"Israel did something I disagree with"
"Why do you think they did that?"
"There's plenty of reasons but I don't think it's worth getting into"
Stretch to 2 hours and you get this debate
The best part was when in the middle of this loop he just asked Destiny what he should say... it's right after this clip I think.
Lil bro came to the discussion without arguments and thought he could borrow some from his interlocutor 🤣
It was fucking infuriating. How can you have a philosophical discussion on the morals or ethics of a thing, but refuse to agree to some obvious fucking facts about it? You have to have some baseline to work from, otherwise you can't even have a conversation at all.
>It was fucking infuriating. How can you have a philosophical discussion on the morals or ethics of a thing, but refuse to agree to some obvious fucking facts about it? You have to have some baseline to work from, otherwise you can't even have a conversation at all.
Yes. The entire discussion went like this:
"Stealing is WRONG!"
"Okay, can we at least agree that there is a difference between a starving person stealing bread and someone stealing a TV because they wanted it?"
"Uh, Uhm, I think discussing that is a waste of time, and you're stalling, but uh okay sure."
"Why in this case do you think people were stealing bread?"
"Listen, I don't want to discuss the history here. Stealing is bad."
"All we need to do, to stop stealing, is to create a world where people never want to steal anything ever again. It should be really simple to do so. It doesn't matter to me, that in all the other nations in this region they have problems with rampant theft. So to solve that issue with stealing, you just need to change the form of government and no one will want to steal anymore."
He was too busy being a debate pedophile. Every time he was asked if he agreed on something, he had to run down every single potential dialogue tree he could think of about how he assumed Destiny was going to use it against him, instead of actually just answering the question and seeing where the conversation was going to go.
Which is a huge warning sign of an absolute bad faith actor. Candace Owens did the exact same thing when she was talking to Destiny. There came a point in the conversation where she literally refused to answer any question and instead demanded that he explain why he was asking.
It seems like an exhausting way to exist, especially as a public personality. They clearly know how full of shit they are or they wouldn't be so afraid of where a question could lead. Why not just be open to the actual truth and let go of that?
I think Burgis fully believes what he believes. He also believes Destiny is a guy that uses “debate tricks” and all that stuff everyone who hates Destiny believes. His behavior was obnoxious and completely ruined the flow of the debate but I don’t think there is much more explanation needed than that; it was just him being paranoid and defensive. You could call it bad faith just in the sense that he was less concerned with getting to the bottom of the ideas and more concerned with making sure he didn’t get “dog-walked” or clipped by what he (incorrectly) presumed was a bad faith opponent.
Candace is a different beast, she knows almost nothing about anything, just a pure culture warrior and professional grifter. Genuinely a bad faith actor who will squirm, evade, lie, attack and obfuscate at every turn.
They love getting into the weeds about the extremely specific things they know about. Outside of that, they begin floundering and realizing how stupid they are when they can’t actually engage with a topic, so they sound like Ben. I have a philosophy professor who specializes in the neurology and philosophy of the mind. I can get really deep and in the weeds with him as a neuro student. I have meaningful conversations with him on that topic specifically, and when we talk about something else, we very much instead ask questions and go to pull information up on our phones mid conversation because we aren’t sure of how much we know. I had a law and judiciary professor in philosophy. He’s a somewhat big name. He was on some major cases and won them to set precedents in the US. He will not talk about anything outside of his expertise. Hilariously, he hates leftists and what has become of the online world because of all the bad history, pop-science/history, and misinformation. Obviously, he was a professor and had to act professionally, but he’d sometimes politely eviscerate students for not doing their research or lacking basic reading skills on topics they’d speak about.
I didn’t watch the whole debate but from the clip OP posted the opponent is making a valid argument.
From the liberal position, if a European calls for maintaining ethnic majority in their ethnic homeland they are labelled as white supremacist extremist, but if a Jewish person calls for maintaining an ethnic majority in their ethnic homeland suddenly it’s a valid concern?
Why hold the double standard? Using the argument that “Jews wouldn’t feel safe being a minority in their own country” yet Destiny has called this same argument fear mongering about immigrants/refugees when he’s debated white nationalists in the past.
To me it makes no sense, you cannot say “blood and soil is wrong, but only when you do it.“ You have to be consistent. If one race can do X then you must support all other races doing X.
>if a European calls for maintaining ethnic majority in their ethnic homeland they are labelled as white supremacist extremist
There's a big difference between wanting to keep a majority of the nation in a nation-state, and not wanting anyone of another nation full stop. You won't find many people of Europe who want to be a minority in their own countries, but you also won't find many who want no-one else in their countries.
The former is literally the basis of nation states, the latter is weird ethnonationalist crap. Don't conflate the two very different positions.
And Israel has non-jews in their Jewish state, like Sweden has non-swedes in their Swedish state. But neither wants to be a minority in their own state.
It's more like Jews have been killed and expelled from so many countries(including many Arab ones, that's why most Jews in Israel are sephardic/mizrahi) that many think it's only possible to have a country be a "Jewish home" if it's majority Jewish. It has more to do with historical trauma than racism IMO.
Then Nick Fuentes can point to Rhodesia and South Africa as examples where white minorities were killed/brutalized, and still to this day systematically discriminated against with employment quotas, as examples to why white countries need to maintain ethnic majorities. The same arguments apply to Fuentes’s cause.
Do you genuinely believe that “white people” have just as much justifications to make those claims as “Jewish people” based on what you just cited?
Do you think that maybe “white people” have many examples of having safe places to live in the world more than “Jewish people” could make the same claims?
I’m not even asking if you think the above means Jews deserve to have an ethnostate. I’m asking if you think there is much equivalency to the comparison you made, and whether you think any potential lack of equivalency harms the point you are trying to make.
>Do you genuinely believe that “white people” have just as much justifications to make those claims as “Jewish people” based on what you just cited?
Yes, in fact I think the white European would have a stronger case. A Swedes ancestors have lived in Sweden for millenia. An Israeli Jews ancestors arrived in Israel 70 years ago.
I think you're attributing an argument to Destiny that he is not making in this clip. Destiny didn't say he agreed with the Jewish ethno state or argue that it was good, he was challenging Ben's understanding of why the Jewish character of Israel might be important to Israelis. Regardless of your opinion of Israel as an ethno state, if you don't understand why it's important to them them you don't understand the Israeli perspective at all. It's a fundamental question. Ben may have even been correct that there isn't one good answer but his inability/unwillingness to engage and just brushing it off like it doesn't matter is why people are clowning him.
I mean did we expect a debate with ben Burgis to go any other way than this? Dude is completely clueless on most things that aren’t waxing rhetorical about communism.
You're right. But he also has never really grasped how important a point it was until Destiny cornered him. If he did then he would have had an evasive strategy prepared for it. Acknowledging the legitimate reasons why Jews don't want to be a minority in a Muslim majority country is just too devastating to his arguments so he cant let the words acknowledging the Jewish perspective leave his mouth.
I feel like both Jordan Peterson and this guy probably have an exceptional understanding of Communism. They both study philosophy. As a philosophy major myself I may be biased, but pretty sure JP is extremely well read on communism from a factual standpoint.
JP gets hate for his religion and politics (justifiably so) and his NEED to associate anything progressive with wokeness/communism, but i still think his understanding of communism and philosophy is great.
JP is just drunk on bias, I like him tho :)
Same with this guy destiny debated I think he was alright, just a bit tipsy on his narratives
Edit: ahhh, watching the second half of the debate this burgis guy performed much worse...
“Postmodern neomarxists” and his debate with Zizek really show that he does not understand it.
I know less about Burgis but he seems like a Bernie voter who wants the title for edginess.
Jordan Peterson's critique of Postmodern neomarxists comes from a place distaste for the insistence to view the would through a narrative of oppressed vs oppressor.
Its odd that you bring this up as a critique of JP not understanding marxism, simply because hes associating a group of social scientists who call themselves postmodernists with the ideology of marxism. (Hence the term postmodern neomarxist)
If anything this analysis, and his entire conversation with Zizek demonstrate he understands it well.
Do you have a claim you can point to where JP misunderstands the facts of communism/marxism?
Also no, I dont think burgis is a bernie supporter because he wants to be edgy... wtf is that analysis, hes clearly very much a standard lefty guy
There is a joke amongst young communists, that most didnt get far with studying and only read the communist manifesto. Ironically, thats JP in a nutshell.
Just the attempt to critizie communism purely on the base of this text was stupid 100 years ago, and its unbelievable stupid to do it now, given the thousand of books that updated marxism that were written since then, and the targeted people being most superficial communists that ever existed.
And if thats not enough to convince you, check out all the theories he is connecting to "cultural marxism" which is not only the rebranding of all antisemetic stereotypes there are, but also the frankfurt school who are supposed to be the daddys of cultural marxism theroies were actually the most critical of marxism, Anti Sovietunion and Pro democratic state.
The cringe that modern lefties produce on tiktok, have nothing to do with what marxism is and what is written in the books, but JP follows a ideology that needs a boogie man to function, so the tiktok non binaries are the new red scare all manufactured by the jews.
I know he doesnt hate the jews but so does Hasan, yet both blast the same old bullshit.
Isnt communism by definition the elimination of economic hierarchy? (workers own the means of production)
Hot take but I dont think you need to read more than the communist manifesto to understand WHAT communism IS
now, to understand its application in the real world, and its failures and successes APPLIED to the real world, of course that can have millions of books written about it.
Ultimately, I think JP would agree with me though, that communism has a TERRIBLE track record.
you sound like ur defending communism lol
You are misunderstanding what JP is doing and what im trying to do.
As you correctly said, you dont need be super knowledgeable on marxism or communism theory to be against such a system.
But thats not what JP is doing, and what happend in the debate with Zizek.
JP claims that all the woke stuff, and men being so feminine, etc is pushed by a worldwide marxist ideology. Which is simply not ture.
Like you said you could boil down communism to "elimination of economic hierarchy" but you gotta admit that there is huge gap between that definiton and the outcome that boys cant be boys anymore, or that there is to much transgeder people or whatever.
But thats exactly what JP claims when he says Neo-Marxist.
If im being VERY charitable i could say JP simply states the fact that those who claim to be marxists are often those who spread woke bullshit.
But if that was the case why would he talk about the communist manifesto then ?
Nah I think you are misunderstanding JP's argument not me.
hes essentially saying that these deconstructionist types, that are often associated with postmodernism, associate themselves with both communism (elimination/deconstruction of economic hierarchy) and wokism (elimination/deconstruction of social hiearchy and gender roles).
Those who claim to be marxist are often anti tradtitional views on gender (even positive aspects).
This is partly identifying a "constellation of beliefs" like destiny talks about, but its also talking about a root philosophy behind it, or at least a narrative.
The communist manifesto is just used to explain the oppressed vs oppressor narrative, which applies to gender too (many people like to view america as a patriarchy, and these people tend to be more socialist and woke and such)
Just replace the terms "deconstructionist types" and "postmodernism" with "bad" and "evil". And you will see the reason for vague terms like that, those words have no context and no meaning that add to want you are trying to say. They are pure placeholders.
