I would have included a clip of “Triumph of the Will” here, but apparently such a film never existed…
Well, I can’t complain too much; it’s been a while since a news story propelled my brains through my skull to the ceiling. However, the trigger this time demonstrates that several developments are even worse than I thought—or believed they would get—such as…
- The Left’s embrace of historical airbrushing and censorship as part of its strategy of controlling thought and knowledge.
- Social media’s meat-axe approach to policing online content.
- The perilous state of the First Amendment as both the Left and its allied media seek to control art as well as speech.
YouTube released new policies regarding “hate speech” yesterday to “reduce more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube.” Since the new policies almost immediately resulted in the removal of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 Nazi propaganda epic “Triumph of the Will,” I can confidently conclude the the policies are far too broad, and also that those executing them have the perspective of the average person who has grown up in a cave, and the judgment of the PTA scold who wants to ban “Huckleberry Finn.”
After all, to the virtue-signaling pharasees at YouTube, “Triumph of the Will” falls under the rubric of “videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory,” as YouTube explains one prohibited category. That’s a nice, reductive, stunningly simple-minded way to describe an indispensable work of film art that has educational and perspective value for anyone seeking to understand such topics as documentary film-making techniques, women in cinema, the life and career of Leni Reiefenstahl, black and white movie composition and film editing, and, of course, the history of World War II and the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Just wait until YouTube decides to focus on race in the arts, and such topics as blackface and slavery. I assume this will mean good-bye to such film classics as “Top Hat,” “Gone With The Wind, “Trading Places,” Holiday Inn,” and, of course, the immortal comedy trio of “Airplane!” (“I speak jive!”), “Animal House” (“The Negroes stole our dates!) and “Blazing Saddles.” Hate speech, don’t you know. Down the memory hole with it all. Good riddance.
YouTube had become an invaluable cultural archive with which any enterprising individual could educate himself or herself on 20th Century history, culture, art forms and biography. Apparently–what am I saying “apparently” for? Obviously—that matters less to the platform than making sure all users are only exposed to RightThink, or their facile, arrogant interpretation of what that is.
At a climax in “Judgement at Nuremberg”—an anti-Nazi film that is quite a way down the slippery slope, but one I could see eventually being banned by YouTube as including too much “hate speech” for society’s safety—the accused Nazi judge Ernst Janning, watching as his own defense attorney cruelly badgers a prosecution witness, a broken woman, rises to his feet and demands, “Are we going to do this again?”
The same question needs to be asked of our society as we watch the wave of cultural, intellectual and historical airbrushing wash over the nation. Haven’t we been down the path of book-banning and censorship “for the public good ” before? Have no lessons been learned? YouTube is engaging in nothing less than video-burning based on content, and it is being shrugged off as acceptable because, after all, YouTube isn’t the government, so there’s nothing we can or should do about it. That is an expression of wilful ignorance, however.
We know YouTube is executing the desires of powerful, anti-democratic political forces. It is a national online library, and libraries foster thought. YouTube is now leaving the business of facilitating thought for the business of deciding what thoughts are acceptable, and, eventually, they hope, possible. I have seen opposition to abortion, radical climate change measures, illegal immigration and affirmative action being referred to, in high places, as “hate speech.” How long do you think it will be before YouTube kowtows to its progressive masters and includes those positions, and others, in its category of ideas that cannot be “promoted or glorified?”
My head explosion wounds are somewhat balmed by the fact that YouTube was at least flagrant in its first public display of censorship under its new standards. Now that we know that even videos with unquestionable relevance to history, art, politics and culture will be withheld from public view based on what the platform unilaterally declares is safe, we have been alerted to the danger ahead.
The question is, what can we do about it?
Ethics Alarms 
So who censors the censors? When does the left’s hate for freedom and independent thought become too much?
Time to file anti-trust against Google/YouTube and Facebook/Instagram before it’s too late.
Two thoughts come to my mind when the topic of private censorship arises: instead of bitching about it, we should create a competing alternative; and why doesn’t the Library of Congress offer a searchable database of videos.
History can be whitewashed only if we allow ourselves to stand idly by and merely complain. That does not mean that essays like Jack’s are unnecessary and unproductive, quite the contrary.
To challenge this censorship movement it will take an army of those with the right skills to combat it. Jack is in the vanguard much like Paul Revere alerting and calling each of us to action. What we need now are generals that can marshall the needed resources and organize them for the purpose of creating alternative media that will drive the censors into the dustbin of history.
