enough. He's right to be angry that his family needs bodyguards after he's saved hundreds of lives. I think people don't take us seriously because we tell them they're wrong, while also telling them we respect them, and that subconsciously makes people think we're disingenuous. We need to tell people they're wrong, and also that we have no respect for them. Then they'll at least see us and our "elitism" as authentic, and authenticity is supposedly what has all the currency these days.
I’ve always been a smart human being. Yet only recently did I hit upon a practicable strategy regarding this-just don’t speak to them. By which I mean speak to the people who are falling for this trickery by understanding why it is so effective. Cautiously but firmly point out a more humane perspective rather than directly confronting the ideological wall. In short, follow the approach of catching flies with honey, not vinegar. People aren’t receptive towards a conversation that they are unprepared for.
Rand Paul was trying to get his Faux News soundbite he wanted and he got it. Just like that weird Kennedy guy who keeps claiming people can't say no when they have literally said no. It's all theatre for the soundbite on Faux News.
@@warlordofbritannia, indeed. I always wondered why Faucci even sought to engage with any of Rand's idiocy. Just directly address any actual point Rand was making with the actual facts, and dismiss the rest of his comments with some funny description of how they are absolute fantasy obviously directed not to Faucci but some imaginary demon in Rand's head. Humor is a very effective 'don't listen to that clown' method.
There are bits here I definitely agree with, but I gotta say, the comments around 12:13 are really... well, wrong, imo. The people who are learning about archaeology online, are not learning archaeology. They may be learning *about* archaeology, but not how to *be* archaeologists. You will always need institutions that teach people the practical knowledge that defines archaeological research and practice that you can't in a youtube video. Some historians are trying to be better communicators and embrace a public presence online (some do very well as a result, such as Roel Konijnendijk), but those who do never stop producing academic-level research either. You have to let that be the bedrock for the information you then simplify (a dirty word maybe, but valid and not shameful at all, just nuanced) for the public. This is part of being a good teacher. Losing that academic standard means losing your foundations. And many academics are happier to be more insulated in that academic world, whether it's due to a lack of communication-with-laymen skill or simply a lack of interest, but that's okay too. They can keep developing that foundation that others then use. But as it stands I do agree that "public history" needs to be more of a thing, I just think that universities still have an extremely important role to play in this! Also about the age of populism as via the rise of modern computers: we are not in an age of unfettered information and access to that information. There are technological feudalisms in place that decide when and how we have access to the "populist" internet. We are providing a source of revenue to service providers who we owe our internet access to. This age of information is real, but it is not 'free' information as some have put it. Marx never wrote about this specifically, but all in all it's not *so* different from how he described material relations between the capitalist and the consumer in his time. I'm simplifying things a lot, and there is nuance to this, but I do believe we're not living in a new age of populist potential. We're Iiving in an extrapolation of past classist structures, but with new technologies that give us the illusion of freedom more than ever. Wanna add that I love your videos and respect what you do as a history student! This is just a friendly and nuanced disagreement.
I’ll only reply in short but I agree 100%. You can learn about archaeology but it won’t make you an archaeologist. There is so much more involved like conservation of items, recovering items and respecting what you’re unearthing and even bagging and sorting things correctly. No matter how much you read you will not be an archaeologist because you won’t have the practical skills that are needed. It’s more than digging a big hole and then saying how people are wrong for believing A because it’s actually B. It’s why I do like Miniminuteman but I do hate the idea that ‘anyone’ can be an archaeologist, I’m not one myself but my partner is absolutely killing it in the field and the amount of time and effort they put into it and just the education required, it feels like it’s an utter disservice to the field to act like anybody with a shovel can be one. Is that possibly a poor view as not everyone has the chance to get a Uni degree? Sure, but you need the practical skill set that you cannot earn by just watching and reading. Education and academics are important and instead of saying ‘anyone’ can be one it should be ‘everyone’ can if you fix the fundamental flaws with say the education system in the US that doesn’t give people the options to go into the field. My view may be different due to being from the U.K., but I hope that rambling mess made some sense.
Yes, I am a scientist and you just can't learn science without university. And also the vast majority of scientists aren't tasked with science communication, they are doing the actual research.
@@DruchiiEverything you said makes sense! When Milo went out to a site and started picking artifacts off the ground I wanted to scream. He should have known better, because of his education. I appreciated that he acknowledged the mistake later but how many people online actually watch the correction? You can't teach a whole semester of ethics in a 20 minute video.
Yep, throwing formal academic standards/ institutions away to replace it with mass media is a very, very, very bad idea. Those standards & those institutions are primarily responsible for nearly everything we take for granted in the modern world. It’s not perfect, and I absolutely believe there is room for substantial reform, but the fact that even the most mundane aspect of the world is too complex to begin to understand without a substantial amount of prerequisite knowledge isn’t something we can overcome by getting rid of prerequisites.
"free speech" protections are evidently selective. neo notsees are likely to face less pushback from the law than the protesters that protest the "war" in G @ Z @ . Depends on the ideologies of the enforcers and those with money that have influence over the enforcers. On paper we have free speech protections. In reality those protections are selective.
"He's not a revolutionary, he's a bored rich kid!" "I've got some bad news for you about every revolution..." (as seen on social media in very recent weeks)
I gotta say I'm only a short way in, but your advice on how we need to navigate the coming political landscape by embracing populism and getting better at communicating online is so spot on in my opinion. People are frustrated with the status quo, and marketing "more of the same" isn't going to get it done
I concur. The GOP are good are two things: being immoral lackwits, and messaging. To combat them, we need to not only promote good policies but communicate effectively.
So long as you're an inclusive populist like Bernie Sanders. Sometimes populism has the issue of creating a villainous 'other' as a means of rallying support, whether that other is a religious, ethnic, or rational minority, or an immigrant group, of a people who's politics you dislike.
@@minutemansam1214I am happily exclusively of people whose politics I don't like. Having people whose political ideology is based on white supremacy and Christofascism in your political party is how you get a white supremacists Christofascist party. We MUST be exclusive to be inclusive to marginalized communities.
Keep it up man. People need to know not all of us Southern people believe in the lost cause nonsense. We are starting to pull away from it and just ignore our parents and grandparents when they spew this garbage out. In South Carolina, my 11 year old daughter is still taught in school that the war was about states rights. It will be a while before we can be done with it. Keep educating people. Love your channel.
My mother, 1920 to 2016, grew up being taught that in school and everywhere else. *She made sure I knew better.* You can do what Mom did for your kids.
I was taught the same thing in California about 11 or 12 years ago in high school, and I know my brother, in his AP US History class (also in California, same school and everything), was also taught states' rights was the whole story and the north didn't care about slavery at all. I was retaught the same thing in college too, again, in California. I remember being confused, thinking, "Isn't it kind of both--slavery AND states' rights to do so?" Thinking back on it, I get the feeling the teachers didn't know, not that they were twisting things because they loved slavery and/or the Confederacy. It sucks, but thankfully we have the internet (or not so thankfully if we have zero media literacy lol).
11:40 man maybe I’m just in a different bubble than you but I really didn’t see Fauci’s response as that bad or blustery like you. How would you have liked him to respond? If he says nothing conservatives say “he didn’t deny it so it’s true” if he gets upset you say he sounds pompous, and responding is almost impossible because Rand Paul gish galloped him with limited time. I understand your point about embracing populism but in your specific example I just don’t see where you can apply it
I would have liked him to understand that he is onstage and Paul is his scene partner in a piece of theater. Don't complain about your unfair treatment and call for mom with the "Madam chair, he's being mean to me" routine, go toe-to-toe with Paul and give it right back to him. He didn't have to lend credence to the accusations, but he did need to play to the cameras and understand that getting defensive comes off as desperate and writing people's (misguided though they may be) COVID skepticism off as "crazy" is elitist and out of touch. If he'd stayed calm, adopted a reassuring tone, played to the cameras, and gone over the evidence at hand instead of flipping out and refusing to answer questions, then he could have changed minds.
@@AtunSheiFilms thank you for responding to my comment. You make good arguments but I’m still not sure going toe to toe would change any minds. It’s my first point that if he instead chooses to attack Rand conservatives would pivot to “he doesn’t even address the allegations he just attacks people for asking questions!” I don’t think the people Rand is playing to were ever going to have their minds changed by Fauci in the first place.
@AtunSheiFilms you can't go "toe to toe" with people in public debates. The rise of fascism shows this to be true. Allowing people to spread lies, evthem, en you immediately counter and disprove them, only works to convince more people of the lie.
So respectfully, I think @TheZanderator's argument here is effectively an appeal to futility and @aetherkid's argument is just a losing strategy. I don't think every creationist and h*oloc@ust denier needs to be platformed by experts in debate, but I do think that the face of the US government's response to a pandemic needs to understand the fundamental rules of PR and media communication, especially that WHAT you're saying is far less important than HOW you say it.
I think your perspective as someone who simultaneously embraces populism and is working to prevent misinformation is really interesting, I'd be super excited if you ever made a video touching on the subject. There are so many things I love about the digital age -- my whole job is built around having nearly unlimited access to information and no traditional gatekeepers -- but I'm someone who is going to have a hard time getting on that train. I still associate the term populism with a movement to create a kind of post-truth post-responsibility world where faith is placed in whomever can shout the loudest. I get the impression that there's something you're able to see in how the current day fits into historical trends that I can't yet.
It was an interesting point, Atun made...and I noted while listening to it that I probably can't get ON the populist train, based on my personal beliefs...but I can certainly ADAPT to the reality that populist methods are the meta of communication world.
To me, populism is an entirely neutral term; it is descriptive, not connotative. I think that if you continue to think your own views through on this (well, any subject really) you’ll eventually reach this point of detached enlightenment, be able to not even think of the moral tangents at first impulse. I’m sure there’s some subject or topic on which you’ve already achieved this, something which you used to feel uncomfortable or too strongly about yet now possess a more clinical view on.
The thing is, populism is less of certain set of ideals and mindset. May it be the egalitarian/socialist left populism of 1900s, or the reactionary and crazy right populism of trump in 2020s. Instead it more of a marketing strategy, instead of framing yourself with experience, a certain identify or some type of other establishment tie or skill. You focus on how your fighting for the common man, against the system and for radical change. All which is a very neutral stance with can be used to focus on still very fact based thing, but also crazy mis-info from wired corners of internet. Also why the label is used for so many different ideology's, despite there huge differences .
White supremacy and racism is a tragedy, but it's not a threat to those in power. The idea of them being made to face the consequences of their actions is. A mass killing is a tragedy, but class consciousness is a crime.
@@bronotamrok3002 Dylann Roof entered an African American church, murdered nine people and injured a tenth stating that he was doing so in order to spark a race war. He was charged and convicted of murder and civil rights violations, but the idea of treating what was obviously an act of racial intimidation and actual terrorism as a terrorist act was laughed off. Luigi Mangione killed a rich white dude and it took them less than a week to start screaming "terrorist".
Not really, Luigi is being charged under NY law, the state has very stringent anti terror laws that SC dosent cause of a certain event 20 years ago. As for Roof he got the death penalty
Wow. That is a really really bad Fauci take. You can make an argument Fauci responded poorly. But he’s 100% right and he doesn’t come across as an a******. Your take and the way you talk about it does, actually. Which is really depressing to me because I really respect you.
I also think he didn't come off as an asshole, but you can't ignore that to a dishearteningly large number of Americans he absolutely did come off that way. Winning or losing a debate on the public stage has as much to do with optics as anything else. I wish it were any other way but this is the world we have to fight in.
Yeah this is my issue honestly. I can be okay with him having a different opinion about fauci, but the impression is deeply childish, borders on offensive, and is just wholly unhelpful in any way. I'm sure he thinks this is some weird "Don't tone police me/trample on my free speech" but like, dude, you just come off as washed and crude. It's just low rent in general.
@ParadoxicalThird you miss the point entirely. He doesn't think that fauci was wrong (he called him an accomplished pathologist in this very video), it's that rhetorically fauci did not speak well. Plenty of Americans did think that he was an "out of touch asshole". And he wasn't. And they're wrong. But messaging to them matters and the world of populism is how you need to speak.
@@DiamondsDroogI don't give a single shit about those people though? I don't want people who are in the right to have to capitulate to dishonest, bad faith bullshit so that some tribalistic idiots don't have their ego bruised. That's silly.
I don't know if it's just me (not native speaker) but Fauci didn't come up pompous at all in that speech you showed. It seemed perfectly appropriate. And anyway I highly doubt that that questioning will be his ultimate legacy. I doubt many people know about it at all.
Exactly. Most people I know think he did very well in those insane question sessions. He appeared quite rational and authoritative. If people have faltering trust in institutions for no good reason - and a scientist under ridiculous inquisition sounding defensive isn't one - then the problem rests in them, not in the institutions. The media smearing of Fauci was ridiculous and most of it happened from the fringe right. I'm honestly quite surprised that Andy bought into it, and that is saying quite a bit about his media bias. Maybe it really is much harder to escape from your bubble even as an educated man.
I meant the COVID response will be his legacy, not that specific questioning. I recommend watching the whole exchange, then scrolling through the top comments ruclips.net/video/kz7OGxb9X6E/видео.html
The minor little problem was that Fauci was concealing his funding of Wuhan Institute of Virology though a NGO cutout, and de facto lying. He did have something to conceal, which he did clumsily. He also overstated his conclusions on Covid, and tried to quash dissenters rather than engaging them.
@@zxbc1 I didn't read that segment at all as that Andy bought into the insane questioning. He's commenting on the undeniable fact that somewhere near 50% of the American public did. The problem lies in them, sure, of course, but at the same time, it's undeniable that Fauci came off as pompous to them. I don't know what a better tack to take would be, but to disregard how messaging comes off to nearly half the American public is to doom yourself to repeating the same mistakes if a similar situation occurs again in the future.
@@AtunSheiFilms By the time of this exchange in Congress Fauci had been there several times, as well as many other outlets often biting his tongue answering absurd accusations or responding to questions about absurd accusations, he'd been hounded with lies for years by then by the GOP/anti-vaxxers including death threats against him and his family. He had had it by then and even given that it wasn't as 'pompous' as you describe IMO. I'd like to see you have to sit with cameras hounded by Jim Jordan, Rand Paul, MTG, Kennedy, etc just plain lying on you AND giving you no chance to actually answer many times. Your characterization of him was unfair at best. ~ signed MA to Confederacy transplant in my mid 20s (1978) as a newlywed not to retire. OH! AND a "Boomer" - yes a hippie who's generation filled the streets fighting for civil rights, end to the draft, end Vietnam, for women's Lib, for ecology (Earth Day). PRO TIP: ALL generations have both Left & Right or Dems and GOPs if you will, generalizing an entire generation as you do is below you. Our generation's worst sin was raising the most politically uninterested, therefore ignorant generation of the 20th Century.
As a german, the idea of giving unlimited free speech to nazis, letting them do their marches, show their nazi symbols say their nazi messages, without any restrictions is something that kind of feels unacceptable. I know where you're coming from, but I hope you can also see, where I'm coming from and that the issue isn't quite as straight forward as free speech absolutists make it out to be. I wish I could be a free speech absolutist, but I can't.
I agree. One person's freedom of speech and assembly ends at the moment they infringe on someone else's freedom to be safe. It's the old paradox of tolerance: if you tolerate nazis, they will make life intolerable to everyone else. That being said, I think Atun-Shei had a point about who we are trusting to oppose these extremists. The USA isn't the only place in the world where the police is more likely to side with a far right protest while suppressing a counter protest.
While there is a severe gray area in this idea of “free speech absolutism” the ultimate solution is to allow for it, but also allow for the consequences of it. The problem is that a lot of people have very skewed ideas of what those consequences should actually be. The proper way to deal with fascists, is a combination of ignoring them, and mocking them. These “movements” are often made up of people who are incredibly weak, they are often weak physically, mentally, and emotionally which is why they never really succeed. There is a balance to this though. CounterProtesting them when they go and speak on college campuses is the wrong approach, because that gives them more attention. Kicking them off of platforms does exactly the same thing. It gives their conspiracies air and fuel. Don’t put them up as the ultimate villain in society because that also gives them an “in” into the minds of people who feel powerless. Often the easiest way to make them crumble is to laugh at them, often hysterically. Their ideas cannot hold water without fear, and intimidation. So you’ve got to refuse to be intimidated, and simultaneously build spaces where they are simply not allowed to gain a foothold. The biggest mistake made after World War Two was allowing those former Nazi generals to publish their memoirs where they had an easy scapegoat to why they lost. So don’t give them the fuel and Air, and create spaces where the lost people who follow them can come and say “ I’m having second thoughts”. Not very easy in practice, but the concept itself is pretty simple.
