The media environment morphs with dizzying speed year after year, and the rise of political streamers is just the latest arc of the digital age. How do we explain the rise of streamers in the context of rising inequality and atomization? And what do we make of the popularity of many such streamers among a predominately male audience? Popular Twitch streamer and libertarian socialist Ian ‘Vaush’ Kochinski joins Taya Graham and Stephen Janis for a special discussion.

Studio Production / Post-Production: David Hebden

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Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Taya Graham:

Hello, everyone. My name is Taya Graham, and welcome back to The Inequality Watch, a show where we examine how corporate elites manufacture inequality, and weaponize it against us. Why do we call the show the Inequality Watch? Well, it’s for a pretty simple reason. There is no greater existential threat to our supposed democracy, or life on this planet, than the unjust enrichment of the few at the expense of the rest of us.

This extreme and unprecedented wealth leads to an unhealthy imbalance of power and opportunity. The result is an economic and political system warped by the naked theft of both our political and physical resources on a vibrant planet that should belong to all of us, but instead, ends up in the hands of a corrupt few. Part of the reason that we can and do report on this is because we’re independent media, right, Stephen?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. The tentacles of inequality run deep and my mainstream media counterparts often have to answer to them. Fortunately for us at The Real News, we don’t. So we can hopefully give you actual truth and objective reality.

Taya Graham:

You’re right, Stephen. The mainstream media often avoids challenging these powerful interests. No, not individual politicians, but the real power, the dark money that warps our political processes. Where do you turn? Where do you go to find news, information, and commentary that’s untainted by establishment politics and corporate interests? Well, could a video game streaming service be the next frontier of a new political movement? Could young progressives be shaping future policy positions while playing Dark Souls or Baldur’s Gate?

Well, that’s actually a distinct possibility. And why? Well, partly because of the work of my next guest. His name is Ian Kochinski, but he’s better known as Vaush, and he’s at the vanguard of what’s commonly called the Debate Bro Movement. His work is why we are taking a slightly different approach for today’s show. We’re starting on a series of reports on new media, and investigating a cultural phenomena that he is a part of.

It’s a sphere of fierce political debate, where some of the youngest voters go to learn and discuss the best policies and politics to save and prosper our nation. Where is this gladiators’ arena? Well, although I discovered it on YouTube, it initially evolved on Twitch. What is Twitch? Well, for the uninitiated, like myself, it’s primarily a streaming website for gamers, where they share their love of eSports. But like most social media, it has evolved to reflect the concerns of our day. In an era of a global pandemic, a worldwide economic crisis, and a surge in social unrest and political division, finding a space to break down and understand the shifting sands of today’s politics is happening more and more in these online communities, and are needed now more than ever.

To understand these new political communities, and the movements they’re fostering, I delved into what’s known as the realm of the Debate Bros. Young folks, often, but not exclusively men, who step into the arena to fight for their ideals in politics, philosophy, and ethics. To understand this world better, of course, I had to call in one of the reigning champions, Vaush.

Vaush:

I can’t precisely do that. I’d have to run you through specific scenarios in which it fails to make my argument.

Stephen Janis:

What’s your political ascription?

Vaush:

I’d say left liberal, for the most part.

Stephen Janis:

Damn. All right. Why are you punching left, comrade? What’s up?

Destiny:

All I’m saying is that one of the biggest ways you can control your budget is to control the place that you live in. And that sometimes if you’re a poor person, sometimes moving to a different area can be a good way of managing your budget. That’s all I’m saying. Is there anything there that you disagree with?

Vaush:

Yeah, that sometimes the costs associated with moving are substantial and they can prevent people from moving, especially if you’re disabled or have a family.

Destiny:

Okay.

Vaush:

Yeah, substantially so. You do realize the entire video that I have just watched, of yours, is a screed of arguments you would’ve argued against two years ago? Some of these arguments are riddled with survivorship bias, some of them sound very similar to arguments [inaudible 00:03:53].

Destiny:

You’re going way over course. So if you’re like a fucking disabled war veteran with a family of 27 or whatever, and you [inaudible 00:03:58]-

Vaush:

No, no, no, no, no. If you’re a regular, one of the many Americans who lives paycheck to paycheck or can’t afford a $300 emergency, not if you’re a disabled war veteran with 87 children who [inaudible 00:04:10].

Destiny:

If you can’t afford anything in your life, then how are you going to affording your current rent?

Vaush:

What? Because moving is an additional cost, because you added to the existing cost.

Destiny:

[inaudible 00:04:16] and you’d be saving money after moving, you’d move to someplace cheaper.

Vaush:

You don’t know. Destiny, you don’t know anything about me.

Destiny:

[inaudible 00:04:23]. Mr. Mom and Dad paid… Mr. Mommy and Daddy paid for your school. I promise you I know more than you about this. [inaudible 00:04:27].

Vaush:

Then respond to the arguments rather than characterizing what I have to say.

The landlord can’t just walk away unless he’s able to sell the property. He is tied to that property. The renter is not so much wait.

Stephen Janis:

As a homeowner, again, I don’t have a problem with homeowner and I don’t have a problem with property management, I have a problem with landlords.

Vaush:

You don’t have to rent.

Stephen Janis:

Wait, wait. What can you do? Wait. What’s the alternative between renting and owning a house?

Vaush:

No, I’m saying the alternative to being a renter is to buy a property.

Stephen Janis:

So that’s what I was saying. The only way out of this exploitative system is to have an enormous amount of money that most people don’t have access to. You should look up Portugal and their drug policies. Freedom makes societies better, just a better place to live for everyone.

Taya Graham:

Well, figuratively punching Nazis or admonishing impractical or intractable leftists, Vaush is a libertarian socialist. His edgy humor and no holds bards fights for his ideals often leave him somewhat alienated from his leftist comrades, feared and despised by the alt-right, but still beloved by his audience of over half a million subscribers combined. Please welcome to this episode of the Inequality Watch Vaush.

Vaush:

Hello.

Taya Graham:

Vaush, it’s great to have you. Thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis:

Welcome to our show.