Chris:
In theory, I agree. In practice, the capital and power accompanying it are most likely to swamp any effort we make unless we divide their capital legally make the tech giants less gigantic.
Google had net income of $30 billion last year. As you say, they would swamp any effort by a group funded by idealists.
Our useless antitrust authorities should never have allowed Google to make the dozens (hundreds?) of acquisitions that let them achieve this total Mark dominance. And with $30 billion a year to spend on lobbyists and campaign donations, Google faces little danger, I fear, of being subjected to meaningful regulation.
The problem is that what funds YouTube, Facebook, etc is ad revenue. Any advertiser who tried to help fund such an endeavor would be swamped with boycott campaigns.
This is the Chinese Social Credit System in its infancy.
Conservatives boycott by not buying a product. Don’t like Gillette’s ad? Don’t buy Gillette. Don’t like CNN? Don’t watch CNN. Leftists boycott by complaining about people who support things they don’t like. Don’t like Fox? Start a letter writing campaign against every company that advertises on Fox. Accuse them of being racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, idiophobic, etc. They stage protests outside the company headquarters. They throw blood on customers of those companies.
This is not theory. This is how tech giants become giants. An idea germinates and champions run with the ball. None of the major social media firms became what they are overnight.
What I learned running a tech business incubator was that the successful entrepreneurs never let obstacles dampen their belief that they could succeed.
If the outcome of censorship is inevitable why are we talking about it. We should just get with plan and submit to those forces.
With respect, I did recommend invoking the Sherman Anti-trust Act because its application fits. I did not recommend surrender or knuckling under to them.
Additionally, I founded and still own a company from an idea I had in the shower in 1991 after I had just built a new home based on a salary I was earning. It has been profitable for nearly 28 years and put 2 kids through private colleges and 1 one through public. I know what it takes to succeed. I do it every day.
Finally, market comprehension is vital before entering one. One of the best definitions of a monopoly is it controls price by controlling supply (meeting its demand at the prices it chooses) that cannot be supplanted by any ready competitor due to high barriers of entry. This is exactly true of Google/YouTube’s market, though less true of Facebook/Instagram. Businesses do not engage in suicide missions. It tends to discourage investors.
Hope this clarifies my position.
I appreciate your experience as an entrepreneur and I don’t discount the application of the Sherman or Clayton acts but to be employed the FTC has to demonstrate that they actively conspire or act to monopolize or attempt to restrain trade. I don’t think that some group that creates an open forum that turns no one away can be barred from entry. Content creators cannot be barred from posting on competing media platforms or it will be a per se violation. If they demonetize a content provider for posting elsewhere it too smacks of restraint of trade. These platforms do not pay for content and they rely on digital content creators to provide the value that puys eyeballs on the pages so ads can be viewed. Content creators will go where they can make the most money with the least headache. If the platforms continue to censor content creators they will go elsewhere.
To my knowlege there are no legal barriers to creating a publishing platform. All that is needed is an Internet connection and a server. It may not be pretty at first but it takes time to build an elaborate service.
If it were impossible we would not see all these start ups create platforms built on business models that anticipate being gobbled up by Microsoft, Google, and others.
Google accounts for over 99% of US internet searches. Their results algorithms control what people see/get. Any competitor can, and likely will, be excluded by those algorithms. They already are excluding non-woke results. The Sherman Act is just fine for this.
I am not sure that the money to back a ‘conservative?’ ‘traditional?’ ‘American’ movie database exists. I would donate to such a cause, if for no other reason than I KNOW what social media is becoming… a tool with which to fill the reeducation camps, or to create the target list for the roving death squads.
The problem is, who watches the watchers? Conservatives have been sold out for so long- by power seeking swamp dwellers who campaign on policies and rule by whatever makes them rich and powerful, and the apathy created by American of prosperity- the as a group few trust those who make promises. Like abused children, they hardly dare to believe that the abuse will stop: it is just how life is.
This makes it hard to band together for a cause like this. Too much betrayal in the last 30 years, from the left and the GOP elite. Would the new Facebook/Twitter/Google/Youtube colect our data and sell us out as well? Why not, given the money they could make doing so?
Which is exactly what the left intended all along.
