UPPER TIERS BLOG: LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT

Happy Sunday. New video’s doing well – by our standards anyway – so that’s pleasant. All moving forwards nicely.

First, a warning: skip this if you’d rather just hear me talk about Beanus. Sorry. This is kind of political, but just where I’m at right now.

With these being the first videos we’ve done about WW2, I was kind of expecting getting Awful People popping up in the comments. And so it has been. A lot of anti-semitism and holocaust deniers. I’ve been playing whack-a-mole with them – not blocking them but hiding them from the channel. 

We had one calling us the real Nazis, and reiterating the well-spread nonsense that Hitler was actually left-wing, because I compared the decor of Castle Ksiaz to Trump Tower. I left that one in there, because it was so stupid.

And today, an ALL-CAPS idiot has decided to report us for “propaganda, hate speech, and misinformation” for using AI in the latest one. There’s no AI in these videos, apart from one tiny bit to animate a drawing I did of Die Glocke. The rest is stock footage. I gave myself RSI drawing those graphics, for pity’s sake! 

DENY, DENY, DENY

A lot of the comments were telling me to watch a widely-discredited Holocaust-denying conspiracy documentary. We were getting so many that I ended up blocking the title of the film, so they couldn’t post about it. 

It isn’t so much shocking that we’re getting these comments as it is just plain scary. 

This is why I got upset at The Wolf’s Lair, I think – because we were there in Poland against the backdrop of what’s going on in the world today. That emboldening of extremism, the misinformation, the authoritarianism, the shocking lack of empathy. 

I’m not the only person to say this is the most dangerous time in history that I can remember – more so even than the Cold War. It genuinely feels like good has lost a war against evil, and I don’t know where this leads. I fear for us all, and especially my grandchildren.

It's why, I think, we’ve such a fascination with WW2 – not just because it was the first modern war, but because it happened in Europe. A liberal democracy – populated with people just like ourselves - was able to slide into fascism through ego, violence, control of the media, misinformation… It’s no surprise that Mussolini – the founder of fascism – had been a journalist. He used the media of the time, in the same way that social media is being used today.

Of course, the far-right would say that's evidence that all journalists are propagandists, rather than see how it applies to today's social media landscape, but I digress.

WW2 and the rise of Nazism happened because by the time people realised what was going on it was all too late. And it seems to be happening again, right before our eyes, and nobody seems to be trying to stop it.

Beyond burning Teslas, where’s the actual resistance? Beyond Bernie Sanders and AoC, where are the voices calling this out for what it is? Governments in the West are all so scared of losing the economic benefits and security guarantees of being allied with America that they’re walking on eggshells. 

I doubt extreme views ever went anywhere, but now people are brave enough to share them – because the most powerful people in the world have their backs – and so they’ve spread faster than ever. What are we all to do?

THE OTHER END

The original ending of the second Poland video was very different. It was a bit of a primal scream by me – I was feeling very overwhelmed, upset, angry – about where we are now, and how we can’t let it happen again.

I don’t think I’d have changed anyone’s mind with it, and it didn’t feel directly relevant to the story we were telling, but at the same time… it was unfocused, and maybe just my emotions getting the better of me. So, we chose to cut it.

I’ve always felt pretty apolitical. I’ve never really subscribed to any ideology, or any one party. I’ve generally voted Liberal or Labour, but I never really felt confident or that well-informed about my choices. My views have always been driven by what I can see, by commonalities between us all, by what is right for ordinary people, and the fact that the Tory policies – more often than not – seemed to be just that little be crueller. 

And that’s not even a criticism of those who 'self-identify' as Tories. Some of my oldest friends are Tories; one was literally a Conservative councillor. Imagine that! Being friends with someone who has different opinions to you on things!

SYSTEM SHOCK

The system is something I’ve become increasingly disillusioned by – the more I learn about the role of Britain and America in the world over the past 80 years – heck, since forever – the less I feel I was born into a system with any sort of moral high ground. We’re as bad as the rest of them.

I mean, not as bad as the Nazis, obviously, but when you see what Churchill and Roosevelt were willing to overlook to do a deal with the Soviets, when you see what – as we touched upon in the latest video – the Americans were prepared to ignore for Operation Paperclip, when you add up the death toll from wars and invasions caused by Britain and the USA over the past 80 years, and you compare it to the wars started by Russia and China in the same period…

I dunno. I just don't know what to think.

I’ve just lost all faith that anybody in power – anywhere – has any sort of moral integrity, let alone have the best interests of their citizens in mind. These huge powers drop bombs on anyone, ending hundreds of thousands of lives without batting an eyelid, and for what?!

But then… the rhetoric from America’s current administration, and the language you see on social media, is another level of dangerous, and it feels reckless, willing to upset the equilibrium – but not in a way that’s going to lead to a safer, more equal, more empathic, world. It’s the rule of the few at the expense of the many - at any cost.

THE GAMER IN THE COALMINE

I do think that the so-called ‘culture wars’ of the past decade have been a big factor in creating an atmosphere where extremism could flourish. Gamergate was the canary in the coal mine – it drew the battlelines that have only become more entrenched over time – and it doesn’t feel like we’ve learned anything. Social media seems to have broken the brains of people.

I mean, this week a YouTuber/Instagrammer/TikTokker that Sanja and I love – a guy called Garron Noone – who mostly just posts funny little videos, was subject to a pretty full-on attempt to get him cancelled, because he posted a very reasonable, level-headed, video mentioning immigration in Ireland. 

