I love OSP and once i saw that video on the subscription page i knew it would be something like that. Red&Blue are mostly ok, but they’re hopelessly radlib. Blue is a product of an education that considers anything after Aristotle not really worth considering (he’s on the record saying that Hegel doesn’t make any sense and that modern philosophy was his least favorite class in college), and Red seems to be a firm believer in the “capitalism is bad, but we can make it better” camp. Either that, or she’s keeping her powerlevel very well hidden. All in all, they never seem to endorse or understand the motivations of radical historical figures or fictional characters, giving them a very enlightened centrist vibe. I never expect anything other than the very mainstream from them.

That being said, they raise money constantly, and seem to be big believers in charity as a way to make a change in peoples’ lives (which is true, only limited in scope, but so is mutual aid, so huh), and considering that they live comfortable lives in the imperial core consuming regular media it was a matter of time that they repeat the party line unquestioningly. They expressed support to Ukrainian charities giving food and shelter to people escaping the warzone before, but I can imagine an opportunity to make content to support what they see as a “good cause” and raise money was also a good way for them to do it without affecting their schedules too much.

All of this to say, i don’t think they should be canceled over this. Considering the takes i’ve seen from other content creators, this is pretty tame, and explained better by ignorance rather than malice or straight up greed. Youtube personalities are definitely not the kind of people you would expect to have the most correct anti-imperialist takes, nor should you expect that from them.

Gotta love those BraveVoices

They made a similar remark in another video calling the Holodomir a genocide, so this isn’t exactly surprising to me. Kinda fell out of their stuff around that point, tbh.

I’ve basically accepted than any “liberal” youtube channel or podcast will invariably say something stupid and ignorant about either Russia/Ukraine or China at some point, regardless of how “apolitical” they usually are.

The way this usually works is that a popular channel is approached by a “charity” that asks them to do a special video, usually as a sponsor. They will help out with the “research” on the video and sometimes even the editing, which is very appealing to a youtuber as it can save them potentially dozens of hours of work on their video, and they get paid for it. And if the charity is something they vaguely agree with (i.e. “Russia bad.”) Then they don’t question it too much.

Tbh, their channel has been lowkey awful for a while. Their discussion of tropes is ok, but very “baby’s first fiction, let’s just talk about basic libshit like Avatar and Harry Potter and treat every fictional story like a big budget hollywood fantasy or superhero story.” And their history stuff has always been pure dogshit. They never know what they’re talking about and half the time it seems like their video’s only source is a half-skimmed wikipedia page.