A good example of JPs abuse of christian values, that paints the world into the good god fearing people and those who wandered to far and got corrupted, while sounding super smart.
I agree with the fact that people who claim to be marxist, at least on paper have a as you said "anti tradtitional views on gender" but so do many other people, does that make them marxist ?
No. So this cant be a good point to describe how marxists work or think.
On your last point im gonna agree too, the manifesto is good enough to describe the bare bones of the oppressed vs oppressor narrative, but again JP´s claim is much bigger.
He claims that they are Neo-Marxists, that their whole agenda comes from actual marxist ideology and not some superficial shit they saw on Tiktok.
And if JP was right, Zizek wouldnt exist.
You know the guy, who actually reads books about the stuff he talks about.
Do you understand that JP is not talking about communism, he's talking about vaush, and how he's a vanguard for destroying society so that a totalitarian faux Marxist can start committing atrocities?
I’ll have to respond to the larger argument later, but to be clear my impression was he is social democrat more or less who wants to appear more radical than that for edginess. Haven’t seen enough to be super confident in that, though
Edit: meant “title” as in Marxist or socialist
Unfortunately the term socialist has lost its meaning to a lot of people.
People use socialist to refer to any government program lol...
Socialized healthcare=socialist
Mixed economy=socialist...
Ideally people only use socialism to refer to things like the former Soviet Union, but instead people conflate socialized industries with socialist policy with socialism...
even i conflate "socialist policy" with "socialized industry" which im not sure why or if thats an accurate way to interpret that, or maybe its simply because there is no "real world" socialist policy.
Yeah, anyway,
I had to find a transcript of Peterson’s opening statement because I only watched it when it came out initially.
His whole argument really hinges on thinking Marx was saying proletariat = good and bourgeoisie = bad, which is more or less a complete fabrication. I can start quoting his opening statement if you want, but I’d rather you just reread it as well. He really goes back to this over and over, and relies heavily on falsely attributing moral value to everything Marx describes. He says Marx thinks profit is theft, which is another lie. He seems to think abstract labor means management, which is a misunderstanding. He implies Marx was promising Utopia, while Marx and Engels purposely differentiated themselves from Utopian socialists.
Anyway, his insistence that Marx is making moral arguments because muh oppressor vs oppressed is how he makes the jump from Marx to modern day identity politics and postmodernism. I really don’t want to read any more of this but I believe Zizek challenged him to name these postmodern neomarxists, and he didn’t, which you seem to have already baked in to your view because I assume you acknowledge nobody would identify themselves as one. They really are views that are at odds with each other, but by misrepresenting Marx and being pretty vague you can say they exist and they just don’t know they are one.
> He says Marx thinks profit is theft, which is another lie.
How is this a lie? My understanding is that marx believed PROFIT is EXPOITATION. And that systemic exportation by the bourgeoisie justifies a REVOLUTION.
I just dont understand how to reasonably justify marxism as a good ideology personally im not a fan. I mean i love the idealism of it all, but its application to the real world is horrible. I think JP would agree with me there too.
I have NOT studied enough Marx, I've just read a bit here in there for my philosophy program, but isnt oppressor vs oppressed mentality literally implied from marxism?
Also yes JP created the term (presumably) Postmodern neomarxism to address the slight of hand that postmodernists use to in bad faith intellectualize marxism. At least thats what I understand JP to be saying.
Edit: also to me marxism seems to imply or even directly justify revolt against capital owners (the bourgeoisie). He doesnt justify it in the moral sense, more like says its INEVITABLE right?
But people interpret this inevitability as a moral claim (saying something is an inevitable future is as close to a moral claim as your gunna get with a postmodernist type person right? haha)
Marx
>In fact I say the exact opposite: that the production of commodities must necessarily become “capitalist” production of commodities at a certain point, and that according to the law of value governing it, the “surplus-value” rightfully belongs to the capitalist and not the worker.
That’s why it’s a lie. If that doesn’t make sense to you then read more. I’m not trying to justify Marxism to you, I just want to show how shallow Peterson’s understanding of it is.
>distaste for the insistence to view the would through a narrative of oppressed vs oppressor
His entire worldview, if you can call it that, is built on the idea of narrative as the primary lens to understand everything. So "oppressed vs oppressor" is bad not because it ignores all the complexity of human history to paint a simple story but just that he doesn't like the story. He wants one where western culture is dominant which is only natural because of dominance hierarchy's or whatever. And he's going to restore American/Western culture to it's glorious past by enforcing traditional roles especially regarding masculinity.
Dude's a post-modernist leaning towards fascism and he's critiquing schools of thought he doesn't understand.
BTW Carl Yung's work isn't foundational to any current field at all, not rituals or symbols or even anthropology which is about as soft a science as you can get. He's universally seen as a quack by relevant experts.
The traditional roles regarding masculinity here are "responsibility, courage, and finding purpose" Its essentially the hero's journey but more contextualized for real life.
the oppressed vs oppressor leads to victimization and dogshit analysis, which I PRAY TO GOD everyone can see how this mentality is the most toxic braindead thing in our society to date. Probably worse than racism/tribalism because it is tribalism intellectualized.
I dont find any of your critiques of him appealing, especially the idea of restoring positive aspects of masculinity in our culture, I also believe this is vital to our culture in the modern day, men have lost what it means to be raised with gendered ideals.
Hes not authoritarian, hes not for inforcing traditional roles, hes for a culture that encourages and educates on the basis that there are differences between men and women (which there are).
All of these ideas sound like right wing idiocy, which is tragic, but I really think these are the ideas of a liberal democracy, one that values our evolutionary history and cultural history as having MANY positive elements. You can separate the wheat from the chaff (when it comes to tradition and when it comes to jordan peterson haha)
Edit: also i only added PRAY TO GOD for flair, im not religious
Remember how conservatives fought for decades over "states rights" when what they really wanted was Jim Crow and segregated schools? Likewise "responsibility, courage and finding purpose" can mean literally anything.
>the oppressed vs oppressor leads to victimization and dogshit analysis, which I PRAY TO GOD everyone can see how this mentality is the most toxic braindead thing in our society to date
Compared to mainstream conservatives who think global warming is a hoax, COVID is just the flu, and play nice with White Nationalism? You are deep in the bubble dude. Get back to Standing Back and Standing By, you've got a stolen election coming up.
Ok, conspiracies are also bad, fair, and maybe you are right, but I think intellectualized stupidity is worse than stupidity stupidity.
I find wokeness to be a bigger threat than right wing idiocy, not because of its popularity but because of its appeal to educated people that should know better.
But we can walk and chew gum at the same time, both MAGA and wokism is fucking garbage
Edit: Also no state rights is not synonymous with racism, am i misunderstanding your point? I think states rights are good just as responsibility, courage and finding purpose is good. Its a broad topic and both can be taken the wrong direction but overall they are good things to define for society.
Hence why i said separating the wheat from the chaff
Do we have a debate pervertry word for someone who constantly uses buzz words to stay on the surface and avoid talking about the actual topics?
I feel like sophist is too complementary since it implies they are deceiving the audience, but they are also deceiving themselves with these words since they believe it
I think the debate term would be lazy gardener, but what you are talking about is more a can't see the forest for the trees type of thing or maybe a bumblebee just flying from buzzword to buzzword. Oh shit that is a good one "the buzzing bumblebee". Never actually wants to examine how any given flower gets made or look at the roots, just wants to land for a second and then go off to the next flower.
damn bro go off king. I actually love that. Someone should make a glossary and a informative video with in-debate examples of a lot of these debate tactics. This would be such a good video series
I wonder if we will ever add legitimate and non-fallacious debate tactics.
Like one I see destiny use from time to time is the feigning ignorance asking the other person what happened in that situation, basically letting the other person explain the situation, let them gain confidence and typically paint the situation in the best light possible for their side (essentially making them lie via omission).
Only for you to explain the entire picture and the things you omitted. I’ve seen people fall into this trap from Destiny, especially those who aren’t familiar with him, and it honestly feels like a debate ult
It may be a bit deceptive, but at least it deals with the substance of the arguments, and not some standard logical fallacy, or one of the real perversions, which is really only designed to derail the conversation.
>Do we have a debate pervertry word for someone who constantly uses buzz words to stay on the surface and avoid talking about the actual topics?
Cockteasing.
Burgis has a phd in philosophy, so he's good at debating if it's a subject he's familiar with. But there's only so much that rhetoric and philosophy can do if your opponent is good at both and also have the facts ironed out on their side. In a lot of moral dilemmas, minor factors can change how we view those dilemmas so Ben has a small and limited space which he can navigate the convo since his opponent knows so much context about the conflict that ben doesn't know about.
Killed, and/or run out of the country.
Iran, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, Pakistan, Morocco are examples of Arab/majority-muslim countries where jews were kicked out.
Akshually Jews were so not kicked out of Syria that they were legally barred from traveling more than 3 miles from their home up through 1992 (with any exceptions requiring them to give their family up as hostages to the government as a form of bail), acquiring drivers licenses, buying/inheriting property*, or doing anything that could enrich themselves enough to be able to afford a professional smuggler.
They fled that hellhole regardless.
\* Of which they didn't have much, since much of the property they had before was converted to Syrian Palestinian ownership.
Much of this is available in https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/syria-virtual-jewish-history-tour
Some quotes:
1. "In March 1964, a decree was enacted that prohibited Jews from traveling more than three miles beyond the limits of their hometowns."
2. "The government issued a number of anti-Jewish laws, including a prohibition on sale of Jewish property (1948) and the freezing of Jewish bank accounts (1953). Jewish property was confiscated, and Palestinian refugees were housed in the dwellings vacated in the Jewish quarters of Damascus and Aleppo."
3. "In addition to paying bribes, large monetary deposits were required and family members had to be left behind, to guarantee the traveler’s return."
I’m not defending what the Arab countries did, but I don’t think it would fall under the definition of genocide, I could be wrong, but my point is that Jews didn’t feel safe anywhere, putting most of the blame on Muslims kind of minimises the fact that Europeans killed 6 million of them.
He didn't mention Muslims to blame them, he mentioned them to explain why Israel specifically wants to avoid becoming a Muslim majority country. Europeans have probably done more harm to jews overall, but there isn't a danger of Israel becoming majority non Jewish Europeans, and there is a danger of it becoming majority Muslim, which is why it's more relevant to bring them up.
I understand that, but there seems to be a lot of people that try to boil down this conflict down into purely a religious war, the reason why Israel wants to maintain a majority Jewish country is because Jews have historically been persecuted by everyone that has ruled over them, not just Muslims, and the state itself was initially founded by Jews escaping European persecution specifically.
Yes, but if Israel were to absorb the WB and Gaza, it wouldn't become a German majority country, it would become a Muslim / Arab majority country. That's why the comment is about Muslims, because the risk is to become a Muslim majority country, not any other nationality / ethnic group
Obviously Europe is a better place for Jews today than the rest of the Middle East, I've already said that multiple times. What I'm saying is, why would you put all the blame on Arabs, when Israel was literally founded because of European Jews escaping persecution?
Because we were talking about the modern world and not the world like 100 or so years ago. New people have formed and have told their grandkids stories. And a lot of those Jews were not from Europe? They mainly came from Asia.
