PewDiePie Calls Out the 'Old-School Media' For Spiteful Dishonesty 920
New submitter Shane_Optima writes: After losing his Youtube Red show and his contract with Disney, the owner of the most subscribed channel on Youtube, Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (aka "PewDiePie"), has released a video response to the Wall Street Journal and other mainstream news outlets, who have labeled his comedy videos variously as racist, fascist or anti-semitic. In it, he accuses the mainstream media of deliberately fabricating and misrepresenting the evidence used against him because they are afraid of independent content producers such as himself. In the video, PewDiePie discusses the recent actions of the Wall Street Journal, whose reporters sent nine cherry-picked and edited videos to Disney, which led directly to Disney's decision to terminate their relationship with him. These video clips and others used to "prove" PewDiePie's guilt have been edited (he claims) to remove all context, to the extent of using a pose of him pointing at something as a Nazi salute and using a clip where other players are creating swastikas in a game and editing out the part where he is asking them to stop. The most-cited video in the controversy involves seeing if he can use the site Fiverr to hire someone to create a video containing an over-the-top message for a mere $5. After a couple of laughing males unfurl a sign saying "Death to All Jews," he recoils with widened eyes and sits, apparently dumbfounded, for another thirty seconds before the video ends, without him uttering another word.
PewDiePie's video comes several days after a Tumblr post where he attempted to clarify that the videos were intended to be comedy showing "how crazy the modern world is." He has not yet used the phrase "fake news" in his response to the controversy, but given the current trends surrounding that phrase, it isn't surprising that his supporters are resorting to it frequently. Is this all just another unfortunate instance of collateral damage in the war against far-right political movements, is it a campaign of malicious retaliation by old media that is terrified of new media (as Felix claims), or was J.K. Rowling correct when she called out PewDiePie as a Death Eater? Err, I mean, ...as a fascist?
Update: Apparently, canceling his Youtube Red series was deemed an insufficient response. Youtube has now removed the mirror of PewDiePie's "Death to All Jews" video because it "violates Youtube's policy on hate speech." The original posting of the video had already been marked private by PewDiePie shortly after the controversy erupted. A quick check of Vimeo and Daily Motion came up empty, so you're on your own if you wish to find out for yourself what the controversy was all about.
PewDiePie's video comes several days after a Tumblr post where he attempted to clarify that the videos were intended to be comedy showing "how crazy the modern world is." He has not yet used the phrase "fake news" in his response to the controversy, but given the current trends surrounding that phrase, it isn't surprising that his supporters are resorting to it frequently. Is this all just another unfortunate instance of collateral damage in the war against far-right political movements, is it a campaign of malicious retaliation by old media that is terrified of new media (as Felix claims), or was J.K. Rowling correct when she called out PewDiePie as a Death Eater? Err, I mean, ...as a fascist?
Update: Apparently, canceling his Youtube Red series was deemed an insufficient response. Youtube has now removed the mirror of PewDiePie's "Death to All Jews" video because it "violates Youtube's policy on hate speech." The original posting of the video had already been marked private by PewDiePie shortly after the controversy erupted. A quick check of Vimeo and Daily Motion came up empty, so you're on your own if you wish to find out for yourself what the controversy was all about.
Death To All Jews (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't think of many places where you wouldn't get fired for that sign.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hmm, students and professors of a university in my county have protested against the invitation of an Israeli minister for some event about security along other major world politicians (including Merckel). Simply because he is from Israel (because all Jews are evil and all Palestinians are good). The new anti-Jew sentiment is called anti-Israel so they can claim they are still for freedom or religion and not racist (since Israel is not a religion nor a race). If even professors are ready to protest against
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Informative)
There is actually orthodox jewish groups who are anti-zionist, but I guess that's like black-on-black violence, you conveniently forget about them.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Interesting)
Jews haven't had a "homeland" in more than 2000 years. Putting natives population in camps so that you can move somewhere your great-great-great-("...-"*100)-great-grand-father lived is just plain wrong.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
> Jews haven't had a "homeland" in more than 2000 years. Putting natives population in camps so that you can move somewhere your great-great-great-("...-"*100)-great-grand-father lived is just plain wrong.
So-- Jews and Muslims lived side by side in what is now Israel throughout the middle ages. All of Palestine was about 10-15% Jewish in 1900 and about 30% Jewish in 1945. International forces proposed partitioning this at the close of WWII and with the rise of sectarian violence into three parts-- a Jewish state, a Muslim state, and the city of Jerusalem. But that all became a free-for-all with multiple Arab armies moving on the Jewish population and we've evolved to the shitty situation we have today-- where there's an overly-defensive state of Israel taking extreme measures to prevent its own eradication and somewhat becoming the bad guys in the process.
Re: Death To All Jews (Score:4, Insightful)
By conventional means? Not so sure about that. Last time they ventured into Lebanon it wasn't exactly a walkover.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Putting natives population in camps so that you can move somewhere your great-great-great-("...-"*100)-great-grand-father lived is just plain wrong.
I'm not entirely sure that is the argument the Israelis put forward to justify their right to have their own state, but it is certainly the sort of argument you hear from the starry-eyed end-time evangelicals. But if that argument is legitimate, then would also be legitimate for the so-called 'Aryan' Germans to throw the Jews out of Germany with the same argument, or the Celts to 'reclaim' more or less all of Europe etc. Or the American Indians to throw out all of the European immigrants. It's nonsense, and
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Insightful)
Since you're enjoying painting similarities, perhaps you could tell us about the constant attempts by Mexico to demoralize, terrorize, and eventually destroy the United States?
Can't think of any? Israel/Palestine is NOTHING LIKE United States/Mexico.
Re: (Score:3)
It's more like the United States and Native Americans on reservations around the 1870s.
It's hard to say anything nice about either side. You can't act like Ghandi in a place where people would just shoot Ghandi - it can't be done by shame so there is escalating violence.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Insightful)
Israel is not the problem. Self-serving people in politics in Israel is the problem.
Re: (Score:3)
That might have made a lot of sense 60 years ago, but not today. You can't take a people's land because it wasn't historically theirs. It doesn't sound fair, but this is a problem without a solution. If you ejected the new residents, you would have to start by kicking most people out of North America.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably because jewish religious/historical texts claim the jews bailed on Egypt then wandered the desert and finally invaded and stole the Palestinian's homeland. Personally I think all the sky fairy worshipers are crackpots but I fail to see what is disputed on that bit. You could (probably rightly) argue that it is the homeland of everyone born there and yesterday doesn't matter but I can't see any logical basis for calli
Re: (Score:3)
That's the line taken to justify being critical of anyone that is critical in any way of whatever government happens to be running Israel at any time. Point out corruption of one official? Anti-Jewish? Point out some criminals in Israel who sold some classified US military gear to China (who then to the horror of those criminals onsold it to Iran) - anti-jewish.
