• cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 months ago

    With all due respect these are two completely perpendicular axes. His analysis of the Ukraine conflict and the US’s new Cold War against China are one thing and his takes on vaccines and global warming are another thing entirely. Obviously we won’t post any videos of his on the latter two subjects because as you say it’s likely to be BS. There are many anti-imperialists with bad takes on vaccines and global warming, does that mean that everything else they say is also wrong? Conversely, there are countless liberals who are right on vaccines and GW but completely and utterly delusional when it comes to geopolitics.

    People can be wrong about one thing and right about another. If a piece of analysis is correct then it is correct regardless who it comes from. Obviously we should be careful to not spread reactionary propaganda, and when it comes to right wing sources that means we need to vet a piece extra carefully before we share it, but also it’s frankly lazy and not very educational to automatically dismiss something without engaging with it simply because it comes from a source we don’t agree with on other topics. If something is BS then i’d like to believe that we are smart enough to realize it, or if not to at least have our comrades point it out for us by dissecting the piece and showing how and where it is wrong.

    In fact doing this can often be more educational than just engaging with content that we already know we will 100% agree with. It is a good exercise to engage in critical analysis of a piece, understand what the biases of the author are and identify where their analysis falls short as a result. Obviously this isn’t worth doing with just any old reactionary garbage, something has to have at least a minimum level of coherence and connection to reality, else we’re just wasting our time, but i don’t think this falls in that category.

      • Aria@lemmygrad.ml
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        3 months ago

        What did he write for Infowars? Do they exclusively publish lies or is their barrier to entry just low? I’ve found Brian Berletic to use sources well, be transparent and make logical conclusions with few or reasonable leaps.

        • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          As I posted in the top comment, some pretty right-wing Alex Jones level, anti global warming, “globalist”, anti vaccine level shit. They’re still on his page. He’s never once self-crit over them. And lot of the bad takes have been very recently. I’m actually very happy to have this line of discussion. Please, ask me for more info.

          • Aria@lemmygrad.ml
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            2 months ago

            Hi ButtBidet. Do you have more examples? Especially interested in bad arguments, rather than bad takes.

            • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              2 months ago

              If I can copy/paste a previous conversation that I had with a mod:

              Global warming is in fact a scam perpetrated by globalists to control every aspect of human industry, population, consumption and demographics, as declared in the United Nation’s Agenda 21 report and conclusions drawn at the globalist Club of Rome forum. After decades of uncontested propagandizing, the globalist agenda began to slow under the scrutiny of skeptics able to propose their objections en-mass via the Internet.

              Under increasing pressure, exposing inconsistencies and bold faced lies, globalists themselves have literally conceded that their “irrefutable research” on all fronts is “flawed,” (read: lies). [link ]

              Another article:

              t’s not entirely accurate to call the Belfer Center merely a big oil representative that forms the spearhead of promoting the theory of anthropogenic global warming and the resulting Ponzi-scheme environmental policies proposed to deal with it. [link ]

              On his page, although written by Paul Joseph Watson:

              As we have previously documented, the manufactured threat of man-made global warming is being used as a tool of neo-colonialism in the third world, not only through the seizure of land and infrastructure, thereby preventing poor nations from using their resources to develop, but by literally starving poverty-stricken people to death. [link]

              If you want bad arguments instead of bad takes, I’ll have to find the text of a struggle session from over a year ago. You want to see it?

              • Aria@lemmygrad.ml
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                2 months ago

                If you’re willing. When I say bad arguments, I mean misrepresenting a source or bad quality sourcing, or drawing conclusions that aren’t supported by the data he cites.

                Thank you for these 3 links as well.

      • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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        3 months ago

        It’s a little frustrating that you seem to ignore everything i wrote about engaging with the content of a piece instead of just attacking the messenger.

        To answer your question, no, there is not much out there with this level of quality of analysis on these topics. There just isn’t a huge amount of content like this coming from progressive channels, i wish there was. By the way this channel isn’t even the worst offender as far as reactionary sources of good geopolitical analysis that have been shared here. When we do so we assume a certain level of political maturity from our comrades, such that they can engage with the analysis presented and separate that from whatever other reactionary views that source may have.

        If someone is uncomfortable with giving a particular channel views they can use one of the alternative links provided where the video is embedded on a third party website. I’d recommend doing that anyway for privacy reasons.

        The advantage of videos like this is that they use the western media’s own reporting and publicly available information to show how when you actually dissect what they are saying they frequently slip up and admit the truth even while they try to spin it to fit their narrative. That is helpful when trying to deprogram people who would otherwise not trust any non-western source, or who would refuse to listen to any overtly communist channels.

        If you think that sharing videos like this should come with a content warning to caution against listening to these sources on other topics then that is totally valid and we can absolutely do that.