Taya Graham:

How did you carve out this particular niche? How did you start streaming gaming and debating? Can you walk me through it? How did it go from just playing video games and chatting to this very substantial political debate?

Vaush:

Well, I’ve liked live-streaming as a format for about as long as it’s existed technologically and since basically its inception. Initially it was mostly a gaming thing. I think that live-streaming mostly started out with Korean eSports players, broadcasting like StarCraft matches, going way back. But very, very quickly, it was evident to a lot of people, this was a medium that was pretty revolutionary. The ability for a person to interact in real time with an audience was pretty unmatched in basically any other mass media format. So invariably it was going to become a medium for political discussion, and I wanted in on that.

I think that there’s something very authentic and engaging about being able to do this in a very live quick, easy format. We’re entering an era of populism. More and more so people are distrustful and discontented with who they see as suited politicians, the class of politicians. And live-streaming is innately, if not authentic, at the very least, somewhat populous because you have to be there live, you have to respond and engage live. It’s disarming, it’s personable, and I think it’s endemic to the era. So I’m happy to be here.

Taya Graham:

How would you describe what you do? I would categorize you as part of a new leftist media ecosystem, but how would you describe your work and its goals?

Vaush:

I have a tendency to play down what I do. After all, it is largely live-streaming and YouTubing, it’s not anywhere near as rote and professional as, I guess, what a lot of people who believe what I believe would’ve done in the past. But really it’s just the modern version of pamphleteering or running radio shows, in a day-to-Day sense practically. I mean, at my computer right now, it’s a very informal job with very low professional standards, which I like, both because it’s incredibly personally convenient and also because I think it’s better representative of what it is we’re trying to do. It does away with a lot of ostentatiousness and respectability politics that are otherwise really common to entry level political engagement.

Not having to deal with that, being able to just talk about what I want just to sit here and engage freely, I like that, and I think the audience likes it too. I think it breaks down what would otherwise be a uncomfortable barrier of professionalism.

Stephen Janis:

Did I make a mistake by wearing a tie to this interview, or should I take my tie off at this point?

Vaush:

I think you look great in it personally.

Stephen Janis:

Okay, thanks.

Taya Graham:

You need to break down those barriers. You know what? I have to say though, I have found your conversations with both American and Canadian Nazis fascinating. Let’s take a look at a clip.

Vaush:

Walk over here. Holy shit, you’re losing it. Just move on with the white nationalist ethnostate thing. So let’s say, the moral argument would be that I don’t think it’s okay to say that a person can’t live in a neighborhood or country because of their race. That would be my argument.

Speaker 1:

It’s fighting against the thought that in X amount of years, whites are going to go extinct. And we perhaps, and again, this is imaginative, there’s so much overlapping with societal, cultural, moral claim. I think it would benefit the people of America to have some separation, have some breathing there.

Vaush:

How would it benefit us? How do I benefit from this?

Speaker 1:

There’s going to be less right wing voters in the voting demographics, in the electoral. So right away, you’re going to be better situated to win elections for the left. I know you’re not necessarily a Biden supporter.

Vaush:

Sure.

Speaker 1:

And as a nice guy, white nationalist, I favor secession over civil war and eternal fighting.

Vaush:

If we’re talking pragmatics though, then the easiest thing that I could do is grant you territory in the heartland of America, starve you out with the blockade, deny you airspace in the surrounding area, wait for you all to starve, retake my territory, and now I have 1 million less fascists in my country. If we’re talking pragmatics, the easiest thing that I could do would not be to your benefit. You’re asking to be left alone, which is not something that I’d be willing to do purely because it benefits my voting demographics. If you’re making that argument, why do you deserve this? What’s so wrong with living in America?

Taya Graham:

So what I’ve noticed is that you really take the time to tease out their belief systems and then challenge them. What benefit do you think this brings to your audience?

Vaush:

Well, I think this is something that is very particular to live-streaming. Far right politics has always been about dog whistles and euphemisms. You can’t just go online or I guess in any format really, and just scream the N-word. I guess you can, but it’s not very politically effective. Usually you have to bury it under a bunch of associative issues. Donald Trump represented the death of many euphemisms, but even in his case, there is still a layer of civility and mutual respectability he has to upkeep. The case with live-streaming is that very often people who represent far right values can’t actually keep it in that well. It’s very difficult for them, I almost sympathize, to accurately reflect and describe their politics in a way that doesn’t completely give the game away. So you have to tease out those values, you don’t want to argue what they want to argue because what they want to argue is a substitute for what they actually believe.

It’s like getting into, if you could analogize it back to the 1960s, getting into a big argument about, I don’t know, forced busing, or school rights, or something, when in reality you’re talking about race. You want to focus on what people are actually thinking about, otherwise you’re just shadow-boxing and you don’t want to do that.

Stephen Janis:

I’ve noticed Vaush in your comment section, even in the way just watching your videos, that a lot of times you’re in the process of deradicalizing young men. Can you talk about that process? Because it seems so potent and we’ll talk about more about the right radicalization process. But how do you go about that? How do you approach that? Because it’s so hard, I think as people get programmed on YouTube, how do you kind of confront that, or otherwise try to help people with that?

Vaush:

Well, I think that people fall down those pipelines really quickly these days. Maybe they always have, but it’s more visible now than ever.

Stephen Janis:

I agree.

Vaush:

It simplifies, and it’s weird too, because you think, you just casually like a 14-year-old boy in high school, it’s like, “Here’s my Nazi phase,” or whatever. It’s surreal. I don’t like it. I don’t like the fact that that’s what we deal with, but it’s deliberate, it’s targeted. Steve Bannon spoke extensively about his efforts to reach out to sexually insecure young men and convince them that far right politics were the answer to the issues, like the incel problem.