It's annoying how often that happens.
It means you have to be carefully complimentary o
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Interesting)
After all, just about everybody else has a "homeland".
Really? What's the Christian homeland? What's the Muslim homeland, or the (insert any other religion)? Judaism is fairly unique for being tied to a specific place in that way. (Mecca is not the "Muslim homeland", the Vatican is not the "Christian homeland") There are a few other religions like that, but they're not popular ones nowadays. The only ones I can think of are the old Mongolian religion and some aboriginal ones, and I don't know any of their names or any details about them.
... I wrote that, but I'm finding it a hard sentence to parse. Basically: When people say, "Those Zionists are bad because they're slowly stealing/conquering land through the use of settlements." that is a legitimate grievance. When people say, "Those people say they're anti-Zionist when they complain about the settlements, but really they're anti-Jewish and should be ignored." that is not a legitimate counter argument. Painting with a broad brush like that is wrongheaded, no matter who is doing the painting.
The point you make about people using anti-Zionism as cover for anti-Jewishness is often true, but in the same way this fact is also often used as cover to dismiss grievances against some of the negative actions of Zionists.
Re: (Score:3)
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Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
I detest the guy for other reasons. I think he's a twat. However, do you truly believe that he's a neo nazi? Does anyone? Probably not. His firing was one of virtue signaling, nothing more. I think virtue signaling is far more harmful to society than some moron's stupid jokes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if he's a neo-nazi. He put some shit on his little web video and now nobody wants to advertise with him. He made a choice. They made a choice.
Free market at work.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it does. It's the implication being made. ..and the reason they don't want to advertise? Manufactured outrage by the fake news media.
Interesting how compartmentalized you are. Since when are you a free market proponent?
Not about the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bizarre little trick, apparently some weird leftover piece of Cold War propaganda, that any time a topic has anything to do with the free market you can point that out and a significant minority of people will believe you've just "won" the discussion and will mod you up, even if you're rambling irrelevant drivel. (It works on Reddit, too.)
Congratulations, Disney and Youtube are legally free to do as they choose. No, the first amendment doesn't constrain them. Are we done with the kindergarten version of Civics now?
There appears to be widespread *lying* about the nature of the videos in question, characterizations that are so brazen as to be actual lies by mainstream media organizations like the Wall Street Journal, Wired, The Independent, etc. This is on top of the WSJ actually going out of their way to get PewDiePie "fired" by mining and editing his content and then sending it directly (from my understanding) to Disney.
I think that alone is all worth talking about. If dishonest and manipulative newspapers don't interest you at all, well there's the door. Bye.
But there's even more: to the extent that companies like Youtube and Disney are being pressured by asshats writing letters and threatening boycotts, I'd even go so far as to say it's worth discussing trying to pressure them in the opposite direction. Not because I'm a huge PewDiePie fan (I'm not; I've watched only a few of his videos), but because the internet is being dominated by a small group of companies and it's worth a little effort to push back now, while we still can, and inform them that free speech for their platform (not just our constitution) is what we actually want.
Just listen to this smug shit coming out of the WSJ [wsj.com] and put that in the context of the thousands of Youtubers trying to figure out Youtube's uncodified content policy so their videos won't be de-monetized. Put that in the contest of the millions of Youtube users who just want their favorite hosts to be able to speak their mind uncensored. The WSJ doesn't care about all of that. They only care about media giants being able to dictate acceptable content with an iron fist.
Does that violate the first amendment? Again, no. Is this capitalism at work? Again, yes. You're such a good, smart little anti-Communist for reminding us of these things!
But us talking about it and getting a bit pissed about it and wondering aloud if there's any way to pull the brake on this shitshow before it gets any worse is also capitalism at work. If that's a conversation that doesn't interest you--there's the door. Vote with your feet, citizen.
Re:Not about the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
Subby, the mere fact that there was anything to mine to give as evidence is admission of poor taste. PDP, even when streaming live, has the ability to censor his broadcast. He can turn off the screen view and flip to his face cam, he can end a game, he can even just straight up hit the power button on the PC or yank the ethernet cable out if he had to. If he bothers to edit his video before uploading it, I'm sure he could snip out those controversial aspects as well. Instead, he rolled the dice and lost.
Ultimately, he's responsible for what gets posted, and he chose poorly -- regardless of what his views are or whether he's as evil as the mean media wants to portray him -- he had Nazi jokes, imagery, slogans, and clips in his videos! You can say that's just his sense of humor and he doesn't mean it -- sure. I agree that it's a character assassination, but that's NOT why he was let go. Disney would have ended its relationship at the slightest whiff of indecency, much less a scandal. It has ended business relationships before over MUCH less. Google/Youtube is just reacting to its advertisers. When advertisers say they don't want their brand to be associated with show X, and enough are concerned, show X gets the ax. At least with Youtube, PDP has a chance to try again at a later date to work with them, and he still has his regular channels, just not the same advertising levels. Disney won't touch him again.... ever.
This is a particularly economics-only reason for Youtube. They don't even like for people to curse on their broadcasts and have been tightening the screws on anything not G, PG, or very mild PG-13 material for their adsense programs.... which has ticked off a lot of foul-mouthed youtubers (many of which I love dearly... especially because they are foul-mouthed!).
Youtube wants fresh, kid-friendly shows they can push advertisements towards as if it were really cheap TV. They bend the rules now and then and are OK with bending the rules bigtime in return for potentially big bucks, and they figured out they backed the wrong horse with PDP.
Don't rail against Youtube and Disney for doing what all entertainment businesses do when a star gets embroiled in controversy.... and you would as well if it were your money on the line. Want to go after crooked journalists that twist stories to put a spin on things that doesn't fit reality? Best of luck to ya in starting your own newspaper/news network. You'll find quickly that the money is in scandals, so that's what the public gets.
At the end of the day, the story is true enough -- he had Nazi material on his show, and for many -- that's enough for them to not want to be associated with it... regardless of what he meant by it or whether he found it funny rather than taking it seriously.