SW. I was not suggesting a conservative channel or platform I was suggesting a platform open to all ideas. That is the point. If we censor ideas we don’t agree with we are no better than those who want to whitewash history.
The fact that you think a conservative channel or platform would discriminate against other points of view is an indictment of our society. Conservatives that ban, suppress, or persecute speech are not conservative at all.
My point above is that such a channel would have to have true ethical conservatives or it would degenerate into another whitewash as you describe.
Slick:
As you know, what we say here will be used (misused) against us, too. You can see what is coming, though we don’t know exactly how fast it is coming.
You know what I did yesterday? Bought a boat that can offer a nice life to its inhabitants without needing refueling for LONG periods of time and will run on solar power at anchor or adrift far away from what some consider civilization. Also taking a navigation by stars course just in case the on board electronics are disabled by the masters of the universe. An anti-solution, if you will.
You know, just in case.
I still say Sherman Act them.
My version of what you did is the bunker deep in a undisclosed rural location.
But as I get older, my plans change: I will fight if and when the time comes. My bunker strategy will never be self sufficient such that it is feasible, given the lack of funds available to develop it.
The question is, what can we do about it?
I would answer: understand the implications of this small incident within a larger context. That context is ‘metapolitics’. Here is a definition offered by Metapedia, itself dedicated to communicating ‘forbidden thought’ and suppressed thought:
Metapolitics deals in ‘larger issues’ of value and meaning. The New Right (Nouvelle Droite) is a ‘movement in ideas’ that took shape in reaction to the events of May 1968.
Here is the definition offered by highly slanted Wikipedia: “Nouvelle Droite (English: “New Right”), sometimes shortened to the initialism “ND”, is a far-right political movement that emerged in France during the late 1960s. The movement has links to older fascist groups and some political scientists regard it as a form of fascism, although this characterization is rejected by many of the ND’s adherents.”
Right here you can see the essence of the issue and the problem: it hinges in who has the power to define, and who has the institutional power to control what has been defined.
Across all the ‘social media’ platforms there have been bannings, expulsions, quarantines, deplatforming, demonetizing. This has been going on for 2 years now. After the Christchurch massacre the effort to control, limit, exclude and isolate people and groups who work in the ‘metapolitical’ domain has increased. And this leads me to mention Walter Lippmann again.
If I am right in what I have been saying, there has developed in this century a functional derangement of the relationship between the mass of the people and the government. The people have acquired power which they are incapable of exercising, and the governments they elect have lost powers which they must recover if they are to govern. What then are the true boundaries of the people’s power? The answer cannot be simple. But for a rough beginning let us say that the people are able to give and to withhold their consent to being governed — their consent to what the government asks of them, proposes to them, and has done in the conduct of their affairs. They can elect the government. They can remove it. They can approve or disapprove its performance. But they cannot administer the government. They cannot themselves perform. They cannot normally initiate and propose the necessary legislation. A mass cannot govern. The people, as Jefferson said, are not “qualified to exercise themselves the Executive Department; but they are qualified to name the person who shall exercise it… They are not qualified to legislate; with us therefore they only choose the legislators.”
a) If people have acquired power which they are incapable of exercising, what I take this to mean is that huge segments of the population have been corrupted. To get to a clear understanding of what happened, and how it happened, is not in ant sense an easy endeavor. But, and from *our angle*, we see that people have become ‘deranged’. How did this come about?
b) Government, at least at an intelligence-level, or perhaps one can say at the level of the so-called Deep State, surely has the brainpower and the analysts to be able to define what is threatening to the regnant ‘Order’. A crisis is brewing, and such a crisis must be controlled and directed. If they did not do this, if they simply allowed events to proceed. Therefore, there is now visible a crisis that has to do with what sort of information is available to people, those people (the population) that they determine are incapable of governing, who are *out of control*, and must be reined in.
Lippmann says: “What then are the true boundaries of the people’s power? The answer cannot be simple” and he is right indeed. It is not an easy question. And it is a fundamental problem of liberalism! Liberalism is allowed, if you will, up to a certain point. But there comes a point when more severe control measures have to be implemented.
Et voilà: the situation that we now face.
Lippmann’s ideas, though he wished to see himself not as an enemy or adversary of the disenfranchisement of his fellow citizens, points nonetheless to what a given government will do and in a sense must do to preserve itself and the order over which it presides. What ‘America’ means today, for people who are capable of honesty and who choose not to self-deceive themselves and others, is a vast managerial system of control. This is what it has become and it is vastly different from what was previously conceived.