Agree. I also sense a bit of contradiction on Atun-Shei's answer, cause he does close it with pointing out the importance of community defense against nazis. So clearly he does believe people should restrict nazis' "free speech", he just believes in a more direct action based approach, rather than a governmental approach. So to say with that in mind that he does beleive in the free speech of nazis feels like a needless semantic play.
@ social consequences are always more effective against these movements. That’s why “weird” was such an effective counter argument against the conservative right, and why it should never have been abandoned. Plenty of people are fine with being scary, and “drinking liberal tears” or whatever, but not a single person wants to be a weirdo who doesn’t shut up about things that don’t actually affect their daily lives or interactions.
@soulman4292 well, that worked out famtastically for Harris, calling Republicans weird. Also, in prher democracies, trying to do a coup would land you in prison and you wouldn't be allow to run for any office ever again. Maybe that could have stopped a certain fascist much more effectively, than calling him weird.
@@ethanhoward389Did he declare himself science incarnate or did he say he's referring to actual verifiable facts? See, I don't see anything pompous about saying "Hey, I have my evidence right over here, I'm working with all the best evidence we have!"
I hate (okay, maybe not "hate") it when my favorite youtubers "move on" and stop making the kind of entertainment I fell in love with them for. I like "debunks," "takedowns," etc. Sometimes it's nice to feel smug when generally all my life does is humble me. Sometimes a little lighthearted "bullying" of a placeholder opponent is harmless entertainment.
AtunShei, as a fellow progressive who values free speech extremely highly, I just want to say that after watching your take on the subject, my respect for you and your work has increased even further. It is so refreshing to see someone who is genuinely progressive, even radical, express such unwavering support for free speech and expression.
There was a time a few years back where my own unqualified support wavered, but I think I’m even more radically pro-free speech now (perhaps because of it).
The clips you showed of Fauci and the way you were describing him don't match at all. I agree with what you're saying about populism but I'm pretty baffled by that example honestly.
@@MrZauberelefantI don't want to convince the MAGA crowd. They've made up their mind and I'm not dropping myself to the bottom of the barrel to try and appeal to fascists who have made it clear they won't listen to anything. I'll meet the generally ignorant and uneducated on the subject halfway, sure. That's not MAGA. MAGA have already seen reality and rejected it. Diluting the truth just to appeal to them is beyond silly.
@@MrZauberelefant Being spineless does not help. We need fire. We need to address actual issues something the DNC is chronically uninterested in. That can absolutely be done in a serious manner. The issue is not that the left does not appeal to say blue collar workers. The issue is that in the US and most of the world really the "left" is in reality represented by centrist neoliberal parties with maybe some more left wing parties in coalitions or party wings. The problem is that those centrists are just not going to promise real change. But that is what people want. I wish everyone was good enough to see through bs "solutions" coming from the right. But thats just not the case. So if one side says "we aren't going to really change anything" and the other side promises the moon. The latter is always going to win in times like this.
Yeah, I had a bit of whiplash there. Those clips had me completely agreeing with Fauci, but it's not like I'm unaware of the thing Atun-Shei is talking about either. I have to wonder if there was some kind of sample mix-up there.
11:32 "Came off like a pompous dickhead." Surely there's a reason in this Q&A you only answered good, serious questions, not trollish bullshit, right? Okay, now imagine you're legally obligated to reply to trollish bullshit.
I dont know, the clip to me made him look very whiney. Im not American so I dont know who he is, but yeah he doesnt seem very skilled at facing hard questions as part of his public facing job
@@Rynewulf Why are you focusing more on the fact that his answer to a bullshit question "sounded whiny" instead of the fact that the questions being asked were bullshit? Part of what I'm calling out is this "feelings-based" critique of politics. Saying that Fauci wasn't "cool enough" when he was bombarded with absolute nonsense is propaganda. They get away with nonsense questions, while Fauci is held accountable for making an articulate and well considered rebuttal - to nonsense. It's an obvious double standard. It's like, if you kick me in the shin, and I call you an asshole for it, but you think that swearing is worse than kicking someone in the shin. It just doesn't make sense.
Ideas and ideologies are always very nice for our own growth but at the same time you might try to bake them a little more when you find yourself saying that you think you are enforcing free speech by letting Nazis goosestep in you neighbourhood, but your next sentence is that when they actually do that, you feel you'd need to call the neighbourhood's anarchist grassroot cops that do not exist to ensure everybody's protection.
Yeah I'm 100% with Fauci on this one. He'd been getting all of these room temp IQ questions and accusations not only in that hearing but in general for months. Eventually, you gotta call a spade a spade. Besides, I don't think there's any answer he could have given that the maga crowd would have accepted.
I disagree on the Fauci bit. He was very valid in his criticism and I think the people who reacted negatively are sensitive and out of touch with communication skills.
1:49 That being said, one could argue that the Dutch Republic was for a good chunk of its history a de facto monarchy that was controlled by the Orange dynasty through the position of stadholder, which was an executive position in the Republic - similar to a presidency - that the family monopolized for most of Dutch history. The fact that the Orange dynasty outright created their own monarchy that still currently rules the Netherlands to this day shortly after the Napoleonic Wars is sort of indicative of that.
As it Dutchie, I was checking to see if anyone not(ic)ed that, and I would agree with you. The history of our independence (mostly from the Hapsburgs) is way more complicated than a disdain for monarchy, and most of it was led by aristocracy in favor of the system itself anyway. It's not so much that people thought it a bogeyman, but more that they didn't want to be subjugated by a foreign power that incidentally was extremely Roman Catholic, while the area above the rivers tended to have become protestant to boot. It's not like the Republic was stable anyway - stadholders were often in conflict, a mob in The Hague gruesomely murdered the De Witt brothers as the result of a genuine conspiracy against them, and it all ended in years of social upheaval and several revolutions, only for us to become a (admittedly somewhat reluctant) kingdom under Louis Napoleon, and then again after William V got instated as king. Our history is a weird mix of liberal ideas, rampant capitalism, colonialism, at times outright empoverished nobility, or excessively wealthy ones, and calvinist social tendencies (above the rivers anyway), that I don't think is done justice by being simplified into a one-liner like 'they got rid of their king'. Don't get me wrong, I don't blame anyone for not knowing all of the history of all the nations of the world - we often don't know our own... I just disagree with what was said.
"Quick! Gimme an AR-15! WHAT DO YOU MEAN there's a 90 day waiting period!? I need it right now! The MAGATs are swarming my house as we speak!" "Background checks? What do you need background checks on me for? All I need a gun to defend myself!" "Wait, what? I can only have a 10 round magazine!? But that's ridiculous! There's at least 30 MAGATs out there that I need to defend myself from!" "Why can I only buy semi-autos? Why can't I buy a fully automatic rifle? Why are you being so restrictive of my right to defend my own life?"
Your point about communication and storytelling is absolutely spot-on. I see this as a teacher myself. Make serious points entertaining and interesting, and pseudo-history becomes less attractive. Excellent channel that I have greatly enjoyed over the past couple of years.
My only disagreement about the freedom of speech point made around 26:20 is that Nazis freely assembling has historically and is still historically not the same as (for example) Black Panthers freely assmebling. And both groups have notoriously been treated differently when doing said assmebling. I acknowledge that I could 100% be wrong in this interpretation (I am interested in a more in depth video or explanation regarding this if you ever do it) but personally I interpret your point of view regarding freedom of speech for Nazis as disregarding how all groups assembling is not the same. Because frankly, some groups assembling inherently means planning to subjugate or even genocide others. Specific groups utlizing freedom of speech should not, in my opinion, be brushed with such a broad stroke. I, a Black queer person, should not have to endure knowing that people within my city or town are legally allowed to potentially plan to harm me. Sadly I do have to endure that but I personally believe that there should be legal and moral opposition to such activities because otherwise what or who else is going to stick up for marginalized people? Those who do have the privilege to ignore those kinds of discrimination? I'd like to think that people within "in groups" would but sadly we do not live in an altruistic world evident by the amount of people within "in groups" participating in bigtory and making it harder for community protection to be a viable option for everyone. When you're already being marginalized, it can be really hard to have the sustainable power or safety to come together and protect your most vulnerable from folks with both privilege and the corrupt justice system on their side. Regardless, thank you for taking the time to respond to questions and post this video. Keep up the good work!
Thank you! I'm BEYOND happy another person is saying it! Its so easy for people like Atun Shei, who live in positions of relative comfort and privilege, to feel exasperated by the thought of shutting down and cracking down on hate speech when, evidently, they themselves are not on the chopping block. Allowing hate speech to thrive unchallenged is what's ultimately causing things to start rolling backwards lately. Its what started the recent targeted transphobia campaigns and the genocidal rhetoric therein. Plus, hate speech is legally considered a crime because of the incitement of violence and other such activities.
I agree that hate speech should be morally, socially, and culturally unacceptable and really enjoyed hearing your thoughts! So you mention "Because frankly, some groups assembling inherently means planning to subjugate or even genocide others." Who in the government decides which groups are advocating for that in terms of legislation and enforcement?
I don't think putting the "you know it when you see it" decisions for free speech in the hands of the government is a good idea. How often do Right Wing media blocks try and paint the left as the "actual Nazis"? How long until a far right FBI director classifies some leftwing group as "A clear and iminant danger to American Children" and revokes [some progressive group]'s right to publicly assemble? Reactionary rhetoric & repressive groups will skirt these laws and cops won't enforce them on those groups anyways. What will happen is the laws you thought would protect you will be used to silence you while the people who want you dead will just slightly change their approach and keep all the rights you accidently gave away.
@AtunSheiFilms history shows that when nazis get together and start parading around openly, they are already several stages deep into their plans to commit genocide. Our founding fathers were racist pieces of shit, so they wrote laws that would protect them from a truly fair justice system. A better society would have not have unlimited free speech even for acts of terrorism.
Yeah, I don’t agree with you on the Fauci take. You seem to put the onus on the person being (as they note, unfairly) attacked by a political machine that doesn’t care for evidence or consistency. While populism is growing, populism is not a means to communicate complicated and context dependent situations. If you got called into Congress and had people who have failed to show an ounce of respect for the complexity of the position you hold, are you sure you could maintain some form of decorum towards those who have proven that they will refuse to accept anything you say? At best this feels like saying people (who are insufficiently educated, or capable of critically thinking to a scientific extent) should be the target of justifications for actions they have neither the desire nor capability to understand.
And that's the problem: people are generally ignorant and they tend to favor the better storyteller over cold, hard facts. If Dr. Fauci told a better story while spitting facts, maybe even throwing some well-deserved shade at Ron Paul's nepo baby boy, he'd have reached more people.
I am no Rand Paul fan, but the fact that many Republicans went after him for clicks, does not mean that Fauci is an honest individual. At the start of the pandemic he claimed that wearing masks were counterproductive, he later on admitted that he made that up because according to him there were not enough masks to go around . He was a staunch advocate of lockdowns even though it had a devastating impact across the world and led to a massive spike depression, suicide, domestic abuse, drug overdose, loneliness and mass unemployment. The vast majority of covid deaths were those 70 and above but he refused to advocate for selective lockdowns. After the lockdowns were over he had the nerve to claim that he was never for lockdowns in the first place. He lied to congress by claiming that the NIH had no role in funding gain of function when in fact his successor admitted to this though he claimed that gain of function was a good thing.
@Atun-Shei Films, your comment about being Libertarian while disavowing Lost Causers who share that political ideology is commendable. Libertarianism was originally (in an agricultural society of the homesteaders of-exactly-Little House on the Prairie era) the was the Party of the next door neighbors who pitched in and helped each other out when one neighbor lost everything in a natural disaster for example. It was NEVER meant to be about "not liking handouts" in general, and its very very unfortunate that the descendants of those homesteaders commingled ideologically with the last of the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age and beyond to promote laissez faire economics.
I don't know if I agree with atun shei's take entirely but I think I got the jist of what he was saying. Fauci's defensive response, however justified it might've been, just didn't hit with people because it came off as whiny and out of touch. I live in a very conservative area nowadays and Fauci is perceived extremely negatively by my neighbors when he's brought up as opposed when I lived in a very liberal area. Maybe a lot of that was from the media they consumed, but I think his own public speaking ability also had something to do with it. I feel that if you're in any sort of argument, especially high stakes ones, you really can't act defensively. Depending on who you are, you can't really have a big emotional rise as then its perceived that you lost. It reminds me of schoolyard bullying where people were just trying to get a reaction out of you. I really don't think that Fauci's response was that bad in any normal circumstance, but that's not how a lot of country perceived it. It really does feel like you can't win unless you hit back with your own quips and try to humiliate your rival. Its shitty but that feels like the reality to me. I don't know if calm rational debate has ever really existed but it doesn't exist now.
yeah I can't say it was most impressive display of competence at public speaking, though it was _definitely_ a context designed to rile him up and put him on the defensive. but I'm also very unconvinced that this actually matters, or is remembered at all by many people whose brains aren't completely melted already. I'm rather doubtful that that public appearance ultimately swayed that many people either way. the people inclined to hate him have made it clear enough that they don't really need reasons, _any_ excuse is good enough. and the people inclined to love the guy (generally a smaller and less vocal group, but still pretty weird) don't really seem to care what he actually says or does either, he's more of a symbol of their political allegiances than a person making actual decisions. for everyone else... does this even matter? I think the US response to the 'rona was fairly incompetent, though I also think a lot of those decisions were made well over Fauci's head. I just don't really care about (even a high-ranking) civil servant when there are political leaders who clearly deserve far, far more of the blame.
In the early 2000s, I argued with my teacher in South Carolina that the Civil War was not about states rights. I also argued with my teacher in Georgia, when I was in sixth grade. I realize that some schools, especially more middle class, white suburban schools, teach the lost cause myth, but a lot of the black schools in the south teach that the civil war was about slavery. So I think that is a big dynamic that i've noticed.
Grew up in Rhode Island, the problem is often the textbook itself. My sophomore year history teacher repeatedly warned us in class as we were discussing the readings that our American History textbook was written by a Virginian, and that it often veered into a far too favorable account of their practices in the antebellum period. Our final project in that class was being assigned a Civil War/Reconstruction era figure and having to write a pseudo-memoir account for them. I got Robert E Lee. Our textbook talked about Lee a whole lot more than it did Sherman or even really Grant. When your textbook is written by a Virginian and you're in your early teens as a white dude in an UBER white suburb, being in the North doesn't matter. My paper was probably rife with Lost Cause drivel.
@@FreeBurd0620 Keep in mind that McGraw-Hill makes the most elementary and high school textbooks in the USA, called slaves 'workers' and 'economic migrants'...in 2015. So no one should be surprised that Black Americans call slavery 'slavery', and the institutions in charge of learning in this country - the ones run by white people - don't. Why do you think the Republican Party wants to get rid of the Dept. of Education so badly? They'll continue to whitewash American history, because they don't want white kids to understand their own history. Homeschooling, but on a stage write large.
@@FreeBurd0620 More seriously, I wrote my undergrad thesis on Confederate memoirs. The soldiers tended to be conciliatory and at times honest about the cause of the conflict than the politicians, especially the professional soldiers.
Thank you for the Q&A. Im excited for the American Revolution content; that time period from about a decade before the Revolution through to 1830 or so is critically important but also really misunderstood. So few Americans know anything about it and the stories of that time are still having ripple effects now.
Also, the statement "The government that governs best, governs least" is really only true in the minimal sense (which is how most libertarians interpret it) when there are no assholes, sociopaths or corporations. The vast majority of our laws are implemented to stop a specific action or action type by one of these groups
I'm going to have to argue against the "if you can't beat populism, join populism" take at 11:45. If two sides play the populism game, the dumber side will win, *_every time._* Charisma or presentation or a humble demeanor won't do it. Atun-Shei can't win the populism game. Flint Dibble can't win the populism game. Somehow, we need to make respecting expertise cool.
Look how the rejection of populism turned out for the Democratic party. It is almost like millions of Americans are sick and tired of the way things are, whether they're right about the reasons why or not. The status quo isn't working for Americans and they have shown they won't vote for the status quo candidate. Yet, the Democratic party continues to display that they're an elitist party even AFTER losing the election. The recent Dem chairs that were voted for were all older than 70 years old and Democratic party schmoozers. I voted for Kamala Harris, but I'm not delusional to the reality that the rejection of populism (Bernie and AOC) led us right to where we are now.
I don't think playing into what the lowest common denominator expects is all that bad of a plan. Obviously you still need to keep your you know, facts straight but in my mind you do need to say "We're building homes for people!" instead of "We're working towards a zoning plan with big corporations!" even if that's what you're doing. You have to know how to sell. Stuff like communism and socialism didn't get popular with actual workers because Marx made a 6 hour long youtube essay explaining power structures, their local union guy said "hey those rich bastards are smooching off our work, f-em!"
