How Racist is "Ask Yourself" on a Scale of 1 to 10?

the number one most common thing people
say to me about Isaac the youtuber known as ask yourself is not that he's racist that's number two that's the second most common thing they say to me I would say the most common thing they say to me is wow it's really cool that you managed to still be on speaking terms with Isaac despite the fact that he is so racist like they give me credit that I'm willing to like overlook this or put this to one side and still try to collaborate with it worse disgust me ISM no an interesting response that would be what makes you think I ever overlooked it or put it to one side he and I discussed the extent of his racism extensively I made videos really attacking and denouncing him for being a racist those are still online is still on YouTube he had the maturity to say that it didn't really bother him that he thought it was fine to leave that criticism on the internet and he had his own response to it and that was fine although sure we did talk about other things like moral philosophy and science of the mind and other topics that came up we many times over discord I don't think I don't think ever Skype mostly discord which is a voice chat plot it's the same as Skype but you know it's a voice over Internet Protocol we discussed racism and the extent to which I perceived his views on politics raises and I challenged his assumptions and I thought he was very well behaved in those conversations with me but no we never went away it absolutely never went away and I'd say it was something I raised with him periodically not out of the blue and it was something I tried to raise with him positively in the following sense I tried to say to him look you can solve this problem this is hard I'm keeping it real with you guys but I thought a human heart I got you know I got sympathy for the devil this kid isn't the wrong on this he's dead wrong there were no excuses he is 100% the wrong but I still want to do the right thing and of course you look at him and you think he has positive potential to do something good for the vegan movement to do something good for Canada for Canadian politics he's sitting there in Guelph with no suit he wants to be an activist he wants to make a pause difference in the world in some way and I respect that but sure on on race issues on history and politics generally he's dead wrong he's horrifyingly embarrassingly wrong and you hope that he can grow up and change and take on new facts and new perspectives new pays sir I'm digressing here but I think this is an important aggression you know many times I've heard Isaac say to meat-eaters look why can't you just accept that this isn't something you've given a lot of thought to like this is more or less the first time you've really thought about veganism or animal rights like why do you want to behave like you're an expert like all of a sudden you're an expert on protein or you're an expert on slaughterhouse conditions something like why can't you just openly say well this is something I've never read a book about or done a lot of thinking about I'm just starting to think about it now why not have a more open-minded attitude when you're talking to someone who really has done all the reading or as someone who's had this same conversation a hundred times because in his case he has he's been pitching veganism he's been debating veganism again and again I was kind of in the same position when I was trying to debate him or in a Socratic sense draw out his his thoughts and his position his reasoning on issues of race and racial politics and colonialism in Canada where I was really saying to him like well you know have you ever thought about how Canadian Parliament works and why it was designed and invented that way and why it never had representation for indigenous peoples and First Nations peoples like when we're talking about racism were not talking about you know complaints that the women on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine you know aren't Hispanic enough often enough I mean I know there's this sense in the 21st century we're like third wave feminism and the culture of complaint and focusing on really trivial details is it offensive that ariana grande speaks in a fake African American accent in our interviews these you know these really minor trivial things about race can can dominate the headlines and you know the really fundamental questions of whose land are you living on you know do you actually know the history of how the land that is now Toronto was taken away from matías peoples do you know who those people were or what language they spoke and where they are now it's a it's worth knowing have you ever given five minutes thought of this and why was their language never spoken in Parliament why didn't they have seats in parliament the way other writings and groups are represented so when I was talking about that with him which I think was a conversation worth having that was one of our first voice conversations we talked by text earlier than that I mean I was in the position of saying look I can tell you've never thought about this before you have never given five minutes of thought you've never read a book about this so why don't you be a little bit open-minded in thinking you know there are some things here you never say and I give him credit I think he was open-minded enough did you Mellisa see off camera I know if you heard both sides of the conversation if you were there to hear that some of them maybe you were yeah you're right anyway so some of these conversations Melissa was kind of just physically in the room anyway um you know Isaac has approached these issues from a very fundamentally self-centered perspective that's limited and limiting and in the same sense that veganism ultimately is not about you and has none about your feelings questions on a massive scale of the history of civilization and Cole and slavery and racism there's a sense of which you have to have the detachment to understand these issues that it's not about you and it's not about your feelings or it's not after a certain yeah after a certain point so there's a similar kind of this a similar kind of challenge and you know in the same way that the first time someone has even heard of veganism or heard about animal rights or heard about slaughterhouse conditions it's kind of morally different many of you have this experience some of you don't like if you're talking to someone I felt this a week Melissa died we were at the dinner table with a hunter and I felt like it was the first time so he was very experienced hunter he'd killed animals all over the world I thought it was the first time he even thought about the concept of not killing animals of not both not eating me from so I was like huh like and there's this weird sense in which it's almost immoral it's almost as if he's been living his life without the option of not being evil because he didn't even have the fork in the road presenting he didn't eat another concept that there was a way to not be evil so he was evil all the time by the you know okay now if I meet that guy again a couple years from now which may happen I mean talk to the same guy again the second time you have that conversation is not the