This is targeted. Deradicalizing, trying to show people that maybe they shouldn’t be 14-year-old Nazis or whatever, at any age or position they have to be at, it’s vital. There is a tendency with some left-leaning people to write-off some groups as lost, that there are some groups of people like, “Why bother with them?” And while I don’t think disproportionate time and energy should be spent, I don’t think we should all commit ourselves entirely to the project of fixing this one white boy or whatever. At the very least, it’s something worth thinking about. And the fact that we keep seeing these recurring cycles of reactionary thought propagated by people appealing to young men, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, clearly this is something worth attention. We don’t want to be caught unawares here.

Stephen Janis:

What do you think makes young men so vulnerable to this? Taya and I always talk about this sentence that he started watching YouTube videos and it never ends well.

Taya Graham:

Exactly.

Stephen Janis:

What do you think makes young men so vulnerable to this kind of… I don’t want to say propaganda, but this type of line of thinking that puts them down the rabbit holes that you’re trying to pull them out of?

Vaush:

Honestly, I think it’s just sexual insecurity. Often unwarranted sexual insecurity, oftentimes held by young men who have not even been old enough… They haven’t been alive long enough to have any real reasons to be sexually insecure. I think that fascism tends to stem from that. Even if you go back to 120-

Stephen Janis:

That’s deep.

Vaush:

Like the Jim Crow days, right? These propagated myths of white insecurity against Black men. What would they do-

Taya Graham:

That’s a good point.

Vaush:

The lynchings they did. There would be castration, accusations of rape or sexual assault. There’s this fear of impotence, it seems, that’s reflected in a lot of this propagandizing, and young people are just really insecure. They’re pretty vulnerable to that just by virtue of being young and stupid. It’s like a messy subject, but it’s worth paying attention to.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, because you had Senator Josh Holly writing a book on masculinity, and you see polls that say that young men tend to be less liberal than young women. It really seems like the right has said, “If we can profit, or if we can somehow exploit that security you’re talking about we can build a larger coalition of young men who will vote for us.” Is that what you see happening with people like Josh Hawley going, saying, “I’m going to define masculinity.”

Vaush:

Yeah, for sure. The right is very, very, very worried about young people because young people are so disproportionately liberal. Look at Vivek Ramaswamy talking about raising the voting age to 25 or whatever. And the demographics show this, young people will be the death of the Republican Party unless something changes, and they know that. So how do you convince these people? Well, in an age of populism and distrust, young people aren’t going to be moved over with these bow tie libertarian arguments anymore. The Ben Shapiro era of young people being motivated by some snobby intellectualism or pseudo intellectualism, I don’t think that’s as prominent anymore.

Ben Shapiro gets picked on by his other daily wild cohorts quite often, the more openly fascist ones. I think now it’s all about the big guns. It’s insecurity, racial politics, sexual politics, get them young when they’re stupid and easy to give narratives to. “That girl you liked didn’t give you any attention? That’s actually because feminism has ruined modern women. You notice that a cool Black guy who plays basketball, he’s getting a lot of attention, you’re not? That’s because racial politics promoted by the left, which is actually promoted by Jews, is convincing young women that they need to be more like…” Shit like that, you know? It sounds crazy, but that is legitimately the narrative that gets pushed in a lot of cases. And 14 year olds are dumb, so that’s a demographic you can push for.

Taya Graham:

And I just wanted to follow up by saying that there are certain neoconservative reactionaries, influencers even, that have gone out of their way to capture the hearts and minds of these young men. And I notice that often in your conversations with… You have a very male audience in general, I hope I’m not misspeaking, it seems like you have a lot of men in your audience-

Vaush:

For sure.

Taya Graham:

… you give them advice and insights into dating, and how to be a good ally, and how to talk to women, what consent is, how to get enthusiastic consent. Why do you think one of the extreme right wing’s goals is hooking young men in the area of dating and relationships, and what do you think the left could or should be doing?

Vaush:

I think that people, especially young people, are very self-interested when it comes to the ideologies they hop on board with. If a good pitch is given to them, they’re more likely to go with it. It’s what benefits them. The left has strong messages of empowerment for young women. If you’re a young woman and you listen to the left attitude on what young woman are and should be, you’re going to hear a lot about freedom, you’re going to hear a lot about empowerment. It’s not always good all the time, but I think for the most part, there’s a pretty strong positive message. Whereas with men, there’s a mixed narrative of it’s not that men are bad, it’s that let’s be real here, men are dangerous. And on the left, that gets promoted often. And if you’re like a 14-year-old boy and you hear that, that’s not really… You hear a message from the left and it’s like, “well, what should I do to be a left-leaning person? How should I be a progressive?”

And it’s like, “Well, you have to check your privilege.” It’s like, that’s not bad. I’m not saying that’s a bad message. I’m saying that it’s a bad onboarding message for your average guy. So the right comes in and they’re like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, you don’t need to change a thing. In fact, you are being held back by the media, by the narrative, by feminists.” They give a much more compelling message. So I try to match that. I think there are lots of ways to promote empowerment and confidence without playing into those tropes.

Stephen Janis:

How do you really craft a message to young men that’s an alternative to the idea of just check your privilege. Do you have any methodology you use or any sort of examples or just if you don’t mind exploring that, because it’s fascinating.

Vaush:

Yeah. Well, I think a lot of it is just about the appropriate ways to channel confidence. A lot of the advice people give for being confident is not that, it’s actually an advice for covering up insecurity. You see this a lot with Andrew Tate style stuff where it’s like, the solution to being insecure is actually to be this monstrous force where you demand or intimidate or otherwise project strength onto others to compensate for a genuine lack of competence in yourself. And the left response, which I think is often very lacking, is, “No, no, no, no, no. Don’t do any of that. In fact, be smaller, take up less space. If you’re a guy, you already take up a lot of space, so take up less space.” And again, is there value to that? To an extent, sure, we can talk about it, but bad messaging. I think that promoting healthy confidence, the idea that the left shouldn’t be afraid of talking about stuff like dating advice, they’re like, “Well, what is it?”

Realistically, give dating advice to a young guy. A lot of left-leaning people can’t because it gets locked up in this performative PSA talk about the importance of being respectful and not being a misogynist or whatever, which is good, but it’s not holistic, it’s not the whole message, and it doesn’t teach people everything they need to know. They miss out on a lot. I guess that’s the main thing I try to focus on. What slips in the gaps? What insecurities does the right pretend to fix and can you actually fix them? What evidence really touches on that?