I've never been a fan of PDP, but I respect the business he's built around doing what he loves and wish him well -- I'm sure with his $7 Million he made last year and millions before that that he's perfectly capable of making his own streaming service -- question is... will anyone pay for ads on it to support him.... especially if he keeps up with the Nazi jokes.
Re:Not about the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone is so stupid as to not understand that making jokes about killing Jews
He didn't make a joke about killing Jews. He made a dark joke about the fact that there's a real fucking website where you can pay $5 and someone else will happily wish death upon all Jews halfway around the world. It's surreal and unsettling and symbolic of all kinds of stuff that that's the world we live in. But the joke (and the wider point) doesn't work at all if the written message isn't an offensive one.
If you honestly thought that Jews dying was the punchline of that joke, you are an android and your sense of humor simulation circuits are malfunctioning. You're like someone who thinks any work of fiction written in the first person must be espousing author's own thoughts and feelings.
Re:Not about the free market (Score:4, Insightful)
He made a dark joke about the fact that there's a real fucking website where you can pay $5 and someone else will happily wish death upon all Jews halfway around the world.
Context. He has repeatedly made the claim that white people are discriminated against. He attempts to demonstrate this with stunts, like paying non-white people to hold racist signs in the hope that they will be treated differently. In this case it backfired, because they were kicked off the service they were using as well, proving that the rules do in fact apply equally regardless of skin colour.
If you review his output, he regularly makes this claim and other arguments associated with white supremacy. What surprises me is that Disney ever signed up with him in the first place. Presumably they just looked at his no. 1 ranking on YouTube, rather than reviewing his content.
Re: (Score:3)
He didn't make a joke about killing Jews.
So you think he was serious about killing Jews? That doesn't really improve the quality of your argument.
If you honestly thought that Jews dying was the punchline of that joke,
That was not the claim. Move the goalposts much? The claim was that the joke was about killing jews, and guess what? It contained the words "KILL" and "JEWS" in the same sentence. And they weren't arranged like "JEWS KILL", either.
If Disney were still alive, instead of just being a freezer-burned head, he would have loved this shit. But he's dead, so jew-killing humor is a no-no at Disney Corp.
Re:Not about the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, so you say. But others watch the video, and his other videos, and conclude that he is a bigot and that this video is an attempt to push out bigotry under the cover of humour.
And this is hysterical McCarthyist nonsense. (Granted, I haven't watched a large body of his work yet so conceivably there could be a "pattern" I've missed)
And I'm not sure that I'm going to go the extra mile to get *yet more* exposure for bigoted views
Is Mel Brooks an anti-Semite? Was The Producers an anti-Semitic movie? Simple questions. The Producers contained scenes celebrating Nazism *and then a reaction shot of people looking horrified at that scene*. Does that ring any bells?
faux-shock-horror faces
If it's faux, it's as good as real. There was no winking-at-the-camera moment. Mel Brooks didn't include a scene in The Producers where he addressed the camera with "HITLER WAS BAD, MMMKAY?!". That doesn't make it anti-Semitic.
Not in a world that has seen such an uptick in racial hatred and misogyny expressed online in the past few years.
This trend will continue so long as the witch hunt continues. Pegging non-racism and non-sexism as actual racism and sexism is operating in the opposite effect as intended; it is causing the taboos against those things to weaken. This is one of the most important reasons to talk about this shit, but in order to accept that this is what's happening you'll probably need to first admit to yourself that the political correctness based campaign against Trump (who is a loathsome individual, don't get me wrong) completely backfired.
This shouldn't be a controversial thing to say, it really shouldn't. Look at the numbers--it was a lack of turnout among Democrats that sunk Hillary, not a spike in Republicans. So far as you support witch hunt stuff like this, you are further sowing the seeds of the left's ongoing destruction.
Re: (Score:3)
That's a joke? Are you into bumfighting videos too? Do you find conflict diamonds hilarious?
Re:Not about the free market (Score:5, Interesting)
We are going to play the my-user-id-is-lower-than-yours-so-I-am-right game? Ok, I'm in.
The problem is that he is right. And it's not even about nazi jokes. And, for the record, until a week ago all I know about that guy was that he is one of the "big" YouTubers. I neither knew nor cared just what he showed on his channel, all I knew is that I spend a lot of time watching YouTube and that I haven't seen a single one of his videos, so our interests apparently don't overlap too much.
Sadly that guy has now become the topic of channels I DO watch. Which in turn meant that I got way more information about the whole shit than I wanted. So what does go on here?
Apparently that guy made some "funny" videos. YMMV and it sure ain't hitting my particular style of comedy, but it seems that he's making some rather crude and not-too-PC comedy. At least that's what I got so far. And he's had his run-in with various "traditional" news media before who in turn don't report too favorably about him.
What caused the whole shit now was some webpage where you can pay people so they do what you want them to do and they make videos about it. According to him, all he wanted to do is show people just what kind of crap people will do for just 5 bucks. Was it tasteless? You bet. But what it also was is a commentary on our overly materialistic society where people will do anything for a quick and easy buck. That much he proved.
What happened next was the WSJ doing a montage of some of his earlier works by cutting it in such a way to make him appear like he was actually a Nazi. I took the time to actually watch the footage they took the snippets from, and what I can say is that they were taken WAY out of context. By the logic they applied they could turn Bruno Ganz into a Nazi because he played Hitler in The Downfall.
There is something very, very wrong going on here, and by that I don't mean that guy paying those other two guys to present that "death to all jews" banner. This is being taken way, WAY out of proportion, and I'd really like to know why. What did that guy do that made the WSJ so afraid that they go out of their way, even throwing their journalistic integrity into the gutter, just to destroy him?
Re:Not about the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand the distinction you are trying to make
I don't think you do. I really, really don't think you do, because you just continued from the same stale script that PopeRatzo was using.
Not everyone can build everything from the ground up. The perennial example is that Comcast is widely surveyed as one of the worst companies in the nation at customer service, but no one can afford to start their own competitor. PDP can roll his own video service and carry with him a decent chunk of his fans, but damn near no one else could. The inertia involved with platforms like Youtube is incredible.
This is not a Free Speech issue.
Yes it is. Free speech was not born with the First Amendment. It exists outside of it. Claiming that one is pro-free speech while supporting a company that engages in draconian censorship (not merely "supports their right to", but actually supports and patronizes and defends the companies) is akin to claiming to be against racism whilst patronizing and vocally defending a private golf club that doesn't allow black people to enter. Just because they're not the government doesn't magically make it not racism. Ditto censorship and internet media giants.