And when people on this blog speak of the Left as the principle agents of this control and management system, and direct all their rage and hatred to the SJW et cetera, I suggest that they are making a huge and consequential mistake. It is the System itself, in fundamental ways, and irrespective of political affiliation, which has given itself over to mechanisms of control, and these are the backdrop and the foundation of our society today. Now, it begins to manifest with more clarity and also with more force.
Anyone who studies ‘media systems’ (the Media and all its means of dissemination) quickly understands that it is highly, though not exclusively, propagandistic. And this is why METAPOLITICAL IDEAS are threatening to it, and why they are reacting with such fury and intensity against these ideas.
There in no one who writes on this blog who is not also, in one degree or another, in thrall to sets of conventional idea that are part-and-parcel of the conventional control-system. And that, of course, is a metapolitical idea! In my own view, metapolitics can be, and perhaps should be, understood as ‘spiritual’. Simply because spirituality has to do with ‘the spirit’ and ‘spirit’ has to do with idea and the domain within the human that deals in metaphysical concepts of meaning & value.
Therefore — and this horribly complexifies things — the battles of today are ‘spiritual wars in high and low places’. I feel badly introducing the idea, but it must be done: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.”
Everything — everything! — depends on how one defines what this is supposed to mean. Therefore, and again, everything hinges in interpretation: hermeneutics:
Hermeneutics as the methodology of interpretation is concerned with problems that arise when dealing with meaningful human actions and the products of such actions, most importantly texts. As a methodological discipline, it offers a toolbox for efficiently treating problems of the interpretation of human actions, texts and other meaningful material. Hermeneutics looks back at a long tradition as the set of problems it addresses have been prevalent in human life, and have repeatedly and consistently called for consideration: interpretation is a ubiquitous activity, unfolding whenever humans aspire to grasp whatever interpretanda they deem significant. Due to its long history, it is only natural that both its problems, and the tools designed to help solve them, have shifted considerably over time, along with the discipline of hermeneutics itself. The article focuses on the main problem areas and presents some proposals that have been put forward for tackling them effectively.
I must apologize for being so … irritating with long posts and descriptions. But at the very least I have done my work, or would like to believe that I have, in relation to the problem of ethics in the larger context. I see the ‘problem’ and it is immense, but I do not know how to act in this present except to try to clarify the situation.
Yeah we get it. You’re brilliant. We’re not. So, what is your brilliantly conceived action plan to combat the forces of evil we cannot see and you can? Will you please just tell us (assuming you have any idea whatsoever).
Please reconcile with Chomsky.
You’re probably not old enough to remember, but on “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” Maynard G. Krebs, a beatnick and Dobie’s best friend, (Played by “Gilligan” himself Bob Denver), always had a involuntary reflex when he heard the word “work” and would squeak out “WORK!” It was a very funny running gag. Once he has an attackw where his own “WORK!’ exclamations triggered “WORK!” and he couldn’t stop.
I have the same kind of reaction when I hear or read “Chomsky”…
I only have vague early childhood memories of Dobie Gillis, and Bob Denver as Maynard G. Krebs. Actually went to school with a guy named Krebs. Kinda weird.
Chomsky is a punchline to many capitalists and constitutionalists. To me, though he may indeed have a fabulous IQ, he’s an unfunny relic of 1950s and 1960s radicalism.
[First attempt to post did not work, trying again now]
First, arrive at a clear conception of what *they* are. How would you begin to do that? That would be the first order of business, don’t you think? But prior to that it would certainly have to involve either accepting or denying what is being proposed. Don’t you think that that would also have to be the case?
But, if you cannot even conceive of that as possible and necessary, I can only assume that you would flounder in uncertainty, both spiritual and metaphysical. You would remain in a lost condition. However, it is likely that you have never thought about the question of *perdition* within a more general, and meta-political, context. Or, what it mean when an entire civilization goes off the rails, and some important figures have proposed just this. Richard Weaver being the one who influenced me most strongly.
But whether you — poor, self-described dullard AdImageJim — understand it or not, whether you are capable, intellectually, politically or spiritually of understanding, many people are beginning to ask these sorts of questions when they mull over the bizarre conditions of this strange present. Though you don’t — evidently — some people do define our essential problems as spiritual.