I'm only halfway through your post. I got through your part on Dr. Fauci. I find myself a bit conflicted and perhaps confused. Of course, I don't know Dr. Fauci personally but to me, he did not come across as arrogant. I found it a perfectly normal reaction to someone who has his integrity attacked. I might have acted the same way. I don't like Rand or his ilk at all having delt with people who embrace ignorance as somehow better than education. Without going to deep here, I believe ignorance is not something bad but just lack of knowledge which is something to be overcome by education. You don't look down upon ignorance but educate it with a kind heart. But, through propaganda, you can fool many people, particularly those who lack information, into believing all sorts of junk and thereby, control them, particularly if you can get them to fear something. And this is what's been done, deliberately, for many decades now. Combine that with deliberate lack of funding to education and you make it so that the educated now are mostly those who are well off thereby setting up a class conflict. Again, this is deliberate. And, to my understanding, this did not used to be the case. (My grandparents, never rich but in fact quite poor, were able to put my father through college with my dad working small jobs to help him get through to getting a doctorate in chemistry.) So, I really disdain those who have deliberately created a lying propaganda machine while making education too expensive. I'm rather burying the lede here though. I don't think your wrong about Dr. Fauci coming across as arrogant, I just don't see it myself. Is this because I'm now from an older generation or have some small education myself? Maybe. So, what would you have said in Dr. Fauci's place? You hint at it but give no straight example. I really am at a bit of a loss here because we absolutely MUST embrace science as our way out of the situation we are in along with being more populist in our politics. My own bias is, as I view it, to be more like an FDR or Bernie Sanders.
Oh, let me add, I'm a fan of your work and find it rigorous in an academic sense and therefore appreciate it even more. That you can do it in a way that appeals to many people marks you as an exceptional talent to my mind. So, please don't take my ideas here as derogatory in any sense. Clarifying things a bit, ignorance is not something to be ashamed of or looked down upon. Elevating ignorance (or superstition) as somehow better than education IS to be looked down upon. Some of my relatives are, unfortunately, deriding education and science as inferior and in their minds, sinful because that's what they've been taught for decades and miseducated/propagandized into believing.
See, I felt the anger of Dr. Fauci when he snapped at that dog. I was grinding my teeth. How do I embrace populism? I would love to learn how to do that.
@@dmman33 Wikis are not populist. Wikis respect a hierarchy of expertise among Wikipedians and all sorts of rules and guidelines. Populism is when an overwhelming number of people report normal airplanes or even major constellations like Orion's Belt as mysterious drones and when the government tells them it's not a big deal, populists say, *_"Even if the authorities are right,_* they are still obligated to treat the public's concerns *_as if they were_* valid."
If you want to embrace populism, then the first thing you need to do is *embrace the concept of an absolute truth.* It doesn’t have to be consistent, or even make much sense if you think about it critically, but it needs to be something you won’t question and won’t let anyone else question either. The second thing you need to do is *identify an enemy,* and crusade against them in any manner you see fit. Activism, social outreach, political manipulation, or any combination of the three. The third thing you need to do is *learn basic public speaking* and study populist speeches. Once you have acquired all this, you will need to *commit to it,* and everything else will just fall into place.
@@dmman33 It goes way back, Andrew Jackson was one example of a populist president. The 2016 election reminded me of the urban/rural divide or the conflict between Hamilton and Jefferson. I've seen people say our politics are now based on vibes and that we live in a post truth age. I think the reality is that people spend too much time on the internet and its causing great mental harm. A lot of conservatives are a pathos based people in their approach to thinking, so misinformation tailored to enrage the masses is kind of what got us here. Over the 2010s there were false stories of people getting attacked or raped by refugees and in these stories they sought to enrage people by talking about how the EU memberstates were actively working to suppress these stories, even going as far as to punish the victims of these attacks. Such stories paved the way for the new European far right that we seeing in europe. Like wise in the states we stories of secret pedophile cabals and stories of rich elites plotting to kill the messiah. Ultimately I think January 6th would have never happened if those people didn't spend every hour of their life looking at the posts of Russian bots or right wing influencers.
@InspiriumESOOfor Vegans anyone not Vegan. Some believe green anarchists with pets are larpers etc… it’s all idiosyncratic about what we think is appropriate. I believe that animal liberation encumbers us to recognize our own animalhood among our fellow creatures. I don’t think eating animals is necessarily problematic since it’s just nature that organisms eat others. But there may be an argument to suggest our cognitive abilities leads us to rationalization of not having to consume fellow animals for sustenance. There are plenty of theoretical backdrops to work into eco radicalism. Me personally I’m into Social Ecology and Solarpunk
The lesson about populism is correct, but the bit about Dr. Fauci is bizarre and largely unconnected to the larger (correct) idea that institutions don’t carry inherent credibility anymore. Congressional exchanges of that sort are purely theater designed to create headlines and sound bites, not real change or legislation.
Atun-shei Films you have set me on a personal mission since watching "checkmate Lincolnites" so many years ago to begin my personal mission in life which is teaching the civil war in a accurate way to the future generations to stop the lost cause from perpetuating long than it should have ive been going to college to become an educator and is volenteering at a local museum about the naval aspect of civil war and helping preserve that history as well as the history of where i live because of you man thank you for helping me realize that 🤝
I can't say that you're wrong, but it is sad to see that the world cares more about what's populist than what's true. I don't see how humanity will progress any further when truth no longer matters.
@xavierreichel8254 I absolutely agree that you do not have to lie to be populist. But as cynical as may sound, I don't think most people want meaning or truth. Most people just want something that feels good. Unfortunately, what feels good is rarely anything connected to reality. I agree with Andy that this is the rising paradigm we are left to deal with. But I don't see an upside. Throughout history, populist movements have far more often led to great atrocities than to any kind of progress. I fear all that is left to the future of our nation is idiocracy and ashes.
I get what you mean with the free speech for nazis thing but I gotta say as a gay person I'm sure as hell not going to advocate for that. I think it's also understandable to not want people to call for your immediate execution under the guise of free speech, but I do undestand there are other, better ways of dealing with this than just banning speech, or preventing people from assembling.
Frankly, though I think our current culture is preferable to Nazism, if we can't debate our respective systems on their merits and have ours come out on top after a reasonable discussion (which is laughably easy to do if you study National Socialism's flaws for more than 5 minutes); that is, if we can't out-debate the Nazis and have to resort to shutting them down, then we need to work on our political beliefs. Nazis are really nothing more than the product of various grievances from the people whose voices are suppressed, and who see no other alternative but extremism to have their ideas heard. Sometimes this means their ideas are insane; but more often than not, their ideas are more than valid, and should have been implemented a long time ago. An example of this is mass uncontrolled migration: why is the so-called 'far right' rising in Germany, and in literally every country that mass migration has affected? Because nobody else is willing to talk about mass migration! All mainstream parties simply support it blindly, and call anybody who doesn't "insensitive" at best, and "racist" or "islamophobic" at worst. Of course they also often call people Nazis, simply for wanting to control migration into their country. This is an example of people turning to 'extremism', because the existing powers that be offer no paths to talk about restricting mass migration.
@@abercrombieblovs2042Thank you!!! I feel like I'm going crazy seeing some of these comments! Not to mention, trying to take away the rights of "bad guys" is super short sighted and foolish. If that becomes the law, then all you have to do is change what "bad" means, and you can start silencing anyone that opposes you freely.
@@bagingibargingo4436 Yeah... The more you study history - particularly around the 1920s/1930s - the more you realize, banning political parties and speech for specific groups is not a solution, but simply stuffing a lid on a pot that's already boiling over. The more people suggest it, the more I reply, "Go right ahead! THIS time it will work for sure! You can trust me!"
I don't mean to be aggressive but the Fauci bit just felt way below your level. Your impression of him and how he actually spoke were completely disconnected from each other, and in general it just feels silly to resort to blabbering impersonations.
Yeaaah like Fauci was at his wits end. You can't call someone a 'pompous elitist asshole' for doing what any rational person would after literal years of being attacked and your family be threatened by actual crazy people.
I'd be interested to hear what you mean by "community defense" at 26:20 I agree that we shouldn't trust a right wing (Dems included) government to enforce a ban on the far-right, however I think something needs to be done. Idk, I used to be totally pro 1st amendment in regard to nazism, but after seeing stuff like Christ Church in NZ, I just can't be ok with these ideologies even existing. They add literally nothing except pain and suffering. And it's not even accidental/incidental suffering like capitalism, it's on purpose.
A person's freedom ends where another person's freedom begins. Far right ideology tramples the freedom of others. It tramples the freedom of minorities and it tramples the freedom of people who are opposed to it. Therefore I would argue that they shouldn't be free to do that because they're literally taking away other people's freedom. No one should be able to treat people as anything less than people, but that's what far right ideology preaches.
Saying that the age of people paying x-amount for a university education is frankly ridiculous. If you're going to say something so obviously out there, back it up with some stats etc.
There are no stats for this, it's a completely bananas take. The idea that we're even remotely close to the dissolution of the college concept as we know it is fucking wild. This video really exposes him for having some absolutely out there, bordering on conspiracy or just generally very very insulated and abnormal takes on where the country is going. As someone who has loved the channel for years this video is deeply alarming and makes me really question if other videos are laden with takes that are weird and untrue and i just didn't realize it because it passed the vibe test initially.
when you started talking politics and free speech it made me feel like you captured me and i was being given the villain speech. i loved it. please do more.
@@baneofbanes Assault - no. But criticize severely - yes. Those who complain about being 'cancelled' and scream 'censorship' when they're called out on their bullshit like to claim victimhood status - but it's just other people exercising their own freedom speech in response.
@@Elitist20exactly! When these types scream “censorship” the correct response is “nobody is censoring you, if they were you wouldn’t be allowed to say this in the first place”. Of course that works better with someone who is actually capable of some self awareness. If you are arguing with someone who is seemingly incapable, then you mercilessly mock their weakness. Don’t kick them out, don’t start a protest against them, MOCK THEM, because they often want nothing more than to be seen as scary and dangerous, but if you refuse to be terrorized, and instead put their own insecurities at the very front of your arguments, they will often melt down, and lose their strength within their own community. This is actually why the “They Are Weird” line was so fucking effective, and why those weirdos had ZERO counter arguments against it.
Why are they screaming censorship though? If they were removed from public platforms or attacked in their finances, those are definitely cases of censorship. If they cried that in response to mere criticism that’s absurd, but I’ve seen this argument applied in defense of everything from personal disengagement to physical assault. It actually makes me angry since if you don’t specify reasonable limits on those consequences it means literally nothing. Public stoning is certainly a “consequence” and if it applied to any form of speech that would make speech fundamentally unfree.
Regarding the new age we are in, I keep thinking of Idiocracy where Joe Bauers is trying to get the POTUS' cabinet to accept his idea of using water for crops, and they kept replying with "Water, like in the toilet?". It would be tough for an agronomist to counter that argument without practice.
This was awesome and informative! Thanks for taking my question about 1688! You’re 1000% right about universities! Academics and artists gotta collaborate more! I’d be down for hearing all about the Green Scare! I always wondered how the green messaging, so strong in the 90s, collapsed by the end of the 00s and never came back. Never forget W’s numerous crimes! Thanks for what you do, Man!
Relating to your free speech point, there's somewhat of an exemple of free speech regulation in my own country and region of Belgian Wallonia called the "cordon sanitaire médiatique" or "media quarantine barrier" which is a principle of communication that has been used for a few decades now. The idea being that far right and fascist parties are ostracized from any and all public communication platforms and political debates, they aren't officially banned per say but they aren't allowed to interact with the main body of politics through mass media. It has worked phenomenaly well in preventing the rise of the far right in the region especially when compared to the North of the country which doesn't have such a measure and is seeing an increasingly extreme and normalized far right. My point basically is that there are ways to keep these guys out of public debate without endangering the rest of the more healthy discussions that should be had.
Also "not the place of a historian" is such a horseshit argument. It's basically just saying people with expertise in what has occurred in the past of our reality don't get to use that expertise to have a say on the material conditions we live under. It's not the fault of historians that reality has a progressive bias
I know they're two very different channels but I would love to see you work with Milo Rossi. Also I love the work that you've done with Carl for inrangeTV.
There are three options to deal with populists: 1. Acting defensive (not ideal, you already explained that well) 2. Debating "toe to toe" as you said in another comment (which in my eyes only increases their platform .... ) 3. Just ignore them and only debate people who want to debate in good faith (not ideal either) I live in the Netherlands and we have the same problems with populists (Wilders, Baudet, Van der Plas .... ). Option 1 and 2 are not working here. Option 1 produces content of angry leftists and progressives, the fuel the right wing internet machine runs on. Option 2 assumes there is a "market place of ideas" with a level playing field, but there isn't in reality. Treating far right people as serious debating partners usually moves the Overton window to the right is the experience in my country. Personally I'm more a fan of Option 3, although that's also not ideal either, because they can play the victim card that they are being excluded. Option 3 is rarely being tried, but when it is, it's usually also not working. So yeah, I don't have an answer either.
"Moving the Overton window to the right" just means "remembering that far-alt-right-extremist ideas were completely and totally normal just 50 years ago".
The issue with the criticism of point 2 is that in the realm of politics and trying to garner power and influence, you simply HAVE to address the crazies at some point. Getting defensive over their bad ideas or outright ignoring them, options 1 and 3, are what is killing the left. When it comes to individuals and smaller platforms on the internet, yes I agree that giving undue legitimacy to extremists is at best and optics and at worst actively contributing to their rise in influence. Joe Rogan hosting white nationalists on his show in a plea of being “fair and balanced” is reprehensible. But in national politics you cannot run from these people. You don’t even necessarily have to engage their ideas toe-to-toe and treat them as valid, you simply have to address them as real and as a problem. Here in the US that’s what got Trump elected a second time. Democrats weakly tried propping up the same old vapid promises and talking points, occasionally alluding to the fact “we’re not the other guys” and that doesn’t work. The only brief moment of true momentum they had was when Tim Walz started calling GOP officials weird and gross on public stages. The DNC made sure to muzzle him soon after. And what small number of leftists we have are even worse. The not concern people have is with being right. Well, in the real world, being right doesn’t mean much when you’re trying to gain support from the masses in a political campaign. It’s about being the most persuasive, not being the most correct. You can’t just expect all those dumb uninformed people you ridicule to disappear into thin air or to suddenly not vote for the fascists rising to power. You have to reach out to them, engage them at their level, and better convince them to join the right path. This smug arrogant pathetic insistence on being objectively correct on the issue instead of actually fucking playing ball is what’s going to doom this country and leftist thought around the world.
does this mean that you're not a believer of the paradox of intolerance? The government that governs the least doesn't have the power to help you when you need it
Wait... you say Fauci came across like a pompous asshole... but then you showed a clip just giving some basic pushback against one of his critics. If you wanted to show him behaving like a pompous asshole, you needed to have selected a better clip?
I really appreciate your view of ideology and your disdain for dogma. I think a lot of good causes are crippled by dogmatism and purity testing which limits the scope of its audience. I'm not a vegan or even a vegetarian. I go hunting (I eat what I shoot), but your videos that drew on the parallels between animal rights and abolitionism made me think a lot about my behavior and society. Certainly far more than someone scolding me for having a hamburger has ever done.
No group has ever failed for being too pure. What has repeatedly been shown to take groups down was being too willing to work with their enemies then being infiltrated and taken over.
@aetherkid yeah, that's definitely not true. Tell that to the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Infighting cost them dearly. Have you never heard of divide and conquer? Amplifying divisions amongst your enemies is a classic strategy. Alienating potential allies hurts your cause.
Do you scold z0ophioes to try to make them stop messing with animals? Or do you live and let live, and somehow try to win then over with kindness? Do you enable their behaviour so they don't feel attacked? What exactly would be your plan?do you just want to ignore this because being honest about your attitude towards zo0philes makes you uncomfortable? Perhaps because you would not be so rational and kind towards people you assume hurt animals more than you?
learned a lot back when i was a greenpeace organizer about the green scare-- there was also a sort of "second green scare" under W bush where the patriot act was -- oh shit as i'm typing this you're mentioning it lolol
People really need to understand that just because the Fauci clip doesn't come off as whiny or elitist to them, it will come off as that to other people.
My next question after watching this video is "how do we inject populism into factually accurate content and how do we convince more folks?" I'd particularly like some advice on what to talk about with family members.
@@adsventuresome7511 I think it’s a matter of connecting academic and public historians with independent artists and RUclipsrs. Both have email addresses after all. And social media presences, too!