This is another very old argument that has persisted and achieved some sort of status as wisdom, despite it being utter bollocks. People who truly believe in free speech do not believe that it is perfectly OK if major communication platforms do an end run around it by dint of their being private corporations. Many will say that needs to stay legal (they're not for making it illegal for Youtube to censor whomever they choose), but they don't think it's ok any more than an anti-racist thinks racist private golf courses are ok.
but no one is owed a Youtube channel or Disney sponsorship.
No offense (but I'm too worn out to properly soften this so it might be offensive anyway, sorry), but I haven't the slightest fucking clue how you could read my entire post and think that this was a sensible thing to say. It means nothing. It's a very, very tired Cold War era argument that has long outlived its usefulness and migrated outside of the context where it makes sense.
No one, *no one* is saying they are owed anything. I believe PewDiePie himself said a disclaimer to that effect in his response video.
Maybe it needs to be explicitly said that Youtube, WSJ, etc. are not "owed" anything from us, including but not limited to silent acquiescence?
Re:Not about the free market (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing more insidious and anti-free speech than claiming that someone else is required to provide you the soapbox to stand on.
Saying that Youtube or anyone else must pay to provide a platform for someone else is as about not free as you can get. I don't' care that their big or that it gives them market power. Your right to free speech ends at your nose, no one else is obligated to help you speak. You are literally demanding that these companies provide the soapbox at their own expense and that's wrong in so many ways and you probably don't even realize how evil that suggestion is.
If you think there should be a platform where anyone can say anything and no one can take it down then you should support the government building the platform, not forcing some private company to provide the soapboxes and pay for it all.
Re:Not about the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing more insidious and anti-free speech than claiming that someone else is required to provide you the soapbox to stand on.
Which no one said.
Saying that Youtube or anyone else must pay to provide a platform for someone else is as about not free as you can get.
Which is something you had a fever-dream about, not something I actually said.
not forcing some private company
Which is something you invented whole cloth, and something that I explicitly, tediously denied *at length*.
Your right to free speech ends at your nose, no one else is obligated to help you speak.
And I'm *not obligated* to not talk about how evil Youtube and the WSJ are behaving.
You are demonstrating what may be the greatest, or at least the most successful, straw man argument of all time. I can explain over and over and over how I am not arguing that Youtube should be "forced" to do anything, and people like you (you're certainly not the only one doing this) will reply as if I had just said the exact opposite.
Youtube isn't obligated to show PDP's videos. And I'm not obligated to use Youtube, to not talk about Youtube's actions, or even to not talk about how market pressures could be brought to bear to oppose the current and ever-tightening policies being championed by Youtube and the WSJ.
You, and your strawmen-ing ilk, are the only ones talking about forced obligations here.
Re:Not about the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
PDP can roll his own video service and carry with him a decent chunk of his fans, but damn near no one else could. The inertia involved with platforms like Youtube is incredible.
The problem with this argument is that it's anti-free-speech. You are saying that once a service becomes popular, once the inertia sets in, that service must be forced to publish and force to silence its criticism.
If you are going to make that argument, why not also require PDP to host material from other channels on his own? After all, his channel is the most popular, his subscribers represent the biggest "platform" with massive inertia that makes it hard for new channels to gain viewers?
People who truly believe in free speech do not believe that it is perfectly OK if major communication platforms do an end run around it by dint of their being private corporations.
How far does this extend? You have to define "major", and there in lies the problem. And what about things like filters? Most search engines filter things like spam sites and pornography by default, to provide a better user experience. People wouldn't use Google at work if it was full of spam and porn. So is it okay to host content but just filter it from searches and make sure basically no-one sees it, because the video is just a 9 hours of the goatscx guy?
It's also worth pointing out that PDP hasn't actually been kicked off YouTube, he has just lost some of his sponsorship and syndication deals. Are you suggesting that YouTube Red and Disney should be forced to continue paying him?
PDP's freedom of speech is intact. He does not have a right to an audience, or a platform. If he did, I'd be demanding top billing, a Disney contract and a million subscribers too, because it would be my right.
The perennial straw man refuses to die (Score:3)
The problem with this argument is that it's anti-free-speech. You are saying that once a service becomes popular, once the inertia sets in, that service must be forced to publish and force to silence its criticism.
No I'm not. I've explicitly refuted this straw man like twenty different times now in every way I can think of, but it keeps rising from the dead.
Are you suggesting that YouTube Red and Disney should be forced to continue paying him?
No, I'm suggesting these legions of people (like you) who are trying to shut down debate, analysis, criticism, and talk of boycotts[1] by conflating it with arguing that Youtube should be legally forced to not censor people are being intellectually dishonest asshats.
why not also require PDP to host material from other channels on his own?
This is taking an argument that "it would be a bad thing if phone companies could start censoring
Glass houses & stones (Score:3)
I'll agree that what Pewdiepie did was crass and tasteless, but I would think that his apology (which he gave in that very video...) would cover it.
Speaking of which, you yourself have used more than a few crass racial stereotypes [slashdot.org] right here on Slashdot. Would you think it was fair if all the newspapers tomorrow were calling you
Re:Glass houses & stones (Score:4, Insightful)
First, I encourage all Slashdot readers to take a look at what Xenographic thinks is a "crass racial stereotype".
Second, I don't expect Disney to sponsor my Slashdot comments, nor do I look for the alt-right to spring to my defense because they don't.
Why do you hate the Japanese, PopeRatzo?
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Informative)
Okay, let's look at the context. The guy has gone alt-right. He claims that his is discriminated against because he is white, and pushes other white supremacist ideas.
What he now claims was a joke is actually part of a long running attempt to prove that white people are treated differently, i.e. that brown people holding up such a sign would get a free pass. Ironically he has disproven his own assertion here, because they brown guys who held the sign have suffered the consequences as well.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see anywhere that he intended them to say "death to all jews", outside the hitjob pieces in the MSM - and they lie about everything. I'm not going to watch a PewDiePie video to see, because I can't stand watching that guy, but I believe him when he says
Though this was not my intention, I understand that these jokes were ultimately offensive.
As laughable as it is to believe that I might actually endorse these people, to anyone unsure on my standpoint regarding hate-based groups: No, I donâ(TM)t support these people in any way.