I understand that you are presenting a *bait* of sorts: to involve me in your statement that you think that I think you-plural are unbrilliant. I suggest you examine that. Because it indicates that you see yourself as a *we* and that you unconsciously perhaps understand that you operate in a sort of groupthink. As you well know, I see American Conservatives as operating in this sort of *groupthink* and this is why they are a) ineffective, b) ‘part of the problem’ and c) actually inhibiting progress.
The larger ideas that you hope can be spoonfed into your impertinent mouth … will never be delivered in that way. A baby wails for pablum. A baby gets fed. But you are a grown man. You are not a child and you are (I hope, though ‘there is no cure for stupid’) not unintelligent. So, take some steps yourself!
Hope that helps . . . 🙂
Helps so much. Thank you ma’am. I feel so much better that I’ve been shown the light…not to mention the yummy pablum.
Jim — may I call you Jim? — I am glad to be of service!
I struggle with this… On one hand, YouTube is a private company, and the libertarian in me wants to give them as much wiggle room as possible. On the other, the public square has moved out of, well, the square, and is now being hosted on various social media sites, and ‘d say YouTube is at the top of that list.
And I think those problems are harder to reconcile than it immediately seems. For instance, I don’t believe that the censorship of political speech, and mainly right-leaning political speech, is even primarily ideologically motivated… At best (for them) it might be icing on the cake. I think YouTube has made a business decision; YouTube has gone through three “adpocalypses” now, which are mass migrations of advertisers away from YouTube followed by a mass demonitization of the partnered creators. They feel, and they’re probably right, that left-leaning, vapor-afflicted outrage mobs are more likely to impact their bottom line, and so they’re trying to preserve their bottom line. There are massive channels out there saying that their ad revenue has dropped by as much as 66%, and YouTube only makes money if they do.
It’s cowardly, but not unique, and I don’t think it’s legitimate to expect people or businesses to suffer financially so as to act as you’d wish them to. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, not to your principles.
That said, I think that something, perhaps something outside the box, needs to happen, sooner than later. Because if we cede the platforms to the outrage mobs and the heckler’s veto, free speech will be meaningless because despite creators having the willingness to speak, and other people expressing a willingness to hear, the disconnect between those groups will become irreconcilable.
What a peculiar problem. As the demographics shift, as the cultural attitudes shift and are shifted (engineered), the base that makes up the political and economic landscape shifts, and the politics of those citizens is catered to by business interests.
Since business interests, more or less thoroughly, if not nearly totally, control what information and perspective is provided, it is logically necessary for them to police the platforms and environments where ‘opinion’ is expressed.
It is therefore the best business decision to allow Business to determine what sort of thinking is allowed on its platforms and, to the degree possible, for Business to insinuate itself into all facets and phases of social, cultural and democratic life.
They have their ‘bottom line’ to defend, not the principles of the republic. Principles do not earn their share-holders money. “The world, Mr Beale, is a business…”
I think that what you have described, and which I elaborated on, presents a strong case about *what has happened to America and why*.
Business interests have an interest in contributing to a cultural situation most favorable to their bottom line, and they do, and there is no ideological nor legal means to curtail them.
This assumes that the hand-wringing, pearl-clutching, vapor-afflicted moral molegills are a demographic on the rise. I’d love for you to explain why you might think that is, because while I accept that they are a very loud group, and that companies are afraid of them, I don’t see any reason to think that they’re anything more than a minority.
Ah, I think I see your problem with understanding my view and position.
I am under the impression that we live in managed and engineered cultures. I assume, based on my research and my sources of research, that there is a ‘they’, and they desire political control. The ‘they’ is hard to define, but it is not impossible.
I see the business class, which you describe, as being part of the ‘they’. I believe that they have subverted the nation as it was originally conceived. That much seems self-evident. It is not so hard to understand. ‘They’ have insinuated themselves and have subverted our politics so that they can have unfettered access to the demos. They are the ‘ants’ as it were and the demos the ‘aphids’. Aphids exist to have mateial extracted from them. In my view, it is ‘they’ that are the cause, or the force rather that propels, of America sinking into its ‘dumbed down’ condition. I define ‘dumbed down’ as having lost spiritual and intellectual agency.
