As with my previous critiques, I’d like to preface this with the obvious. I agree with Vaush on nearly all of his political positions, and I believe that, as a long-time member and contributor to the community, I should be able to offer some good faith pushback towards his positions when I notice issues with them. I love this community and I wouldn’t care to express my disagreements if I didn’t believe it was useful or helpful in some way.
In Vaush’s recent streams he has defined doomerism as something like a mindset caused by grim circumstances which leads you towards counter-productive behaviors. His primary concern seems to be that by hyper-focusing on your grim circumstances, without a focus on proactive steps you can take to better your situation, you become so entrenched in your negative emotions and dire circumstances that you fail to act proactively in the face of incoming disaster.
Where I take issue is that Vaush’s recent rhetoric has seemingly led to increased levels of actual doomerism within the community. As a person who monitors both the subreddit and site chat nearly all of my waking day, and as a member of the community outside of those spaces, I have noticed an uptick of actual doomerism relating largely to the SCOTUS and the midterms. The most common counter-productive sentiment I’ve seen tends to be the loss of hope in electoralism. I believe this is a direct result of Vaush’s recent rhetoric, specifically two themes he’s focused on - Moore v. Harper and the perceived inevitability of American fascism. The particulars of these two themes aren’t something I wish to discuss here, because my main criticism doesn’t involve those particulars.
Anti-electoralism is something our community has taken a strong stance against in the past, and I believe it still continues to do so today. However, Vaush’s recent rhetoric is seemingly pushing our community into anti-electoral sentiment and positions. Every victory the Democrats have had during and leading up to the midterms is almost immediately followed by Vaush crushing any momentum or enthusiasm in our community by mentioning that Moore v. Harper will almost certainly lead to the end of democracy, and that American fascism is an almost inevitable outcome. This rhetoric itself is not anti-electoral, but the impact it’s seemingly having on our community is - as an uptick of messages, submissions, tweets, and comments from our community members including anti-electoral thoughts or positions is contributing to the exact opposite type of behavior Vaush wishes to see from his audience, proactivity in the face of incoming disaster. Another outcome from this type of momentum or enthusiasm crushing rhetoric is the instilling of strong negative emotions in individual members of our community. Although Vaush would almost certainly counter with the idea that your emotions don’t change the reality of the circumstances you’re in, he as a staunch consequentialist would almost certainly agree that the outcomes of his rhetoric take priority over all else. If the outcomes of his recent rhetoric instill strong negative emotions in our community members, and thus cause either a great deal of sadness or depression in those community members, this would directly conflict with Vaush’s previously stated position that a good advocate is a healthy advocate, and that advocates must prioritize their physical, mental, and personal wellbeing before attempting to step into the field.
Vaush’s recent rhetoric has also included the publicly stated strategy of intentionally fearmongering to incite his audience into action, borrowing from the strategies used by successful right-wing demagogues like Tucker Carlson. Though a successful strategy in it’s own right, my experiences inside of our community have been the opposite, as of recent. Our community includes a large number of highly at-risk trans people, and in my experience since election day, these people have generally not been incited into further electoral action, but rather into survival action in the form of pro-gun and emigration rhetoric. Vaush has also recently stated that he will likely shift his rhetoric towards survival tactics, depending on the outcomes of the midterms, which I believe will make these instances even more prominent in our community. Although it is important to be prepared in the case of crisis, Vaush’s recent rhetoric has been treating the end of democracy and the rise of American fascism as nearly inevitable, as seen in his "we’re only buying time" motif, which is seemingly leading more members of our community to abandon electoralism in favor of self-preservation, which is counter-productive to our current electoral challenges.
Our most critical line of defense in America today is voting rights, and if we shift away from defending this line with proactive action, based on the grimness of our circumstances, we’ve managed to circle ourselves back into the same trap of doomerism. Vaush may take issue with my framing of his positions as doomerism, but it’s not his positions which are doomerism, rather the outcomes of his rhetoric are instilling doomerism in members of our community. Our situation is rough, and our political climate is changing rapidly, but this is not an excuse to abandon the outcomes of rhetoric in favor of technical correctness about our circumstances. We must try until the very end to protect what remaining democracy we have left and prevent fascism in this country, rather than partially abandoning our posts as pro-electoral political propagandists in favor of self-preservation or survival rhetoric. If the counter to this effort is to compare ourselves to Weimer Republic and it’s fleeing oppressed – I aspire to be that of the Weiße Rose.
Stay warm and hydrated my friends!
yousharknotpass
gummygunk