As far as I can tell, the MSM created this wholecloth from malicious editing, as they've done time and time again to create a narrative. From photoshopping all the black people out of Tea Party rallies and them calling them racist, to maliciously editing the 911 tapes in the Trayvon Martin shooting to completely change the story. Making shit up is what they do.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
This is my recent fav CNN edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
People get so appalled by Trump/right-wingers calling CNN "fake news" but I don't understand how anyone can defend CNN when they do shit like this. It's not usually this blatant but it's almost always there. Real "facts," completely made-up context.
I would say the case is the same with PewDiePie here. He clearly wasn't encouraging people to kill Jews. He was actually trying to come up with the very worst thing someone could say, and that's what he came up with. So his actually belief ("The very worst thing you can say is 'kill all jews'") is turned into "PewDiePie wants to kill all Jews." The MSM's context is the exact 180 degree opposite of PewDiePie's stated belief.
The good thing to come out of this is Pewd's 53 million young subscribers who have been watching him for years and know he's not a racist/anti-Semite have now been given an extremely relevant and personal example of how the media lies. Kids critically examining the bias/falsehoods of the mainstream media sounds pretty good to me.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
People are quickly starting to learn that when someone cries "fake news", it almost always means that in fact it's not fake at all.
Re: (Score:3)
Worse how? Saying more mean things on the internet? Oh no, not that.
The issue's not about the line. It's about the misrepresentation that made it look like he crossed it. Google should grow a pair. I just wish it was for a better quality user.
I rather suspect they are afraid. Here's an opportunity to redirect attention away from their own lack of integrity.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone watching the end sequence of that video who goes on to describe it as anti-semitic either does not understand human emotion or is deliberately lying. If that video proves PewDiePie is anti-semitic, then John Cleese, Mel Brooks, Jon Stewart, and dozens of other comedy legends are also anti-semitic, including the political and the largely apolitical.
Re: (Score:3)
Allegedly reputable news organizations characterizing that video as "anti-semitic" [wsj.com] is something else entirely.
If this is true then he has a really good case for a libel/slander suit.
Re: (Score:3)
That's kinda the point, they aren't anti-semitic and neither is PewDiePie.
Horse shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Context is everything and lacking context your statement is a lie. The guy made a couple satires based on claims of him being a , not a normal staple on his channel. The allegation was that since some white racist like him he must be racist. That beauty should sound familiar right? By the way, some Muslim extremist likes your post, so you have to be a homophobic anti-Semite.
The "take offense at everything" generation has ensured that the overwhelming majority of comedians will not perform on a Campuses. But hey, enjoy Amy Schumer shows ever week because a white chick insulting men and pretending to be a slut is comedy everyone can enjoy for an eternity right?
You didn't watch the video, did you? (Score:5, Informative)
> He is apparantly suprised that broadcasting a sign with "Death To All Jews" on it would get him fired.
Actually, he's surprised that his other video about the media taking things out of context would itself be taken out of context to prove that he was some kind of Nazi.
Even in the original video, in which he was dismayed to find out that someone would actually do those things for a few bucks, he says that he's not proud of this and apologizes to the viewers because he didn't think the people he hired on Fiverr would actually do those things.
But I bet you didn't actually look at any of that, and now the videos are marked as private. The best I can find now is this discussion [youtube.com] by a friend of his.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Death To All Jews (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Belonging to a group does not make you more credible to comment on an argument.
What? Of course it does, all else being equal. And you didn't specify.
Re: Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
So then why does it matter that Milo and Ben Shapiro are Jews (ethnically or religiously)? Be consistent.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Interesting)
Ben Shapiro
In his own words [nationalreview.com]:
Donald Trump’s nomination has drawn anti-Semites from the woodwork.
I’ve experienced more pure, unadulterated anti-Semitism since coming out against Trump’s candidacy than at any other time in my political career. Trump supporters have threatened me and other Jews who hold my viewpoint. They’ve blown up my e-mail inbox with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They greeted the birth of my second child by calling for me, my wife, and two children to be thrown into a gas chamber.
And here's a breitbart piece on the subject... [breitbart.com]
He has started playing the victim on Twitter and throwing around allegations of anti-semitism and racism, just like the people he used to mock.
Ben, no one hates Jewish people.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
Infowars [infowars.com]? Breitbbart [breitbart.com]?
Sarah Silverman once went on Conan dressed up as Hitler, complete with stache and Swastika. [hollywoodreporter.com] That's a bit more than a sign.
"Ah, but that's different, she was obviously doing it to make a point."
So was PewDiePie.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
PewDiePie's being about "it's fine to be an antisemitic little shithead"
I think his point was more that it's trivially easy to make other people act like antisemitic little shitheads. He paid $5, and he got at least two people to make a video that (were it their honest opinion) would rightly earn them wide condemnation. Yet no one's even commenting on those two dudes - they were clearly 'just following orders.' Doing the necessary to pay their bills and probably don't really believe their sign.
His point was that it takes very little to get people to openly proclaim beliefs they don't hold. Especially on the internet. (I assume those two guys would want more than $5 to hold up their sign outside a synagogue, for example.) Ask yourself how much it would cost to get you to add "Hail Satan," "I'm totally gay for DJT," or "People like PewDiePie deserve to die" to your facebook page. Or to film yourself saying those things to strangers in Times Square. You don't have to be serious about the statements, just to use those exact words so that someone else can use them out of context.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
His point was that it takes very little to get people to openly proclaim beliefs they don't hold.
And that needed to be proven, because.... ? Or is this just one of those bullshit "social experiments" where Youtubers get to act like assholes because they're holding a camera to record what happens?
Youtube is a cesspit of wannbes trying to outdo each other in shock value, while avoiding getting banned by Youtube, all for the views. PewDiePie was just another one playing the game, but he got burned. He paid people desperate for money to do something stupid, and then pretends to be shocked that they actually did it. That way he gets to claim he's not really responsible, while being the one who conceived it, paid for it, videoed it, uploaded it and collected the ad revenue.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite different points though. Sarah Silverman's point being about the grotesquery of Trump, and PewDiePie's being about "it's fine to be an antisemitic little shithead"
No, his point for the clip that was taken out of context was:
* "Youtube Heroes is an Authoritarian nightmare that is going to attract the worst kinds of people."
* "The media likes to take things out of context to slander people."
* "Hey, there's a thing over here that I'm pointing at."
* "This fiverr website is a great example of how surreal the modern world is."
Depending on which of the clips they took out of context you're talking about, of course.