The “hand-wring, pearl clutching, vapor-afflicted” are not the ’cause’ but rather a symptom of decadence in a process tending downward. Who that class you refer to is, and how they have been formed, and what are their tenets, and where they stand let us say ‘spiritually’, that is an involved question. I do not say that it cannot be answered but I do think it is a difficult and involved conversation to approach the answer. To understand America today — as Americanopolis that must be opposed and resisted — involves seeing how it has been subverted and by what internal forces.
Having been influenced by Thomist thinking, and certainly to a degree by the writing of E Michael Jones, I tend to see man’s essential problem — the essential problem we all face in our deteriorating condition, and in our culture’s deteriorating condition — as arising from the reality of ‘seduction’. It is not a dicfficult concept to grasp in the abstract, but it is not easy to understand the complexity of how it functions. As a man becomes a slave to his passion he is no longer in sovereign control of his intellect. And only the intellect is capable of higher conception and of serving the higher aims that our culture has defined. The first order of business in conquering a sovereign man is to undermine him through manipulation of his desire.
Therefore, I do not pay great attention to the ‘symptom’ of decadence and corruption, but try to determine the cause. And the essence of the cause is in spiritual defilement and degeneration.
Hope that clarifies things a bit.
Commercialism as fuel for the vice engine rather than merely one of many facets of life corrupted by it: I like it.
I was influenced by, among various sources, David Kupelian. While not a Thomist (as far as I know) his views must necessarily have their original impulse from Thomist thought.
That book is: “The Marketing of Evil” how radicals, elitists, and pseudo-experts sell us corruption disguised as freedom.
If we cannot grasp — really and truly — what ‘freedom’ is and what it means, then we fall into the tricks and traps set for us. I became very interested in the Christian critique of decadent culture but realized that many (especially evangelicals) did not have the philosophical background to explain how the seduction takes place, who sponsors it, and how it fits into the problem of ‘political control’.
E. Michael Jones and ‘Libido Dominandi’ — (if you are not already familiar with it) — might be interesting.
The video is not really very good. I think E Michael Jones does a much better job.
Exactly
Remember, this isn’t anti-democratic, it is anti-Democratic. This was all done because one Vox columnist who describes himself as a gay latino was called a gay latino by a conservative YouTube commentator. After this, the Vox ‘journalist’ demanded that Crowder be banned for using his own words against him. Of course, YouTube found that Crowder hadn’t actually violated any of its policies (and Trump may have opened an anti-monopoly investigation) so it couldn’t just ban him. So, if you can’t ban him for violating the terms, change the terms and make them retroactive.
So, YouTube had to change its terms of service to ban such a wide range of speech that such movies will be banned. Of course, Chris Rock’s video of ‘Black People vs Niggaz’ is still up.
Google recently lost $70 billion of its value due mainly to its censorship on YouTube. Now, they are demonetizing even more of their content. This is a religion. No company would be making more decisions hurting their company to this extent unless they were being driven by ideological motives.
A number of the non-woke commenters I follow over mostly geek content got crippled last weekend. Silly them for thinking their bad reviews of movies and TV shows really warrants censorship like the proverbial shouting ‘Fire!’ One columnist comments on Brexit, but again, what does that directly matter to an American based company?
I don’t know what the answer is to fix it is, businesses should not have this much control of the public square without restriction. I’m not talking censorship but the opposite. If you don’t use the big three, you are severely hampered in several arenas, like careers and publishing/art. As much as regulation is heavy handed and expensive, the market gave up the free speech that made these companies possible. Censorship always fails in the long run, and in another generation people will be confused about ‘what were they thinking. These monopolies think they own speech, and it will take a big smack from government (unlikely as Congress doesn’t value free speech) or more likely loss of customers.
I’ve only become a serious Youtube consumer in the last six months. I will miss the techie videos and how to’s for SO many topics. But I’m quite willing to jump to another platform as soon as a rival appears. I may not approve of woo-woo alien conspiracy theories, but I’d rather watch a dozen of them than lose useful commentary.
Negative reviews are much more useful when deciding what to see or read. Positive reviews almost all sound alike. Happy people who aren’t professional critics or educated in the field cannot enunciate what was done well. The latter two groups give better reasons, even if I don’t agree with their opinion on violence, say, I can believe them when they say ‘that’s not a Sue’ and give reasons why. So Rotten Tomatoes is useless if they want to candy-coat so only good reviews are allowed. I want to know if my money and time will be wasted. Youtube, FB, and Twitter are destroying the value of their platform to prevent negative opinions at all costs. Hate speech is being called even on mixed reviews.