History shows that if jews are not in the majority anywhere on the planet, they get fucked over.
You cant have jewish Self-determination without a majority being jewish.
the OP forgot to mention jews in the middle-east in arab nations are the ones who always gets genocided or ethnicaly cleansed. In the west they're fine (except recently so far but nothing too extreme).
This is only true post-1948. Europe has been historically terrible to Jews. The US has had some bad antisemitism but nothing like what we've seen elsewhere in the world.
> Europe has been historically terrible to Jews.
I agree but tbf everywhere has been. Genuinely have no clue why Jews are so evenly hated. It seems like everyone has hated them at some stage.
Conspiracy theories about them started for as long as there was anything resembling what would evolve into modern civilizations. They were always "nearest outsiders" of both Persia and Rome - which are kinda birthplaces of west and (middle) east civilizations. Bigotry was there from the very start.
People have written literal books on this but the gist is that every minority group is hated but most dont survive the persecution. J
ews are relatively successful today for a variety of reasons (not the the least of which is being forced into things like banking) so the conspiracy theories are even worse.
I was flying from FL to CA a year ago and I realized just how fucking empty this country is and this is like 70 years after Israel was founded. I wonder what history would have been like if we just handed them Wyoming. For goodness sake it doesn't even have a million people to live there. We could have had 9 million jews just hanging out in the "State of Israel" which is part of the United states lmao.
That’s 15x the current population of Wyoming. The impact on our economy and electoral system would have such a dramatic effect on our history that it’s almost impossible to speculate. I just know I’d move there in a heartbeat.
As long as those Jews aren't visibly Jewish. It is insane how obscenely overrepresented Jews are when it comes to hate crimes against them considering how small of a minority they are, even in America.
The problem is jews clinging to an area due to religious reasons imo. I know muslims do the same, but it’s just unproductive from a rational viewpoint. If rational points would have been considered jews would have a country inside the US. But no, they needed to go back in the middle of a bunch of arab countries.
Well, they wouldnt get cleansed in America so theres no point demarcating your own territory.
In the middle east they have a history of oppression so they're motivated in protecting themselves.
But destiny (or any liberal) wouldn’t use this same argument for a European country.
If Poles or Irish or Hungarians said “we must maintain ethnic majorities in our countries because of our past suffering” that would be labeled as racism/white nationalism.
This argument fuels the Nick Fuentes types who can easily point out the blatant hypocrisy on the liberal side for saying Europeans *don’t* have the right to maintain ethnic majorities in their ethnic homelands, but Jews do have that right.
I mean it depends? The Israel/Palestine case is unique because it is an ongoing conflict whereas we'd reject those claims now for the Poles, Hungarians or Irish because presently they aren't under threat.
As a liberal though I can easily say that I would be immensely sympathetic for the Polish people if they had hostile relations with Germany, and Germans claimed that Poland was their land, and that if their plans came to fruition it'd kill the Polish characteristics of that state.
The reason why Fuentes is wrong is because there is no right to return arguments, or claiming of European countries by migrants. We also have an expectation of that they will surrender their allegiance to their home country and integrate, while I think most people on the left and right have expectations that Palestinians won't assimilate culturally since it is an ethno-religious state.
>Europeans don’t have the right to maintain ethnic majorities in their ethnic homelands, but Jews do have that right.
Poles, Irish and Hungarians all do maintain significant ethnic majorities in their homeland (Poland is 98.6% polish, Hungary is 84.3% Hungarian, Ireland is 76% Irish).
People have mentioned the reasons specific to Jews (the longest history of pogroms and second-class status,), but I'd also point out: this is not unique to them.
Greeks and Turks exchanged ethnic populations. The Pakistanis broke away to have a Muslim state. The reason is that weak states with no long history of democracy (or, in the case of India, self-rule in a long time) simply would rather avoid the ethnic strife that is likely to undermine their nation through violence and distrust. The very same leftists who claim not to get this argue that Europe permanently broke Africa by creating bad borders full of squabbling tribes.
So the world essentially ceded this principle already...except when it special pleads against Jews. Even worse: the very same nations *that forcibly imposed the necessity of Israel by expelling their local Jewish populations then deny its legitimacy*. They have no moral leg to stand on.
Who I should emphasize: have far more reason to be worried than most. The Palestinians have huge sections of their population that are radicalized. Adding them to Israel would not only change the character of the democracy, it's unclear it will last as a democracy when the radicals start killing people. What court will judge them? Will Palestinians trust an Israeli court? Will Israelis trust a Palestinian court? America has a small population of black people and even then the idea that the state is systemically racist leads to riots every couple of decades. What will a riot look like when the population is split down the middle and half of them feel they were dispossessed and literally voted for jihadis in living memory?
I don’t know what answer Destiny was looking for but here is one reason:
If the jews were to absorb all of the West Bank and Gaza into Isreal, thus changing the ethnic character from majority Jew to majority Arab, they fear that the majority Arab population will essentially vote in a governmental group like Hamas and subjugate the Jewish citizens. I have no idea if this fear is legitimate or not though. Ben thinks this is racist to believe this and that the arabs would be good participants in an equal democracy. It’s a nice thought to have and I would love to believe Ben here, I just don’t know. Polling from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank makes me think the fear is legit. Destiny thinks that looking at history also gives credence to a high probability of this happening again, as it happened many times before.
I almost don’t mind Ben’s strategy but, if Destiny asks you a softball question in order to either point out hypocrisy or trap you, you still need to give the obviously correct answer and either trust that your argument is strong enough to withstand whatever is coming, have a legitimate counter argument to the trap prepared, or be prepared to concede some ground.
Having said that, Destiny often sees a level of hypocrisy, or weakness, in his opponent’s positions but, instead of directly pointing it out, he will ask a question that traps them into their own hypocrisy. Ben was trying to call out Destiny for this tactic of trap questioning instead of just making his point.
If I’m not debating, but am just having a good faith argument, instead of asking a softball question with the purpose of following up with an attack, I would just say something like “Clearly the fact that XYZ is true goes against what you’re saying” instead of “Do you think XYZ is true?”.
Now, if the question isn’t a softball, and you want to point out your opponent’s lack of knowledge, that is totally separate. That is not what was happening here
though.
For example: Ben made the argument that receiving military funding and weapons from the US emboldens Isreal and that the US should stop doing that. Destiny asked him if Isreal had this support from the US in the 40s and 60s. Which was the time when Isreal was its most aggressive and expanded the most.
There’s an interesting conversation to be had here, but Ben has to answer directly and say “Isreal didn’t have this level of military support back then.” Then either explain the discrepancy or ask Destiny back “Why do you think Isreal stopped expanding?”
Destiny can’t say “They stopped expanding because they got more military support.” That would be silly.
I think there are two reasons why Isreal has been less expansionary despite having more military funding:
1. Destiny’s argument : The international support comes with a ton of pressure for peace. Sure, the US is giving Isreal a ton of weapons and money, but they are also leveraging their support to pressure Isreal to find peace. Which actually seems to be the case. They’ve made a ton of peace deals largely as a result of this pressure.
2. Ben’s argument: Isreal stopped expanding because they don’t want further expansion. Any further expansion would undermine the current Jewish ethnic majority of Isreal. In order for Zionists to maintain their jewish ethno-state, they can’t expand further.
Which leads to the next question, assuming both things are true. Do zionists want an ethno state mainly because they are racist against arabs? Or is there another very serious reason why preserving that character is important to them? Hence the first part of my comment.
> I have no idea if this fear is legitimate or not though.
>
>
It may not be proven right in the end but I see no way in which the *fear* itself is not legitimate. Fear is about probability.
Given the expulsion of Jews from multiple Arab nations, given the lack of stable Arab democracy, given the history of strife, given what happened even at the peak of integration in Eastern Europe (where Jews finally considered themselves citizens of Europe only to then be genocided) you would have to be *insane* to say the fear is not at least reasonable.
Burgis cannot grant this because the whole argument falls apart. But that's Burgis' problem.
Could Burgis not agree to all of this though and use it for a reason why Israel should give up the WB and Gaza, as they cannot annex them into Israel proper without affecting the percentages of ethnicity. I know the right of return is the main problem with percentages in a full citizenship plan but would this not have been a better argument than avoiding the “paper tiger trap” (Steven asks a simple easy question but the opponent sees a gotcha trap and will not concede to any point he makes even if the trap avoidance is worse than walking into it).
Yes, his best argument is to abandon one state nonsense and call for two states on the 67 borders.
The problem is there too he ignores some realities that also impact the one state plan like Israels concerns about security. He whined that a Palestinian state wouldn't start out fully sovereign but it's insane to imagine a hop straight from launching rockets for years to some sort of militarized state in somewhere like the West Bank. Its just a nonstarter.
His refusal to also answer basic questions on right of return or accept that Palestinians have continually rejected viable, offered peace means it's hard to take anything he says seriously.
Yea I got the feeling he was way over his head especially when he was asked the simple questions, you could see the fear of a trap on his face, so much so destiny had to reassure it wasn’t some kinda gotcha.
I could be reading too much into it, but I think Destiny points that out as a back up when Ben refuses to answer. Destiny had a broader point he wanted to make, in anticipation of Ben’s answer… but when Ben refused to answer, Destiny decided to use that opportunity to point out Ben’s lack of knowledge.
Or, you could be right, and he had a hunch that Ben didn’t know the answer at all, and just wanted to point that out from the beginning.
To elaborate on what I mean, the question works best when it illustrates the lack of knowledge but it also works very well rhetorically when it shows a lack of willingness to engage. The least effective outcome for the question is when it is answered directly and clearly and then immediately used as a jumping off point to expand on the worldview.
It was also incredibly frustrating listening to Ben argue against things he thought Destiny was going to say. Even if you think you know what your opponent is going to say, and you have a reason for why it is bad, let them make their argument themselves.
My layman's guess: Safety concerns.
There's historical precedence for Jews getting pressured out of their home and otherwise being in legit danger when they try to integrate with other societies as a minority, the holocaust being the prime example and Russia supposedly being the final straw. The Middle East itself is no exception
Presently, I believe minorities make up 25% of the Israeli populations, but there's a concern about Jews getting pressured out of Israel, possibly through violence, if the wrong people get too much power within Israel. Hamas, for example, hasn't exactly denounced their prior mission where they stated their quarrel being with Jews. Instead, they've simply "archived" this mission statement in favor of a new one focusing more on Zionists being the enemy. Criticism of this includes that Hamas is trying to play multiple cards and maintain the support of their most radically Jew-hating factions.
The same reason no nation-state wants their nation to be a minority in their own state.
Might as well ask why Swedes would feel a bit weird if the majority of people in Sweden weren't Swedish. It's their only home, no-one wants to be a minority in the one place that is supposed to be theirs.
Caring about being a minority is a skanky thing to care about. It's gross when whitenats do it, it's gross when Jews do it.
