Communism, Etic vs. Emic Perspectives & Youtube Censorship. (Vs. NonCompete)

we're living through an interesting
period of time in which one end of the political spectrum is being censored and suppressed by social media by the internet in a way that the other end of the political spectrum is not my own political views and values are left-of-centre so I see the harm done by the left-wing extreme much more than I see the harm done by the right-wing stream I'm constantly meeting and talking to people who have been seriously damaged and misinformed by communist propaganda um but we're not living through a period of time in which the right-wing can openly present neo Nazi propaganda or can openly present fascist propaganda they do so covertly and periodically we have scandals in the Western press when the covert nature of their messaging gets exposed this kind of thing is ongoing but I'm about to show you just a couple of clips of communists overtly discussing and marketing communism and talking about an even demonstrating view a little bit how they make excuses for the history of mass murder these videos are not demonetized these videos are not suppressed or deleted by YouTube whereas right-wing groups face constant threat of their Twitter or being deleted their YouTube channel being deleted their freedom of expression shut down this type of left-wing extremist propaganda YouTube considers itself a neutral platform for hello and welcome very much to marketing how to market bread communism hello your friendly neighborhood radical reviewer here have you heard that communism has never worked that communism always fails that communism kills people I knew we can look at like a number of communist governments that have failed miserably at a point my communism is bad but is this true well countries embark on various economic projects in various parts of the world at various times in our history so it's difficult to make such a categorical statement as communism has never worked in fact one could easily argue that since these various countries had States and did not have worker control of the means of production then by definition they were not communist let's take a look at key factor number two downplaying the achievements of communist experiments well let's see here's a study using World Bank data which found that socialist countries had higher quality of life than capitalist countries when controlling for a level of economic development using criteria such as life expectancy literacy daily caloric intake and access to higher education or housing or what about this Oxfam America report on Cuba which details the achievements of the Cuban Revolution basically my point is this behind the assumption that every attempt at communism just naturally failed because communism has contradictions within it that causes it to fail that ignores the influence capitalist interventionism has had on attempts at communism and it ignores the positive aspects of these nations that we should strive for so the next time someone argues that communism has never worked or that communism always fails or that communism killed 500,000 gazillion people recognize that they probably have no idea what they're talking about don't think about your you know small channel with your small sub count as meaningless because if you took all the little tiny channels on left tube and you put them all together that's a ton of reach and impact that we're having let's now contrast this to a short clip from Frank decoder this is under five minutes long I constantly face this supercilious attitude from left wingers that anyone who disagrees with them they just don't know what they're talking about I've devoted many years of my life to study the history of communism and Frank decoder has devoted many years of his life and he's now published many books to studying the history of communism especially in China shouldn't really come as a surprise as a surprise to anyone familiar with one-party states in particular you know the sort of Leninist Marxist variety if you study the history of the Soviet Union you will know that 1917 is followed by a very brutal civil war and of course a Red Terror and you can say the same thing about any other one-party state um throughout the 20th century so try there's no exception so if I would have to summarize it very quickly let's say in minutes now it's said that one great misunderstanding of 19 to 49 is that it is often described as a liberation that's what the regime says and when you think in terms of liberation you imagine people applauding the arrival of the Liberation Army but it was a military conquest and a very brutal one as Stalin and the Soviets helped Mao Zedong turn his ragtag army of guerrilla fighters into a very formidable fighting machine it was very brutal in Chiang true in 1948 big city in Manchuria to the north of Beijing didn't be all a general laid siege to Chun Kuen for five months hundred and sixty thousand ordinary people start as there were blockaded in that city trunks Xuan fell other cities were besieged before you know it all of these cities start surrendering unwilling to undergo that horror so the red flag goes up in 1949 this is followed immediately by land reform which again is often misunderstood as being about land when you say land reform you think land well it was very much about creating a pact sealed in blood between the poorest of the poor and the party by very much forcing the poor and a majority of the popular villages to eliminate their own frequently elected leaders in other words they had to denounce people carefully targeted by the party people denounced as tyrants or landlords or traitors or dangerous elements about 2 million of them were killed the assets distributed to the crowd those who refused to participate and his denunciations