Taya Graham:

That’s really interesting, and I actually hate to veer the conversation from the direction we were taking, but you made a statement recently that really stood out to me, and I think it was in a conversation with a documentary filmmaker working on a piece about the Seven Mountains Christian Project. And you said What we need to focus on is not necessarily critiquing Democrats, or liberals, or progressives, but fighting the fascist impulse in our country. And I took that to mean essentially that there can be common ground found with Republicans, or Democrats, or libertarians, or moderates, but that the fascist impulse would co-opt everything we cherish. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

Vaush:

Yeah. Ultimately, from a left-leaning perspective, if fascism wins, it’s over. It’s done. We see this happen in other countries, there’s no two words about it, they’ll kill us. They will kill us. We’ll all be in mass graves. By we, I mean any kind of remotely left-leaning figure, any visible queer sexual minorities, these groups are done. So their victory cannot happen. I think that there are good and bad ways to do coalition building against that. The bad way is what the Democrats want you to do, which is this, “The Republicans are really bad and they’re so bad that you can’t criticize us, because we’re so much better than them. So fall in the line because we’re the best option you have, and if you criticize us, you’re actually helping them.” And I think that this is the very cynical way that liberals try to placate progressive or socialist critiques of their political strategies in the face of fascism.

The good way is, I think, more of a tactical alliance. What can liberals help on specifically and at what point is undermining them to a more progressive and actually beneficial? I think that’s a really difficult thread to weave. It’s really difficult to find a good balance there. And the frustration I have, I guess, is that it seems like a lot of people just can’t have that conversation. There are people who are very ideologically motivated to despise the Democrats to the point where they downplay the threat fascist pose. And then there are people who think that the fascists aren’t really that much of a threat, so it’s unnecessary to oppose the Democrats meaningfully for that reason. It’s such a mess.

And you see flavors of this all over the left’s face, people argue amongst themselves constantly. I personally side with anything in terms of coalition building is justifiable if it means keeping the fascist from winning, and as long as that need has been met, it’s free game. Any dissident behavior outside of that purview is acceptable, but you can’t compromise the fascism thing. Because, man, it’s like with Biden, right? I don’t want Biden to be the democratic front-runner for 2024. I’m not happy about that, but he is. That’s a fact. And I don’t think Trump should win. So you do what you can.

Stephen Janis:

What do you think is the root of the fascist impulse in this country? Because we grapple this a lot in our coverage of policing across the country, but what’s the root, why is fascism so hard to root out in this country? Why does it seem to be so stubborn?

Vaush:

I think that in a way, fascism is like politics without politics, or politics by other means. It’s a way of supplanting political thought in favor of a frenzy drive that is of course political, it’s fully political, but it’s a way of masking those broader intentions. I think that Republicans are fastidiously pro-corporate. They’re more pro-corporate than Dems are, on average, though, of course, both are corporate parties.

Stephen Janis:

True.

Vaush:

And I think that as is often the case with reactionary pro-corporate parties, the Republicans realize that people are getting less and less amenable to trickle down economic bullshit, because nobody believes that crap anymore. Even Republicans don’t really. The voters, no one buys that. So how do you get people to vote Republican if all the economic arguments are bunk, completely discredited? Well, you have to get them the reactionary angle. But if you go too far down the reactionary angle, people stop promoting reactionary politics for the sake of corporate politics, and instead go the other direction where they promote pro-corporate politics secondarily, and the reactionary impulse becomes the norm.

And that’s, I think, where the tipping point towards fascism really hits on. And right now you take a look at the discourse with the far right in this country, and it’s insane, genuinely psychotic every day. It’s like, “What’s the new culture war talking point? Let me watch this episode of Sesame Street because a prominent senator called it the downfall of the West or something. Here’s a clothing company that released an item for the binding trans men’s breasts or something. Now I need to do research to find out whether or not this person was substantiated and say that it was actually designed by a pedophile in 1973.” It is so disconnected from reality that it’s farcical, but it’s unfortunately also the battlefield and the right has always been better at setting the stage for that. So we just have to deal with it and learn the arguments.

Stephen Janis:

And also, as Taya said at the beginning of the show, we talked about inequality, the show deals with inequality, and how much is the inequality in our country, which makes so many things impossible, like healthcare for all and other things, how much is that driving the simplistic solutions of fascism? You’re saying, “The country can’t take care of me.” We were just talking about how Narcan spent seven or eight years not being easily accessible because of the greed of the company. And when you see a system fail like that, doesn’t that make it easier to make the fascist argument in some ways?

Vaush:

Well, I think people respond aggressively to the idea that something is wrong, but people are very susceptible to bad narratives as to what it actually is. Not to say the average voter is stupid, I would never say that, but the average voter is very, very, very susceptible to narrative. People respond to storytelling more than they do anything else. Nothing else even comes close. You can talk as much as you want about why inflation happens or whatever, you better sell that as a story. And in the case of the current economic crisis, we saw what happened to Germany after their economic crisis, we know how this can be manipulated and how it can be weaponized. Things are wrong. Things are going poorly. The economy is ostensibly doing well right now in terms of the raw numbers, GDP growth and blah, blah, but your average American voter is feeling the purse strings tightened substantially.

And when people feel things are wrong, they will accept any explanation for why that is, no matter how absurd or incredulous it may seem. And the current narrative being promoted loudest by the right is that this is all trans people, immigrants, Democrats, China, something, anything, everything all at once, it doesn’t really matter. As long as people are riled up, then they’ll buy it and that’s all they need.

Taya Graham:

This is actually a question I probably should have asked you at the very beginning of the interview, but you define yourself as a libertarian socialist, am I correct?

Vaush:

Yes.

Taya Graham:

Could you explain what that is? And follow up to that, do you think Americans are ready to embrace socialism?