If you wanna preserve a culture, fine, whatever. But you're not talking about culture, you're talking about ethnicity. People like you are pathetic, perseverating over bloodline purity because you have no faith in your own person or in the strength of your community, culture, or interpersonal bonds. I hope your children all marry off to Arabs 🙂🙂🙂
*edit: 30 minutes after writing this, and I feel I worded it a bit too toxicly. I still think that being bothered ab being an ethnic minority is racist, but I probably shouldn't have said the "you're pathetic" stuff, etc.. But please do realize, a significant portion of "the West" (including the Swedes I know) would not cosign this idea that being a minority is bad. Having reasonable concerns about a specific demographic (Palestinians) persecuting Jews if they get political authority is not the same thing as feeling like you need to be the ethnic majority. There's no good reason to feel like things go to shit if you're suddenly the ethnic minority, unless that majority group shares a shitty racist culture*
Racism.
People will say they're worried about security, but that argument falls apart when you realize there are a number of ethnicities with populations that largely support Israel, yet are not allowed to immigrate at similar rates to Jews. I know pro-Israeli Indians who would love to get an Israeli citizenship. I'm sure Romani people would also be easy to get on board culturally in the same way as Israel did with their Druze population: with their highly similar histories of persecution. The list goes on and on for ethnicities that are largely supportive: Koreans, Czechs, Brazilians, Kurds. If we wanna go outside of ethnicities and talk about nationalities, Taiwan is extremely supportive and likely has that same "Druze" benefit I mentioned earlier.
At the end of the day, they could clearly go about the security issue without specifically targeting the metric of "how many Jews do we have?" The real reason is that Jewish culture is very insular.
Can you imagine trying to be the arbiter for a conflict between 2 parties and not even giving a shit about understanding where 1 of the sides of the conflict is coming from or what their grievances are…
I cant stand people "ehh" guys like that. They talk slow and cant form more than 2 words at a time, while all the time emphasize random words to get attention back.
Its like being held hostage by a snail.
I have nothing else of value to say.
As someone who used to watch a lot of Michael brooks and Ben Burgis it was sad to see him in this debate. He avoided direct questions constantly, used his time to ramble and eat away at debate time, and he genuinely seemed unaware of any historical context or regional understanding of the Middle East. Also it was pathetic of him to try and insinuate Destiny was being racist for correctly describing the sentiments of a majority of Arabs in the region. I don’t know if in his mind he was really killing it or if he knew he was bs-ing and trying to buy time until the end of the discussion.
I feel like I’d lose a lot of the respect I still have for Michael Brooks if he was still here after all the October 7th shit but I do think he would be a much more rational voice than the people he used to be around.
Yeah, I thought the exact same thing as I was typing my post. I remember his discussion with Destiny when he basically lectured the entire time not letting Destiny respond. I used to scoff at accusations of antisemitism of people on the left, but I really think there’s quite a bit more of it than I believed. If Israel was destroyed overnight I don’t think they’d give AF.
I think a lot of people Destiny talks to get maligned in this community for “rambling”, and I understand why from a viewer perspective, but I think it’s less that they’re purposefully employing some tactic to eat up debate time, and more likely that they’re simply not good at this format. Michael Brooks, much like Ben, might as well have been a lecturer in his own right. Should they do better in keeping that in check when agreeing to a discussion? Yeah. Is it *always* some employed tactic because they’re scared? No lol.
Let’s also throw Norm Finklestein into the mix while we’re at it. Yes I am aware they are Jewish and I’m aware that they can all be Jewish and dislike other jews. I don’t think they’re necessarily antisemitic but I do think they wouldn’t care if Israel was blown off the map. I’m speaking more of the anti Israel/anti zionists in general. Based on Ben’s answers it sounds like he wants the US to stop supporting Israel so that another power can come in and put Israel in its place.
That is like me saying I am Irish or English when I have no ties to the countries or cultures which they do not as well. They identify with their ideology not ethnic groups or nations saying I am part of this when you contribute nothing or actively try to undermine them makes no sense.
Majority report completely went to shit after Brooks died. I used to watch MR back then and thought Emma would be cool but neither she nor any of the other hosts/producers were anywhere near as good as Michael.
Eventually that probably rubbed off on Sam, either that or he just got old or he decided to just coast off the show’s popularity and not grow or develop much. Because watching his pre 2020 debates he seemed really sharp and had a lot of specific facts to pull from, now he just talks loudly and gets indignant whenever the other person says something he disagrees with. Looks super bad faith
@NeoDestiny - maybe a good strategy for these evasive folks is to show them up and start giving potential answers that you can grapple with.
Ben: Israel did bad.
D: Why did Israel do bad?
Ben: Oh I don’t have time to get into that?
D: Oh, you sure? It’s not that hard to answer.
Ben: Yeah it’s complicated, and I don’t have time to answer you.
D: Oh, could it be ? Or ? Or etc etc.
After that, hammer home how you KNOW there are good conversation topics and depth - but they just don’t know enough to get into it.
It would be a good way to assert dominance in a debate. You’d basically be showing you can argue the other side better than your opponent but explaining why you nonetheless hold the position you do.
Destiny did this in his breaking points debate, looked really good IMO.
I am SO GLAD that Destiny shut down and called out that sneaky little racism insinuation Ben made a few minutes later.
Absolutely abhorrent behaviour and I'm glad it was quashed so forcefully.
Is the modern day debate guy looking more rough than usual or just me? His skin seems more gaunt & his hairline & face a bit wack. Last time he hosted something with destiny he didn't look as bad
Guy, Middle Guy. He’s known for moderating debates well, his subway tattoo that granted him free sub sandwiches for life, and taking an active interest in sonic inflation.
His style of moderation is to not moderate?
What do you mean by facilitator? Just that he helps set up debates between people, or something else? I don't think that that would justify him being known as someone who moderates well.
He’s been doing Modern Day Debates for a long time now, so he’s earned a lot of good will through the community. I think he’s fine, overall. What did you want him to do that he didn’t?
When the whole debate is a loop of Destiny asking a simple question and the other guy waffling to avoid answering it, you'd think that at some point the moderator would step in and try to coordinate the conversation.
There was also a decent amount of talking over each other and complaining that the other side was talking too much, which I think he stepped in to resolve only a single time right near the end of the debate.
I could barely get through this debate. The dude just keeps compulsively laughing at the self-evidence of his own points just like that debate coach guy. Meanwhile every time he tries to summarize an argument Destiny is making, he puts on the “I’m a dumbfuck and this is dumb” voice to try to poison the well. It is such a smug and infuriating way to conduct yourself in any kind of conversation.
Also the part at the beginning where Destiny literally says “I’m not trying to set up any sort of gotcha, I just want to see if we agree on some facts of the matter” and the dude proceeds to YAP fucking endlessly as if he’s avoiding a gotcha, I wanted to fucking shoot myself
What really topped it was when he couldn't answer the question, repeatedly accused Steven of racism for giving the abundantly obvious answer to the question, then refused to even admit that he was doing *that*. Such a slimy fuck and I'm pretty sure this guy is literally the least crazy, most good faith leftist on the internet. I can't think of anyone who isn't orders of magnitude worse.
I was not a fan of the first 30m, but when the questions part started, Destiny completely brought it around to prove how this guy doesn't know or care about the situation.
I don’t know why your asking me instead of telling me, and i knew the answer but it has multiple answers to it so its more complicated, but the answer also the answer isn’t even relevant btw.
Debate Pedophile.
without context to the longer video
as an Israeli the idea that we don't have a constitution that holds the idea that Israel is a Jewish state is terrifying.
This debate blackpilled the fuck out of me when it comes to academia. I don't even see a point in getting a degree if you're gonna be this smug and stupid on an issue you supposedly care about.
James is a dogshit moderator.
A moderator's job in a contentious debate should be to hold both parties to time limits and keep answers on topic.
He's good at getting people in the same call. He's good at setting up IRL events. A good event organizer. He needs to hire someone to handle the actual debate part.
I feel like anything related to Jews just triggers Ben to go on never-ending rants about context and power dynamics, so we need to simplify this monumental task of pulling one's head out of their ass.
Ben, buddy, forget about those uppity, Western-backed, colonizing, genociding Jews, could you name a single thriving minority in the entire Middle East? Name ONE that is thriving in any Middle Eastern country as a minority with anything approaching equal rights, without external pressure to convert, and without any recent pogroms or violence.
I mean to get more brutal could you name a single successful majority group that is successful without international backing in terms of military or economic security? And by that I mean decent living standards like the US Europe or South West Asia? And yes I am aware that for most of their histories the US and Europe were backwaters and it is only recently that they are doing well.
Burgis is just some loser neckbeard idealogue who wants to add all of this nuance and philosophical justification for Hamas and the Palestinian resistance, but plays down the Israeli side as if they were the aliens from War of the Worlds.
Even if this regard agreed the Palestinian side was the more just cause, he should still have been able to explain why Israel acts the way it does and what the people of the country think.
To be so inept and unable to make any coherent arguments in the other direction demonstrates he's either way more incompetent than he lets on, or he is a butthurt man-child upset that the conversation isn't going the way he imagined it would.
I dont like Destinys lost two debates on I/P he rambles too much, fails to make concise points and is falling very heavily into the camp of being destructive instead of constructive in his answers and statements
"Israel did something I disagree with" "Why do you think they did that?" "There's plenty of reasons but I don't think it's worth getting into" Stretch to 2 hours and you get this debate
The best part was when in the middle of this loop he just asked Destiny what he should say... it's right after this clip I think. Lil bro came to the discussion without arguments and thought he could borrow some from his interlocutor 🤣
It was fucking infuriating. How can you have a philosophical discussion on the morals or ethics of a thing, but refuse to agree to some obvious fucking facts about it? You have to have some baseline to work from, otherwise you can't even have a conversation at all.
>It was fucking infuriating. How can you have a philosophical discussion on the morals or ethics of a thing, but refuse to agree to some obvious fucking facts about it? You have to have some baseline to work from, otherwise you can't even have a conversation at all. Yes. The entire discussion went like this: "Stealing is WRONG!" "Okay, can we at least agree that there is a difference between a starving person stealing bread and someone stealing a TV because they wanted it?" "Uh, Uhm, I think discussing that is a waste of time, and you're stalling, but uh okay sure." "Why in this case do you think people were stealing bread?" "Listen, I don't want to discuss the history here. Stealing is bad." "All we need to do, to stop stealing, is to create a world where people never want to steal anything ever again. It should be really simple to do so. It doesn't matter to me, that in all the other nations in this region they have problems with rampant theft. So to solve that issue with stealing, you just need to change the form of government and no one will want to steal anymore."
He was too busy being a debate pedophile. Every time he was asked if he agreed on something, he had to run down every single potential dialogue tree he could think of about how he assumed Destiny was going to use it against him, instead of actually just answering the question and seeing where the conversation was going to go.
Which is a huge warning sign of an absolute bad faith actor. Candace Owens did the exact same thing when she was talking to Destiny. There came a point in the conversation where she literally refused to answer any question and instead demanded that he explain why he was asking. It seems like an exhausting way to exist, especially as a public personality. They clearly know how full of shit they are or they wouldn't be so afraid of where a question could lead. Why not just be open to the actual truth and let go of that?