My personal thought on this is that populism is a somewhat general term and concept, but it is mostly about creating strong, clear points and creating an "enemy" to further your own points, as this tends to really resonate with people, as it makes ideas really understandable. This can be seen in checkmate lincolnites where the Confederates are not given empathy and shown to be very bad. This is probably a good use of populism, as the lost cause myth also uses populism in depicting the northerners as being violent and authoritarian, and checkmates' lincolnites helps counter that influence as the confederates were indeed bad. However, populism can be dangerous, as it can be used to spread bad ideas and get rid of naunce, as it requires bold emotional dynamics. Idk if that helps you.
Populism is fundamentally afactual because real solutions to real problems are difficult, expensive, inconvenient, etc. and therefore not emotionally appealing. It’s much more emotionally appealing to blame all of the world’s problems on some outgroup, like coastal elites, immigrants, or “da joos”.
I disagree with this; well, science versus populism is an old story. The need for good public communication skills is also long-term issue. As for Do you own research mob (via lap top). I had fun with fellow teachers about Chat bots of late. I show how by asking ChatGPT and Gemini: "Where in the Bible is there is there a list of the Ten Commandments?". ChatGPT and Gemini initially responded as any apologist or preacher, citing Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. When asked for an explicit numbered list (1 to 10), the bots still avoid a direct answer. If the discussion was narrowed to a "Yes or No," ChatGPT acknowledges that, "No, there is no exact list of the Ten Commandments in the Bible," while Gemini maintained its ecclesiastical position. ChatSonic, after some clarification, provided a nuanced and accurate response. If research tools can't get some as elementary as this answer correct; there is clearly a place for dudes doing academic courses in biology, mathematics, history, IT, and sociology. We are a story-telling and myth-making culture - we need skills and knowledge in how to navigate such.
Depends on where your family members are coming from. My mom’s still a Reaganite at heart but I was able to slowly get her to disown the current GOP by repeatedly pointing out how far removed they are from (her idealized version of) Reagan.
Your videos have always been a great source of insight as I understand the world and my beliefs, especially your new ones with the Abolitionists, environmentalism, and Animal rights. In fact, it has inspired me to return to being a vegetarian, and I have started volunteering at my local Domestic Abuse Center. Thank you, Andy, your work is dearly needed and I hope more can learn as much from you about themselves as I have.
It's great when something we mostly watch to entertain ourselves during chores inspires action! I've also become a vegetarian again after watching the Benjamin Lay video - the part about the cognitive dissonance regarding eating animals hit home.
Damn, so much Fauci dick-riding in the comments! Lol no but seriously, many of you are misunderstanding my point about populism. Others understand it and just disagree with it, which is obviously fine and I very well could be wrong. In any case, I think this is an important idea that bears expounding upon further than some offhand comments in an unscripted Q&A, maybe even in its own video.
Here's the thing. Multiple things can be true at once. Anthony Fauci can be objectively right about the COVID science based on the evidence he had at the time, he can be justified in defending his reputation from scurrilous attacks, AND he comes across as pompous, whiney, and elitist - basically, on camera he reads as having the exact type of media personality that makes people distrust institutional experts. He may not come off that way *to you,* especially if you're liberal or left-wing and are still understandably angry at MAGA's COVID misinformation campaign, but if you don't believe me, watch the whole exchange of the hearing I clipped and scroll through the comments. ruclips.net/video/kz7OGxb9X6E/видео.html
I'm not saying that Rand Paul was the good guy during these hearings. Far from it! Paul is a personification of exactly the type of slimy, cynical anti-intellectualism that my channel and others like it have been fighting for years. The question I'm interested in is, how do we most effectively fight that anti-intellectualism?
Paul knew exactly what he was doing in that hearing. He made it personal, rudely interrupted Fauci, and gish-galloped him with outrageous untruths *with the explicit goal of riling him up.* He succeeded. Fauci shuts down and refuses to answer questions. He whines about how the "crazies" are after him (he means insane far-right conspiracy nuts, but the public hears normal conservative who might have doubts about the COVID response from watching Fox News). You know, I know, and everybody in that room knew the context of Paul's continued harassment of Fauci in public and the press, and that Fauci had a reasonable reaction. *But all that most Americans saw was a soundbite where a supposed "expert" had an irrational defensive response to an innocuous question.* Paul outmaneuvered Fauci because he's a great actor who understands how to play the game of political theater.
When I say "embrace populism in public education" I mean that historians and scientists have to become great actors too. If you want to do public outreach in education in your field (and you should, if you are actually serious about fighting misinformation) it's not enough anymore to rest on the laurels of your expertise or your degree. You've got to learn the crafts of communication, of theater, of filmmaking, of storytelling. You've got to become an artist.
Yes, it's a lot to ask. No, it's not fair that you have to do this. But the hard, unwelcome truth is that this non-strategy of just telling people "Trust the experts" and "Trust the science" just isn't working. We need to 1) bring high-level academic information to people *for free* in a slicker and more charismatic way than the peddlers of misinformation do and 2) radically reform our institutions from the inside to make them serve the public good rather than corporate profit.
Easier said than done, I know - and obviously some institutions are better than others in this respect, but to continue on with the COVID example, I think a big reason COVID denial was so widespread in America is because institutions of public health failed the people so catastrophically with the opioid crisis. Pharmaceutical companies are literally the devil and they only care about making money. I mean, a health insurance CEO just got canoed and a third of the country cheered. "Trust the science"? Come on. Read the room.
This is not a defeatist stance. POPULISM IS GOOD, it's is what we need right now - as long as it's the right kind of populism. We shouldn't embrace it reluctantly, we should embrace it joyfully.
In 2008, the economy collapsed and the Wall Street vampires who were directly responsible got let off with a warning. It's no accident the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements sprung up right after. *At that time we correctly understood that the systems of power were not serving us. We correctly understood that the elites of our society play by different rules than we do.* Forty years of top-heavy neoliberal economics had left us all broke and exhausted and we were ready for a drastic change.
In the States, after Bernie's 2016 campaign collapsed, Trump was the only viable populist movement left. And he told us that the badly paid intellectuals and academics in STEM and the humanities were part of the "elite" that we should despise (all while making the actual elite, the billionaire class, richer than ever by cutting regulations). Now we can't hear the end of how "Big Archaeology" and "DEI history" are indoctrinating us with pro-government propaganda and turning our kids gay.
Why did this resonate with millions of people? It's simple. The right-wing (fake, insincere, corporate-owned) populists told a story that was more compelling than the story that the academics and intellectuals were telling. That's it.
When Graham Hancock released his Netflix show, a bunch of archaeologists signed a very sternly worded public letter wagging their fingers about how platforming pseudohistory is dangerous. No one cared. Netflix certainly didn't care - the show could be about Hancock walking the Nazca lines in clown makeup farting into a microphone, and as long as they make a boatload of cash from it, they'll renew it for another season. But when Milo Rossi, a charismatic and relatable young guy with media savvy, crested the hill at sunrise on the third day and charged onto TikTok and RUclips talking about how Hancock's evidence doesn't square up (and crucially, while having this populist attitude of "why are we falling for all these fake conspiracies when there are actual real government conspiracies to worry about"), all of a sudden the forces of pseudoarchaeology were in complete disarray, issuing desperate hit pieces about how Milo hates puppies and likes pineapple pizza and accidentally leaves the tap running in the bathroom of other people's houses (it's okay Milo I forgive you).
Now, I don't think that debate and debunking is usually the best way to fight misinformation, and have no desire to get into the "should we legitimize assholes by engaging with their ideas" discussion, that's a whole other topic. My point is that we've got to tell a better story, and the best way to do that is marry scholarship to art. We've got to use social media as a tool for public education and be smart and calculated about how we use it - we've all seen academics and historians on Twitter who gain a following, very obviously get addicted to the app, and then get into undignified spats with N@zis and weirdos and end up looking as foolish as Fauci did in that hearing.
In show business, we understand that perception is reality. What you say is not as important as how you say it. Don't get lost in the Fauci example - think about the big picture. We all listen more to influencers we have a parasocial relationship with than we do strangers with a bunch of letters after their names. That's just the truth of where we're all at.
A million people watched the stupid low-budget film where the N@zi warlock fights the witchfinder with a lightsaber, cried at the end, and said "This changed my life. I'm no longer a racist." 90% of these people have never read, much less heard of, Gary Gallagher or Charles Dew or Charles Royster.
We ignore this new paradigm at our peril.
"Two things can be bad at the same time" is a truth which even otherwise reasonable people seem to have a *shockingly* difficult time grasping
#thomasfrank
This is just as true for teachers in the classroom. We have to compete for attention with not only kids wanting to be kids, but their social media, movies, music, cultural framing, and all the baggage they bring from home.
You're right. It's a tall order, includes long hours low pay, and criticism from every corner. But the rewards of this challenge are there for people who care about others, knowledge, and the future.
I appreciate you going into depth on this topic. Better understanding and acceptance of the situation helps motivate me to add to my repertoire and skill-set.
Also, I'm looking forward to you Revolution period work next year. Perfect timing in so many ways.
Peace to you now, and in the coming year! 💜🐈⬛🐾
👏 YES!!!!! Art and Scholarship MUST unite if both are to survive! The Internet is an ally, not an enemy!
RUclipsrs and other online filmmakers, reach out to local academics! Academics, find out RUclipsrs to spread the word about your research and the current state of the fields!!
THAT is the future!
Older generations are wedded to mediating institutions: schools, broadcasting, publishing, museums. These are all good and have their place, but direct contact will change more minds than an article in an obscure journal ever will!
@@AtunSheiFilms, wait, can I get some justification for calling Rand Paul slimy cynical anti-intellectual and whatnot? Especially when considering he was going against Fauci, whose own correspondence showed he was being, to say it nicely, less than honest about some REALLY important issues…
I always found it weird how libertarians defend the Confederacy, slavery severely violates the non-aggression principle which is central to that ideology (at least those who take it seriously). I can understand the states rights argument in its pure form but when that is used in order to subjugate other people then it's null and void.
Libertarians exist in contradiction with themselves. Capitalism is brutal and exploitative but it's the peak of human development in their eyes, in spite of whatever lip service they pay to liberty and freedom. They want the freedom to exploit others, but in a way they can claim is "earned"
I've found that most libertarians are in fact not libertarian for all. Just themselves. They will send their children to public schools and drive on public roads yet they get angry over taxes and regulations.
The Confederacy wasn't even libertarian for free people, let alone the enslaved. Mark E. Neely has written a superb book on it, Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism.
Basically, his argument is that the Confederacy was an authoritarian, centralised state with many features that were already commonplace in Tsarist Russia. Citizens required a passport to move between states, freedom of speech was heavily restricted, imprisonment without charge was routine, and much of the South was effectively under military occupation.
Because American "Libertarians" are nothing of the sort, they're just confused (or dishonest) Objectivists. Everywhere else in the world Libertarianism is considered left-wing.
Libertarianism is popular with confederate sympathizers
I know you formatted Checkmate Lincolnites like you did because the lost cause myth is a view that some modern people actually have, but I think that sort of format where you have 2 characters meant to be explicitly from either side of the conflict is a great way to teach about history and focus on the differences and similarities that people at the time percieved there to be. I'd love to see your future videos on things like the revolutionary war formatted in a similar way, like a loyalist soldier and patriot soldier discussing the war.
Appreciate the kind words but Im not really interested in that format anymore. While incredibly entertaining it’s also super limiting in terms of imparting information and invariably becomes a “debunk” video or at the very least an attack/defense of a certain viewpoint.
@@AtunSheiFilms "or at the very least an attack/defense of a certain viewpoint"
Isn't that kind of a good thing though? The "let history speak for itself" kind of approach seems, in my view, to allow the people who wish to perpetuate myths like the lost cause the wiggle room to continue buying into the narrative that they like without any real sense of push back. Never mind the abysmal rates of literacy in the US and how many people fail to pass reading comprehension above a 5th grade level.
I get that the format might not be satisfying anymore and I appreciate wanting to do something different. But I wouldn't be so dismissive of the... didactic nature of what it presented. It seems to me like we need more of that sort of thing, not less.
In my opinion, the debunk genre is not a good thing for public education. It's a defensive and ultimately losing strategy. Debunks put you in the confrontational situation of having to say "No, you're wrong" when honestly that's better left unsaid. The best way to persuade someone of something is to gently guide them toward a conclusion without ever explicitly spelling it out - if you've framed your arguments right, the person will come to that conclusion on their own without feeling condescended to or preached at.
What the debunk genre does have going for it is its reach. Smackdowns are undeniably entertaining, and the algorithm favors them because negative emotion keeps people on social media for longer than positive emotion does, and companies like RUclips make more money from ad revenue. This is imo the singular most important reason for Checkmate Lincolnites' success. That, and the Lost Cause is frankly a very easy target that is already evolving out of the zeitgeist anyway. I filled a niche that someone would have eventually.
Final thought. I think social media outrage farming, which is inevitably what shows like Checkmate Lincolnites devolve into, is ethically wrong. The show was successful in its function as a nail in the coffin of the Lost Cause (and as a springboard for my career), and with that accomplished, it can go the way of the dodo.
@AtunSheiFilms What I really appreciated was the use of comments in earlier videos to avoid making a strawman. I think you can take elements from the format and evolve them if you feel that the format itself is too preach-y or outrage-y.
It also may contribute to the education value by feeling like you’re talking to an audience and not a character. I’m also not a RUclipsr and not you, so my take might be completely worthless.
@@AtunSheiFilmshow are you going to feel about people using the format for their own content?
You were the primary force in my changing views regarding the lost cause myth. You really opened my eyes to the lies perpetrated in defense of that myth by historians and I wanna thank you for opening my eyes to that!
That's a hard thing to do. We all have a reaction to being told what we learned growing up or thought we knew isn't exactly true.
That is very impressive. It’s not easy to change your beliefs.
I was already moving that way after George Floyd and reading "Lee and Me" by a fromer West Point guy but Andy just confirmed it for me.
I remember my sister winning something like a united daughters of the confederacy writing competition. She was in northwest florida in early middle school I believe in the 90s. It's not hard to get brainwashed when your role models that share a passion tangentially have an ulterior motive. Can't imagine she would've gotten recognition if she wrote a brilliant piece criticizing the confederacy. She is quite progressive now.
To be clear it was a private nonprofit group and i think she won something like a savings bond. It was similar to a science fair for writing. Seems totally benign on the surface, but they were created in 1894 and propogated the lost cause and fund raised for quite a few confederate monuments
“checkmate, patriots!” is going to hit different
It is necessary. It’s the last myth standing
@@dmman33 Myth?
@@rogerkeleshian2215 myth
@@rogerkeleshian2215 Yes. A MUCH more deeply rooted one than the Puritans and the Frontier and Columbus and even the Lost Cause . It’s based on ignorance of British Constitutionalism and the Loyalists, as well as European history, generally.
@@dmman33 Why is it necessary exactly?
I had not considered that Johnny Reb had found a home on Archive of Our Own
A wild Jack sighting! I love your stuff!
Was not expecting to see you here
But now that i think about it
It absolutely makes sense
8 works so far
The sexual tension between Johnny Reb and Billy Yank was palpable, so it’s not surprising he’s on AO3
What is that?
"The amazing thing about modern life is that you can connect with nature any time you like. It's called camping, you numbnuts! Oh, I'm sorry, is your objectively amazing modern life getting you down? Then go hike the Appalachian Trail!" - Atun-Shei
The only addendum I'll add to that is that in order to support our objectively amazing modern life, industry and capital are destroying nature at a terrifying and unprecedented rate. So don't just hike the Appalachian Trail, fight for it by getting involved in climate justice and eco-defense.
@@AtunSheiFilms BASED! Cheers, comrade!
@AtunSheiFilms We speak for the trees because they've been here longer than you and me. Living in Montana it feels like we've been in a long and losing battle defending our public lands, but honestly it's a fight worth taking to the end.
@@AtunSheiFilms Based and green pilled.
Aren't all the criteria for "objectively amazing life" ultimately dependent on subjective results? If literacy made people miserable it wouldn't be objectively amazing anymore.
~11:20 I really don't think Dr. Fauci sounded like any sort of a pompous asshole at all.. He sounded like someone who is not very media trained in a way that's relevant to our current climate, but the way that his character was (and continues to be) distorted is actually reprehensible and would drive most people, particularly people who have devoted their entire lives to public service in their field, totally insane.
Not only that, but he has probably been getting multiple death threats daily. That would have to be draining.
Yeah, I don’t see what Andy’s talking about either. Maybe it’s a surfeit of knowledge about what he went through, but I just feel bad for him in watching that clip again.
Certainly the clips he showed were not of him being pompous. Just the opposite, he was pleading for mercy after staying steady in the face of horror. Maybe Andy expects him to be a polished politician.