Re: (Score:3)
Just because the people being called it weren't able to punch, doesn't mean the people using it didn't deserve to be punched.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. Gawker was trashy clickbait, and they had no right to oust a gay person or publish private sex tapes. I'm as leftist as you can get, and can acknowledge that.
Doesn't make Breitbart any better. It's basically borderline racist, right-wing Gawker.
Re: Death To All Jews (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
You: All X are Y
Parent: I'm an X and not Y
You: That's a logical fallacy
I can see why the right is so keen on alternative facts, when you consider a direct, factual counter example as a "logical fallacy". Facts are immutable and you can't logic them away.
Re: (Score:3)
That article was written by Milo Yiannopoulos, and I don't think he's very interested in sleeping with women. It's also a hyperbolic headline for an article that was both funny, and true.
Re: (Score:3)
Be careful, the same people who think www.breitbart.com is run by neo-Nazi also think it's perfectly OK for Gawker to out an homosexual CEO, or publish wrestling star illegal sex-tape... under the idea of "freedom of the press". Go figure.
Having an opinion about Breitbart's content does not necessarily mean someone is against "freedom of the press." If somebody called for Breibart to be shut down because of the garbage they crank out, that would be another issue. Nobody's saying Breitbart should be silenced, just ignored.
Re:Death To All Jews (Score:5, Insightful)
Pro Palestine does not equal anti Jew.
It may equal anti-zionist but then liberals tend to be anti-nationalism period. That includes Jewish Nationalism as much as it does, say, American nationalism.
Hell, I personally know quite a lot of anti-Israel, pro-palestine Jews who would be terribly offended at the suggestion that by virtue of their ethnicity they are compelled to be in favor of an appartheid regime that denies basic human rights to a vast population, and who actually support either full and equal rights for Palestinians in Israel or a Palestinian state free of Israeli control.
Did you think all Jewish people today would still believe what their grandparents believed 70 years ago? That an ethnic homeland is a fundamental pre-requisite to freedom ? The liberals have long stopped believing that in general - and Jewish liberals tend to agree. At least, those under 40 do.
This Perfectly Illustrates The Craziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with any sense of intellectual integrity can clearly see that it was all satire. They can also see through the dishonesty of the media. This is just a taste of what the media has been doing politically. Regardless of how you feel about the current POTUS, these tactics are exactly the same tactics used against him from the MSM.
Follow the dollars. This stuff generates clicks. It gets people to read their stories. They do it because they get money for it. Hopefully at some point soon this type of "journalism" dies down.
Professional attention whore strikes again (Score:3, Insightful)
I am disgusted by this article, almost as disgusted as I am at myself taking the time to respond to it.
PewDiePie is a professional attention whore and it is fascinating to watch him ply his craft. This latest response is perfectly timed, just as the flames were dying down he fans them and gets another round of attention.
He is a troll and like any troll the way to defeat it is by ignoring it.
Re:Professional attention whore strikes again (Score:5, Insightful)
He may well be a troll. Entirely possible. But the videos I've thus far seen were not of a trollish cast, and the "Death to All Jews" one in particular is not remotely anti-semitic. If you genuinely believe it to be so, you may be from an actual intellectual, emotional or perceptual disorder of some sort [wikipedia.org].
This latest response is perfectly timed, just as the flames were dying down he fans them and gets another round of attention.
If this is the current state of the media, if this is the sort of hyperbole we're going to be subjected to for the next four years, if this is the new McCarthyism, then these are flames that need flaming, be it by trolls or non-trolls.
On a personal note here: it's not like I really fear some totalitarianism of the left, either. I don't think they can win this war... not in America, anyway. But I do rather fear the consequences of proving Trump right, of validating the echo chambers of tens of millions of people who were right-leaning fence sitters until they saw the proof stack up that the mainstream media really is full of hysterical, baldfaced lies.
Has it always been *this* bad? Fuck me, I'd better stop before I start saying "woke".
Re: (Score:3)
The dishonesty and cynicism here shown by allegedly reputable mainstream media outlets here is astonishing.
The mainstream media does troll people too. That's nothing new. However, it's not some grand conspiracy against small independent content producers.
Quoting things out of context and creating outrage generates traffic for them. And if they do it to another troll, that's all the better. And the fact that he was sponsored by Disney made him an easier target still. Most journalists know that Disney is super quick to drop endorsement deals on the flimsiest of reasons.
Re: (Score:3)
I understand your feeling that people seem to be a little over sensitive right now. But personally, I'm starting to see the darkness creeping in where I thought there was light. My friend, with a bachelors in comp sci, who I normally regard a
Re:Professional attention whore strikes again (Score:5, Insightful)
He may well be a troll. Entirely possible. But the videos I've thus far seen were not of a trollish cast, and the "Death to All Jews" one in particular is not remotely anti-semitic. [trimmed ad hominem attack]
I didn't say he was anti-semitic, I don't believe that he is. I said that he is an attention whore. The entire reason he asked for THAT phrase to be written was to get a reaction.
If he was truly horrified by what he and they did, as he claimed in the video, he could have solved the problem by simply not posting the video. Instead he posted it and got waves of free publicity.
This is part of a campaign:
Re:Professional attention whore strikes again (Score:5, Interesting)
If he was truly horrified by what he and they did
Your posts and others like it are rather like the arguments that seek to conflate the contents of leaked documents with the personalities of Assange, Snowden and Manning. All three of them could turn out to be cynical trolls or just plain horrible people, but that wouldn't make their revelations worth ignoring.
Likewise, PDP could be a troll and it wouldn't change one iota the underlying gravity of the situation. Youtube and other social media have been slowly clamping down in recent months, the Wall Street Journal was an active participant in getting Youtube and Disney to act against PewDiePie here, and in the aftermath they are openly and brazenly talking about it all in the context of online media giants needing to crack down on free speech everywhere [wsj.com].
[trimmed ad hominem attack]
Insults found in in the conclusion of an argument (in the "then") cannot, by definition, be an ad hominem. Only insults in the premise or logical induction of an argument (in the "if") can qualify, and they do not automatically qualify simply by being insults. On a simpler note: an ad hominem is not an "attack"; it is an informal logical fallacy. The rules of politeness are entirely orthogonal to the rules of factual or logical correctness.