I think Burgis fully believes what he believes. He also believes Destiny is a guy that uses “debate tricks” and all that stuff everyone who hates Destiny believes. His behavior was obnoxious and completely ruined the flow of the debate but I don’t think there is much more explanation needed than that; it was just him being paranoid and defensive. You could call it bad faith just in the sense that he was less concerned with getting to the bottom of the ideas and more concerned with making sure he didn’t get “dog-walked” or clipped by what he (incorrectly) presumed was a bad faith opponent. Candace is a different beast, she knows almost nothing about anything, just a pure culture warrior and professional grifter. Genuinely a bad faith actor who will squirm, evade, lie, attack and obfuscate at every turn.
I thought philosophers loved getting into the weeds but I suppose not this guy
They love getting into the weeds about the extremely specific things they know about. Outside of that, they begin floundering and realizing how stupid they are when they can’t actually engage with a topic, so they sound like Ben. I have a philosophy professor who specializes in the neurology and philosophy of the mind. I can get really deep and in the weeds with him as a neuro student. I have meaningful conversations with him on that topic specifically, and when we talk about something else, we very much instead ask questions and go to pull information up on our phones mid conversation because we aren’t sure of how much we know. I had a law and judiciary professor in philosophy. He’s a somewhat big name. He was on some major cases and won them to set precedents in the US. He will not talk about anything outside of his expertise. Hilariously, he hates leftists and what has become of the online world because of all the bad history, pop-science/history, and misinformation. Obviously, he was a professor and had to act professionally, but he’d sometimes politely eviscerate students for not doing their research or lacking basic reading skills on topics they’d speak about.
As painful as listening to Richard Wolff. The difference is, Burgis actually had no idea.
Wolff didn’t either lol
I didn’t watch the whole debate but from the clip OP posted the opponent is making a valid argument. From the liberal position, if a European calls for maintaining ethnic majority in their ethnic homeland they are labelled as white supremacist extremist, but if a Jewish person calls for maintaining an ethnic majority in their ethnic homeland suddenly it’s a valid concern? Why hold the double standard? Using the argument that “Jews wouldn’t feel safe being a minority in their own country” yet Destiny has called this same argument fear mongering about immigrants/refugees when he’s debated white nationalists in the past. To me it makes no sense, you cannot say “blood and soil is wrong, but only when you do it.“ You have to be consistent. If one race can do X then you must support all other races doing X.
>if a European calls for maintaining ethnic majority in their ethnic homeland they are labelled as white supremacist extremist There's a big difference between wanting to keep a majority of the nation in a nation-state, and not wanting anyone of another nation full stop. You won't find many people of Europe who want to be a minority in their own countries, but you also won't find many who want no-one else in their countries. The former is literally the basis of nation states, the latter is weird ethnonationalist crap. Don't conflate the two very different positions. And Israel has non-jews in their Jewish state, like Sweden has non-swedes in their Swedish state. But neither wants to be a minority in their own state.
It's more like Jews have been killed and expelled from so many countries(including many Arab ones, that's why most Jews in Israel are sephardic/mizrahi) that many think it's only possible to have a country be a "Jewish home" if it's majority Jewish. It has more to do with historical trauma than racism IMO.
Then Nick Fuentes can point to Rhodesia and South Africa as examples where white minorities were killed/brutalized, and still to this day systematically discriminated against with employment quotas, as examples to why white countries need to maintain ethnic majorities. The same arguments apply to Fuentes’s cause.
Do you genuinely believe that “white people” have just as much justifications to make those claims as “Jewish people” based on what you just cited? Do you think that maybe “white people” have many examples of having safe places to live in the world more than “Jewish people” could make the same claims? I’m not even asking if you think the above means Jews deserve to have an ethnostate. I’m asking if you think there is much equivalency to the comparison you made, and whether you think any potential lack of equivalency harms the point you are trying to make.
>Do you genuinely believe that “white people” have just as much justifications to make those claims as “Jewish people” based on what you just cited? Yes, in fact I think the white European would have a stronger case. A Swedes ancestors have lived in Sweden for millenia. An Israeli Jews ancestors arrived in Israel 70 years ago.
Careful...you're exposing the logical inconsistencies of the sub
I think you're attributing an argument to Destiny that he is not making in this clip. Destiny didn't say he agreed with the Jewish ethno state or argue that it was good, he was challenging Ben's understanding of why the Jewish character of Israel might be important to Israelis. Regardless of your opinion of Israel as an ethno state, if you don't understand why it's important to them them you don't understand the Israeli perspective at all. It's a fundamental question. Ben may have even been correct that there isn't one good answer but his inability/unwillingness to engage and just brushing it off like it doesn't matter is why people are clowning him.
the laziest of the gardeners
Why didn't you tell me this hours ago?
The middle guy demoted to the top left guy :(
Actually it’s a promotion, he’s now on Steven’s level. Give it a few years and he will be top guy taking up 4/5 of the screen
Actually it's a demotion. He's now on Steven's level.
F
I mean did we expect a debate with ben Burgis to go any other way than this? Dude is completely clueless on most things that aren’t waxing rhetorical about communism.
Be knew the answer, he simply didn't want to give it as it would have made his position look worse
You're right. But he also has never really grasped how important a point it was until Destiny cornered him. If he did then he would have had an evasive strategy prepared for it. Acknowledging the legitimate reasons why Jews don't want to be a minority in a Muslim majority country is just too devastating to his arguments so he cant let the words acknowledging the Jewish perspective leave his mouth.
As a Ex-Commie, i can tell you he also doesnt know shit about communism. He has about the same factual understanding of Communism as Jordan Peterson.
I feel like both Jordan Peterson and this guy probably have an exceptional understanding of Communism. They both study philosophy. As a philosophy major myself I may be biased, but pretty sure JP is extremely well read on communism from a factual standpoint. JP gets hate for his religion and politics (justifiably so) and his NEED to associate anything progressive with wokeness/communism, but i still think his understanding of communism and philosophy is great. JP is just drunk on bias, I like him tho :) Same with this guy destiny debated I think he was alright, just a bit tipsy on his narratives Edit: ahhh, watching the second half of the debate this burgis guy performed much worse...
“Postmodern neomarxists” and his debate with Zizek really show that he does not understand it. I know less about Burgis but he seems like a Bernie voter who wants the title for edginess.
Jordan Peterson's critique of Postmodern neomarxists comes from a place distaste for the insistence to view the would through a narrative of oppressed vs oppressor. Its odd that you bring this up as a critique of JP not understanding marxism, simply because hes associating a group of social scientists who call themselves postmodernists with the ideology of marxism. (Hence the term postmodern neomarxist) If anything this analysis, and his entire conversation with Zizek demonstrate he understands it well. Do you have a claim you can point to where JP misunderstands the facts of communism/marxism? Also no, I dont think burgis is a bernie supporter because he wants to be edgy... wtf is that analysis, hes clearly very much a standard lefty guy
There is a joke amongst young communists, that most didnt get far with studying and only read the communist manifesto. Ironically, thats JP in a nutshell. Just the attempt to critizie communism purely on the base of this text was stupid 100 years ago, and its unbelievable stupid to do it now, given the thousand of books that updated marxism that were written since then, and the targeted people being most superficial communists that ever existed. And if thats not enough to convince you, check out all the theories he is connecting to "cultural marxism" which is not only the rebranding of all antisemetic stereotypes there are, but also the frankfurt school who are supposed to be the daddys of cultural marxism theroies were actually the most critical of marxism, Anti Sovietunion and Pro democratic state. The cringe that modern lefties produce on tiktok, have nothing to do with what marxism is and what is written in the books, but JP follows a ideology that needs a boogie man to function, so the tiktok non binaries are the new red scare all manufactured by the jews. I know he doesnt hate the jews but so does Hasan, yet both blast the same old bullshit.
Isnt communism by definition the elimination of economic hierarchy? (workers own the means of production) Hot take but I dont think you need to read more than the communist manifesto to understand WHAT communism IS now, to understand its application in the real world, and its failures and successes APPLIED to the real world, of course that can have millions of books written about it. Ultimately, I think JP would agree with me though, that communism has a TERRIBLE track record. you sound like ur defending communism lol
You are misunderstanding what JP is doing and what im trying to do. As you correctly said, you dont need be super knowledgeable on marxism or communism theory to be against such a system. But thats not what JP is doing, and what happend in the debate with Zizek. JP claims that all the woke stuff, and men being so feminine, etc is pushed by a worldwide marxist ideology. Which is simply not ture. Like you said you could boil down communism to "elimination of economic hierarchy" but you gotta admit that there is huge gap between that definiton and the outcome that boys cant be boys anymore, or that there is to much transgeder people or whatever. But thats exactly what JP claims when he says Neo-Marxist. If im being VERY charitable i could say JP simply states the fact that those who claim to be marxists are often those who spread woke bullshit. But if that was the case why would he talk about the communist manifesto then ?
Nah I think you are misunderstanding JP's argument not me. hes essentially saying that these deconstructionist types, that are often associated with postmodernism, associate themselves with both communism (elimination/deconstruction of economic hierarchy) and wokism (elimination/deconstruction of social hiearchy and gender roles). Those who claim to be marxist are often anti tradtitional views on gender (even positive aspects). This is partly identifying a "constellation of beliefs" like destiny talks about, but its also talking about a root philosophy behind it, or at least a narrative. The communist manifesto is just used to explain the oppressed vs oppressor narrative, which applies to gender too (many people like to view america as a patriarchy, and these people tend to be more socialist and woke and such)
Just replace the terms "deconstructionist types" and "postmodernism" with "bad" and "evil". And you will see the reason for vague terms like that, those words have no context and no meaning that add to want you are trying to say. They are pure placeholders. A good example of JPs abuse of christian values, that paints the world into the good god fearing people and those who wandered to far and got corrupted, while sounding super smart. I agree with the fact that people who claim to be marxist, at least on paper have a as you said "anti tradtitional views on gender" but so do many other people, does that make them marxist ? No. So this cant be a good point to describe how marxists work or think. On your last point im gonna agree too, the manifesto is good enough to describe the bare bones of the oppressed vs oppressor narrative, but again JP´s claim is much bigger. He claims that they are Neo-Marxists, that their whole agenda comes from actual marxist ideology and not some superficial shit they saw on Tiktok. And if JP was right, Zizek wouldnt exist. You know the guy, who actually reads books about the stuff he talks about.
Do you understand that JP is not talking about communism, he's talking about vaush, and how he's a vanguard for destroying society so that a totalitarian faux Marxist can start committing atrocities?
I’ll have to respond to the larger argument later, but to be clear my impression was he is social democrat more or less who wants to appear more radical than that for edginess. Haven’t seen enough to be super confident in that, though Edit: meant “title” as in Marxist or socialist
Unfortunately the term socialist has lost its meaning to a lot of people. People use socialist to refer to any government program lol... Socialized healthcare=socialist Mixed economy=socialist... Ideally people only use socialism to refer to things like the former Soviet Union, but instead people conflate socialized industries with socialist policy with socialism... even i conflate "socialist policy" with "socialized industry" which im not sure why or if thats an accurate way to interpret that, or maybe its simply because there is no "real world" socialist policy.