In mostly unrelated news, if I agreed with Andy all the time I would not watch his content because I would find it boring.
I would encourage you to read sarah schulman's oral history of ACT UP to maybe get a sense of why some reasonable people might not be fans!
I'm not sorry to disagree with you here 25:40. The tolerance paradox is not the unsolvable problem so many make it out to be. Tolerance cannot exist while intolerance is allowed, but it's only a paradox under the assumption that society is incapable of self-enforcement. More to the point, you don't have to already have a perfect, logistic oriented, solution to a problem in order to present it as such.
To use a metaphor: You see a fire, but no one else does. Do you still shout fire even if you don't know where the alarm/extinguisher is? Yes, of course you do, there's a fire.
yeah, I really only think it's a "paradox" if someone is deeply committed to a liberal, "values-neutral" approach to regulating political speech. which I guess is one thing (even if I disagree with it) inside of a philosophy department. but such a thing _has never_ existed in real life, and _will never_ exist. so it seems rather moot. any ruling class in a society (no matter how large or small, egalitarian or hierarchical, permissive or repressive) is going to set limits on the political activities of people hostile to it.
I'm not a liberal, I do not care about the rights of fascists or other violent bigots. they've made it quite clear that they want to harm me and others like me, and will do so given the opportunity. if I had the political power to do so, I'd be fine with forcing them to keep their hate to themselves, at g*npoint if necessary. paradox resolved.
@million_unalived_CEOs Well put, and I agree with you. The sort of hyper-neutral stance you're referring to is a very easy one to take, from a place of privilege. Not so easy if you're among those being persecuted.
The "tolerance paradox" only exists if you view it as a moral absolute, which it isn't. Tolerance is a social contract, and always has been. You have to accept people who are different from you. If you don't do that, you have broken the contract, and like any other contract, it is the person who broke the contract first who is liable for the breakdown and should suffer the consequences.
@@noelm5154 you don't have to accept people whose fundamental worldview sees your essential humanity as unacceptable
@@jeffreylunger Agreed, hate speech has never been protected.
Heh. Hopping from a Miniminuteman Q&A where he recommended you as one of his favorite RUclipsrs to seeing you also put out a Q&A. What a delightful day
the reaction in the live chat of milo saying that was awesome. so many cheers
You can tell Milo built a lot of his style with dudes like Atun-Shei
It’s crazy to me that Fauci was seen as out of touch. But maybe we non-Americans only saw his public health statements and not his congressional hearings.
Nah just a bunch of people believe fake news like Newsmax and Fox News which lie to their base because they need to feed the conspiracy mindset or else their viewers stop watching them.
He did lie about the medical supplies that one time...
It seems like the person asking you if you were an Anarcho Syndicalist all those years ago was prophetic.
THIS!
16:12 Hard agree on this. I moved from the rural Midwest to Massachusetts this past year and the amount of people out here that don't understand how poverty affects people is mind boggling. People who have never left New England for their entire lives don't understand how problematic certain government policies can be because they've never had to worry about a world without them.
I'm loving it out here, the people are great, it just definitely feels like its own bubble.
That's how it is in Seattle as well. Historically there hasn't been the type of poverty and communities of color that exist in other areas. As a person of color the white upper middle class liberals here have been less understanding and accepting of differences oddly to me than when I lived in florida. Its weird. They dont really understand communities of color either. Its what they want to believe.
Most people in new England are poor and working class
Poverty shows up differently in areas. Rural poverty and inner city poverty are two different cultures.
I grew up rural poor in MA,and find that my life , and my values ideology are more closely aligned with rural poor people further south in Appalachia proper, or in rural Maine/ NH than with the "city /suburban Liberals" here in MA. I went to school at a University in an area that is considered super progressive, even by MA standards, and it was like going to a different country for me. Going to the greater Boston area is like that for me as well.
I agree that they just do not ever understand a world without lots of government intervention, and where they see that as defacto a good thing, even when those government programs are bloated and distorted from doing any real good and that anyone who doesnt think like them is somehow just a backwards savage who needs to be ideologically colonized, .
It ,for me drives home, that the greatest cultural differences in our country are found along a rural /urban split vs simply on things like party affiliation
@craigsurette3438 my mom would be dead without those programs you elitists piece of shit
I think the main issue with free speech nowadays is that people want free speech to actually be consequence-free speech.
You can say what you want but people are also free to react to it however they want (within the law.)
Also not to mention that there is a lot of people acting in bad faith when it comes to free speech. Particularly on the right to where they'll champion Elon Musk as the arbiter of free speech even though he's always targeted journalists who are critical of him as well as to employees who don't have a union. Or like Trump wanting to outlaw flag burning even though that is a free speech demonstration
YES exactly.
Being Dutch, we have religious liberty baked into our constitution. More specifically, it's called "freedom of education" and says the state will pay for schools controlled by the church. Next to schools controlled by the state.
Nowadays, a lot of schools are pro-LGBT, even the christian ones, and will for example fire anti-LGBT teachers. This has caused extreme right-wing christians to yell "THIS IS unconstitutional! This is against article 23 (the article in question)!"
Even admitting that "I guess article 1 (no discrimination) is more important than article 23."
Which yes, yes it is. But these people wanna make article 23, freedom of religious indoctrination of kids 24/7, more important than article 1, no discrimination allowed in the country on any basis.
So yeah, just wanna add this story to show that for them, it's all about consequences. In the Netherlands, where they can make it into a legal argument, they admit they don't care about free speech, but just about power.
In America they still have to use the "religious freedom" argument. But please look at the Netherlands and how people talk about article 23, to know that for christians, it's not about religious freedom. But Christian hegemony.
Personally I'd argue the left also wants to force their own opinion on everyone. Thing is, and I love how Contrapoints phrased this "I just want to survive. The facist's goal is to be the only standing."
Whenever christians talk about "religious freedom", or in the Netherlands article 23, they make it look like they mean the first thing, but they actually mean the second thing.
If you look at christianity and wokeism in practise, you can see wokeism is the first thing, and christianity is the second thing. (Although #notallchristians, but the christians who do the first thing are called 'woke' christians, so yeah.......)
I've never been a smart human being. It takes me a lot of time to change how I see things but it does happen. I completely disagree with your portrayal of the Fauci clip (as you showed it). People that spew nonsense gotchas tend to anger me and I can't see where they're coming from anymore and Fauci didn't seem as befuddled and standing on expertise as you portrayed.
What did I miss? How do I interact properly with people that spew ignorant nonsense and refuse to see patterns and completely refuse to empathize with anyone not exactly in their same situation?
I do love your work and expect no response from you. If any of our other comrades could explain to me, I'd be grateful.
Yeah he spoke about Fauci like this and it was... Just out of tune. Like Fauci was being sent literal death threats and being prodded by people who genuinely did not give a flying fuck about him or anything he said, saying he told nothing but lies and slander. Like no, it's not elitist or pompous to call out the bullshit like that. Like sure some people might say yeah he was elitist or pompous but those people are just wrong and upset that someone who is genuinely smarter than them disagrees with them.
Fauci didn't go hard enough. He's right to be angry that his family needs bodyguards after he's saved hundreds of lives. I think people don't take us seriously because we tell them they're wrong, while also telling them we respect them, and that subconsciously makes people think we're disingenuous. We need to tell people they're wrong, and also that we have no respect for them. Then they'll at least see us and our "elitism" as authentic, and authenticity is supposedly what has all the currency these days.
I’ve always been a smart human being. Yet only recently did I hit upon a practicable strategy regarding this-just don’t speak to them. By which I mean speak to the people who are falling for this trickery by understanding why it is so effective. Cautiously but firmly point out a more humane perspective rather than directly confronting the ideological wall.
In short, follow the approach of catching flies with honey, not vinegar. People aren’t receptive towards a conversation that they are unprepared for.
Rand Paul was trying to get his Faux News soundbite he wanted and he got it. Just like that weird Kennedy guy who keeps claiming people can't say no when they have literally said no. It's all theatre for the soundbite on Faux News.
@@warlordofbritannia, indeed.
I always wondered why Faucci even sought to engage with any of Rand's idiocy.
Just directly address any actual point Rand was making with the actual facts, and dismiss the rest of his comments with some funny description of how they are absolute fantasy obviously directed not to Faucci but some imaginary demon in Rand's head.
Humor is a very effective 'don't listen to that clown' method.
There are bits here I definitely agree with, but I gotta say, the comments around 12:13 are really... well, wrong, imo. The people who are learning about archaeology online, are not learning archaeology. They may be learning *about* archaeology, but not how to *be* archaeologists. You will always need institutions that teach people the practical knowledge that defines archaeological research and practice that you can't in a youtube video. Some historians are trying to be better communicators and embrace a public presence online (some do very well as a result, such as Roel Konijnendijk), but those who do never stop producing academic-level research either. You have to let that be the bedrock for the information you then simplify (a dirty word maybe, but valid and not shameful at all, just nuanced) for the public. This is part of being a good teacher. Losing that academic standard means losing your foundations. And many academics are happier to be more insulated in that academic world, whether it's due to a lack of communication-with-laymen skill or simply a lack of interest, but that's okay too. They can keep developing that foundation that others then use. But as it stands I do agree that "public history" needs to be more of a thing, I just think that universities still have an extremely important role to play in this!
Also about the age of populism as via the rise of modern computers: we are not in an age of unfettered information and access to that information. There are technological feudalisms in place that decide when and how we have access to the "populist" internet. We are providing a source of revenue to service providers who we owe our internet access to. This age of information is real, but it is not 'free' information as some have put it. Marx never wrote about this specifically, but all in all it's not *so* different from how he described material relations between the capitalist and the consumer in his time. I'm simplifying things a lot, and there is nuance to this, but I do believe we're not living in a new age of populist potential. We're Iiving in an extrapolation of past classist structures, but with new technologies that give us the illusion of freedom more than ever.
Wanna add that I love your videos and respect what you do as a history student! This is just a friendly and nuanced disagreement.
I’ll only reply in short but I agree 100%. You can learn about archaeology but it won’t make you an archaeologist.
There is so much more involved like conservation of items, recovering items and respecting what you’re unearthing and even bagging and sorting things correctly.
No matter how much you read you will not be an archaeologist because you won’t have the practical skills that are needed. It’s more than digging a big hole and then saying how people are wrong for believing A because it’s actually B.
It’s why I do like Miniminuteman but I do hate the idea that ‘anyone’ can be an archaeologist, I’m not one myself but my partner is absolutely killing it in the field and the amount of time and effort they put into it and just the education required, it feels like it’s an utter disservice to the field to act like anybody with a shovel can be one.
Is that possibly a poor view as not everyone has the chance to get a Uni degree? Sure, but you need the practical skill set that you cannot earn by just watching and reading. Education and academics are important and instead of saying ‘anyone’ can be one it should be ‘everyone’ can if you fix the fundamental flaws with say the education system in the US that doesn’t give people the options to go into the field. My view may be different due to being from the U.K., but I hope that rambling mess made some sense.
Yes, I am a scientist and you just can't learn science without university. And also the vast majority of scientists aren't tasked with science communication, they are doing the actual research.
@@DruchiiEverything you said makes sense! When Milo went out to a site and started picking artifacts off the ground I wanted to scream. He should have known better, because of his education. I appreciated that he acknowledged the mistake later but how many people online actually watch the correction? You can't teach a whole semester of ethics in a 20 minute video.
@@imthebause yeah and he later apologized for that too
Yep, throwing formal academic standards/ institutions away to replace it with mass media is a very, very, very bad idea. Those standards & those institutions are primarily responsible for nearly everything we take for granted in the modern world. It’s not perfect, and I absolutely believe there is room for substantial reform, but the fact that even the most mundane aspect of the world is too complex to begin to understand without a substantial amount of prerequisite knowledge isn’t something we can overcome by getting rid of prerequisites.
"free speech" protections are evidently selective. neo notsees are likely to face less pushback from the law than the protesters that protest the "war" in G @ Z @ . Depends on the ideologies of the enforcers and those with money that have influence over the enforcers. On paper we have free speech protections. In reality those protections are selective.
"He's not a revolutionary, he's a bored rich kid!"
"I've got some bad news for you about every revolution..."
(as seen on social media in very recent weeks)
Hard disagree about Fauci. Rand Paul was the one who came across as pompous
It's ok to be wrong.
@@jobobtargaryen1258 yes, and you should remember that.
😂😂 Fauci literally claimed to be "the science".... are you still wearing a mask alone in your car?
I gotta say I'm only a short way in, but your advice on how we need to navigate the coming political landscape by embracing populism and getting better at communicating online is so spot on in my opinion. People are frustrated with the status quo, and marketing "more of the same" isn't going to get it done
I concur. The GOP are good are two things: being immoral lackwits, and messaging. To combat them, we need to not only promote good policies but communicate effectively.
There is no shame in speaking with people on their level. Pretending to be above it all only leaves them with a single option.
So long as you're an inclusive populist like Bernie Sanders. Sometimes populism has the issue of creating a villainous 'other' as a means of rallying support, whether that other is a religious, ethnic, or rational minority, or an immigrant group, of a people who's politics you dislike.
@@minutemansam1214I am happily exclusively of people whose politics I don't like. Having people whose political ideology is based on white supremacy and Christofascism in your political party is how you get a white supremacists Christofascist party. We MUST be exclusive to be inclusive to marginalized communities.
Yep. Exactly my conclusion as well. Slight reform isn't cutting it anymore. We need extensive radical changes.
Keep it up man. People need to know not all of us Southern people believe in the lost cause nonsense. We are starting to pull away from it and just ignore our parents and grandparents when they spew this garbage out. In South Carolina, my 11 year old daughter is still taught in school that the war was about states rights. It will be a while before we can be done with it. Keep educating people. Love your channel.
But it WAS about states rights... States rights to tell people they can own other people. Didn't you watch any episode of Checkmate, Jeeez.....
/j
My mother, 1920 to 2016, grew up being taught that in school and everywhere else.
*She made sure I knew better.*
You can do what Mom did for your kids.
I was taught the same thing in California about 11 or 12 years ago in high school, and I know my brother, in his AP US History class (also in California, same school and everything), was also taught states' rights was the whole story and the north didn't care about slavery at all. I was retaught the same thing in college too, again, in California. I remember being confused, thinking, "Isn't it kind of both--slavery AND states' rights to do so?" Thinking back on it, I get the feeling the teachers didn't know, not that they were twisting things because they loved slavery and/or the Confederacy. It sucks, but thankfully we have the internet (or not so thankfully if we have zero media literacy lol).
Love your stuff, love your attitude, love that you're here.
Thanks for being you and keep on keeping on. 💚
Cool to see you here, Dev! Loved your elevator/key talks.
@AliceWallace2 😁👍💚 thanks! I dig on Andy's work a great deal and it's always a pleasure to meet someone who enjoys some of mine, too. ☺️
\o Always good bumping into you on my favorite channels now and again, Deev~
11:40 man maybe I’m just in a different bubble than you but I really didn’t see Fauci’s response as that bad or blustery like you. How would you have liked him to respond? If he says nothing conservatives say “he didn’t deny it so it’s true” if he gets upset you say he sounds pompous, and responding is almost impossible because Rand Paul gish galloped him with limited time. I understand your point about embracing populism but in your specific example I just don’t see where you can apply it
Agree completely- was surprised and a bit dismayed that Atun used that example 😢
I would have liked him to understand that he is onstage and Paul is his scene partner in a piece of theater. Don't complain about your unfair treatment and call for mom with the "Madam chair, he's being mean to me" routine, go toe-to-toe with Paul and give it right back to him.
He didn't have to lend credence to the accusations, but he did need to play to the cameras and understand that getting defensive comes off as desperate and writing people's (misguided though they may be) COVID skepticism off as "crazy" is elitist and out of touch.
If he'd stayed calm, adopted a reassuring tone, played to the cameras, and gone over the evidence at hand instead of flipping out and refusing to answer questions, then he could have changed minds.
@@AtunSheiFilms thank you for responding to my comment. You make good arguments but I’m still not sure going toe to toe would change any minds. It’s my first point that if he instead chooses to attack Rand conservatives would pivot to “he doesn’t even address the allegations he just attacks people for asking questions!” I don’t think the people Rand is playing to were ever going to have their minds changed by Fauci in the first place.
@AtunSheiFilms you can't go "toe to toe" with people in public debates. The rise of fascism shows this to be true. Allowing people to spread lies, evthem, en you immediately counter and disprove them, only works to convince more people of the lie.
