Anyone with even a passing understanding of the far right can tell you that simply platforming extremists means you have already lost the battle They don’t care if they look stupid, they don’t care if their views come off as absurd, bc that’s not the point The point is to get platformed, that’s it

Mehdi was literally the best case scenario and look how it still ended up for him Even the fascist kid is over on GiveSendGo making tens of thousands of dollars under comments like “the white race needs to stick together” WWII showed us the correct method for dealing with fascists.

Actually Sam Seder did great. So I’d say he’s best case.

Thank you for this. My objection to the whole thing (episode? Series of interviews?) is that just by sitting in front of a camera with them, Hasan extends them the presumption of good faith. I don’t think we owe cynics the benefit of the doubt.

this has been the predominant position of the left for a decade and it clearly hasn't worked. these ideas are mainstream now. we either give their audience sound rebuttals or we let them go unanswered.

I don’t think it was ever the left’s predominant position. In any case, the Press has not followed it. It hasn’t been too long since NPR interviewed the owner of Barstool, for example. Sound rebuttals are indeed necessary, but having bigots on your show is not.

and the latter is to the clear benefit of the insular right wing internet media ecosystem and they know it. that's why they've been avoiding engaging with people like hasan or sam seder for years, because when their audiences actually see those ideas challenged, they do turn.

The Tube line or the X-men member?

I’m telling ya if we, as a society, could remember how to ignore people we could fix a lot of the lesser issues

Maybe prevent some of the larger ones from happening too

right wing podcasters have been successfully trying to be left alone by anyone who actually knows what they're talking about for a decade, because they know their ideas don't stand up to scrutiny. these aren't fringe ideas anymore, so why would we on the left continue to give them that gift?

So just ignore them & whoever repeats their bullshit? Why would you want to help them spread their message & give it legitimacy? I have tons of family who listen to this shit & the second they start repeating it I just walk away. They now know not to bring it up w/ me. Imagine society doing that

yeah, it would be nice if society had done that when it would've made the difference. but we're kinda past that. your relative might walk away from you but they're still going to go to bridge club and spread fake news to their friends, right? it doesn't do anything to stop them.

My guy, you are never going to be able to control what people think & feel. There are always going to be conspiracy theory horrible assholes. The only thing you can control is how you behave. Imagine that family member going to bridge club & being told to shut the fuck up or leave. Ignore them

control? no. influence? yes

I mean if you have the time & energy to go back 40+ years to where a lot of this shit started & logic your way from that starting point to here with every person you come across, go for it

"you can't do everything so why bother doing anything at all"

Ignoring people is very much doing something. It’s stopping the spread of their bullshit

didn't we just establish that it doesn't stop the spread of anything? like I said, your grandma is still gonna go to bridge club and tell all her friends about the newest fox news panic, regardless of whether you ignore her or not....

LOL I get invited on prominent fascist shows all of the time. This is completely removed from reality.

you don't think they carefully curate those circumstances to play to their advantage, though? I think about how Sam Seder is one of the most effective debaters in the left media space and how desperately the right avoided him for years. I don't know how else to explain that other than they're afraid

I don’t understand your first sentence. That’s exactly what Jubilee is. What.

I mean sure, you might be right about that. to my eye it seems less curated than "here's a panel of 6 guys who are all going to talk over the guest and immediately change topics once an effective challenge has been presented", but sure. I don't know that this is an ideal format, it's probably not.

but I'm just so absurdly frustrated with the left continuing to go "just stand real still and they'll go away" when that's largely what we've been saying for a decade and it clearly hasn't worked, and I don't see these people presenting alternatives.

like both hasan and seders appearances seemed more effective in reaching these audiences than anything I've seen in a LONG time, yet the left stilllll wants to dismiss the entire concept as inherently harmful .../

/... bc appearing on the same stream as these people gives them airtime, when they'd have it otherwise anyway, and it would just be unchallenged. which is what they've primarily been doing for decades. maybe the left needs an alternative to this format itself, idk. but ignoring them doesn't work.

*a decade I should say, ever since they stopped being fringe. to be clear I'm speaking within the context of the modern media ecosystem, not legacy media, and I'm talking about how we reach the particular audiences that watch people like nick fuentes, tim pool, and yes jubilee

And if you cannot see that, that’s exactly my entire point.

so, honestly, what is the alternative? do we need a different format, a jubilee for the left that is designed to shine a bigger light on the guys that go "yeah actually I AM a huge racist", "yeah actually I AM completely ignoring facts to cling to my established but clearly flawed model of reality"?

because again, I can see that. and surely thats an important part of this conversation. but i don't know what the next best alternative is and when I see normies (forgive me) cringing over these people saying "yes I'm racist" or "the federal gov pays taxes" I'm confident "just ignore them" is not it

Seder is an exception, not the rule. He understands the game is rigged before he plays. For every Seder, theres 100 breadtubers who got overconfident and gave a fascist a gotcha moment.

you have a point, although this still kinda validates my frustration with people shitting all over Medhi Hasan for participating in it (moreso than they did on Sam) when he's also extremely skilled at this. also consider if Seder and Hasans got so much attention *because* they're so good at this.

I don't think many people were exposed to breadtube vs "idw" debates except for people who already hung around breadtube or idw. so bringing out people who can do this effectively seems to inherently have that much more reach as far as I can tell. so don't think those gotchas matter as much.

if we have Hasans and Seders shouldnt use them to our advantage & maybe let other people to learn from it so that we can cultivate more of an understanding of how these arguments are basically always in bad faith and how you approach them in such a way to expose their flaws like Sam does?

I look at the kids like Parker doing debates on TikTok with randoms who just repeat RW rhetoric and how accessible it is to such a wide audience on that platform and can't help but think that they don't HAVE to be the exception. because what we want to combat is the ideas, not the personality.

it's kind of a counterpart to things like crowders "change my mind" shit where he'd talk to inexperienced college freshman. that kind of content attracted a huge audience and I think we should consider that this dynamic can be fostered and shaped more effectively to our advantage.

I dont think they have and i dont think many people who listen to rw podcasts would reach that conclusion. The average fascist podcaster sees this shit as an excellent opportunity. Thats why they do these Jubilee spots.

but I think they see that opportunity as one for their personal grift, not necessarily for their broader political project. almost every one of these people care waaaaay more about their own grift than any particular movement.

and ideally, obviously, we wouldn't elevate their grift in any way, shape or form. but if we have the skill to let them dig themselves into holes such that their political project suffers and yours benefits as a result, I think there's a point at which that becomes a valuable tradeoff.

and it's not just a tradeoff if, like me, you believe that we've basically let the alt right run roughshod over an entire generation of men and boys' exposure to political media with few effective counternarratives, it may or may not be a necessary cost.

relevant to other thread, for example, that's kind of the calculation that someone like Sam Seder makes when he decides to on PBD or Tim Pools show imo. of course, saying "I am going on/having this guest on the show" promotes in some manner. but if there was no benefit people like him wouldnt do it

Jubilee is a show? I thought at first you were opposed to the Biblical concept of Jubilee or forgiveness of debts.

Every time “Jubilee is bad” comes across my timeline I find myself first chafing at such a bad take: No! A jubilee is just what we need! Oh. You weren’t talking about mass debt relief? My bad. I’m not even religious. Dunno why that’s my first association.

At least we got to see Jordan Peterson eaten alive by atheists, but it's bad indeed.