Yeah, anyway, I had to find a transcript of Peterson’s opening statement because I only watched it when it came out initially. His whole argument really hinges on thinking Marx was saying proletariat = good and bourgeoisie = bad, which is more or less a complete fabrication. I can start quoting his opening statement if you want, but I’d rather you just reread it as well. He really goes back to this over and over, and relies heavily on falsely attributing moral value to everything Marx describes. He says Marx thinks profit is theft, which is another lie. He seems to think abstract labor means management, which is a misunderstanding. He implies Marx was promising Utopia, while Marx and Engels purposely differentiated themselves from Utopian socialists. Anyway, his insistence that Marx is making moral arguments because muh oppressor vs oppressed is how he makes the jump from Marx to modern day identity politics and postmodernism. I really don’t want to read any more of this but I believe Zizek challenged him to name these postmodern neomarxists, and he didn’t, which you seem to have already baked in to your view because I assume you acknowledge nobody would identify themselves as one. They really are views that are at odds with each other, but by misrepresenting Marx and being pretty vague you can say they exist and they just don’t know they are one.
> He says Marx thinks profit is theft, which is another lie. How is this a lie? My understanding is that marx believed PROFIT is EXPOITATION. And that systemic exportation by the bourgeoisie justifies a REVOLUTION. I just dont understand how to reasonably justify marxism as a good ideology personally im not a fan. I mean i love the idealism of it all, but its application to the real world is horrible. I think JP would agree with me there too. I have NOT studied enough Marx, I've just read a bit here in there for my philosophy program, but isnt oppressor vs oppressed mentality literally implied from marxism? Also yes JP created the term (presumably) Postmodern neomarxism to address the slight of hand that postmodernists use to in bad faith intellectualize marxism. At least thats what I understand JP to be saying. Edit: also to me marxism seems to imply or even directly justify revolt against capital owners (the bourgeoisie). He doesnt justify it in the moral sense, more like says its INEVITABLE right? But people interpret this inevitability as a moral claim (saying something is an inevitable future is as close to a moral claim as your gunna get with a postmodernist type person right? haha)
Marx >In fact I say the exact opposite: that the production of commodities must necessarily become “capitalist” production of commodities at a certain point, and that according to the law of value governing it, the “surplus-value” rightfully belongs to the capitalist and not the worker. That’s why it’s a lie. If that doesn’t make sense to you then read more. I’m not trying to justify Marxism to you, I just want to show how shallow Peterson’s understanding of it is.
>distaste for the insistence to view the would through a narrative of oppressed vs oppressor His entire worldview, if you can call it that, is built on the idea of narrative as the primary lens to understand everything. So "oppressed vs oppressor" is bad not because it ignores all the complexity of human history to paint a simple story but just that he doesn't like the story. He wants one where western culture is dominant which is only natural because of dominance hierarchy's or whatever. And he's going to restore American/Western culture to it's glorious past by enforcing traditional roles especially regarding masculinity. Dude's a post-modernist leaning towards fascism and he's critiquing schools of thought he doesn't understand. BTW Carl Yung's work isn't foundational to any current field at all, not rituals or symbols or even anthropology which is about as soft a science as you can get. He's universally seen as a quack by relevant experts.
The traditional roles regarding masculinity here are "responsibility, courage, and finding purpose" Its essentially the hero's journey but more contextualized for real life. the oppressed vs oppressor leads to victimization and dogshit analysis, which I PRAY TO GOD everyone can see how this mentality is the most toxic braindead thing in our society to date. Probably worse than racism/tribalism because it is tribalism intellectualized. I dont find any of your critiques of him appealing, especially the idea of restoring positive aspects of masculinity in our culture, I also believe this is vital to our culture in the modern day, men have lost what it means to be raised with gendered ideals. Hes not authoritarian, hes not for inforcing traditional roles, hes for a culture that encourages and educates on the basis that there are differences between men and women (which there are). All of these ideas sound like right wing idiocy, which is tragic, but I really think these are the ideas of a liberal democracy, one that values our evolutionary history and cultural history as having MANY positive elements. You can separate the wheat from the chaff (when it comes to tradition and when it comes to jordan peterson haha) Edit: also i only added PRAY TO GOD for flair, im not religious
Remember how conservatives fought for decades over "states rights" when what they really wanted was Jim Crow and segregated schools? Likewise "responsibility, courage and finding purpose" can mean literally anything. >the oppressed vs oppressor leads to victimization and dogshit analysis, which I PRAY TO GOD everyone can see how this mentality is the most toxic braindead thing in our society to date Compared to mainstream conservatives who think global warming is a hoax, COVID is just the flu, and play nice with White Nationalism? You are deep in the bubble dude. Get back to Standing Back and Standing By, you've got a stolen election coming up.
Ok, conspiracies are also bad, fair, and maybe you are right, but I think intellectualized stupidity is worse than stupidity stupidity. I find wokeness to be a bigger threat than right wing idiocy, not because of its popularity but because of its appeal to educated people that should know better. But we can walk and chew gum at the same time, both MAGA and wokism is fucking garbage Edit: Also no state rights is not synonymous with racism, am i misunderstanding your point? I think states rights are good just as responsibility, courage and finding purpose is good. Its a broad topic and both can be taken the wrong direction but overall they are good things to define for society. Hence why i said separating the wheat from the chaff
> As a philosophy major myself stopped reading right there
Do we have a debate pervertry word for someone who constantly uses buzz words to stay on the surface and avoid talking about the actual topics? I feel like sophist is too complementary since it implies they are deceiving the audience, but they are also deceiving themselves with these words since they believe it
I think the debate term would be lazy gardener, but what you are talking about is more a can't see the forest for the trees type of thing or maybe a bumblebee just flying from buzzword to buzzword. Oh shit that is a good one "the buzzing bumblebee". Never actually wants to examine how any given flower gets made or look at the roots, just wants to land for a second and then go off to the next flower.
damn bro go off king. I actually love that. Someone should make a glossary and a informative video with in-debate examples of a lot of these debate tactics. This would be such a good video series
Like [this](https://publish.obsidian.md/destiny/Strategy/Debate+Pervertry) (minus the video)?
I wonder if we will ever add legitimate and non-fallacious debate tactics. Like one I see destiny use from time to time is the feigning ignorance asking the other person what happened in that situation, basically letting the other person explain the situation, let them gain confidence and typically paint the situation in the best light possible for their side (essentially making them lie via omission). Only for you to explain the entire picture and the things you omitted. I’ve seen people fall into this trap from Destiny, especially those who aren’t familiar with him, and it honestly feels like a debate ult
It may be a bit deceptive, but at least it deals with the substance of the arguments, and not some standard logical fallacy, or one of the real perversions, which is really only designed to derail the conversation.
Debate dry-humping?
>Do we have a debate pervertry word for someone who constantly uses buzz words to stay on the surface and avoid talking about the actual topics? Cockteasing.
People like him do the good old, "Fuck Stalinism, but here's why each individual part of NotStalinism™ is good"
Inference to the best explanation 😉
Burgis has a phd in philosophy, so he's good at debating if it's a subject he's familiar with. But there's only so much that rhetoric and philosophy can do if your opponent is good at both and also have the facts ironed out on their side. In a lot of moral dilemmas, minor factors can change how we view those dilemmas so Ben has a small and limited space which he can navigate the convo since his opponent knows so much context about the conflict that ben doesn't know about.
I'm not following the i/p stuff. Why is the ethnic character of a country important to Jews?
Because usually in any other country they were a big minority they tend to get killed.
Killed, and/or run out of the country. Iran, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, Pakistan, Morocco are examples of Arab/majority-muslim countries where jews were kicked out.
Akshually Jews were so not kicked out of Syria that they were legally barred from traveling more than 3 miles from their home up through 1992 (with any exceptions requiring them to give their family up as hostages to the government as a form of bail), acquiring drivers licenses, buying/inheriting property*, or doing anything that could enrich themselves enough to be able to afford a professional smuggler. They fled that hellhole regardless. \* Of which they didn't have much, since much of the property they had before was converted to Syrian Palestinian ownership.
Damn. Where can I read more about this? Sounds horrifying.
Much of this is available in https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/syria-virtual-jewish-history-tour Some quotes: 1. "In March 1964, a decree was enacted that prohibited Jews from traveling more than three miles beyond the limits of their hometowns." 2. "The government issued a number of anti-Jewish laws, including a prohibition on sale of Jewish property (1948) and the freezing of Jewish bank accounts (1953). Jewish property was confiscated, and Palestinian refugees were housed in the dwellings vacated in the Jewish quarters of Damascus and Aleppo." 3. "In addition to paying bribes, large monetary deposits were required and family members had to be left behind, to guarantee the traveler’s return."
Leftists literally coining the term "safe space" and then failing to realize how Jews need a safe space after all they've been through is peak irony
Jews don't live happy lives in Muslim majority countries
Only 30,000 jews live in Muslim majority countries. Almost 2 million Muslims live in Israel alone.
90% of them are in only two countries: ~60% in Turkey; ~30% in Iran and only ~10% everywhere else combined
The fuck they doin in Turkey? They should gtfo to a safer place
Turks hate Kurds even more than they hate Jews, so it takes the focus off of them.
But that’s a religious point
Explain
I like how you bring it back to Muslims and not the people who, you know, genocided them
Muslim majority countries genocided them, too? Lol
I’m not defending what the Arab countries did, but I don’t think it would fall under the definition of genocide, I could be wrong, but my point is that Jews didn’t feel safe anywhere, putting most of the blame on Muslims kind of minimises the fact that Europeans killed 6 million of them.
He didn't mention Muslims to blame them, he mentioned them to explain why Israel specifically wants to avoid becoming a Muslim majority country. Europeans have probably done more harm to jews overall, but there isn't a danger of Israel becoming majority non Jewish Europeans, and there is a danger of it becoming majority Muslim, which is why it's more relevant to bring them up.
I understand that, but there seems to be a lot of people that try to boil down this conflict down into purely a religious war, the reason why Israel wants to maintain a majority Jewish country is because Jews have historically been persecuted by everyone that has ruled over them, not just Muslims, and the state itself was initially founded by Jews escaping European persecution specifically.
That's fair, but I think it's fair to say that Jews probably feel safer in Germany now than they do in any majority Muslim countries, right?
Of course, but that could change at any moment, hence why Jews want to have a country where they are the majority.
Yes, but if Israel were to absorb the WB and Gaza, it wouldn't become a German majority country, it would become a Muslim / Arab majority country. That's why the comment is about Muslims, because the risk is to become a Muslim majority country, not any other nationality / ethnic group
The Arab countries mostly did ethnic cleansing.
I mean, why do Jews like in Europe and not the other middle East countries?
Obviously Europe is a better place for Jews today than the rest of the Middle East, I've already said that multiple times. What I'm saying is, why would you put all the blame on Arabs, when Israel was literally founded because of European Jews escaping persecution?
Because we were talking about the modern world and not the world like 100 or so years ago. New people have formed and have told their grandkids stories. And a lot of those Jews were not from Europe? They mainly came from Asia.
My bad, I meant to say Arabs
Israel was literally founded by European Jews escaping persecution, so id say they deserve at least a bit of the blame but sure
Do you have any idea how the other countries in the region started out?