Stephen Janis:

It means a Bernie Sanders supporters like to smoke pot, I guess.

Vaush:

Libertarianism was originally considered a leftist ideology, the term-

Stephen Janis:

That’s wild.

Vaush:

… was used by proper socialists. Obviously things have taken a bit of a turn with regards to how it gets perceived. I think that American libertarians, right libertarians, actually bragged about how effective they had been in shifting the meaning and use of the term, which I’m personally very frustrated by, but that’s life.

Taya Graham:

Understandably.

Vaush:

What I mean by that, functionally, in my opinion, all socialism is libertarian, but fundamentally it’s just freedom oriented socialism. When Marx originally wrote on socialism, he wrote about it in terms of freedom, not equality. He felt that equality was a natural… Or at least approximate equality, was a natural byproduct of freedom. And the freedom that he laid out was the freedom of, of course, the proletariat from bourgeois control, the freedom to belong to a class which was not being subjugated by the interests of another class. I think that people often get tied up when they talk about socialism, they talk about the USSR, they talk about China. I hate these countries. I do not believe in them. I don’t stand by them. I think that socialism, as a project, is better represented by your average American worker frustrated with the fact that they have no control over their workplace than any people’s council in some ostensibly socialist country.

Stephen Janis:

How do you think your format, the platforms you use, inform just how you approach these problems in this kind of debate? How does it change… It’s interesting, because you said it’s a populous platform. How does it inform how you discuss things with your audience, debate your audience, and even interact with your audience in terms of some of the de-radicalization things you talked about? How important is that?

Vaush:

I think it’s essential, in large part because, as you mentioned earlier, I try to touch on personal advice quite often, and some of the advice that I try to hit on most fastidiously would be like rhetorical advice. A lot of the people in my audience are queer, a lot of them are young. I am fully sympathetic to the struggles of a young person trying to carve out their identity in a world that is growing more hostile to them. So the rhetorical advice, how do you argue with your parents that offend your identity? I know that sounds trivial, but for a lot of people that’s incredibly meaningful.

Stuff like that is really difficult to deliver on in a prerecorded format because it’s potentially dishonest. All the rhetorical advice in the world, prerecorded and scripted, you can make anything or any one sound good. I have to sound good in the stream, and I often don’t, of course, I gaff constantly. But I think that learning how to deal with that too is also part of the process. It’s a more holistic and honest kind of rhetorical advice, and I think that that just could not be done in any other format. I’m delighted to exist in a time where this medium also exists. I don’t know how I could do this otherwise.

Taya Graham:

I was curious what you think are the possible political next steps for our country, because I’ve been thinking about the recent concerted push for criminal justice reform, and labor solidarity, and gender equity, and you mentioned there’s a populous movement occurring, and then there’s been an exceptional conservative backlash manifesting culturally and in our legislature. So I guess my question would be what do you think the future of our country looks like or what would you like it to look?

Vaush:

Well, it seems like the Republicans have a timeline. This will get more difficult for them as time goes on, because Biden has appointed a lot of judges, which will make it really difficult for them to win in legal battles to disrupt the democratic process. And young people who are very left-leaning proportional to other generations are going to vote with more and more certainty over time. They have a limited window of time with which to do their big play. They can attempt to big play, and if they succeed, then we lose and are dead. If they don’t succeed, I think that they will make themselves politically irrelevant for two generations at least. It’s very risk reward for them, I feel. I think that the big struggle from our perspective, what we need to focus on is providing the counter narrative. People are fed up with the way the system is right now.

They’re disillusioned. They’re in many cases, quite hopeless, and Democrats on their own are almost completely incapable of assuaging these fears. Biden doesn’t represent a change to the status quo. Biden represents a… I’ll admit, more competent than I expected. He’s done stuff that I didn’t expect, like with the NLRB rulings, but all the same, status quo politics. He can do good, but he’s doing good within a status quo framework, and that does not assuage people’s fears. Populists, left-leaning people, socialists, progressives, whatever, whatever flavor they’re coming at it from, have to guide the party in a responsible direction, and I want them to do so while carving out power for themselves. This isn’t about making Biden stronger, this is about making us stronger, flying under the wing as it were, until we’re capable of fronting a meaningful electoral challenge. Outside electoral, there’s tons we can do, but that’s complicated and often quite frustrating.

Stephen Janis:

It is interesting because I was just thinking as a reporter, you talked about storytelling, and this is not a question, but one of the things that’s drilled into us as reporters is storytelling, storytelling, storytelling, unwrap a narrative, iterative writing, all that stuff is one of our main things we’re trained on. So it’s good to hear that you still think there’s power in that because I think there really is. And speaking of that, what’s the media diet that you think some of the people you’re dealing with who are most difficult to bring out of the rabbit hole, what is their media diet? Are they watching Fox News or are they just getting everything from YouTube? What is it that’s setting the tone or the narrative, so to speak, that you’re having to confront in your discussions online?

Vaush:

I think they’re mostly getting this information from the internet. I think that Fox News is, at this time, really only of relevance to people who have already been captured by it. You have internet articles from places like The Daily Caller of Breitbart, which confirm preexisting biases. But I think for a lot of people, especially young people, the kind of people who would have a chance of chancing upon my content, it’s really just about being lonely and young, a little stupid, as young people are, very susceptible to narratives that confirm their preexisting biases. They’re looking for something to make them feel smart and different, because all young people are. And many of them stumble onto spaces that have been cultivated specifically for that purpose, to bring them over, to bring them over to the right. And once they fall into those spaces, and it could be anything, 4chan’s a pretty common one, but it could be anything.

They form friends and those friends confirm their biases further. And as things get further and further to the right, more and more radical, sometimes they want to leave, but they can’t because now they’re afraid they’re not going to be able to make friends outside of this group anymore. They have a feeling that what they’re doing is wrong, or maybe things have gone too far. They didn’t expect it to go this way, but what can they do? If they try to just join in with the left or whatever, not only would they not be able to socialize good along, they wouldn’t be accepted. They’d be treated like a criminal, thought criminal, they’d be branded.