So respectfully, I think @TheZanderator's argument here is effectively an appeal to futility and @aetherkid's argument is just a losing strategy. I don't think every creationist and h*oloc@ust denier needs to be platformed by experts in debate, but I do think that the face of the US government's response to a pandemic needs to understand the fundamental rules of PR and media communication, especially that WHAT you're saying is far less important than HOW you say it.
I think your perspective as someone who simultaneously embraces populism and is working to prevent misinformation is really interesting, I'd be super excited if you ever made a video touching on the subject. There are so many things I love about the digital age -- my whole job is built around having nearly unlimited access to information and no traditional gatekeepers -- but I'm someone who is going to have a hard time getting on that train. I still associate the term populism with a movement to create a kind of post-truth post-responsibility world where faith is placed in whomever can shout the loudest. I get the impression that there's something you're able to see in how the current day fits into historical trends that I can't yet.
It was an interesting point, Atun made...and I noted while listening to it that I probably can't get ON the populist train, based on my personal beliefs...but I can certainly ADAPT to the reality that populist methods are the meta of communication world.
To me, populism is an entirely neutral term; it is descriptive, not connotative. I think that if you continue to think your own views through on this (well, any subject really) you’ll eventually reach this point of detached enlightenment, be able to not even think of the moral tangents at first impulse.
I’m sure there’s some subject or topic on which you’ve already achieved this, something which you used to feel uncomfortable or too strongly about yet now possess a more clinical view on.
The thing is, populism is less of certain set of ideals and mindset. May it be the egalitarian/socialist left populism of 1900s, or the reactionary and crazy right populism of trump in 2020s. Instead it more of a marketing strategy, instead of framing yourself with experience, a certain identify or some type of other establishment tie or skill. You focus on how your fighting for the common man, against the system and for radical change. All which is a very neutral stance with can be used to focus on still very fact based thing, but also crazy mis-info from wired corners of internet. Also why the label is used for so many different ideology's, despite there huge differences
.
I feel the same as you.
The whole terrorism thing has me thinking about how differently the cases of Dylann Roof and Luigi Mangione have been handled.
White supremacy and racism is a tragedy, but it's not a threat to those in power. The idea of them being made to face the consequences of their actions is.
A mass killing is a tragedy, but class consciousness is a crime.
How were they handled differently? I had never compared the two, and would be interested in knowing more!
@@bronotamrok3002 Dylann Roof entered an African American church, murdered nine people and injured a tenth stating that he was doing so in order to spark a race war. He was charged and convicted of murder and civil rights violations, but the idea of treating what was obviously an act of racial intimidation and actual terrorism as a terrorist act was laughed off.
Luigi Mangione killed a rich white dude and it took them less than a week to start screaming "terrorist".
Not really, Luigi is being charged under NY law, the state has very stringent anti terror laws that SC dosent cause of a certain event 20 years ago. As for Roof he got the death penalty
My view-not that anyone asked for it-is that I won’t advocate for vigilantism, but neither am I feeling too bad about this particular incident.
jacket goes hard as hell. solid video per usual.
What jacket is that? Looks great
Wow. That is a really really bad Fauci take.
You can make an argument Fauci responded poorly. But he’s 100% right and he doesn’t come across as an a******.
Your take and the way you talk about it does, actually. Which is really depressing to me because I really respect you.
I also think he didn't come off as an asshole, but you can't ignore that to a dishearteningly large number of Americans he absolutely did come off that way. Winning or losing a debate on the public stage has as much to do with optics as anything else. I wish it were any other way but this is the world we have to fight in.
Yeah this is my issue honestly. I can be okay with him having a different opinion about fauci, but the impression is deeply childish, borders on offensive, and is just wholly unhelpful in any way. I'm sure he thinks this is some weird "Don't tone police me/trample on my free speech" but like, dude, you just come off as washed and crude. It's just low rent in general.
@ParadoxicalThird you miss the point entirely.
He doesn't think that fauci was wrong (he called him an accomplished pathologist in this very video), it's that rhetorically fauci did not speak well. Plenty of Americans did think that he was an "out of touch asshole".
And he wasn't. And they're wrong. But messaging to them matters and the world of populism is how you need to speak.
@@ParadoxicalThird Fauci did nothing but turn people away from science, acting like a snob helps nothing.
@@DiamondsDroogI don't give a single shit about those people though? I don't want people who are in the right to have to capitulate to dishonest, bad faith bullshit so that some tribalistic idiots don't have their ego bruised.
That's silly.
I don't know if it's just me (not native speaker) but Fauci didn't come up pompous at all in that speech you showed. It seemed perfectly appropriate. And anyway I highly doubt that that questioning will be his ultimate legacy. I doubt many people know about it at all.
Exactly. Most people I know think he did very well in those insane question sessions. He appeared quite rational and authoritative. If people have faltering trust in institutions for no good reason - and a scientist under ridiculous inquisition sounding defensive isn't one - then the problem rests in them, not in the institutions. The media smearing of Fauci was ridiculous and most of it happened from the fringe right. I'm honestly quite surprised that Andy bought into it, and that is saying quite a bit about his media bias. Maybe it really is much harder to escape from your bubble even as an educated man.
I meant the COVID response will be his legacy, not that specific questioning.
I recommend watching the whole exchange, then scrolling through the top comments ruclips.net/video/kz7OGxb9X6E/видео.html
The minor little problem was that Fauci was concealing his funding of Wuhan Institute of Virology though a NGO cutout, and de facto lying. He did have something to conceal, which he did clumsily.
He also overstated his conclusions on Covid, and tried to quash dissenters rather than engaging them.
@@zxbc1 I didn't read that segment at all as that Andy bought into the insane questioning. He's commenting on the undeniable fact that somewhere near 50% of the American public did. The problem lies in them, sure, of course, but at the same time, it's undeniable that Fauci came off as pompous to them.
I don't know what a better tack to take would be, but to disregard how messaging comes off to nearly half the American public is to doom yourself to repeating the same mistakes if a similar situation occurs again in the future.
@@AtunSheiFilms By the time of this exchange in Congress Fauci had been there several times, as well as many other outlets often biting his tongue answering absurd accusations or responding to questions about absurd accusations, he'd been hounded with lies for years by then by the GOP/anti-vaxxers including death threats against him and his family. He had had it by then and even given that it wasn't as 'pompous' as you describe IMO. I'd like to see you have to sit with cameras hounded by Jim Jordan, Rand Paul, MTG, Kennedy, etc just plain lying on you AND giving you no chance to actually answer many times.
Your characterization of him was unfair at best.
~ signed MA to Confederacy transplant in my mid 20s (1978) as a newlywed not to retire.
OH! AND a "Boomer" - yes a hippie who's generation filled the streets fighting for civil rights, end to the draft, end Vietnam, for women's Lib, for ecology (Earth Day).
PRO TIP: ALL generations have both Left & Right or Dems and GOPs if you will, generalizing an entire generation as you do is below you.
Our generation's worst sin was raising the most politically uninterested, therefore ignorant generation of the 20th Century.
As a german, the idea of giving unlimited free speech to nazis, letting them do their marches, show their nazi symbols say their nazi messages, without any restrictions is something that kind of feels unacceptable. I know where you're coming from, but I hope you can also see, where I'm coming from and that the issue isn't quite as straight forward as free speech absolutists make it out to be. I wish I could be a free speech absolutist, but I can't.
I agree. One person's freedom of speech and assembly ends at the moment they infringe on someone else's freedom to be safe. It's the old paradox of tolerance: if you tolerate nazis, they will make life intolerable to everyone else. That being said, I think Atun-Shei had a point about who we are trusting to oppose these extremists. The USA isn't the only place in the world where the police is more likely to side with a far right protest while suppressing a counter protest.
While there is a severe gray area in this idea of “free speech absolutism” the ultimate solution is to allow for it, but also allow for the consequences of it.
The problem is that a lot of people have very skewed ideas of what those consequences should actually be. The proper way to deal with fascists, is a combination of ignoring them, and mocking them. These “movements” are often made up of people who are incredibly weak, they are often weak physically, mentally, and emotionally which is why they never really succeed. There is a balance to this though. CounterProtesting them when they go and speak on college campuses is the wrong approach, because that gives them more attention. Kicking them off of platforms does exactly the same thing. It gives their conspiracies air and fuel.
Don’t put them up as the ultimate villain in society because that also gives them an “in” into the minds of people who feel powerless.
Often the easiest way to make them crumble is to laugh at them, often hysterically. Their ideas cannot hold water without fear, and intimidation. So you’ve got to refuse to be intimidated, and simultaneously build spaces where they are simply not allowed to gain a foothold.
The biggest mistake made after World War Two was allowing those former Nazi generals to publish their memoirs where they had an easy scapegoat to why they lost.
So don’t give them the fuel and Air, and create spaces where the lost people who follow them can come and say “ I’m having second thoughts”.
Not very easy in practice, but the concept itself is pretty simple.
Agree. I also sense a bit of contradiction on Atun-Shei's answer, cause he does close it with pointing out the importance of community defense against nazis. So clearly he does believe people should restrict nazis' "free speech", he just believes in a more direct action based approach, rather than a governmental approach. So to say with that in mind that he does beleive in the free speech of nazis feels like a needless semantic play.
@ social consequences are always more effective against these movements. That’s why “weird” was such an effective counter argument against the conservative right, and why it should never have been abandoned. Plenty of people are fine with being scary, and “drinking liberal tears” or whatever, but not a single person wants to be a weirdo who doesn’t shut up about things that don’t actually affect their daily lives or interactions.
@soulman4292 well, that worked out famtastically for Harris, calling Republicans weird. Also, in prher democracies, trying to do a coup would land you in prison and you wouldn't be allow to run for any office ever again. Maybe that could have stopped a certain fascist much more effectively, than calling him weird.
I dont see how faucci sounded like an ahole or an elitist. Especially when he was being grilled by aholes. Its like he's being graded different
He declared himself science incarnate😂
@@ethanhoward389Did he declare himself science incarnate or did he say he's referring to actual verifiable facts? See, I don't see anything pompous about saying "Hey, I have my evidence right over here, I'm working with all the best evidence we have!"
An intelligent logical public servant cannot be expected to grasp and empathise with and sanitise stupidity.
I hate (okay, maybe not "hate") it when my favorite youtubers "move on" and stop making the kind of entertainment I fell in love with them for. I like "debunks," "takedowns," etc. Sometimes it's nice to feel smug when generally all my life does is humble me. Sometimes a little lighthearted "bullying" of a placeholder opponent is harmless entertainment.
AtunShei, as a fellow progressive who values free speech extremely highly, I just want to say that after watching your take on the subject, my respect for you and your work has increased even further. It is so refreshing to see someone who is genuinely progressive, even radical, express such unwavering support for free speech and expression.
There was a time a few years back where my own unqualified support wavered, but I think I’m even more radically pro-free speech now (perhaps because of it).
The clips you showed of Fauci and the way you were describing him don't match at all. I agree with what you're saying about populism but I'm pretty baffled by that example honestly.
Well, I am too, but the point is: Being a serious person does not help convince the MAGA crowd.
@@MrZauberelefantI don't want to convince the MAGA crowd. They've made up their mind and I'm not dropping myself to the bottom of the barrel to try and appeal to fascists who have made it clear they won't listen to anything.
I'll meet the generally ignorant and uneducated on the subject halfway, sure. That's not MAGA. MAGA have already seen reality and rejected it. Diluting the truth just to appeal to them is beyond silly.
@@MrZauberelefant Being spineless does not help. We need fire. We need to address actual issues something the DNC is chronically uninterested in. That can absolutely be done in a serious manner.
The issue is not that the left does not appeal to say blue collar workers. The issue is that in the US and most of the world really the "left" is in reality represented by centrist neoliberal parties with maybe some more left wing parties in coalitions or party wings.
The problem is that those centrists are just not going to promise real change. But that is what people want. I wish everyone was good enough to see through bs "solutions" coming from the right. But thats just not the case. So if one side says "we aren't going to really change anything" and the other side promises the moon. The latter is always going to win in times like this.
Yeah, I had a bit of whiplash there. Those clips had me completely agreeing with Fauci, but it's not like I'm unaware of the thing Atun-Shei is talking about either. I have to wonder if there was some kind of sample mix-up there.
11:32 "Came off like a pompous dickhead." Surely there's a reason in this Q&A you only answered good, serious questions, not trollish bullshit, right? Okay, now imagine you're legally obligated to reply to trollish bullshit.
That clip didn't make him a dickhead. He made mistakes, but I'd be frustrated too if my life's work was so smeared on such flimsy evidence.
I dont know, the clip to me made him look very whiney. Im not American so I dont know who he is, but yeah he doesnt seem very skilled at facing hard questions as part of his public facing job
@@Rynewulf Why are you focusing more on the fact that his answer to a bullshit question "sounded whiny" instead of the fact that the questions being asked were bullshit?
Part of what I'm calling out is this "feelings-based" critique of politics. Saying that Fauci wasn't "cool enough" when he was bombarded with absolute nonsense is propaganda. They get away with nonsense questions, while Fauci is held accountable for making an articulate and well considered rebuttal - to nonsense. It's an obvious double standard.
It's like, if you kick me in the shin, and I call you an asshole for it, but you think that swearing is worse than kicking someone in the shin. It just doesn't make sense.
A Christmas present I didn’t deserve, but got! Thank you Andy and A Very Merry Christmas to you and fellow history folks and watchers of this content!
Ideas and ideologies are always very nice for our own growth but at the same time you might try to bake them a little more when you find yourself saying that you think you are enforcing free speech by letting Nazis goosestep in you neighbourhood, but your next sentence is that when they actually do that, you feel you'd need to call the neighbourhood's anarchist grassroot cops that do not exist to ensure everybody's protection.
Yeah I'm 100% with Fauci on this one. He'd been getting all of these room temp IQ questions and accusations not only in that hearing but in general for months. Eventually, you gotta call a spade a spade. Besides, I don't think there's any answer he could have given that the maga crowd would have accepted.
I disagree on the Fauci bit. He was very valid in his criticism and I think the people who reacted negatively are sensitive and out of touch with communication skills.
Oh pog, always nice to see more from Atun-shei
1:49 That being said, one could argue that the Dutch Republic was for a good chunk of its history a de facto monarchy that was controlled by the Orange dynasty through the position of stadholder, which was an executive position in the Republic - similar to a presidency - that the family monopolized for most of Dutch history. The fact that the Orange dynasty outright created their own monarchy that still currently rules the Netherlands to this day shortly after the Napoleonic Wars is sort of indicative of that.
As it Dutchie, I was checking to see if anyone not(ic)ed that, and I would agree with you.
The history of our independence (mostly from the Hapsburgs) is way more complicated than a disdain for monarchy, and most of it was led by aristocracy in favor of the system itself anyway. It's not so much that people thought it a bogeyman, but more that they didn't want to be subjugated by a foreign power that incidentally was extremely Roman Catholic, while the area above the rivers tended to have become protestant to boot.
It's not like the Republic was stable anyway - stadholders were often in conflict, a mob in The Hague gruesomely murdered the De Witt brothers as the result of a genuine conspiracy against them, and it all ended in years of social upheaval and several revolutions, only for us to become a (admittedly somewhat reluctant) kingdom under Louis Napoleon, and then again after William V got instated as king.
Our history is a weird mix of liberal ideas, rampant capitalism, colonialism, at times outright empoverished nobility, or excessively wealthy ones, and calvinist social tendencies (above the rivers anyway), that I don't think is done justice by being simplified into a one-liner like 'they got rid of their king'.
Don't get me wrong, I don't blame anyone for not knowing all of the history of all the nations of the world - we often don't know our own... I just disagree with what was said.
I'm trans, and hooboy have my beliefs around gun control and community defense changed recently. It's a new and terrifying time.
"Quick! Gimme an AR-15! WHAT DO YOU MEAN there's a 90 day waiting period!? I need it right now! The MAGATs are swarming my house as we speak!"
"Background checks? What do you need background checks on me for? All I need a gun to defend myself!"
"Wait, what? I can only have a 10 round magazine!? But that's ridiculous! There's at least 30 MAGATs out there that I need to defend myself from!"
"Why can I only buy semi-autos? Why can't I buy a fully automatic rifle? Why are you being so restrictive of my right to defend my own life?"
i disagree with you on Dr. Fauci.
Your point about communication and storytelling is absolutely spot-on. I see this as a teacher myself. Make serious points entertaining and interesting, and pseudo-history becomes less attractive.
Excellent channel that I have greatly enjoyed over the past couple of years.
My only disagreement about the freedom of speech point made around 26:20 is that Nazis freely assembling has historically and is still historically not the same as (for example) Black Panthers freely assmebling. And both groups have notoriously been treated differently when doing said assmebling.
I acknowledge that I could 100% be wrong in this interpretation (I am interested in a more in depth video or explanation regarding this if you ever do it) but personally I interpret your point of view regarding freedom of speech for Nazis as disregarding how all groups assembling is not the same.