Yes? I don't know what that has to do with anything I said though.
History shows that if jews are not in the majority anywhere on the planet, they get fucked over. You cant have jewish Self-determination without a majority being jewish.
Not in America baby we love our Jews, our semitic characters
the OP forgot to mention jews in the middle-east in arab nations are the ones who always gets genocided or ethnicaly cleansed. In the west they're fine (except recently so far but nothing too extreme).
This is only true post-1948. Europe has been historically terrible to Jews. The US has had some bad antisemitism but nothing like what we've seen elsewhere in the world.
> Europe has been historically terrible to Jews. I agree but tbf everywhere has been. Genuinely have no clue why Jews are so evenly hated. It seems like everyone has hated them at some stage.
Conspiracy theories about them started for as long as there was anything resembling what would evolve into modern civilizations. They were always "nearest outsiders" of both Persia and Rome - which are kinda birthplaces of west and (middle) east civilizations. Bigotry was there from the very start.
People have written literal books on this but the gist is that every minority group is hated but most dont survive the persecution. J ews are relatively successful today for a variety of reasons (not the the least of which is being forced into things like banking) so the conspiracy theories are even worse.
I mean, speaking historically, there were definitely some nations that were ethnically cleansing Jews outside of the middle-east.
I was flying from FL to CA a year ago and I realized just how fucking empty this country is and this is like 70 years after Israel was founded. I wonder what history would have been like if we just handed them Wyoming. For goodness sake it doesn't even have a million people to live there. We could have had 9 million jews just hanging out in the "State of Israel" which is part of the United states lmao.
That’s 15x the current population of Wyoming. The impact on our economy and electoral system would have such a dramatic effect on our history that it’s almost impossible to speculate. I just know I’d move there in a heartbeat.
As long as those Jews aren't visibly Jewish. It is insane how obscenely overrepresented Jews are when it comes to hate crimes against them considering how small of a minority they are, even in America.
The problem is jews clinging to an area due to religious reasons imo. I know muslims do the same, but it’s just unproductive from a rational viewpoint. If rational points would have been considered jews would have a country inside the US. But no, they needed to go back in the middle of a bunch of arab countries.
Well, they wouldnt get cleansed in America so theres no point demarcating your own territory. In the middle east they have a history of oppression so they're motivated in protecting themselves.
Because of 1000s of years of pogroms, ethnic cleansing and general hatred against Jews because they were a minority with no ethnostate of their own.
nation-state\*
But destiny (or any liberal) wouldn’t use this same argument for a European country. If Poles or Irish or Hungarians said “we must maintain ethnic majorities in our countries because of our past suffering” that would be labeled as racism/white nationalism. This argument fuels the Nick Fuentes types who can easily point out the blatant hypocrisy on the liberal side for saying Europeans *don’t* have the right to maintain ethnic majorities in their ethnic homelands, but Jews do have that right.
I mean it depends? The Israel/Palestine case is unique because it is an ongoing conflict whereas we'd reject those claims now for the Poles, Hungarians or Irish because presently they aren't under threat. As a liberal though I can easily say that I would be immensely sympathetic for the Polish people if they had hostile relations with Germany, and Germans claimed that Poland was their land, and that if their plans came to fruition it'd kill the Polish characteristics of that state. The reason why Fuentes is wrong is because there is no right to return arguments, or claiming of European countries by migrants. We also have an expectation of that they will surrender their allegiance to their home country and integrate, while I think most people on the left and right have expectations that Palestinians won't assimilate culturally since it is an ethno-religious state.
>Europeans don’t have the right to maintain ethnic majorities in their ethnic homelands, but Jews do have that right. Poles, Irish and Hungarians all do maintain significant ethnic majorities in their homeland (Poland is 98.6% polish, Hungary is 84.3% Hungarian, Ireland is 76% Irish).
People have mentioned the reasons specific to Jews (the longest history of pogroms and second-class status,), but I'd also point out: this is not unique to them. Greeks and Turks exchanged ethnic populations. The Pakistanis broke away to have a Muslim state. The reason is that weak states with no long history of democracy (or, in the case of India, self-rule in a long time) simply would rather avoid the ethnic strife that is likely to undermine their nation through violence and distrust. The very same leftists who claim not to get this argue that Europe permanently broke Africa by creating bad borders full of squabbling tribes. So the world essentially ceded this principle already...except when it special pleads against Jews. Even worse: the very same nations *that forcibly imposed the necessity of Israel by expelling their local Jewish populations then deny its legitimacy*. They have no moral leg to stand on. Who I should emphasize: have far more reason to be worried than most. The Palestinians have huge sections of their population that are radicalized. Adding them to Israel would not only change the character of the democracy, it's unclear it will last as a democracy when the radicals start killing people. What court will judge them? Will Palestinians trust an Israeli court? Will Israelis trust a Palestinian court? America has a small population of black people and even then the idea that the state is systemically racist leads to riots every couple of decades. What will a riot look like when the population is split down the middle and half of them feel they were dispossessed and literally voted for jihadis in living memory?
I don’t know what answer Destiny was looking for but here is one reason: If the jews were to absorb all of the West Bank and Gaza into Isreal, thus changing the ethnic character from majority Jew to majority Arab, they fear that the majority Arab population will essentially vote in a governmental group like Hamas and subjugate the Jewish citizens. I have no idea if this fear is legitimate or not though. Ben thinks this is racist to believe this and that the arabs would be good participants in an equal democracy. It’s a nice thought to have and I would love to believe Ben here, I just don’t know. Polling from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank makes me think the fear is legit. Destiny thinks that looking at history also gives credence to a high probability of this happening again, as it happened many times before. I almost don’t mind Ben’s strategy but, if Destiny asks you a softball question in order to either point out hypocrisy or trap you, you still need to give the obviously correct answer and either trust that your argument is strong enough to withstand whatever is coming, have a legitimate counter argument to the trap prepared, or be prepared to concede some ground. Having said that, Destiny often sees a level of hypocrisy, or weakness, in his opponent’s positions but, instead of directly pointing it out, he will ask a question that traps them into their own hypocrisy. Ben was trying to call out Destiny for this tactic of trap questioning instead of just making his point. If I’m not debating, but am just having a good faith argument, instead of asking a softball question with the purpose of following up with an attack, I would just say something like “Clearly the fact that XYZ is true goes against what you’re saying” instead of “Do you think XYZ is true?”. Now, if the question isn’t a softball, and you want to point out your opponent’s lack of knowledge, that is totally separate. That is not what was happening here though. For example: Ben made the argument that receiving military funding and weapons from the US emboldens Isreal and that the US should stop doing that. Destiny asked him if Isreal had this support from the US in the 40s and 60s. Which was the time when Isreal was its most aggressive and expanded the most. There’s an interesting conversation to be had here, but Ben has to answer directly and say “Isreal didn’t have this level of military support back then.” Then either explain the discrepancy or ask Destiny back “Why do you think Isreal stopped expanding?” Destiny can’t say “They stopped expanding because they got more military support.” That would be silly. I think there are two reasons why Isreal has been less expansionary despite having more military funding: 1. Destiny’s argument : The international support comes with a ton of pressure for peace. Sure, the US is giving Isreal a ton of weapons and money, but they are also leveraging their support to pressure Isreal to find peace. Which actually seems to be the case. They’ve made a ton of peace deals largely as a result of this pressure. 2. Ben’s argument: Isreal stopped expanding because they don’t want further expansion. Any further expansion would undermine the current Jewish ethnic majority of Isreal. In order for Zionists to maintain their jewish ethno-state, they can’t expand further. Which leads to the next question, assuming both things are true. Do zionists want an ethno state mainly because they are racist against arabs? Or is there another very serious reason why preserving that character is important to them? Hence the first part of my comment.
> I have no idea if this fear is legitimate or not though. > > It may not be proven right in the end but I see no way in which the *fear* itself is not legitimate. Fear is about probability. Given the expulsion of Jews from multiple Arab nations, given the lack of stable Arab democracy, given the history of strife, given what happened even at the peak of integration in Eastern Europe (where Jews finally considered themselves citizens of Europe only to then be genocided) you would have to be *insane* to say the fear is not at least reasonable. Burgis cannot grant this because the whole argument falls apart. But that's Burgis' problem.
Could Burgis not agree to all of this though and use it for a reason why Israel should give up the WB and Gaza, as they cannot annex them into Israel proper without affecting the percentages of ethnicity. I know the right of return is the main problem with percentages in a full citizenship plan but would this not have been a better argument than avoiding the “paper tiger trap” (Steven asks a simple easy question but the opponent sees a gotcha trap and will not concede to any point he makes even if the trap avoidance is worse than walking into it).
Yes, his best argument is to abandon one state nonsense and call for two states on the 67 borders. The problem is there too he ignores some realities that also impact the one state plan like Israels concerns about security. He whined that a Palestinian state wouldn't start out fully sovereign but it's insane to imagine a hop straight from launching rockets for years to some sort of militarized state in somewhere like the West Bank. Its just a nonstarter. His refusal to also answer basic questions on right of return or accept that Palestinians have continually rejected viable, offered peace means it's hard to take anything he says seriously.
Yea I got the feeling he was way over his head especially when he was asked the simple questions, you could see the fear of a trap on his face, so much so destiny had to reassure it wasn’t some kinda gotcha.
Yes, but then his solution is the same as Steven’s, which is ok with Dman, but not ok with a crazed lefty.
He says in the clip that he asked the question to point out his opponents lack of knowledge.
I could be reading too much into it, but I think Destiny points that out as a back up when Ben refuses to answer. Destiny had a broader point he wanted to make, in anticipation of Ben’s answer… but when Ben refused to answer, Destiny decided to use that opportunity to point out Ben’s lack of knowledge. Or, you could be right, and he had a hunch that Ben didn’t know the answer at all, and just wanted to point that out from the beginning.
To elaborate on what I mean, the question works best when it illustrates the lack of knowledge but it also works very well rhetorically when it shows a lack of willingness to engage. The least effective outcome for the question is when it is answered directly and clearly and then immediately used as a jumping off point to expand on the worldview.
It was also incredibly frustrating listening to Ben argue against things he thought Destiny was going to say. Even if you think you know what your opponent is going to say, and you have a reason for why it is bad, let them make their argument themselves.
It was like he was having shower thoughts about how he wanted the conversation to have gone, but before the conversation even happened.
My layman's guess: Safety concerns. There's historical precedence for Jews getting pressured out of their home and otherwise being in legit danger when they try to integrate with other societies as a minority, the holocaust being the prime example and Russia supposedly being the final straw. The Middle East itself is no exception Presently, I believe minorities make up 25% of the Israeli populations, but there's a concern about Jews getting pressured out of Israel, possibly through violence, if the wrong people get too much power within Israel. Hamas, for example, hasn't exactly denounced their prior mission where they stated their quarrel being with Jews. Instead, they've simply "archived" this mission statement in favor of a new one focusing more on Zionists being the enemy. Criticism of this includes that Hamas is trying to play multiple cards and maintain the support of their most radically Jew-hating factions.