This is true to an extent, but breaking this cycle is absolutely critical. Giving space where people can say, “Well, maybe I don’t agree with you entirely, but look, let’s laugh at this together. Let’s share some kind of humanity in our agreement on this issue, maybe.” Stuff like that. I try to be real, even with the people who I disagree with strongly. I hope this is self-evident for my content, but I don’t like Nazis. I’m not fond of them. Their political project just doesn’t speak to me. But having talked to and around a decent number of them, I try to keep the message known, “You may be horrible now, but maybe one day you won’t be. And if you ever aren’t, I’ll still be here.”

Stephen Janis:

What happens during that transformation? You probably had people who were once Nazis who might have relinquished that idea, if it even happens at all. What’s it like in that process, in that discussion? That’s so deeply personal and so I think problematic. What happens? Is there a moment where they say, “Oh my God, I was wrong,” or is it just you get into a confrontation with them and maybe two months later they slowly edge out of it? Is it like an epiphany or is it just slowly, literally iteratively easing them out of a rabbit hole, so to speak? It’s just fascinating.

Vaush:

I am glad you asked. I actually just got an email a couple of days ago from a person who I debated two, three years ago, who asked me to de-list a video because they had completely deconverted, and it just filled them with shame to see themselves arguing like that.

Taya Graham:

That’s amazing.

Vaush:

Which I did. God, touching my heartstrings there, right?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, sure.

Vaush:

People almost never change their minds on the spot. It’s almost always you plant a seed at most, and it takes time for it to grow into real dissatisfaction. In my experience, at least from what I’ve heard from other people, usually what happens is that they feel more confirmed in their beliefs than ever after you directly argue with them. But if things go well, you give them something to think about. Maybe they see something happen in their own movement that I paid attention to and called out, and they see it and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, it was like he said,” or whatever. They don’t really care, but they’re more primed to notice things that I pointed out. And over time it builds on them. And almost always this coincides with them finding a new social space, either graduating from high school to college or college into work.

They get away from old people and try to meet with new people. And the confrontation of, “With this new circle of friends, I just can’t make jokes about Black people anymore. What the fuck?” And then, I know that sounds dumb, but usually it’s like, if you tell a joke, problematic or otherwise, and people laugh, you are biologically primed to feel good in having made that joke. And if they don’t, the opposite. And then sometimes I get an email and they say, “Thank you so much for this or that.” Now I don’t think this is a super high conversion rate process or whatever. I don’t know if it’s one in 20, or one in 10, I have no way of knowing, but I’d like to believe, I’d hope that for every person who does email me a lot don’t, and a lot of people just quietly improve and go about their lives. Thinking that at least makes me feel better about what I do.

Stephen Janis:

Do you get a lot of criticism for being so open? Because there’s a lot of pressure, “Don’t platform this person because they’re a Nazi, or they disagree with us.” Do you get a lot of pushback? Because I really like the way you say, “We got to open, we got to talk to people. We can’t just reject people because we don’t agree with them.” I think that’s fundamental to journalism or anything that I’ve ever done in my life. But do you get pushback for that? Do people say, “You shouldn’t be talking to these people, you shouldn’t be platforming them”?

Vaush:

Yeah, it happens. There are people on the left who are just fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of any kind of platforming of or rehabilitation of people who belong to the far right. I think that’s very misguided, personally. I think that it’s very misguided. I think that if you give up on the idea of being able to deradicalize or convert people you’ve given up on the project itself. The right never gave up on it, certainly, the right constantly tries to bring people over no matter how futile it might be. I think that a lot of people are very justifiably worried that what I do or what I represent could be some weakening of the left. “Who cares if we let Nazis into our spaces? Whatever, man, you’re being so woke scoldy by not letting them in. What’s wrong with you?”

And while I don’t think there’s no legitimacy to that argument, I think that it’s not only possible, but absolutely vital that a good way of bringing people on board be found. And so far, I feel like it works. In this case, my community does not have a reactionary bent to it. Very, very rarely there are people in my community who clearly bring too much of their old selves into it, and usually it’s just a matter of time, like a month, and they soften up. It’s just unlearning habits. It takes time.

Taya Graham:

Something you mentioned is that the young people that are watching YouTube or watching Twitch, they’re not just turning away from traditional sources of media, but they probably weren’t even engaged with them at all. But going to these new forms of media, whether it’s YouTube or Twitch, doesn’t it open the door for kind of like a cult of personality, or maybe even an algorithmic bubble that traps people into a downward spiral? If you had to analyze some of the pluses and pitfalls of this new media ecosystem, what do you think they are?

Vaush:

Well, I would certainly agree. There is definitely a severe risk of people developing a parasocial relationships. And I think that as a creator, you have to be responsible with mitigating that. I think to a certain extent it’s completely unavoidable. After all, performatively distancing yourself from other people by claiming that it’s parasocial and irresponsible is itself a way of making people like you. There’s no way to completely ward yourself off from that, and live-streaming itself is very susceptible to this, just because again, it’s live, I’m right there. The immediacy gives a much stronger impression of intimacy for some people. This has, in many cases, negative consequences, in some cases, positive consequences, when it comes to promoting a sense of community and in-group. I think that it’s a compensated for subject, largely because so much discussion has been had on parasocial relationships in the space. If nothing else, it makes me feel like people are taking into account, I guess I should say. It’s not something that I feel people sleepwalk into. There’s enough discussion of it that it’s warded off a little bit.

Taya Graham:

If YouTube and Twitch, or a reduction of establishment aesthetic of MSN, do you think there’s something unique in the way these platforms build rapport that can really challenge mainstream media? What do you think are the benefits of the parasocial relationship between a content creator and a viewer?

Vaush:

I think that it’s not so much the Parasocial relationship itself as it is the authenticity and direct line of communication that can often lead to parasocial relationships. They’re inextricable. People develop parasocial relationships with TV and radio and movie stars, and to much lower extents, of course, because it’s not that immediate feedback, but to some extent. And the degree to which it can be mitigated is largely a project of personal responsibility from the creator side of things to get the benefits though, there obvious benefits would be like, “Well, it makes people like and subscribe.” Which yeah, okay, sure, right, of course. But in a more meaningful social sense, I think the real benefit is just giving people a more personable sense of the value of being engaged with this kind of political thought.