It wasn’t inflammatory – he just said pretty much what I said in the video I did last year following the riots, that if you ignore what ordinary people are saying, and try to shut them down, you just push them towards extremists and racism, and doing things like trying to overturn an election.

Garron got such a backlash that he’s now deleted a bunch of his videos, and retreated from social media. So, another voiced silenced by the far left’s overreaction and lack of nuance, which plays into the far-right narrative that everyone on the left is anti-free speech. You expose them to misinformation when you do that, you make them vulnerable to manipulation by the powerful. And on it goes, around and around. 

This isn’t the only reason we are where we are, but it’s part of it. I’m not blaming the left, but I’ve written before how I got frustrated that ‘centrism’ – another bloody label I reject, because… I mean, even I don’t know what I am – came to be a way to batter anyone who didn’t 100% adhere to one side or another. 

Most of the grief I got for expressing - quote-unquote - "centrist" views in the past came from those on the left. These were the people I thought I was more closely aligned with, the ones I used to think were more sane and balanced, and kinder.

Have I felt less kinship with the left since then? Frankly, yes.

KICK-PUNCH

Years ago, I got a lot of shit on what was then Twitter for saying that maybe if we go around literally punching the far-right in the face it’s just going to embolden them. I was suggesting we should maybe, y'know, try to be better than them, and not use the sort of violent tactics that will be used by them as a propaganda victory.

Even a couple of months ago I saw a comment by somebody saying they’d stopped following me “years ago” because I'd “sympathised with a Nazi”. I didn’t sympathise with the fucking Nazi who got punched! I just didn’t want us ending up here! Now because of that we actually do have to punch them, before it’s too late, which it might already be. 

That Nazi-punch - captured on camera - did nothing other than make a lot of people think that the left were awful people, even if the guy did have it coming. Those on the left lost their minds, sharing and resharing, and cheering it, while - again - it just pushed more of those ordinary people, the ones you really should be trying to win over, towards the other side, and allowed the far-right to double-down on their beliefs.

The far-right simply portrayed themselves as victims in the situation - a tactic both sides have come to use more and more - with great success.

Then there was the way that corporations - let's use Disney as an example - kowtowed to the political winds. Like when Disney fired Gina Carano from The Mandalorian from some fairly innocuous posts. Yes, they weren't terribly well-informed, I didn't agree with them, but she was trying to make a point, albeit clumsily, and it was hardly neo-Nazi. It didn't seem like a firing offence. The outcry which led to that firing was another huge own goal - again, fuelling the far-right, giving them another brick in the platform they've now constructed. For Disney it was merely a business decision.

As is dropping all its DEI policies since Trump got re-elected.

It's that same overreaction – from similar sorts of people - that I got for the final ep of Digi Level 2 for using AI. It’s this militant, black-and-white, thinking. It’s not an inability to see nuance so much as it is a refusal; a determination to be right simply by standing in opposition to something else, and never, ever, backing down. All it does is piss people off and make them resentful.

I don't even think there are as many people on the far-right and the far-left as these companies think; it just feels like it because of social media. The vast majority of the people are moderate, but the ones on the extremes have the loudest voices, the most entrenched opinions, and the pendulum swung one way, and now it has swung back the other with enormous force. But it's us in the middle who they need - we're the ones they have to scoop up to maintain their power.

We're the ones they need to radicalise, and lure over to their side, and the far-right seem to be doing a better job of that than the left are these days.

For the right, 'woke' has been as motivating as The Treaty of Versailles was for Nazi Germany.

THE LEFT EATS ITSELF

I listened to a brilliant interview with the journalist Ash Sarkar recently – she literally describes herself as a communist, so about as left-wing as you can get. So, if you really want to distil it, I thought I was left-of-centre, but maybe I’m actually a Communist! See? I literally don’t know.

She kind of gave voice to what I’ve been feeling these past few years, and gave me hope that not everyone on the left has lost their mind. In fact, she’s getting a lot of grief from the left for a new book in which she suggests that ‘identity politics’ and weaponised victimhood have gone too far and built barriers. 

She writes: “By making a virtue of marginalisation, breaking ourselves down into ever smaller and mutually hostile groupings, we make it impossible to build a mass movement capable of taking on extreme concentrations of wealth and power.”

In short: it has left us too fragmented to take on the elite minority who are now in charge of the world.

She opens the book – Minority Rule - with a brilliant anecdote about witnessing a speech by the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, in which he called an audience of ‘radical left’ activists “A bunch of c*nts”, when asked what the left was getting wrong. It was an attempt to shock them out of where the mindset that has led them to this place, but instead he caused uproar, and got criticised because he’d “brought violence” into a safe space, and had “harmed” everyone in the room. One activist tearfully said she was “terrified” by his “white anger”.

The more of this snowflake madness - well-meaning, but stinks of bullshit - there continues to be on the left, the more normal people are pushed to the right, and the more the far-right are able to utilise it as ammunition to further radicalise and carry out their agendas. We can't combat it by turning on our own all the time, and constantly crying 'victim".

It feels like there are two narrow opposing armies right – far-left and far-right, who hate each other, and sees the other side as mad and dangerous – and then there’s everyone else in the middle, kind of just trying to get on with our lives, and if any of us dare express an opinion you’re either seen as kowtowing to the other side, or slapped in the face with a dismissive label. The far-right is winning. Might've already won.

Thankfully, I’ve had enough shit over the years from both sides that for now I remain hovering in the middle like one of those cool sculptures where a metal shape is suspended in mid air by two opposing magnets.