JonTron isn’t a racist…he’s just ignorant
EVAN: The last week was an…eventful one if you follow
YouTube and online news a lot like I do. Even more so if you’re a guy like me
who watches a lot of gaming and review channels. One guy in particular, JonTon,
caused a controversy over the last week when he voiced some…shall we say, questionable opinions on immigration and
race in a series of tweets, followed by a debate with Twitch streamer Destiny.
(Overlay of various clips from JonTron reviews over the
next segment)
EVAN:
Before I go any further, I want to state that I’ve been a fan of JonTron for
years, I think he’s a very funny and very talented guy, and he’s also a New
Yorker so that’s pretty cool too (OVERLAY: Picture of New York City with text,
“My family is from New York”). His style of humor is very goofy, edgy, and
off-the-walls, it’s right up my alley.
(Pictures
of questionable tweets from JonTron overlay the next segment)
EVAN: But
over the last few months, in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s upset victory as
President of the United States, a lot of celebrities, both in Hollywood and on
YouTube, have been speaking out more on political issues and taking to Twitter
to do so. This country is more polarized than ever, and people on both sides of
the argument want nothing more than to see the other side as, “the enemy.” As
it would stand, Jon takes the side of Donald Trump and the Right in many
political issues.
EVAN: Now,
this is not inherently bad. I don’t consider him, “the enemy,” for agreeing
with Donald Trump, even if it boggles my mind how anyone could support him.
What is concerning, however, is that of some JonTron’s beliefs seem to be
informed by…less than accurate information.
(Overlays
of relevant topics in next segment)
EVAN: I’m
not entirely sure, but I believe a lot of his knowledge of certain topics comes
from untrustworthy sources. He’s done an interview with Breitbart, a hard-right
tabloid blog with an extremely loose relationship with the truth and hard-on
for race-baiting clickbait headlines. I wouldn’t be surprised if he reads
Breitbart as well, since he also seems to be a fan of InfoWars, or at least
Paul Joseph Watson. (Overlay: “He’s retweeted Paul a few times”). Yeah,
InfoWars is the brainchild of Alex Jones and is Ground Zero for online
conspiracy theories.
(Picture of
Sargon of Akkad)
EVAN: He’s
also a fan of Sargon of Akkad, a YouTuber with a MASSIVE hate-on for feminism
who is of the belief that Donald Trump is the Savior of Western Civilization™. And
he’s appeared on Sargon’s LiveStream a few times.
(Next clips
taken from Armoured Skeptic’s video response to Jon and Destiny’s debate)
JONTRON: I
will say a couple things, I’ve been watching you for many years now. In fact I
think yours was one of the first channels I saw that was kind of against the,
uh, SJW stuff, and—
SARGON:
Hang on, is that admission you’ve been a shitlord for years?
JONTRON:
Yeah, uh, I’ve been on your guys side for like four years, I just don’t say it
because…it’s not, politically—well, I just don’t care anymore, I’ve reached my
don’t care apex, so whatever, so be it, I don’t care—I noticed you guys were a
growing movement and I was like, “these guys are going to be the future,
hopefully!”
(End of
clips)
EVAN: Well,
this makes it easier to understand where Jon’s worldview is coming from. It
also shines a light on some of his more…questionable statements from the
Destiny debate livestream.
(Picture of
Sargon’s channel over next segment)
EVAN: I’m
not going to talk too much about Sargon, here. I’ll just note that Sargon’s
“debunking” of social justice ideology isn’t so much debunking as it is setting
an entire acre of straw men on fire. (Photoshopped picture of burning
scarecrows appears here) But he’s worried about social justice ideology enough
that he once petitioned universities to suspend the teachings of all social
justice courses. He um, he got some facts wrong.
(Clips from
H.Bomberguy’s “Measured Response” to Sargon’s Petition)
H.BOMBERGUY:
Well, maybe it’s time to ask the academics to do it for you! Sorry, not
academics—(snickers)—universities—(laughs)—what, like as a concept? “Dear
Universities, please top the bad people for me, you know they’re bad because I
paid someone else to draw propaganda—sorry, a realistic and rational cartoon of
a woman telling institutions to stop the bad people for her.”
(Overlay:
Fun fact, this cartoon was drawn by conspiracy theorist Ben Garrison, who
thinks a Cabal of Marxist Globalists are conspiring with Zionists and Islamists
to destroy American sovereignty and the entire capitalist economic system.
Clearly a reliable and rational source for Sargon to site as evidence!)
H.BOMBERGUY:
“Read the letter.” Ooh, don’t mind if I do! (he opens the letter to find that
it simply says, “Suspend Social Justice Courses.” Seriously, that’s literally all it says.) He couldn’t even
be bothered—(trying not to laugh)—there’s not even a list of courses to be
dropped, he’s literally just asking—(breaks down laughing)
H.BOMBERGUY:
Now I know what you’re thinking—because I can read your mind—isn’t petulantly
demanding institutions stop teaching things you don’t like literally the sort
of thing probably Sargon and his fellow probably free-thinkers like to pretend
they’re against, as evidenced by this very image? Actually, you’re wrong! The
only way to be anti-censorship is to censor the people I say are
pro-censorship! And you can believe me, because I have the support of the
people. Oh, no sorry, these are the fucking EDL, the actual fucking EDL
(Overlay: EDL is the English Defense League, a white nationalist organization
based in Britain), sorry, I don’t know how this footage got in the edit, how do
I stop this—(static)
H.BOMBERGUY:
They’re indoctrinating your children! They’re coming to take your children! If
I write as provocatively as possible it becomes a problem worth dealing with,
right?