It’s not just some distant form of entertainment, it’s not just some casual infotainment topic video that you watch for 15 minutes. It’s like an ongoing human project. And when I’m sitting at the computer streaming, like they’re sitting there too, we are, potentially at least, equally engaged in that belief. And I think there’s something powerful about that, assuming it’s handled correctly. If nothing else, I do know that I have quite a large number of people in my community who have been inspired to go out and protest, or canvas, or phone bank, or something. And I’d like to believe that it’s helped by the perceived immediacy of the platform.

Taya Graham:

I’m approaching this space from a position of a reporter. I’m a journalist, and I’m looking at this as if I’m investigating a phenomena of this online sphere of political theorizing and debate, and you’re a player in this arena. And yet I was told that even as a reporter, I could cost my media organization YouTube channel subscribers and receive blowback. And so I thought about this, but I’m a journalist and I present information and ideas, and I think that the people who watch this deserve to decide for themselves what they think and that I shouldn’t pre-make a decision for them on what they can consume. But I have to ask you, why do you think you’re considered so controversial? Why do you think I was warned away from speaking to you?

Vaush:

Well, I think a lot of it is an inevitable side product of the whole Debate Bro thing. You have to be somewhat abrasive to be good at debate, you can’t avoid it. It lends towards negative attitudes and impressions of one’s personality, which that’s fine. I’m not going to complain about it. I lean into it. It’s fine. A lot of it is I get in fights with people in the left pretty often. I disagree strongly with the attitudes and beliefs of many other people who are left-leaning, not for what I would consider their left-leaning positions, but usually on arguments concerning practicality, pragmatism, what actually can be done, what should we do. To infight with leftists is the most leftist thing one can do. I stand by this fully. This is a testament to the sincerity of my belief.

Stephen Janis:

It is very true.

Taya Graham:

Very true.

Vaush:

In my experience legitimately, it is like the grifters and the insincere types who try to completely avoid conflict with others because they don’t have any real beliefs. So they are unmotivated to directly confront others in that which they believe. Not to say that anyone in particular, just generally speaking, conflict to an extent is good, but I’d like to believe that people-

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, that’s what William Blake said. I’m sorry.

Vaush:

Yeah..

Stephen Janis:

William Blake said-

Vaush:

I agree.

Stephen Janis:

… “No progress without contrarianism,” or whatever, or conflict. Sorry.

Vaush:

Marx was writing, he was arguing with Bakunin back in his day. This has always been happening. I hope that, and maybe not everyone would agree with the extent to which I do this personally, but I would hope that everyone could agree, whether they like me personally or not, that we’re all part of the same team and that there is a broader project. Whatever arguments I might have, say there’s a person discussing some particular element of Black or trans advocacy issues, and I’m like, “Well, I don’t think that’s practical,” or, “I don’t think this works,” or whatever. Whatever disagreements exist in that context, they’re infinitesimally small compared to, again, what’ll happen to us if the other side wins. Very scaled.

Stephen Janis:

Just in terms of fascism is when disagreement ends, that’s the idea of fascism. We’re not going to disagree, we’re just going going to agree on power being pretty much serving itself. So a healthy sign of an ecosystem is that the people are willing to disagree. And one of the things you brought up, pragmatism, which is interesting, and Taya was talking to me about this, is that people actually do go out and phone bank and do things based upon your conversations or some of the debates or some of the things you urge people to do. This actually plays out in the actual tactile world, correct?

Vaush:

Yeah, I have seen it a good amount, and it’s incredibly heartening to see. A lot of it is like baseline incremental stuff, like help Joe Biden win. And again, how enthusiastic am I for Joe Biden, what he needs to win over Trump, and you get people who are excited about that kind of stuff, you can get them excited about other stuff, protests. You can get them involved in say, White House staff positions, hypothetically. You can get them onboarding and providing insight to people with actual power. And it all starts with the enthusiasm, that ground game is something that the Republicans are never going to be able to match ever. They don’t have the young people and the most energetic defenders of their beliefs are… I don’t know, wine moms and Fox News grandparents. The energy just isn’t present in that context.

Taya Graham:

I like wine Moms.

Vaush:

We have that advantage. You know what I mean though? There’s the PTA mom type [inaudible 00:47:50].

Taya Graham:

No, I’m just kidding.

Stephen Janis:

Before I turn this back to Taya, I just have to ask you one question because we’ve talked about this. How graver threat do you think there is democracy coming up in 2024? Is it like level green, yellow, red, remember the old terrorism thing? How heightened are we in terms of the actual literal threat to democracy looking into 2024, in your opinion?

Vaush:

I think it’s pretty bad. I don’t think it’s as bad as I would’ve thought it would be if you asked me this question in 2021 or 2022. I think that Joe Biden has done some stuff that indicates that he’s willing to put it all on the table, like the NLRB ruling. He just yesterday signed a treatise of worker rights protections with Lula Da Silva of Brazil, which is… Will it be like a LARP? Will it be real? I don’t know, but it looks good, I think. There’s some stuff he can point to that might help him. I don’t think Donald Trump is going to do as well in the election as the polls project that he will. I think that the polls are incredibly wrong on this one.

Stephen Janis:

I agree.

Vaush:

Speaking outside the methodology itself for polling bias, and ignoring the fact that there are very, very credible reasons to believe he’s not going to be able to ditch the prison bars on this one. He’s gotten himself in quite a lot of trouble. I think that the odds favor Joe Biden for the election. The real question is, are we going to see more Jan 6 nonsense? Are we going to see extra electoral efforts in subverting the results of the election? And I don’t know. Certainly election security is going to be tighter this time around. I still worry. It does concern me a lot. It’s one of those, they only have to win once kind of deals.

Stephen Janis:

That’s very true.