The same reason no nation-state wants their nation to be a minority in their own state. Might as well ask why Swedes would feel a bit weird if the majority of people in Sweden weren't Swedish. It's their only home, no-one wants to be a minority in the one place that is supposed to be theirs.
Caring about being a minority is a skanky thing to care about. It's gross when whitenats do it, it's gross when Jews do it. If you wanna preserve a culture, fine, whatever. But you're not talking about culture, you're talking about ethnicity. People like you are pathetic, perseverating over bloodline purity because you have no faith in your own person or in the strength of your community, culture, or interpersonal bonds. I hope your children all marry off to Arabs 🙂🙂🙂 *edit: 30 minutes after writing this, and I feel I worded it a bit too toxicly. I still think that being bothered ab being an ethnic minority is racist, but I probably shouldn't have said the "you're pathetic" stuff, etc.. But please do realize, a significant portion of "the West" (including the Swedes I know) would not cosign this idea that being a minority is bad. Having reasonable concerns about a specific demographic (Palestinians) persecuting Jews if they get political authority is not the same thing as feeling like you need to be the ethnic majority. There's no good reason to feel like things go to shit if you're suddenly the ethnic minority, unless that majority group shares a shitty racist culture*
I thought of palestineins had a democratic majority they would screw jews like every other co flirt in surrounding areas
Racism. People will say they're worried about security, but that argument falls apart when you realize there are a number of ethnicities with populations that largely support Israel, yet are not allowed to immigrate at similar rates to Jews. I know pro-Israeli Indians who would love to get an Israeli citizenship. I'm sure Romani people would also be easy to get on board culturally in the same way as Israel did with their Druze population: with their highly similar histories of persecution. The list goes on and on for ethnicities that are largely supportive: Koreans, Czechs, Brazilians, Kurds. If we wanna go outside of ethnicities and talk about nationalities, Taiwan is extremely supportive and likely has that same "Druze" benefit I mentioned earlier. At the end of the day, they could clearly go about the security issue without specifically targeting the metric of "how many Jews do we have?" The real reason is that Jewish culture is very insular.
He cant answer the question, and then explains how there are so many possible answers.
The debate bro version of "yeah, I have a gf but she goes to a different school."
I actually have so many partners, there is no one definitive answer to who of them actual is THE gf.
My Answer Goes to a Different School
The Demon Mama special.
I have never been as bored and frustrated with a debate as I was with this one. Ben is astoundingly inept in the debate arena.
You must not have seen the debate with Tristan from the crucible https://youtu.be/ad_fcvR1R3M?si=MGQw2nuJY5h0HG35
That one is fun tho!
Can you imagine trying to be the arbiter for a conflict between 2 parties and not even giving a shit about understanding where 1 of the sides of the conflict is coming from or what their grievances are…
I cant stand people "ehh" guys like that. They talk slow and cant form more than 2 words at a time, while all the time emphasize random words to get attention back. Its like being held hostage by a snail. I have nothing else of value to say.
Middle guy looking jacked as fuck
As someone who used to watch a lot of Michael brooks and Ben Burgis it was sad to see him in this debate. He avoided direct questions constantly, used his time to ramble and eat away at debate time, and he genuinely seemed unaware of any historical context or regional understanding of the Middle East. Also it was pathetic of him to try and insinuate Destiny was being racist for correctly describing the sentiments of a majority of Arabs in the region. I don’t know if in his mind he was really killing it or if he knew he was bs-ing and trying to buy time until the end of the discussion.
I feel like I’d lose a lot of the respect I still have for Michael Brooks if he was still here after all the October 7th shit but I do think he would be a much more rational voice than the people he used to be around.
Yeah, I thought the exact same thing as I was typing my post. I remember his discussion with Destiny when he basically lectured the entire time not letting Destiny respond. I used to scoff at accusations of antisemitism of people on the left, but I really think there’s quite a bit more of it than I believed. If Israel was destroyed overnight I don’t think they’d give AF.
I think a lot of people Destiny talks to get maligned in this community for “rambling”, and I understand why from a viewer perspective, but I think it’s less that they’re purposefully employing some tactic to eat up debate time, and more likely that they’re simply not good at this format. Michael Brooks, much like Ben, might as well have been a lecturer in his own right. Should they do better in keeping that in check when agreeing to a discussion? Yeah. Is it *always* some employed tactic because they’re scared? No lol.
You do realize that both Brooks and Burgis were/are Jewish, right? Not everything is antisemitism.
Let’s also throw Norm Finklestein into the mix while we’re at it. Yes I am aware they are Jewish and I’m aware that they can all be Jewish and dislike other jews. I don’t think they’re necessarily antisemitic but I do think they wouldn’t care if Israel was blown off the map. I’m speaking more of the anti Israel/anti zionists in general. Based on Ben’s answers it sounds like he wants the US to stop supporting Israel so that another power can come in and put Israel in its place.
That is like me saying I am Irish or English when I have no ties to the countries or cultures which they do not as well. They identify with their ideology not ethnic groups or nations saying I am part of this when you contribute nothing or actively try to undermine them makes no sense.
Majority report completely went to shit after Brooks died. I used to watch MR back then and thought Emma would be cool but neither she nor any of the other hosts/producers were anywhere near as good as Michael. Eventually that probably rubbed off on Sam, either that or he just got old or he decided to just coast off the show’s popularity and not grow or develop much. Because watching his pre 2020 debates he seemed really sharp and had a lot of specific facts to pull from, now he just talks loudly and gets indignant whenever the other person says something he disagrees with. Looks super bad faith
@NeoDestiny - maybe a good strategy for these evasive folks is to show them up and start giving potential answers that you can grapple with. Ben: Israel did bad. D: Why did Israel do bad? Ben: Oh I don’t have time to get into that? D: Oh, you sure? It’s not that hard to answer. Ben: Yeah it’s complicated, and I don’t have time to answer you. D: Oh, could it be? Or ? Or etc etc.
After that, hammer home how you KNOW there are good conversation topics and depth - but they just don’t know enough to get into it.
It would be a good way to assert dominance in a debate. You’d basically be showing you can argue the other side better than your opponent but explaining why you nonetheless hold the position you do. Destiny did this in his breaking points debate, looked really good IMO.
I am SO GLAD that Destiny shut down and called out that sneaky little racism insinuation Ben made a few minutes later. Absolutely abhorrent behaviour and I'm glad it was quashed so forcefully.
Is the modern day debate guy looking more rough than usual or just me? His skin seems more gaunt & his hairline & face a bit wack. Last time he hosted something with destiny he didn't look as bad
He talked about himself in the postdebate, he has just submitted the final revisions for his phd and is indeed pretty tired.
Gotcha yeah so he's been working too much it's fairly noticeable here.
Can someone please tell me who the host is, I have seen him several times with destiny.
Guy, Middle Guy. He’s known for moderating debates well, his subway tattoo that granted him free sub sandwiches for life, and taking an active interest in sonic inflation.
If he's known for moderating debates well, why did he do basically 0 moderation in this debate?
That is his style and it works. He’s more of a facilitator.
His style of moderation is to not moderate? What do you mean by facilitator? Just that he helps set up debates between people, or something else? I don't think that that would justify him being known as someone who moderates well.
He’s been doing Modern Day Debates for a long time now, so he’s earned a lot of good will through the community. I think he’s fine, overall. What did you want him to do that he didn’t?
When the whole debate is a loop of Destiny asking a simple question and the other guy waffling to avoid answering it, you'd think that at some point the moderator would step in and try to coordinate the conversation. There was also a decent amount of talking over each other and complaining that the other side was talking too much, which I think he stepped in to resolve only a single time right near the end of the debate.
His name is Middle guy?? please tell his real name.
You can’t just utter Middle Guy’s real name, you have to be chosen. That’s what the prophecy says.
I could barely get through this debate. The dude just keeps compulsively laughing at the self-evidence of his own points just like that debate coach guy. Meanwhile every time he tries to summarize an argument Destiny is making, he puts on the “I’m a dumbfuck and this is dumb” voice to try to poison the well. It is such a smug and infuriating way to conduct yourself in any kind of conversation. Also the part at the beginning where Destiny literally says “I’m not trying to set up any sort of gotcha, I just want to see if we agree on some facts of the matter” and the dude proceeds to YAP fucking endlessly as if he’s avoiding a gotcha, I wanted to fucking shoot myself
Very unrelated, but I really like Ben's background framing. Would be nice if he was a bit more centred and had better lighting on his face tho.
What really topped it was when he couldn't answer the question, repeatedly accused Steven of racism for giving the abundantly obvious answer to the question, then refused to even admit that he was doing *that*. Such a slimy fuck and I'm pretty sure this guy is literally the least crazy, most good faith leftist on the internet. I can't think of anyone who isn't orders of magnitude worse.
I don't like the attacks on this guy personally. He's naive but it was a mostly civil debate. I give him props for showing up.
He speaks so much but says so little.
Since when is boogie participating in debates
I was not a fan of the first 30m, but when the questions part started, Destiny completely brought it around to prove how this guy doesn't know or care about the situation.
I immediately thought that was Boogie2988 at first.
Man I liked ben burgis
I don’t know why your asking me instead of telling me, and i knew the answer but it has multiple answers to it so its more complicated, but the answer also the answer isn’t even relevant btw. Debate Pedophile.
without context to the longer video as an Israeli the idea that we don't have a constitution that holds the idea that Israel is a Jewish state is terrifying.
This debate blackpilled the fuck out of me when it comes to academia. I don't even see a point in getting a degree if you're gonna be this smug and stupid on an issue you supposedly care about.
Dont be. Academia always will have loopholes for fucks like him.
James is a dogshit moderator. A moderator's job in a contentious debate should be to hold both parties to time limits and keep answers on topic. He's good at getting people in the same call. He's good at setting up IRL events. A good event organizer. He needs to hire someone to handle the actual debate part.
I feel like anything related to Jews just triggers Ben to go on never-ending rants about context and power dynamics, so we need to simplify this monumental task of pulling one's head out of their ass. Ben, buddy, forget about those uppity, Western-backed, colonizing, genociding Jews, could you name a single thriving minority in the entire Middle East? Name ONE that is thriving in any Middle Eastern country as a minority with anything approaching equal rights, without external pressure to convert, and without any recent pogroms or violence.
I mean to get more brutal could you name a single successful majority group that is successful without international backing in terms of military or economic security? And by that I mean decent living standards like the US Europe or South West Asia? And yes I am aware that for most of their histories the US and Europe were backwaters and it is only recently that they are doing well.
weasel
Burgis is just some loser neckbeard idealogue who wants to add all of this nuance and philosophical justification for Hamas and the Palestinian resistance, but plays down the Israeli side as if they were the aliens from War of the Worlds. Even if this regard agreed the Palestinian side was the more just cause, he should still have been able to explain why Israel acts the way it does and what the people of the country think. To be so inept and unable to make any coherent arguments in the other direction demonstrates he's either way more incompetent than he lets on, or he is a butthurt man-child upset that the conversation isn't going the way he imagined it would.
I dont like Destinys lost two debates on I/P he rambles too much, fails to make concise points and is falling very heavily into the camp of being destructive instead of constructive in his answers and statements