Because frankly, some groups assembling inherently means planning to subjugate or even genocide others. Specific groups utlizing freedom of speech should not, in my opinion, be brushed with such a broad stroke. I, a Black queer person, should not have to endure knowing that people within my city or town are legally allowed to potentially plan to harm me.
Sadly I do have to endure that but I personally believe that there should be legal and moral opposition to such activities because otherwise what or who else is going to stick up for marginalized people? Those who do have the privilege to ignore those kinds of discrimination? I'd like to think that people within "in groups" would but sadly we do not live in an altruistic world evident by the amount of people within "in groups" participating in bigtory and making it harder for community protection to be a viable option for everyone.
When you're already being marginalized, it can be really hard to have the sustainable power or safety to come together and protect your most vulnerable from folks with both privilege and the corrupt justice system on their side. Regardless, thank you for taking the time to respond to questions and post this video. Keep up the good work!
Thank you! I'm BEYOND happy another person is saying it! Its so easy for people like Atun Shei, who live in positions of relative comfort and privilege, to feel exasperated by the thought of shutting down and cracking down on hate speech when, evidently, they themselves are not on the chopping block. Allowing hate speech to thrive unchallenged is what's ultimately causing things to start rolling backwards lately. Its what started the recent targeted transphobia campaigns and the genocidal rhetoric therein.
Plus, hate speech is legally considered a crime because of the incitement of violence and other such activities.
If he thinks the government can't be trusted to police it, then uh yeah that's the bigger problem man
I agree that hate speech should be morally, socially, and culturally unacceptable and really enjoyed hearing your thoughts!
So you mention "Because frankly, some groups assembling inherently means planning to subjugate or even genocide others." Who in the government decides which groups are advocating for that in terms of legislation and enforcement?
I don't think putting the "you know it when you see it" decisions for free speech in the hands of the government is a good idea.
How often do Right Wing media blocks try and paint the left as the "actual Nazis"? How long until a far right FBI director classifies some leftwing group as "A clear and iminant danger to American Children" and revokes [some progressive group]'s right to publicly assemble?
Reactionary rhetoric & repressive groups will skirt these laws and cops won't enforce them on those groups anyways. What will happen is the laws you thought would protect you will be used to silence you while the people who want you dead will just slightly change their approach and keep all the rights you accidently gave away.
@AtunSheiFilms history shows that when nazis get together and start parading around openly, they are already several stages deep into their plans to commit genocide. Our founding fathers were racist pieces of shit, so they wrote laws that would protect them from a truly fair justice system. A better society would have not have unlimited free speech even for acts of terrorism.
Thanks!
Maybe it is just me.
But, that clip does not make Fauci looks like a pompous elitist. For me, he simply looks he is restraining anger.
Gotta capitulate to those acting in bad faith or lose views, am I right
Yeah, I don’t agree with you on the Fauci take. You seem to put the onus on the person being (as they note, unfairly) attacked by a political machine that doesn’t care for evidence or consistency. While populism is growing, populism is not a means to communicate complicated and context dependent situations. If you got called into Congress and had people who have failed to show an ounce of respect for the complexity of the position you hold, are you sure you could maintain some form of decorum towards those who have proven that they will refuse to accept anything you say? At best this feels like saying people (who are insufficiently educated, or capable of critically thinking to a scientific extent) should be the target of justifications for actions they have neither the desire nor capability to understand.
And that's the problem: people are generally ignorant and they tend to favor the better storyteller over cold, hard facts. If Dr. Fauci told a better story while spitting facts, maybe even throwing some well-deserved shade at Ron Paul's nepo baby boy, he'd have reached more people.
@@Capt.DanInJapanHe's a scientist, not a politician.
I am no Rand Paul fan, but the fact that many Republicans went after him for clicks, does not mean that Fauci is an honest individual. At the start of the pandemic he claimed that wearing masks were counterproductive, he later on admitted that he made that up because according to him there were not enough masks to go around . He was a staunch advocate of lockdowns even though it had a devastating impact across the world and led to a massive spike depression, suicide, domestic abuse, drug overdose, loneliness and mass unemployment. The vast majority of covid deaths were those 70 and above but he refused to advocate for selective lockdowns. After the lockdowns were over he had the nerve to claim that he was never for lockdowns in the first place.
He lied to congress by claiming that the NIH had no role in funding gain of function when in fact his successor admitted to this though he claimed that gain of function was a good thing.
@@Capt.DanInJapan And this is utterly fucking insane that people have to be talked to like they are children to understand things.
Yeh. I don't agree w Ron Paul on everything but I have some respect for him . His son is just a consummate pol, a Republican pol at that.
@Atun-Shei Films, your comment about being Libertarian while disavowing Lost Causers who share that political ideology is commendable. Libertarianism was originally (in an agricultural society of the homesteaders of-exactly-Little House on the Prairie era) the was the Party of the next door neighbors who pitched in and helped each other out when one neighbor lost everything in a natural disaster for example. It was NEVER meant to be about "not liking handouts" in general, and its very very unfortunate that the descendants of those homesteaders commingled ideologically with the last of the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age and beyond to promote laissez faire economics.
What libertarians liked historically was mutual aid societies & free market.
They don't want a welfare state
@@rogerkeleshian2215 Exactly. Before 1917, being left-wing in Russia basically meant that you were an an agrarian socialist libertarian.
We need that libertarianism back
@@rogerkeleshian2215 again, we need that back
Happy Festivus, Maestro Rakich!
Rather baffled by your cartoonish take on Fauci's response. Was a lot more eloquent and controlled than I'd be, for sure.
It borders on offensive, it comes off as really personally hateful.
I don't know if I agree with atun shei's take entirely but I think I got the jist of what he was saying. Fauci's defensive response, however justified it might've been, just didn't hit with people because it came off as whiny and out of touch. I live in a very conservative area nowadays and Fauci is perceived extremely negatively by my neighbors when he's brought up as opposed when I lived in a very liberal area. Maybe a lot of that was from the media they consumed, but I think his own public speaking ability also had something to do with it.
I feel that if you're in any sort of argument, especially high stakes ones, you really can't act defensively. Depending on who you are, you can't really have a big emotional rise as then its perceived that you lost. It reminds me of schoolyard bullying where people were just trying to get a reaction out of you. I really don't think that Fauci's response was that bad in any normal circumstance, but that's not how a lot of country perceived it. It really does feel like you can't win unless you hit back with your own quips and try to humiliate your rival. Its shitty but that feels like the reality to me. I don't know if calm rational debate has ever really existed but it doesn't exist now.
yeah I can't say it was most impressive display of competence at public speaking, though it was _definitely_ a context designed to rile him up and put him on the defensive.
but I'm also very unconvinced that this actually matters, or is remembered at all by many people whose brains aren't completely melted already.
I'm rather doubtful that that public appearance ultimately swayed that many people either way. the people inclined to hate him have made it clear enough that they don't really need reasons, _any_ excuse is good enough. and the people inclined to love the guy (generally a smaller and less vocal group, but still pretty weird) don't really seem to care what he actually says or does either, he's more of a symbol of their political allegiances than a person making actual decisions.
for everyone else... does this even matter? I think the US response to the 'rona was fairly incompetent, though I also think a lot of those decisions were made well over Fauci's head. I just don't really care about (even a high-ranking) civil servant when there are political leaders who clearly deserve far, far more of the blame.
Your Overanalysing Ravenous video is the reason that I am a vegan. You certainly do have an impact!
In the early 2000s, I argued with my teacher in South Carolina that the Civil War was not about states rights. I also argued with my teacher in Georgia, when I was in sixth grade. I realize that some schools, especially more middle class, white suburban schools, teach the lost cause myth, but a lot of the black schools in the south teach that the civil war was about slavery. So I think that is a big dynamic that i've noticed.
Grew up in Rhode Island, the problem is often the textbook itself. My sophomore year history teacher repeatedly warned us in class as we were discussing the readings that our American History textbook was written by a Virginian, and that it often veered into a far too favorable account of their practices in the antebellum period. Our final project in that class was being assigned a Civil War/Reconstruction era figure and having to write a pseudo-memoir account for them. I got Robert E Lee. Our textbook talked about Lee a whole lot more than it did Sherman or even really Grant. When your textbook is written by a Virginian and you're in your early teens as a white dude in an UBER white suburb, being in the North doesn't matter. My paper was probably rife with Lost Cause drivel.
@@FreeBurd0620 Keep in mind that McGraw-Hill makes the most elementary and high school textbooks in the USA, called slaves 'workers' and 'economic migrants'...in 2015. So no one should be surprised that Black Americans call slavery 'slavery', and the institutions in charge of learning in this country - the ones run by white people - don't.
Why do you think the Republican Party wants to get rid of the Dept. of Education so badly? They'll continue to whitewash American history, because they don't want white kids to understand their own history. Homeschooling, but on a stage write large.
@@FreeBurd0620
In a strange way, being assigned Lee and writing a bunch of Lost Cause bs was A+ understanding.
@@FreeBurd0620
More seriously, I wrote my undergrad thesis on Confederate memoirs. The soldiers tended to be conciliatory and at times honest about the cause of the conflict than the politicians, especially the professional soldiers.
Thank you for the Q&A. Im excited for the American Revolution content; that time period from about a decade before the Revolution through to 1830 or so is critically important but also really misunderstood. So few Americans know anything about it and the stories of that time are still having ripple effects now.
Also, the statement "The government that governs best, governs least" is really only true in the minimal sense (which is how most libertarians interpret it) when there are no assholes, sociopaths or corporations. The vast majority of our laws are implemented to stop a specific action or action type by one of these groups
I'm going to have to argue against the "if you can't beat populism, join populism" take at 11:45. If two sides play the populism game, the dumber side will win, *_every time._* Charisma or presentation or a humble demeanor won't do it. Atun-Shei can't win the populism game. Flint Dibble can't win the populism game. Somehow, we need to make respecting expertise cool.
Look how the rejection of populism turned out for the Democratic party. It is almost like millions of Americans are sick and tired of the way things are, whether they're right about the reasons why or not. The status quo isn't working for Americans and they have shown they won't vote for the status quo candidate. Yet, the Democratic party continues to display that they're an elitist party even AFTER losing the election. The recent Dem chairs that were voted for were all older than 70 years old and Democratic party schmoozers.
I voted for Kamala Harris, but I'm not delusional to the reality that the rejection of populism (Bernie and AOC) led us right to where we are now.
I don't think playing into what the lowest common denominator expects is all that bad of a plan. Obviously you still need to keep your you know, facts straight but in my mind you do need to say "We're building homes for people!" instead of "We're working towards a zoning plan with big corporations!" even if that's what you're doing. You have to know how to sell. Stuff like communism and socialism didn't get popular with actual workers because Marx made a 6 hour long youtube essay explaining power structures, their local union guy said "hey those rich bastards are smooching off our work, f-em!"
I'm only halfway through your post. I got through your part on Dr. Fauci. I find myself a bit conflicted and perhaps confused. Of course, I don't know Dr. Fauci personally but to me, he did not come across as arrogant. I found it a perfectly normal reaction to someone who has his integrity attacked. I might have acted the same way. I don't like Rand or his ilk at all having delt with people who embrace ignorance as somehow better than education. Without going to deep here, I believe ignorance is not something bad but just lack of knowledge which is something to be overcome by education. You don't look down upon ignorance but educate it with a kind heart. But, through propaganda, you can fool many people, particularly those who lack information, into believing all sorts of junk and thereby, control them, particularly if you can get them to fear something. And this is what's been done, deliberately, for many decades now. Combine that with deliberate lack of funding to education and you make it so that the educated now are mostly those who are well off thereby setting up a class conflict. Again, this is deliberate. And, to my understanding, this did not used to be the case. (My grandparents, never rich but in fact quite poor, were able to put my father through college with my dad working small jobs to help him get through to getting a doctorate in chemistry.) So, I really disdain those who have deliberately created a lying propaganda machine while making education too expensive.
I'm rather burying the lede here though. I don't think your wrong about Dr. Fauci coming across as arrogant, I just don't see it myself. Is this because I'm now from an older generation or have some small education myself? Maybe. So, what would you have said in Dr. Fauci's place? You hint at it but give no straight example. I really am at a bit of a loss here because we absolutely MUST embrace science as our way out of the situation we are in along with being more populist in our politics. My own bias is, as I view it, to be more like an FDR or Bernie Sanders.
Oh, let me add, I'm a fan of your work and find it rigorous in an academic sense and therefore appreciate it even more. That you can do it in a way that appeals to many people marks you as an exceptional talent to my mind. So, please don't take my ideas here as derogatory in any sense. Clarifying things a bit, ignorance is not something to be ashamed of or looked down upon. Elevating ignorance (or superstition) as somehow better than education IS to be looked down upon. Some of my relatives are, unfortunately, deriding education and science as inferior and in their minds, sinful because that's what they've been taught for decades and miseducated/propagandized into believing.
See, I felt the anger of Dr. Fauci when he snapped at that dog. I was grinding my teeth. How do I embrace populism? I would love to learn how to do that.
@@UShistorymatters Populism didn’t start in the 2010s: it has been a consistent feature of Internet Culture. Wikis run on it. So do History RUclipsrs.
@@dmman33 Wikis are not populist. Wikis respect a hierarchy of expertise among Wikipedians and all sorts of rules and guidelines. Populism is when an overwhelming number of people report normal airplanes or even major constellations like Orion's Belt as mysterious drones and when the government tells them it's not a big deal, populists say, *_"Even if the authorities are right,_* they are still obligated to treat the public's concerns *_as if they were_* valid."
If you want to embrace populism, then the first thing you need to do is *embrace the concept of an absolute truth.* It doesn’t have to be consistent, or even make much sense if you think about it critically, but it needs to be something you won’t question and won’t let anyone else question either. The second thing you need to do is *identify an enemy,* and crusade against them in any manner you see fit. Activism, social outreach, political manipulation, or any combination of the three. The third thing you need to do is *learn basic public speaking* and study populist speeches. Once you have acquired all this, you will need to *commit to it,* and everything else will just fall into place.
@@dmman33 It goes way back, Andrew Jackson was one example of a populist president. The 2016 election reminded me of the urban/rural divide or the conflict between Hamilton and Jefferson.
I've seen people say our politics are now based on vibes and that we live in a post truth age. I think the reality is that people spend too much time on the internet and its causing great mental harm. A lot of conservatives are a pathos based people in their approach to thinking, so misinformation tailored to enrage the masses is kind of what got us here. Over the 2010s there were false stories of people getting attacked or raped by refugees and in these stories they sought to enrage people by talking about how the EU memberstates were actively working to suppress these stories, even going as far as to punish the victims of these attacks. Such stories paved the way for the new European far right that we seeing in europe. Like wise in the states we stories of secret pedophile cabals and stories of rich elites plotting to kill the messiah.
Ultimately I think January 6th would have never happened if those people didn't spend every hour of their life looking at the posts of Russian bots or right wing influencers.
I love that you're still using Spyro music in the background of these videos. Continue with this please.
“After recent events, it turns out I support the establishment now. I would like to introduce my new sponsor, Raid Shadow Legends!”
"smash the state and all that good stuff" my brother, my captain, ... my king 👑👑👑
No kings, No borders
Smash that like button: tired 😴
Smash the state: wired🤩
Yep a green anarchist who isn't a LARPER, love to see it 😁
@Ellimist000 how would someone LARP as a green anarchist? 🤔
@InspiriumESOOfor Vegans anyone not Vegan. Some believe green anarchists with pets are larpers etc… it’s all idiosyncratic about what we think is appropriate. I believe that animal liberation encumbers us to recognize our own animalhood among our fellow creatures. I don’t think eating animals is necessarily problematic since it’s just nature that organisms eat others. But there may be an argument to suggest our cognitive abilities leads us to rationalization of not having to consume fellow animals for sustenance. There are plenty of theoretical backdrops to work into eco radicalism. Me personally I’m into Social Ecology and Solarpunk
Happy to hear about Frozen 50s guy, I still mumble ‘frozen guy…’ and laugh to myself
The lesson about populism is correct, but the bit about Dr. Fauci is bizarre and largely unconnected to the larger (correct) idea that institutions don’t carry inherent credibility anymore. Congressional exchanges of that sort are purely theater designed to create headlines and sound bites, not real change or legislation.
Atun-shei Films you have set me on a personal mission since watching "checkmate Lincolnites" so many years ago to begin my personal mission in life which is teaching the civil war in a accurate way to the future generations to stop the lost cause from perpetuating long than it should have ive been going to college to become an educator and is volenteering at a local museum about the naval aspect of civil war and helping preserve that history as well as the history of where i live because of you man thank you for helping me realize that 🤝
I can't say that you're wrong, but it is sad to see that the world cares more about what's populist than what's true. I don't see how humanity will progress any further when truth no longer matters.