Taya Graham:

That’s interesting that you brought up that Biden is really the primary alternative because there are people suggesting they won’t vote, or they’re going to vote third party because they’re fundamentally disappointed with what the parties are offering. How would you respond to folks who are feeling that way that say they don’t want to vote or they’re considering making their vote a third party vote?

Vaush:

Look, I’m fully sympathetic to frustration with the system as it exists, but if you will, I would like you to consider the plight of the American Nazi. The American Nazi, popular as they were back in the 1930s, has not been so popular ever since World War II. There are many people in America, not a huge amount, hopefully, but many who just legitimately sympathized with the Nazi party up to and through World War II and have had to stay quiet for a wide variety of reasons since. Now, what have they had to do to get power? There have been attempts at making American Nazi parties to be open advocates for their beliefs and what’s happened every single time? Nothing. Because they’re so detestable to the average person, thank God, they can’t get anything off the ground. The Ku Klux Klan is not politically relevant anymore.

Where do we see these Nazis now? Well, the most effective ones are staffers in the DeSantis and Donald Trump presidential campaigns. It’s not a joke. DeSantis had to fire multiple Nazis from his campaign team, one of which posted a video of him and Florida State Guard marching towards a southern grad, the Nazi Black son. So what have Nazis done? Radicals. Now, are we comparable to Nazis? In reality, no. In terms of the American imagination, we’re both radicals, we need to act as radicals with understanding that our politics are considered radical by many. What have they done to succeed? Well, they stayed quiet. They knew when to use their power, and they kept under the wing of legitimate political organizations waiting for their chance to do something. I understand the sympathy to go hop in with the third party, but you are so misguided if you think that that would do anything other than, I don’t know, signal discontent, and who cares?

Do you think the DNC cares when voters are discontented? Do you think the DNC cares about voter apathy? Voter apathy isn’t a challenge to the system. That is the system. I encourage people to think of solutions to this dilemma that aren’t so ineffective, that they essentially just replicate the processes by which voter suppression has been taking place for the past half century. Voter apathy, the deliberate sequestering and suppression of votes, nothing feels like it matters. Cornel West isn’t going to change that because he can’t change anything, because he can’t win. So what can we do? That’s the real question.

Stephen Janis:

Getting to our last two questions, one of them is just, when people watch your content, what do you want them to take away from it? How do you want them to think about you as a person in this space, and what do you want them to take away from what you’re doing?

Vaush:

Well, I consider myself an advocate. I hope that most people on the left, whether they like or dislike me, and both are fine, people have a right to feel one way or the other, I certainly dislike many people in the space, that we’re all working towards the same shared project. A courtesy that I will often offer other people, even when I disagree with them, if they’re on the left, or maybe say they’re a YouTuber, or if they have a personal beef with me, there’s some big protracted disagreement, usually what I try to do is say, “I don’t really care for this person, but I think their content’s good. I think what they’re doing is good, so let’s focus on that.” There’s value to be found, even outside personal disagreement, because that so often is what it comes down to, lunch table politics. Do you get along with this person? If so, their politics are great. If not, then varying from hesitance to outright condemnation.

We have to rise above that. We have to be strategic. We have to understand that the left is not a social space, it’s a shared political space. And we have to keep our hearts open to the potential for other people to change. Because if we can’t do that, then we’re seeding the point.

Taya Graham:

You know what? Actually, you somewhat answered my last question because I was debating with myself whether or not to even ask you this, because there seemed to be, just from my own perusal of YouTube, a conflict between video essays and streamers, and in particular debate streamers. I know infighting on the left is not a new concept, but this seems really divisive and actually destructive, because it’s such a small space with such an important responsibility. Or am I reading too much into this?

Vaush:

No, I agree. I think that there are people who think that what I do is boorish and dangerous, and it invites negative elements into the left. I disagree with this strongly. I think that debate, just like a carefully cultivated video essay, is just as capable of being dishonest, sincere, informative, worthless, irresponsible. There are so many ways that it can trend. Debate is selectively useful. People often point out, “Well, how often do you actually change minds?” Rarely directly. Indirectly it can be great, but the same can be said of a video essay. Show an average Nazi a bread tube essay, strap them… Clockwork Orange style, strap them to a chair, tie their eyeballs open or whatever. What are you going to get from that? Maybe down the line they’ll question some of the things they believe, but immediately you’re going to get the same results that I get, which is contention and fire and fury.

And I think that we have to acknowledge that that’s part of the process. We can’t wall ourselves off. That’s the main thing I guess I’d warn about really, it’s a lot of people seem to think that the best way out of this problem, and problems there are, is walling yourself off containing a closed safe space, not to do the conservative safe space hyperbole or whatever. Like trying to insulate one’s political space from the outside world. And as a consequence of that, you leave yourself blind to the world. You can’t make any real changes in an environment like that. You always have to be reaching out.

Stephen Janis:

I agree with that.

Taya Graham:

Vaush, I just want to thank you so much-

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

… for taking the time to speak with us and to share your insights of being a content creator and a debater in the space. We really appreciate it. Content creators, whether they’re video essayists, or debaters, or historians, or journalists, they have an incredible responsibility. And I think the most important thing that those with the power to engage others can do, especially with the younger generations, is more than just bring them accurate information. The job, perhaps even more importantly, is to teach critical thinking skills, and how to spot logical fallacies, and to interrogate and stand up for their own belief systems. And although Vaush is contentious, controversial in his humor, and some folks even disagree with the very nature of his format, I think it’s inarguable that he has helped galvanize the generation to analyze their belief systems and challenge the worldviews they’re presented with skepticism.

But if you have a different opinion, feel free to share it with me. I’m always willing to learn more. And after all, that’s what the comment section is for. And just like with my police accountability reporting where I’m willing to speak with cop watchers and citizen journalists. I hope that by reaching out to a variety of independence in our media ecosystem, we can build some solidarity and some consensus on how to really make people’s lives better. And in doing so, truly make our country great. My name is Taya Graham with my co-host Stephen Janis, thank you for joining me for this Inequality Watch.

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