Sorry, but this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
But let me clarify what I said in that "ad hominem" a bit: yes, PewDiePie could have been acting with those facial expressions. That's entirely conceivable. What is not up for debate with anyone who understands human emotion is that that reaction presented (fake or real) was, in fact, one of shock and horror. You can't plausibly twist it around to make it out to be a neo-Nazi slyly winking at the camera. There's no undercurrent of that sort whatsoever. Someone pretending to by anti-semitism (or the ease with which it can be produced) is, in the absence of evidence establishing ulterior feelings and motives, more or less as good as someone who really is offended.
Consider The Producers, where there is a scene celebrating Hitler and Nazism and then a shot of an audience looking horrified at the scene celebrating Nazism. Except, the audience wasn't *really* horrified. They were actors pretending to horrified. Does it then follow that Mel Brooks and/or the audience were anti-Semitic? Does it then follow that the movie as a whole contains an anti-Semitic message?
Re:Professional attention whore strikes again (Score:5, Funny)
You really need to learn to condense your responses and stop rambling.
Shut up, twatwaffle.
Re:Professional attention whore strikes again (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm the submitter. I don't care if he stomps kittens in his spare time, and I doubt I've seen three of his videos before today. The dishonesty and cynicism here shown by allegedly reputable mainstream media outlets here is astonishing.
He may well be a troll. Entirely possible. But the videos I've thus far seen were not of a trollish cast, and the "Death to All Jews" one in particular is not remotely anti-semitic. If you genuinely believe it to be so, you may be from an actual intellectual, emotional or perceptual disorder of some sort [wikipedia.org].
This latest response is perfectly timed, just as the flames were dying down he fans them and gets another round of attention.
If this is the current state of the media, if this is the sort of hyperbole we're going to be subjected to for the next four years, if this is the new McCarthyism, then these are flames that need flaming, be it by trolls or non-trolls.
On a personal note here: it's not like I really fear some totalitarianism of the left, either. I don't think they can win this war... not in America, anyway. But I do rather fear the consequences of proving Trump right, of validating the echo chambers of tens of millions of people who were right-leaning fence sitters until they saw the proof stack up that the mainstream media really is full of hysterical, baldfaced lies.
Has it always been *this* bad? Fuck me, I'd better stop before I start saying "woke".
If advertisers don't want to do business with him because of his actions, that's that. Advertising execs are big boys, they make their own decisions. This is Internet advertising, it could be flipped back on like a light switch if they change their minds.
This sounds about as loopy as Trump's blaming the media for firing Flynn for lying to his VP.
Re:Professional attention whore strikes again (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? It's always been there. Media have always used publicly leased airwaves to perform mass brainwashing under the guise of "Culture", all the while forgetting that culture comes from the people being brainwashed.
He is a troll, and that's the point. He is trolling the media, using comedy as an instrument and now the media will show their furiously fapping hypocrisy as ppd tries to get them to invoke the striesand effect on themselves. They will shrug saying 'you all know we're lying hypocrites', people will shrug and say 'oh well, at least they're not lying' and go on letting them write history, live.
After some years some media executives will fellate ppd and offer him money because his ideas are accepted as culture. Bill Hicks went through *exactly* the same thing for criticizing culture.
Trump, did the same thing, only skillfully. He utilized the media into saying his message no matter what to humiliate the democrats and as a result whole swaths of political science was created. Trump represents the epitome of the media savvy personality president which clearly shows how bad things have got because Trump and Clinton were the *best* candidates that the media savvy political apparatus could offer. Something is clearly broken.
FTFY
I sense the US faces a different threat. There is no fear of a left led agenda in the US because there is no left wing politics in the US, it's painted that way to make it appear 'fair and balanced'. Politics in the US has become right wing or more right wing. The polar opposite of what the USSR was the US still suffers from corruption and faces a slide into meaningless nihilism where corporations replace the state and corporately owned prison camps assume the role of the soviet gulag.
And to cite Benjamin Franklin, who predicted this moment with words "I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. "
I single out the media as the key vehicle for that corruption that seeks to 'de-educate' the citizens from critical thinking, and an education system that teaches people to obey and comply. If the USSR is analogous to Orwell's 1984 then the threat to US citizens is similar to Huxley's 'Brave new world' or even Collin's 'The Hunger Games'.
This is the outcome Franklin was trying to draw peoples attention to, that in time the power of domestic enemies (corrupted people - corporations in 21st C) would over power the populous using government as a vehicle. Be under no illusions, the US can suffer the same way as the USSR because the saying 'All roads lead to Rome' isn't talking about roads.
No, it's always been worse. If we all tried as hard as we can, maybe it can be better. That is why left and right wing politics are obsolete.
Re:Professional attention whore strikes again (Score:5, Interesting)
" I don't care if he stomps kittens in his spare time"
to each his own but animal abuse is on my list of psychotic behavior. wouldn't want anything to do with such a person.
But that's the goddamn point! I'm not "having anything to do" with PewDiePie! I mean, I'm not offering to mow his lawn or perform oral sex on him. This is about ideas and institutions and honesty and intellectual honesty.
Re: (Score:3)
He chose the toxic message to be displayed
And so did Mel Brooks. And then he showed a reaction shot of people looking horrified at the toxic message. And guess what, the people weren't *really* horrified--they were all actors! They were only *pretending* to be horrified by the toxic message celebrating Hilter and Nazism!
There are dozens of other examples like this. Censorship based on absurdist hyper-literalism is pointless at best and dangerously corrosive at worst.
This act alone was enough for him to lose his corporate sponsorship.
I've dealt with this at length in other posts, but I should preemptively restate
Why trust in the media is at an all time low (Score:5, Insightful)
That was the first PewDiePie I've watched, and it's interesting to see the media do to him what they've done to Trump, Farage, Wilders, Le Pen, Orban, etc. The media no longer report the truth, they report their own narrative. They fabricate evidence in an effort to influence people's views.
The media used to be able to control the narrative, but having lost control they're redoubling their efforts to control what people think, which means more attacks against people they disagree with and more fabrications. This is having the opposite effect, and is only serving to turn more people away from the mainstream media.
Traditional media knows it's in trouble but appears to be so out of touch with the public that it doesn't know what to do about it, so the attacks, the lies and the fabrications continue. The sooner the media collapses, the better.
Re: (Score:3)
That was the first PewDiePie I've watched, and it's interesting to see the media do to him what they've done to Trump, Farage, Wilders, Le Pen, Orban, etc.
So, for the record, you consider Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, the le Pen family and Viktor Orban to be genuinely upstanding public servants who have been unfairly portrayed as not-nice people?
Why, in your opinion, do you think these particular people—and not, for example, Justin Trudeau or Angela Merkel—have been so victimised?