were denounced in turn so you could say that 1949 and land reform theory is established on its established through violence and by violence this is going to be more about in minutes I think a couple of minutes as I rush through the People's Republic this is followed by a number of campaigns against pretty much anyone and anything that might be opposed to a one-party state in in brief from 1949 to 1956 all organizations outside of the organization of the party are eliminated religious organizations civil Association study groups philanthropic societies independent chambers of commerce student unions worker unions all eliminated and replaced by the hand of the party many millions also targeted directly from October 1950 to October 51 as enemies of the people people who were seen to be standing in the path of the revolution literally eliminated in front of other people in stadiums in big cities or on stages built in smaller villages in the countryside shot in front of others as a warning Mao gives a killing quota of 1 per thousand but this of course escalates in many parts of the country it becomes 2 to 3 per thousands in other words by the time that we reach 1952 including land reform some 5 million people have been killed on purpose have been targeted and eliminated so in that clip you just heard the first five million executions summarized very briefly in the history of Communist China just from 1949 to 1950 - you're over 5 million people slain executed not starvation not other forms of death that later add tens and tens of millions to the body count that's the first 5 million killed with bullets and bayonets and swords and killed in cold blood not killed in Civil War they weren't fighting back civilian mass execution so it is a very strange error we're living through on the internet where it seems to be socially acceptable and monetizable for people to tell lies glorifying this mass murder in this history but not to tell lies glorifying the other forms of mass murder I am NOT a free speech advocate I actually really do believe in the moral purpose of censorship censorship can be done well and can be done poorly in some cases the function of censorship is merely to separate free speech into separate categories I think it's very important that you have some websites and sub TV channels that are safe for children to watch some that have pornography and some don't I think it makes sense to have some websites where you're gonna see a certain level of violence the level of violence you see on CNN on new news networks that show scenes of warfare and to have another TV channel where you know you can hear the news but you know you're not going to see those scenes of elves I think censorship serves a you know a positive function in our society in many different ways and I think that a country like modern Germany it's a very interesting case study and what happens with censorship where you have the government actively censoring pro-nazi pro-hitler statements nevertheless Germany today in the 21st century has a very active and very open neo-nazi movement so the the successes and failures of different kinds of censorship I think is a complex topic worth questioning I don't have a simple solution in the sense of saying oh well let the left wingers promote their propaganda and let the right wingers promote their propaganda then somehow the truth will emerge out of these contrasting and contradictory claims I think that is just as dangerous as saying let's allow all food manufacturers to label their products as healthy to make whatever health claims they want I think it's actually very important that the government step in and say no you can't take a dozen eggs chicken eggs and write on them that this is healthy chicken eggs scientifically speaking are not healthy so you know I think it's I don't think you can sell a pack of cigarettes and tell people that they're healthy either I think there's a very good reason for censorship and enforcement of labels and standards on these things however when you get into the social sciences history and politics there isn't even a clear distinction between fiction and nonfiction there isn't a clear distinction between fact and opinion and of course it's it's tragic that people live for many years ignorant of the real facts and cultivate an even a sense of moral purpose and smug superiority over others because they they become adherence to this type of propaganda these these types of claims that soften people up for that make people feel more and more comfortable with excuses for mass murder or violence versions of history that very intentionally paper over downplay and why's the dramatic failure of historically real communist regimes in fact one could easily argue that since these various countries had states and did not have worker control of the means of production then by definition they were not communist this brings me to the other issue I have discussed this before in other videos and I've discussed it directly with communists and debate but it comes up here again even in the very short clip I played for you of examples of current and ongoing communist propaganda here on YouTube the the definitional fallacy where communists will engage with absolutely no irony in a no true Scotsman fallacy where they try to define communism in such a way that it excavates it exonerates communist regimes or it exonerates them where they say oh well anything bad about communist regimes that we don't have to take credit for because that doesn't fit the definition of communism and then as you see even in that short clip they then still proceeded to make excuses for historically real communist regimes there's a distinction between ethic and emic here in a university classroom we would never use an emic definition of what Tibetan Buddhism is we'd