I watched the F.D. Signifier video on "Why I left the (White) Left", and whew. He goes in on how BreadTube was (mostly) used to recuperate the reputations of Edgy (racist) video personalities who pivoted to politics.
And how they effectively model their [prior] behaviors in how they engage with Black folks regarding political issues. Or, outright ignore more principled political actors than their darling candidates (he used Chris Raab and Charles Booker (not Cory Booker) from Kentucky as examples).
"White leftists understand that's it bad to be racist, but don't understand why it's bad or how racism works. The lack of critical understanding of how whiteness works, is why a lot of them fall for the same trick[s] over and over."
(The trick being the thin veneer of radical/progressive politics and how successfully it can be sold and packaged to them in certain political would-be's.) I think that's a fairly charitable view of how Streamers use or engage with whiteness, but, [shrug].
He mentioned reading a book written *abt a Black socialist named Herbert Harrison (Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism, Brian Kwoba), a contemporary of Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Marcus Garvey. Herbert quotes Eugene Debs, who declared that, despite knowing racism would sharpen with capitalism's growing contradictions, "We need not worry about it." The "Negro question" was not white folks' fight, but Black folks'.
He uses what happened on Noah Samson's stream with Bad Empanada as a throughline for why this blind spot ultimately made a lot of non-Black folks ignorant to his videos discussing Palestine with other Black political figures (Professor Jared Ball, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill) or in pop culture (Lupe Fiasco condemning Obama's bombing runs and showing support for Palestine), and why he stopped engaging with YouTube culture in the same way. And regarding right-leaning personalities gaining the traction they're getting on Palestine, he made a fairly salient point that Palestinians' goals (at the end of the day) are their liberation from occupation. If that happens bc of people like Carlson or MTG, that's a us problem, not a Palestine problem (which I've seen Palestinians say). It's a solid video.