Re:Why trust in the media is at an all time low (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't consider them upstanding but they are at least honest about their views. Whether or not you agree with them is another thing entirely, but making up stories about them seems to be the status quo lately.
Look at an entirely "pointless" narrative. Harward turning down the offer for some position:
This is what Harward says:
"Like all service members understand, and live, this job requires 24 hours a day, 7 days a week focus and commitment to do it right. I currently could not make that commitment.", basically, I'm retired, I don't want a new job.
According to CNN, they cite the letter then go on with this narrative:
A friend said Harward called it a shit sandwich (no verifiable sources)
A Republican official told CNN (no verifiable sources)
A senior Republican familiar with the process (no verifiable sources)
Marks said he didn't want to speculate why Harward turned down the job, but said turmoil in the White House was likely a contributing factor (basically, I don't want to speculate but here is my speculation)
In the end 5 journalists work on a piece that had just two verifiable sources in it, Harward himself and a senator that says all of the above is untrue.
Being a satirist means acting like a dick. (Score:5, Insightful)
But a very carefully targeted one. The people who get ridiculed have to really deserve the dickish treatment. You can take a cheap shot, but you can never punch down.
Now I've seen the infamous video and I totally get it. It's a good point, but it totally fails as satire because he ended up screwing with, and then harming the guys in the video, who almost certainly have no idea the significance of what they're doing. How many Jews are in India? About five thousand individuals out of a billion. Zoroastrians are almost 30 times more common in the US as Jews are in India, particularly rural India.
Now he's totally right that the media is stupid, block-headed and hypocritical, and has neither the ability nor inclination to understand him. But that doesn't change the fact he attempted satire and failed. That makes him, at least in this incident, just a dick.
Re: (Score:3)
I came here to say more or less the same thing. In fact, from what I've read, both 'sides' are equally as bad (although perhaps in different ways). Basically, the story goes like this -
'Famous entertainer tries to be satirical and irreverent at the expense of some poor people. For money'
'Famous entertainment journal makes up own narrative at the expense of famous entertainer. For money'
Personally I think people defending one side or the other are either missing the point, or have an agenda to push.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is fucking 'PewDiePie' even showing up on Slashdot? Again. There was an article about him just a couple of days ago. Nobody. Fucking. Cares about this asshole. Can we please give it a rest?
Stuff That Fucking Matters (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm the submitter. I don't watch PewDiePie videos. I think I watched only two in my entire life before today. This is serious news. He is the biggest name on Youtube (like it or not), and these are some of the biggest names in mainstream news lying about him, engaging in an open campaign to get him fired (WSJ went directly to Disney, from my understanding), and then they casually, lazily, openly discuss about how their motive in all of this was that they want to see online media giants dictate acceptable content with an iron fist [wsj.com] instead of this willy-nilly free speech bullshit that makes old media nervous.
When the hell did Slashdot turn into goddamn TMZ? Who cares who you like or don't like? This. Matters.
Re:Stuff That Fucking Matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming the claims in this second submission are true, then it belongs here. It falls in the Your Rights Online category. It's not just the government which can deprive you of your rights.
Reminds me of gamergate ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... in that I never heard of it before and don't give a shit now that I have.
Re:Overused (Score:4, Insightful)
You know who doesn't get the irony of fighting fascism with fascism?
The leftists.
Re: (Score:3)
You know who doesn't get the irony of fighting fascism with fascism?
The leftists.
You know who doesn't understand what Irony is... You.
Or leftism and/or fascism.
By definition, a fascist cant be a leftist as Fascism is an extreme right political philosophy, The left equivalent of Fascism is called Communism and ironically enough... they are the traditional enemies of fascism. It wasn't the west Hitler wanted to conquer, it was Russia where he sought his Lebensraum.
Also, those who defeated the Nazi's like Churchill and Eisenhower were actually very left of where today's politicians are. T
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Has he been invited to the white house? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Has he been invited to the white house? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Has he been invited to the white house? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where, oh where, are today's Edgar R Murrows? They all seem to be Hearsts these days.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The best part is that Fox News presents more actual news, rather than op-ed, than any of the other networks. I remember reading that CNN's viewers only give the network at 30% trust rating. I'm not surprised that Fox News has a much more dedicated viewer base.
Re: (Score:3)
Good one! X-D
Re: Has he been invited to the white house? (Score:5, Informative)
I suppose that's a result of pandering for eyeballs.
Partly. It's also that there's six corporate conglomerates who own all the major media in the US. Naturally, these organizations have similar interests. These are also the interests that fund the politicians. So the job of the media is to propagandize the public to accept the political agenda of the elite. Not to inform. It's a media-run state rather than a state-run media.
Re:Has he been invited to the white house? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a saying in Texas: "All hat and no cattle." And yet, "all hat" keeps winning, even when it's losing. Because the Twitter/Youtube economy is about clicks and views, regardless if you find the content compelling or appalling. Trump got the White House in part because his Tweets got him so much free publicity - news media making his Tweets into front-page stuff while his GOP opponents wasted their time and money trying to go it old-school. Now, people like me who'd never heard or cared about PewDiePie are all reading about him on Wired.com [wired.com] for the first time, amazed at his epic rise and fall as a juvenile asshole, doing on the Internet what would otherwise get him smacked in the face until he learns his lesson and stops... all that really matters is how every click records something about you on a server somewhere, and makes somebody a buck.
This is fucking ridiculous. We are all getting Played, and the Players are studying all this carefully and perfecting the craft [wired.com]... for pay.
Re:Has he been invited to the white house? (Score:4, Insightful)
The media is "always appalling"? I disagree.
There are some great media outlets putting out well researched and written articles daily.
Then there are the media outlets targeting people who are only interested in some red meat half-truths being tossed out so they can rant and rave.
While you might not see it as such, I see the current "media dishonesty" schtick to be nothing more than the shark attack media frenzy you complained about.
Re:Has he been invited to the white house? (Score:4, Informative)
What about this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
When Trump says "CNN is fake news," how can I reasonably disagree?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I agree with you, have never heard of that guy before either. Then I clicked a link on youtube out of interest to a video in which he's whining for almost 20 minutes about how unfair he was treated because some maker of comics and movies for children and Youtube (which has no age restriction) did not like his 'joke' video about how to pay some guys to tell the world that all jews should be killed. This guy has made many millions of dollars with uninteresting, stupid, and uninspiring youtube videos - it's n