same it's like look you knew you know what you're doing you know you know there's another way to do it you know you met me and I'm six foot three and I do 200 push-ups a day and I'm healthy you know you could be healthy like as as healthy as me and be vegan or you could be more healthy if you want to that guy he could be healthier he's currently Hunter's diet is killing him it's very obvious anyway you know see you knew you knew this was an option you knew the fundamental issues ethical ecological and health you knew it this is on table for you and after you did you did nothing you didn't take the next step right so again with Isaac I appreciate he's come with these racial issues from a totally solipsistic self-centered place of ignorance and self-righteousness and the ignorance is some how transcends morality when you're totally ignorant like this we've just never thought about it you don't even realize this you're built on genocide it's a okay second time you have that conversation he's not the same he's being told and he was told by this channel I started this argument with Isaac I think he had four YouTube videos up when this started maybe it was like eight but like real I think he had like four videos of substance on his channel it was right at the beginning of his channel that I came down on him with saying look you know you're racist and these people you're flirting with and supporting our races these people you're making excuses for like Courtney Macari and probably Cory McCarthy and Tara McCarthy and even more infamously you know Jack green this is not about guilt by association Isaac genetically is half Jewish Jack green is not merely a neo-nazi he's really a classical Nazi he has videos on his channel dealing with Adolf Hitler himself and other like philosophers of the Nazi Pyrenees he's about getting back to the roots of Nazism and contrast the neo Nazism easer he is an outright explicit Nazi alright and from his perspective you're Jewish I mean I don't think he's Isaac is not religiously Jewish of course and neither am i I'm ethnically Jewish but legislature okay and you've defended this guy in support of this guy and yeah you throw in caveats like well we may not agree on everything in politics you have hobnob with and hand-on have on your channel jf Gareth P so he's mostly Jean Jean Francois Gary P is mostly known as jfg Keva qua white supremacist in terms of just how explicitly white supremacist jf Caribbean is any doubt in your minds here there is a debate between him and faith golde I have videos criticizing faith gold in the channel there's a faith Goldie's also what's form system there's a debate between human faith golde about whether or not she white enough genetically to be a leader in the white supremacist movement and even as your only source that one debate makes it very clear both of them consider themselves leaders in a white supremacist movement and they're talking about the nuances of different forms of leadership okay and look not all white supremacists are Nazis and you know there are there are shades of gray there are different kinds of white nationalists here I know Cory McCarthy is not from the same school of fascism as Jack green and Jack green is not from the same school of white supremacism as JFK rippy guess what Isaac you're linked to all of them and it's not guilt by association you are guilty by your own words and deeds you now have minimum two years of coming on the internet and supporting every penny-ante argument in support of scientific racism the so-called race and DNA debate you coming on supporting sources that are debunked on Wikipedia were a quick Wikipedia search of you quoting and citing neo-nazi websites to back up here's everyone seen this I mean the blessing is from his perspective he won and used to viciously enforce the rule that these conversations on discord could not be recorded a lot of them my conversations with them I thought they were grabbed they wish they were recorded they were not recorded could have ended better he doesn't do that anymore that they changed the rules and to he's now deleted all of his old videos I think he's deleted most of the traces I come back to an earlier lab motif here when I raised this with Isaac many times and including most recent time just a few weeks ago I said to him there was a positive way out of this everyone thinks you're racist I mean okay what does everyone mean everyone who talks to me as I say the most frequent thing people say to me is this guy's a racist or they ask me how racist is he on a scale of one to ten like is he is he an eight or za7 like nobody thinks you're a zero at that scale um or they're asking me about how I managed to put up with this guy given so racist this is an incredibly widespread view of you and it's not for no reason you created they're not rumors this view of you who exploit spread for reason because of your conduct your words your deeds and I don't put it to him as a guilt trip I see why don't you resolve the situation why don't you come out now he wiped away all the old videos on his YouTube channel he declared a new era come out and make a positive statement of what your position is on multiculturalism what your position is on African Americans or African Canadians or Caribbean Canadians or the history of black slavery or apartheid in South Africa come out make a video saying your view of indigenous can't Canadians and genocide in the future of the mohawk riajuu boyd na how you feel about that what that means to you you come out and state your position positively and then people be able to say look even though this guy has made videos with jf guerra P and he was friends with Jack green and he flirted for so long with Cory McCarthy Curt terrible even though there were all these connections even though he said all these things on discord in the past and there are screenshots and statements on Facebook and even though there's all this damming of his hate this is his position now new year 2019 he's taken on a new position doing something positive this power is in your hands and I've said this to your face Isaac instead of doing that to use your own language to use your own slang your own idioms you cut into the shadows meaning you hide in the shadows you make excuses you use mealy-mouthed insincere Security's logic like oh well how do you define racism and then you define racism really narrowly and you companies you wouldn't accept the excuses you make for yourself on this you would never accept from a natural vegan you'd never accept from a meat-eater you're debating you'd never accept from me you make excuses for yourself on this you'd never accept from anyone else you engage in fallacies in the strictest sense of the term fallacy that you'd never accept protocols and it's all on this one issue because it's on this issue that we can all see your use of reason and logic a shallow phony self-serving and insincere you're interested in being rational and reasonable only when it makes you feel powerless only when it makes you feel powerful and not when it makes you feel challenged or powerless oh there's something out there you really need to learn and kiddo growing up in Guelph Ontario there is life is long you're still on chapter 1 you can't do better let's see you do it