What protected and flighty lives do these people live if they cannot handle anything negative? I don’t love negative reviews either, but I did a rewrite after one- because it was needed. My little pony sunshine and rainbows worlds do not make for lasting art… and will be remembered as kindly as “Reefer Madness” or WW2 censorship.
(If anyone comes across a free speech alternative, pass it on?)
My suggestion for Ethics Alarms
1) Get on Youtube, even if it’s just reading your written posts aloud (possibly interwoven with clips of your historical references)
2) Accumulate subscribers (possibly with signal boosts from other prominent culture critics – Tim Pool, Matt Christiansen, etc. you’re good enough for a shoutout)
3) Make money until you get demonitized then switch to a crowd sourced model like Patreon or Subscribe Star
You only need a high speed connection for live shows. If you’re pre-recording you can literally upload the videos over dial-up. If you get subscribers there you can 100% link them to your written work too – a rising tide lifts both platforms.
If you’re interested I recommend you check out the video formats used by Jordan Peterson, Tim Pool, Matt Christiansen, Sargon of Akkad and/or Styxhexenhammer666. These are in order of decreasing relevance with a sharp drop off after Matt.
I agree. For a long time, it’s been an internet speed problem here. I’m going to finally take care of it.
If people remember the story of stone soup in which a person with nothing but a pot of water gets the many that also have very little but contribute their meager ingredient to the mix. While each alone could not make delicious soup, the combined efforts of many with similar desires can do just about anything.
Red Pill Ethics brought a functional idea. The question is what can each of us contribute to make it happen?
I’m in, for whatever I can do.
If dd is in, so am I.
i still owe him lunch, anyway. We can have a business meeting at the same time, if this takes off.
You betcha’
Those who read the Times will have noticed this article: The Making of a YouTube Radical.
I suggest that reading the article, and taking it down to its parts, will reveal an *ideological outline* that is taking shape within ‘Establishment Liberalism’ and outlines certain strategies that will be followed as ‘liberalism’ reacts to the sustained blows brought against it by the ideas of the New Right.
Naturally — predicatbly — the subject of the exposition is a dispossessed and confused young white man. The article starts by reference to a peculiar metaphor: falling down into the rabbit hole. A bad dream I take it. A mistake. Something that happened because one walked out into territories strewn with dangers. One’s compass was not receiving the *right* signals from the proper North Star. Emotionally weak, uncertain, with what is assumed had been a bad education in which the ‘proper tenets of American postwar liberalism’ had not been sufficiently installed, the boy-man ‘fell’ into a pit where others made decisions for him.
Mr. Cain, 26, recently swore off the alt-right nearly five years after discovering it, and has become a vocal critic of the movement. He is scarred by his experience of being radicalized by what he calls a “decentralized cult” of far-right YouTube personalities, who convinced him that Western civilization was under threat from Muslim immigrants and cultural Marxists, that innate I.Q. differences explained racial disparities, and that feminism was a dangerous ideology.
Yet let us be reverse-analytical here. We can easily notice that the article is a piece designed to present a particular view and that view could not, not ever, consider ‘cultural Marxism’ as a ‘real thing’ and thus not as a danger at any level. To use the term ‘cultural Marxism’ is itself, the article insinuates, an indicator of deranged assessment. The notion that ‘Western civilization is under threat’ (an idea explored by Oswald Spengler, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and a minimal dozen other major thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries) is not ‘thinkable thought’. Not threat of any sort could be conceived from the incursion of Muslim into Europe for example. It is not possible within the tenets of Liberalism of this sort to even dwell on physical or genetic differences, nor cultural and ethnic difference. And the notion that ‘feminism’ has any critiqueable aspects is clearly dismissible by anyone who had been raised up properly.
“I just kept falling deeper and deeper into this, and it appealed to me because it made me feel a sense of belonging,” he said. “I was brainwashed.”
