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this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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As a posted before, Brian Berletic is a hard right source. Please don't post him here. I have a hard enough time trying to decipher what he's saying is true or not because he has no qualms for bs, including vaccine and global warming skepticism.
https://hexbear.net/post/3386336
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 (and possibly add content warnings), 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. If you think this video gets it totally wrong then let's discuss where and why, i think that would be an excellent opportunity for us all to deepen our understanding of this subject.
You seriously have no qualms sending clicks and fans to a guy who used to write for Infowars? There no one else that we can post??
I would advise you to get off facebook and youtube, like yesterday.
You know how streamers make money, right? You know why they produce content, right? Do I need to explain it to you?
It's a little frustrating that you seem to ignore everything i wrote about engaging with the content of a piece and just keep doing this "attack the messenger" thing. There's this strange way of thinking that i see most often in liberals where you can never engage with or come into contact with anything that is associated with people who have reactionary views on certain issues, almost like they think that by doing so you somehow become morally tainted by association. As a dialectical materialist i think that this kind of puritanical impulse is not helpful.
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. Are you also going to say we should never post anything from Russian or Middle Eastern sources because they almost certainly hold reactionary views on some issue or other?
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.
As for who he used to write for, of course that's fair to point out, but to be consistent you should also take issue with any author who used to write for Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, CNN or any other mainstream media. Genocide apologist, warmongering, imperialist bourgeois establishment mouthpieces are no less reactionary than far right conspiracy theory websites. In fact the latter sometimes stumble onto real conspiracies and have occasional flashes of insight into how the covert and overt machinery of the bourgeois state works in ways that liberals never do. Obviously that's wrapped in utterly deranged, delusional reactionary drivel, but still.