You don’t have to lie to be populist. You just have to give people meaning to the truth.
@xavierreichel8254 I absolutely agree that you do not have to lie to be populist.
But as cynical as may sound, I don't think most people want meaning or truth. Most people just want something that feels good. Unfortunately, what feels good is rarely anything connected to reality.
I agree with Andy that this is the rising paradigm we are left to deal with. But I don't see an upside. Throughout history, populist movements have far more often led to great atrocities than to any kind of progress.
I fear all that is left to the future of our nation is idiocracy and ashes.
250 years and now we will have a king again. Great show good job.
I get what you mean with the free speech for nazis thing but I gotta say as a gay person I'm sure as hell not going to advocate for that. I think it's also understandable to not want people to call for your immediate execution under the guise of free speech, but I do undestand there are other, better ways of dealing with this than just banning speech, or preventing people from assembling.
Yeah, free speech absolutism is an incredibly straight white guy take tbh.
Frankly, though I think our current culture is preferable to Nazism, if we can't debate our respective systems on their merits and have ours come out on top after a reasonable discussion (which is laughably easy to do if you study National Socialism's flaws for more than 5 minutes); that is, if we can't out-debate the Nazis and have to resort to shutting them down, then we need to work on our political beliefs.
Nazis are really nothing more than the product of various grievances from the people whose voices are suppressed, and who see no other alternative but extremism to have their ideas heard. Sometimes this means their ideas are insane; but more often than not, their ideas are more than valid, and should have been implemented a long time ago.
An example of this is mass uncontrolled migration: why is the so-called 'far right' rising in Germany, and in literally every country that mass migration has affected? Because nobody else is willing to talk about mass migration! All mainstream parties simply support it blindly, and call anybody who doesn't "insensitive" at best, and "racist" or "islamophobic" at worst. Of course they also often call people Nazis, simply for wanting to control migration into their country.
This is an example of people turning to 'extremism', because the existing powers that be offer no paths to talk about restricting mass migration.
@@abercrombieblovs2042Thank you!!! I feel like I'm going crazy seeing some of these comments!
Not to mention, trying to take away the rights of "bad guys" is super short sighted and foolish. If that becomes the law, then all you have to do is change what "bad" means, and you can start silencing anyone that opposes you freely.
@@bagingibargingo4436 Yeah... The more you study history - particularly around the 1920s/1930s - the more you realize, banning political parties and speech for specific groups is not a solution, but simply stuffing a lid on a pot that's already boiling over.
The more people suggest it, the more I reply, "Go right ahead! THIS time it will work for sure! You can trust me!"
I don't mean to be aggressive but the Fauci bit just felt way below your level. Your impression of him and how he actually spoke were completely disconnected from each other, and in general it just feels silly to resort to blabbering impersonations.
civility politics bullshit
@@x999uuu1Typical humanitarian lol
Yeaaah like Fauci was at his wits end. You can't call someone a 'pompous elitist asshole' for doing what any rational person would after literal years of being attacked and your family be threatened by actual crazy people.
Wow. He was right. Fauci did come off like an arrogant elitist.
You must be new here if you don’t like over the top impersonations lol 😂
I'd be interested to hear what you mean by "community defense" at 26:20
I agree that we shouldn't trust a right wing (Dems included) government to enforce a ban on the far-right, however I think something needs to be done. Idk, I used to be totally pro 1st amendment in regard to nazism, but after seeing stuff like Christ Church in NZ, I just can't be ok with these ideologies even existing. They add literally nothing except pain and suffering. And it's not even accidental/incidental suffering like capitalism, it's on purpose.
A person's freedom ends where another person's freedom begins.
Far right ideology tramples the freedom of others. It tramples the freedom of minorities and it tramples the freedom of people who are opposed to it.
Therefore I would argue that they shouldn't be free to do that because they're literally taking away other people's freedom.
No one should be able to treat people as anything less than people, but that's what far right ideology preaches.
Alright now that you finished your Q&A I'm ready for your T&A episode
Saying that the age of people paying x-amount for a university education is frankly ridiculous. If you're going to say something so obviously out there, back it up with some stats etc.
There are no stats for this, it's a completely bananas take. The idea that we're even remotely close to the dissolution of the college concept as we know it is fucking wild. This video really exposes him for having some absolutely out there, bordering on conspiracy or just generally very very insulated and abnormal takes on where the country is going.
As someone who has loved the channel for years this video is deeply alarming and makes me really question if other videos are laden with takes that are weird and untrue and i just didn't realize it because it passed the vibe test initially.
when you started talking politics and free speech it made me feel like you captured me and i was being given the villain speech. i loved it. please do more.
Presumably one of those “wait, is he actually the good guy?” villains 😂
I think it's wrong to say that the way Fauci responded is out of touch without offering an example of how he should have responded instead
Charismatic voices can be very dangerous.
Populism without guidance leads to a river of blood
25:52 on free speech I think people forget that freedom to speak doesn’t mean freedom from consequences!
It actually does. You can’t assault people for what they say and get away with it.
@@baneofbanes Assault - no. But criticize severely - yes. Those who complain about being 'cancelled' and scream 'censorship' when they're called out on their bullshit like to claim victimhood status - but it's just other people exercising their own freedom speech in response.
@@Elitist20exactly! When these types scream “censorship” the correct response is “nobody is censoring you, if they were you wouldn’t be allowed to say this in the first place”. Of course that works better with someone who is actually capable of some self awareness.
If you are arguing with someone who is seemingly incapable, then you mercilessly mock their weakness. Don’t kick them out, don’t start a protest against them, MOCK THEM, because they often want nothing more than to be seen as scary and dangerous, but if you refuse to be terrorized, and instead put their own insecurities at the very front of your arguments, they will often melt down, and lose their strength within their own community.
This is actually why the “They Are Weird” line was so fucking effective, and why those weirdos had ZERO counter arguments against it.
Why are they screaming censorship though? If they were removed from public platforms or attacked in their finances, those are definitely cases of censorship. If they cried that in response to mere criticism that’s absurd, but I’ve seen this argument applied in defense of everything from personal disengagement to physical assault.
It actually makes me angry since if you don’t specify reasonable limits on those consequences it means literally nothing. Public stoning is certainly a “consequence” and if it applied to any form of speech that would make speech fundamentally unfree.
That's because conservatives think that "Freedom of speech" means "you have to listen to me"
Regarding the new age we are in, I keep thinking of Idiocracy where Joe Bauers is trying to get the POTUS' cabinet to accept his idea of using water for crops, and they kept replying with "Water, like in the toilet?". It would be tough for an agronomist to counter that argument without practice.
This was awesome and informative! Thanks for taking my question about 1688!
You’re 1000% right about universities! Academics and artists gotta collaborate more!
I’d be down for hearing all about the Green Scare! I always wondered how the green messaging, so strong in the 90s, collapsed by the end of the 00s and never came back.
Never forget W’s numerous crimes!
Thanks for what you do,
Man!
The US Revolution cannot be separated from the other two of the Big Three of the time; the Haitian and French Revolutions.
Hell yeah! Glad to hear from you Andy
Relating to your free speech point, there's somewhat of an exemple of free speech regulation in my own country and region of Belgian Wallonia called the "cordon sanitaire médiatique" or "media quarantine barrier" which is a principle of communication that has been used for a few decades now.
The idea being that far right and fascist parties are ostracized from any and all public communication platforms and political debates, they aren't officially banned per say but they aren't allowed to interact with the main body of politics through mass media.
It has worked phenomenaly well in preventing the rise of the far right in the region especially when compared to the North of the country which doesn't have such a measure and is seeing an increasingly extreme and normalized far right.
My point basically is that there are ways to keep these guys out of public debate without endangering the rest of the more healthy discussions that should be had.
Also "not the place of a historian" is such a horseshit argument. It's basically just saying people with expertise in what has occurred in the past of our reality don't get to use that expertise to have a say on the material conditions we live under. It's not the fault of historians that reality has a progressive bias
I didn't know you were involved in ALF!! That's awesome! I'm going to have to up my Patreon level!
Allow me to be very clear. I am not involved in ALF, I don't know where to find ALF, and I don't engage in illegal activism.
We all know the triceratops is the obviously superior dinosaur.
My goat posted
I know they're two very different channels but I would love to see you work with Milo Rossi.
Also I love the work that you've done with Carl for inrangeTV.
Fairly sure he and Milo did a stream together a while back
@schad1738 well then, I gotta find it. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
@@schad1738 found it. Thank you.
I was about to say, Andy’s how I found Milo 🤣
Karl Bad Man!
There are three options to deal with populists:
1. Acting defensive (not ideal, you already explained that well)
2. Debating "toe to toe" as you said in another comment (which in my eyes only increases their platform .... )
3. Just ignore them and only debate people who want to debate in good faith (not ideal either)
I live in the Netherlands and we have the same problems with populists (Wilders, Baudet, Van der Plas .... ). Option 1 and 2 are not working here. Option 1 produces content of angry leftists and progressives, the fuel the right wing internet machine runs on. Option 2 assumes there is a "market place of ideas" with a level playing field, but there isn't in reality. Treating far right people as serious debating partners usually moves the Overton window to the right is the experience in my country. Personally I'm more a fan of Option 3, although that's also not ideal either, because they can play the victim card that they are being excluded. Option 3 is rarely being tried, but when it is, it's usually also not working.
So yeah, I don't have an answer either.
"Moving the Overton window to the right" just means "remembering that far-alt-right-extremist ideas were completely and totally normal just 50 years ago".
@@abercrombieblovs2042 maybe it's true in the US, but it's definitely not true in the Netherlands. We were much more left wing in the 70s.
The issue with the criticism of point 2 is that in the realm of politics and trying to garner power and influence, you simply HAVE to address the crazies at some point. Getting defensive over their bad ideas or outright ignoring them, options 1 and 3, are what is killing the left. When it comes to individuals and smaller platforms on the internet, yes I agree that giving undue legitimacy to extremists is at best and optics and at worst actively contributing to their rise in influence. Joe Rogan hosting white nationalists on his show in a plea of being “fair and balanced” is reprehensible. But in national politics you cannot run from these people. You don’t even necessarily have to engage their ideas toe-to-toe and treat them as valid, you simply have to address them as real and as a problem. Here in the US that’s what got Trump elected a second time. Democrats weakly tried propping up the same old vapid promises and talking points, occasionally alluding to the fact “we’re not the other guys” and that doesn’t work. The only brief moment of true momentum they had was when Tim Walz started calling GOP officials weird and gross on public stages. The DNC made sure to muzzle him soon after.
And what small number of leftists we have are even worse. The not concern people have is with being right. Well, in the real world, being right doesn’t mean much when you’re trying to gain support from the masses in a political campaign. It’s about being the most persuasive, not being the most correct. You can’t just expect all those dumb uninformed people you ridicule to disappear into thin air or to suddenly not vote for the fascists rising to power. You have to reach out to them, engage them at their level, and better convince them to join the right path. This smug arrogant pathetic insistence on being objectively correct on the issue instead of actually fucking playing ball is what’s going to doom this country and leftist thought around the world.
Hell yeah. You're my favorite breadtuber
Is that a reference to Vino Farms' early content?
@@jy3n2 Billy Yank: No, it's apparently just liberals who make RUclips videos!
Can’t wait for all your new content coming in 2025.
does this mean that you're not a believer of the paradox of intolerance?
The government that governs the least doesn't have the power to help you when you need it
Love from a Suris and Vaush fan!
Wait... you say Fauci came across like a pompous asshole... but then you showed a clip just giving some basic pushback against one of his critics. If you wanted to show him behaving like a pompous asshole, you needed to have selected a better clip?
Gotta appeal to the nutjobs who blindly hate Fauci instead of, I dunno.. calling them out or something.
I cannot wait for American Revolution stuff. I frikin love the American Revolution
I really appreciate your view of ideology and your disdain for dogma. I think a lot of good causes are crippled by dogmatism and purity testing which limits the scope of its audience.
I'm not a vegan or even a vegetarian. I go hunting (I eat what I shoot), but your videos that drew on the parallels between animal rights and abolitionism made me think a lot about my behavior and society. Certainly far more than someone scolding me for having a hamburger has ever done.
No group has ever failed for being too pure. What has repeatedly been shown to take groups down was being too willing to work with their enemies then being infiltrated and taken over.
@aetherkid yeah, that's definitely not true. Tell that to the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Infighting cost them dearly. Have you never heard of divide and conquer? Amplifying divisions amongst your enemies is a classic strategy. Alienating potential allies hurts your cause.
Dogma is like tradition, "peer pressure from dead people," to quote BotFC.
@@Sableagle exactly, and I have little respect for either.
Do you scold z0ophioes to try to make them stop messing with animals? Or do you live and let live, and somehow try to win then over with kindness? Do you enable their behaviour so they don't feel attacked?
What exactly would be your plan?do you just want to ignore this because being honest about your attitude towards zo0philes makes you uncomfortable? Perhaps because you would not be so rational and kind towards people you assume hurt animals more than you?
learned a lot back when i was a greenpeace organizer about the green scare-- there was also a sort of "second green scare" under W bush where the patriot act was -- oh shit as i'm typing this you're mentioning it lolol
Glad to see a new upload. Unfortunately this time I’m not on a heroic dose of shrooms.
morning everyone. (its morning for me) love to see new stuff from Andy! and finally another damn Q&A, love to see you doing well Atun-Shei!
Good afternoon!
People really need to understand that just because the Fauci clip doesn't come off as whiny or elitist to them, it will come off as that to other people.
My next question after watching this video is "how do we inject populism into factually accurate content and how do we convince more folks?" I'd particularly like some advice on what to talk about with family members.
@@adsventuresome7511 I think it’s a matter of connecting academic and public historians with independent artists and RUclipsrs. Both have email addresses after all. And social media presences, too!
My personal thought on this is that populism is a somewhat general term and concept, but it is mostly about creating strong, clear points and creating an "enemy" to further your own points, as this tends to really resonate with people, as it makes ideas really understandable. This can be seen in checkmate lincolnites where the Confederates are not given empathy and shown to be very bad. This is probably a good use of populism, as the lost cause myth also uses populism in depicting the northerners as being violent and authoritarian, and checkmates' lincolnites helps counter that influence as the confederates were indeed bad. However, populism can be dangerous, as it can be used to spread bad ideas and get rid of naunce, as it requires bold emotional dynamics. Idk if that helps you.
Populism is fundamentally afactual because real solutions to real problems are difficult, expensive, inconvenient, etc. and therefore not emotionally appealing.
It’s much more emotionally appealing to blame all of the world’s problems on some outgroup, like coastal elites, immigrants, or “da joos”.
I disagree with this; well, science versus populism is an old story. The need for good public communication skills is also long-term issue.
As for Do you own research mob (via lap top). I had fun with fellow teachers about Chat bots of late. I show how by asking ChatGPT and Gemini: "Where in the Bible is there is there a list of the Ten Commandments?". ChatGPT and Gemini initially responded as any apologist or preacher, citing Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. When asked for an explicit numbered list (1 to 10), the bots still avoid a direct answer. If the discussion was narrowed to a "Yes or No," ChatGPT acknowledges that, "No, there is no exact list of the Ten Commandments in the Bible," while Gemini maintained its ecclesiastical position. ChatSonic, after some clarification, provided a nuanced and accurate response.
If research tools can't get some as elementary as this answer correct; there is clearly a place for dudes doing academic courses in biology, mathematics, history, IT, and sociology.
We are a story-telling and myth-making culture - we need skills and knowledge in how to navigate such.
Depends on where your family members are coming from. My mom’s still a Reaganite at heart but I was able to slowly get her to disown the current GOP by repeatedly pointing out how far removed they are from (her idealized version of) Reagan.
Very insightful. I really enjoy your videos. Thank you.
Your videos have always been a great source of insight as I understand the world and my beliefs, especially your new ones with the Abolitionists, environmentalism, and Animal rights. In fact, it has inspired me to return to being a vegetarian, and I have started volunteering at my local Domestic Abuse Center. Thank you, Andy, your work is dearly needed and I hope more can learn as much from you about themselves as I have.
It's great when something we mostly watch to entertain ourselves during chores inspires action! I've also become a vegetarian again after watching the Benjamin Lay video - the part about the cognitive dissonance regarding eating animals hit home.
@@hayswan14 Hopefully you both consider going fully Vegan... The dairy and egg industries are just as bad if not worse than the meat industry...
"Smash the state" has got to be the best way to say goodbye I ever heard 😂 thank you ❤❤