First, one must take steps back to examine the central assertion: that brainwashing is possible. But what is it? Because if it can happen, then the real question is how does it happen under *normal* circumstances? It is not hard to see that what is meant is a brainwashing that occurs in a weak individual who has not been properly formed, but then What culture informs a ‘normal person’? and when this is examined, Is it really something different than a brainwashing-of-sorts? There is no doubt that this individual — and there are millions of them of course — is adrift in a confusing culture. The metaphors of ‘ships at sea’ and being ‘blown off course’ and ‘stranded’ on strange shores and accosted by weird inhabitants is an old as The Odyssey. But a proper navigator is an individual who had been ‘properly informed’ at an inner level. The implication is that those who come under the influence of contrary ideas, and those who form those ideas, are either ‘victims’ or ‘sirens’. There is simply no broaching of the possibility that certain contrary ideas may resound because they are ‘good’ ideas. Nor that there may be needed in this present some kind of remediation.
The radicalization of young men is driven by a complex stew of emotional, economic and political elements, many having nothing to do with social media. But critics and independent researchers say YouTube has inadvertently created a dangerous on-ramp to extremism by combining two things: a business model that rewards provocative videos with exposure and advertising dollars, and an algorithm that guides users down personalized paths meant to keep them glued to their screens.
But first: the importance and power of ‘young men’ must be brought out for discussion. What a young man thinks, what values he upholds, how he conducts himself, how he was educated and continues his education, what values and principles he serves: this should really be the primary focus. Who determines these? Who established the structures of value that are set out as models? Actually, and truthfully, the entire question of ‘Value’ and also of values is up in the air. One might assert (I do assert) that there has taken place a ‘transvaluation of values’ and that this present, held up to be normalcy and also ‘good’, is not that. Whole discourses are possible here to expound on this issue. And strong-minded and extremely well-informed individuals have been dealing on this theme for hundreds of years. It is essentially a philosophical problem. Modernity and postmodern hyper-liberal America has not ‘answered’ these questions! Nor has the New York Intellectual Class! But here, let us now examine ‘brainwashing’ and also ‘intellectual coercion’. Let’s take numerous steps back to examine this.
There is certainly, and there surely must be, ‘dangerous ramp-ups’ if one is to take ideas seriously! The whole Occidental canon is quite ‘dangerous’ really. The point is not lost, nor dismissed, that weak people who are ‘victims’ of the conditions of decadence, confusion, spiritual ungrounding, and anomie, could fall into a ‘rabbit hole’. But there is a question that must be asked prior: How has this happened? And answering that question, I feel I can assert truthfully, will become a ‘dangerous’ conversation as the truth is approached.
“YouTube has been able to fly under the radar because until recently, no one thought of it as a place where radicalization is happening,” said Becca Lewis, who studies online extremism for the nonprofit Data & Society. “But it’s where young people are getting their information and entertainment, and it’s a space where creators are broadcasting political content that, at times, is overtly white supremacist.”
Well, I guess it is true: YouTube is a place to listen to discourses and talks by people with ideas that never will and never could appear on the TeeVee nor in any standard media of the US nor of many other countries. It cannot be denied that one can be introduced to ‘dangerous ideas’ on YouTube. But that is because it is a free and open district. There is no other environment, except a library — where things are more difficult to access and it takes a certain kind of reading person to discover — where one is introduced to interesting, different and compelling ideas. But there has to be someone who is receiving the ideas: someone who thinks. And to imply that because the NYTimes has determined, or that American Liberalism and its Tenets have determined what are the acceptable parameters of ‘appropriate thought’ is itself — obviously! — an Orwellian assertion.
“…and it’s a space where creators are broadcasting political content that, at times, is overtly white supremacist”: I cannot think of one site, producer or video in which classical white supremacism is presented. But of course that phrase is a devious phrase. It means any whiff of an assertion that European culture, and the requirement to value and protect it, is a ‘good thing’. No, the entire notion of self-defense is transvalued and given a bitter and wicked term: white supremacism. These are ‘core assertions’ and they are deeply Orwellian and coercive.
Clearly, there is a problem though: huge swaths of people who are not well-enough formed and not well-enough structured in ideas. There is no doubt that these people will fall into any number of different ‘rabbit holes’, though perhaps they will be socially acceptable ones. As it is, the NY Intellectual Elite (if I can refer to the Times with such a term), and ‘liberal America’ of the conventional sort, have an interest in getting those who are veering away back into the proper fold.
I assert that the essence and the sound platform of the Critical Right must be brought out in fullness for open and penetrating conversation. And I assert that the MSM has very many good reasons to inhibit this from occurring. Thus, at the base, we are dealing with ideological warfare. This has to be clarified.