How is the US Convincing the Philippines to Destroy Itself? - The US infiltrates a targeted nation’s information space to manipulate a nation’s own populatio...
    • acabjones
      9·
      11 days ago

      Does this invalidate all his analysis? I’m sure it’s helpful to have that context, but it’s possible to be informed by people whose ideological program doesn’t perfectly align with our own.

      I’ve learned a lot over the past few years from people like mearscheimer, Alexander mercouris, Jeff Sachs, even Andrew Nepolitano, all of whom have varying levels of bad positions.

      Liberals analyze the world on vibes, which tends to mean they need complete ideological alignment with their information sources, which is obviously limiting. But having a philosophical framework orienting our analysis frees us from that limitation because it allows us to read widely, including sources with major problems, without risk of falling for their bad takes.

      • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        41·
        11 days ago

        You absolutely avoided my point that he has tremendously bad takes, including ones that have left possibly millions dead (antivax), and probably billions future dead (climate change skepticism). The guy is a hard right reactionary that sometimes critiques US foreign policy, something that the far right does regularly.

        • davelEnglish
          5·
          11 days ago

          Your points about him being antivax & anti-climate change were not avoided or refuted.

        • freagleEnglish
          4·
          11 days ago

          Uhh, I think you missed the OPs entire response to you.

    • cfgaussianOP
      5·
      11 days ago

      Brian Berletic […] is a current antivax and climate change skeptic

      Which invalidates his analysis on topics which relate to health and climate, but it doesn’t heavily impact the validity of his geopolitical analysis on this particular subject. Or is there anything about the analysis in this particular video that you disagree with or you think is tainted by the source’s views on climate change and vaccines and would like to discuss?

      I appreciate you doing the research and pointing out his reactionary views and dubious history. It’s good to be aware of the biases of the media we consume, but we don’t need to be afraid of drawing from varied sources as long as we can gain something useful from them. When it comes to reactionary sources we just have to be extra skeptical and careful to identify where that reactionary bias possibly skews their analysis.

      Critical media literacy is an essential skill to have, especially for a communist. We will never be able to completely insulate ourselves from content that is not aligned with our views, nor should we. We need to be able to distinguish good analysis from bad, factual information from disinformation, and understand how a source’s ideological orientation affects the quality of their commentary on a topic by topic basis.

      In my experience Lemmygrad has a very high degree of political literacy and maturity, and i trust that no one here will suddenly do a complete 180 in their ideological viewpoint merely by coming into contact with reactionary sources - we are not that fragile - and that most people here know how to identify and discard problematic content in a piece of media.

    • Idliketothinkimsmart
      5·
      11 days ago

      In summary, he had horrible opinions in 2012 and the US is indeed convincing the philipines to become an asian Ukraine.

    • ☭ 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗘𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 ☭MA
      5·
      11 days ago

      I’m not really seeing any climate change skepticism in the article linked (although “even if one does not believe in mainstream notions of ‘climate change,’” is likely trying to cater to such people), and being suspicious of Western pharmaceutical companies’ experimental vaccines (especially when China already had a functioning vaccine using familiar technology) is not an inherently anti-vaccine position. He’s certainly no socialist but I wouldn’t call him hard-right based on those articles

      • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        11 days ago

        Just to completely put the argument to bed, I’ll find the most egragious example from his website, :

        Global warming is in fact a scam perpetrated by globalists to control every aspect of human industry, population, consumption and demographics, as declared in the United Nation’s Agenda 21 report and conclusions drawn at the globalist Club of Rome forum. After decades of uncontested propagandizing, the globalist agenda began to slow under the scrutiny of skeptics able to propose their objections en-mass via the Internet.

        Under increasing pressure, exposing inconsistencies and bold faced lies, globalists themselves have literally conceded that their “irrefutable research” on all fronts is “flawed,” (read: lies). [link ]

        Another article:

        t’s not entirely accurate to call the Belfer Center merely a big oil representative that forms the spearhead of promoting the theory of anthropogenic global warming and the resulting Ponzi-scheme environmental policies proposed to deal with it. [link ]

        On his page, although written by Paul Joseph Watson:

        As we have previously documented, the manufactured threat of man-made global warming is being used as a tool of neo-colonialism in the third world, not only through the seizure of land and infrastructure, thereby preventing poor nations from using their resources to develop, but by literally starving poverty-stricken people to death. [link]

        • ☭ 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗘𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 ☭MA
          3·
          11 days ago

          these are all very bad takes; although, as you mentioned in your post, they’re over a decade old and may not reflect his current views

          with that said, he’s featured people who made transphobic remarks on his streams without challenging them, which is certainly reactionary even if he doesn’t share their opinions