never use an emic definition of what the Nazi Party was for example nor the Communist Party nor even do we use IMF definitions of Islam so I mean with each of these ideologies let's use Tibetan Buddhism as as the least least shocking perhaps it's possible for a Tibetan Buddhist to present you with a definition that inherently glorifies their religion and excludes as not genuinely representative of Tibetan Buddhism anything they find distasteful disapprove of to give an example a very real part of the Tibetan Buddhist religion was creating bowls out of human skulls that would also make musical instruments out of leg bones other parts of the body were used to make various religious artifacts shall we say now you can talk to a Tibetan Buddhist today who will who will insist you oh no no those traditions you know that's just folklore that's not part of Buddhism here's the definition of Buddhism we use in Tibetan Buddhism now okay so this practice taking a human skull and turning it into a bowl you know you could include even more extreme things like human sacrifice killing people to produce magical elixirs and so on okay these were done by Buddhist monks in Buddhist temples with the authority of this religion it's very much as part of the practice and as I say real-world political authority this religion had over people's lives you know that there's a really meaningful and important sense in which we have to use an outsider's definition again this is the ethic versus emic distinction we have to use a detached Outsiders definition and say no here's what we mean when we talk about Tibetan Buddhism and the fact that people who themselves are true believers in Tibetan Buddhism the fact that people within the ideologies don't use this same definition that's not a flaw with our approach that's actually a strength so the same way neo-nazis could give a definition of fascism or Nazism or National Socialism that excavates them papers over the failures and so on a proponent of Islam this is very very common they will often give you a definition of jihad sometimes they give you a definition the religion itself how they define the Islamic faith but the loss can give you a definition of jihad that's very misleading it's misleading in terms of what the actual texts say the hadith and the Quran but it's also misleading in terms of the historical application the reality of what these things mean today and over prior centuries in these long faiths they'll give you some very flattering definition of jihad and then of course the necessary implication of this again kind of definitional fallacy you say oh well anyone who uses the word jihad in another way they're not really Muslim they don't really know what time so again this is the no true Scotsman fallacy and the Communists in 2019 taper they're playing this hard they are they are taking this to the utmost limit in a completely humorless completely deadpan way and I I don't know I mean I guess I have now spoken to a few communists who talk to me later after having the debate gotten touched me a few weeks later or something and said that they realized I was right that this really was a very fundamental problem in their thinking and they needed to change their their approach to politics the female voice who appeared in this channel was a woman who appeared only her voice not her face and made a very confrontational debate about the definition of communism she got and touched me a few weeks later and she had really completely changed her mind on it after watching that video back and watching a couple other videos in my channel that we're talking about you know the real nature of communism the real history of communism so that might be a positive example of free speech actually working but for every one example like her there's so many more that just double down and get more deeply committed to this kind of propaganda so look as I say simply put there's a lot of harm done by propaganda of this kind we live in an era when people very casually talk about learning the lessons of history history has no voice you know it's you and I who have voices history is not significant for what it can take from the past it's significant for what it can add to the present so in the controversy that I alluded to earlier of a right-wing group called identity Europa being exposed and the internet because their private messages were shared and the private messages revealed the extent to which they were really a respectable front for much more difficult to respect right-wing extremists because you know the main impact of that I mean you know what they're doing is not illegal in the United States the main impact is getting their Twitter shut down getting their social social media platforms like YouTube shut down getting demonetised and even some of the companies handling financial transactions and so on where those get shut down because companies say forget it if this is what you guys are preaching we don't want to do business with you we're definitely living in a period of time where that kind of scrutiny is being applied to one extreme on the political spectrum and not the other now I openly admit there isn't a simple solution how can we draw up standards that are applied fairly and consistently maybe the standard is if you're a lying about any historical event that involves the deaths of over a million people maybe how is it you're gonna legislate this I'm over 40 years old so I've now heard a whole generation of people say again and again that they were learning the lessons of the Vietnam War and then engage in a series of wars most obviously Afghanistan that absolutely repeated all of the errors of the Vietnam War so the claims to have learned from history are easily made the actual process of learning from history is quite another thing [Music]