(Clip of
Donald Trump saying, “Wrong!”)
H.BOMBERGUY:
But why does Carl feel so sure he knows what the problem is anyway? There’s
this thing in psychology called, “The Dunning-Kruger Effect.” It refers to a
study that measured people’s perceived skills and abilities versus their actual
skills and abilities. To paraphrase Tao-Te-Ching, “those who think they know,
never learn.”
H.BOMBERGUY:
Carl talks about how upset he is that some girl with dyed hair said the wrong
thing on YouTube!
SARGON:
Feminism is Orwell’s nightmare come to life! With a bright smile, rainbow hair,
and a jingle in the background, by people who are so pathologically entitled
they campaign against other people’s human rights!
[CITATION
NEEDED]
SARGON: I
could probably have handled the debate a bit better as well, but I was a bit
nervous. It’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like this. And I think I
might have over prepared!
H.BOMBERGUY:
Yeah, that’s the problem there. It hasn’t nothing to do with this!
(Quote of
Sargon: I don’t know, I don’t care.)
H.BOMBERGUY:
Carl Benjamin, the guy who can’t watch more than five minutes of a video, can’t
watch more than five minutes of the video making fun of that fact, can’t read
more than the first page of a study, and most likely hasn’t read a sliver of
the books he’s trying to get dropped from being taught in academia, has given
it a thought. And he feels like he does too much research! Carl doesn’t know,
he doesn’t care, and he wants to know and care less!
(End of the
clips)
EVAN: Hopefully
that summed up everything you need to know about Sargon, he’s not a reliable
source when talking about social justice. But he’s one of Jon’s sources, and I
believe he is one of many reasons why JonTron is so misinformed about social
justice.
EVAN: Let
me start out by saying that, despite some of his very out-there statements, I don’t believe that Jon is a racist. I
think that true racism, true bigotry, requires a certain level of malice behind
it. And I’m seeing malice behind Jon’s statements, just a lot of…complete…and
total…ignorance!
(Overlay of
JonTron’s response video to the controversy)
EVAN: My
reasons for thinking that come from the things he said in his response video to
the controversy, where he highlights a bunch of inflammatory news titles about
the discussion of race in this country.
JONTRON:
The simple point I was trying to make is that it’s hypocritical, for those who see
everything in terms of race, to suddenly turn around and object, when white
people speak up in what they believe are the best interests of their race. And
it’s also hypocritical to say that you want to have an honest conversation
about race when you don’t actually want to have an honest conversation about
race and every time someone brings up an uncomfortable statistic, you freak
out! And I mean, you can see this in all the countless media articles that get
pumped out every day from the highest level saying, for instance, “you can’t be
racist against white people,” or “it’s a good thing whites are going to become
a minority.”
EVAN: This
right here is what really let me know that, when you get to the core of things,
Jon fundamentality misunderstands what the current discussion on race and
social justice is all about. Jon is correct to label the statement, “you can’t
be racist against white people,” as false, of course. Racism against whites
definitely does exist, but this kind of racism is personal prejudice.
EVAN: In
social justice circles, at least at the professional and academic level, when
racism is discussed, it is structural in
nature. It’s related to the concept of white privilege, a very hot-topic and
highly misunderstood term. White privilege does not mean that white people have
it all hunky-dory and will never suffer hardship or bigotry. What it means is
that white people as a whole enjoy greater opportunities, greater standards of
living, and experience less barriers to success than do non-whites. The biggest
example of white privilege I can think of involves the justice system, and the
fact that black people are given sentences that are nearly 20 percent longer
than those imposed on white people convicted of similar crimes, according to the
US Sentencing Committee’s report on Federal Sentencing, cited by this ACLU
report on screen. (ACLU report overlay) This is especially notable with drug
crimes. Studies show that drug use among blacks is only slightly higher than
that of whites (10.5% versus 9.5%, source: 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and
Health). But blacks are arrested at over twice the rate as whites are for drug
law violations when you factor in population size (they make up 12% of the US
population but account for nearly a third of drug arrests, source: FBI Report
on Crime in the US 2013).
EVAN: This
is just one example, there’s many others, but that’s a topic for another video.
I want this video to be about discussion, debate, and refuting the various
points that JonTron made, since he claims to want a civil discussion on this
topic.
JONTRON:
That being said, I genuinely hope that people keep debating keep talking to
each other, and keep learning. Honest, civil discourse without witch hunts is
the only way we’re getting out of this mess.
EVAN: And I
agree with you completely on this part, Jon. But you kind of undercut your own
point with what you said next.
JONTRON: I
prefer to take a step back now, return to doing comedy, it’s what I do better
anyway.
EVAN:
Sorry, but I’m not sure I’m ready to forget about this whole thing. While I do
believe the media and people may have overreacted to what you said, some of
what you said was pretty extreme and troubling. And considering you lost over
10,000 subscribers over the whole ordeal (picture of Jon’s socialblade
statistics) and had a lot of your fans in your subreddit turn on you (pictures
of various memes and unflattering remarks made about Jon on said subreddit), I
don’t think it’s time to move on quite yet.
EVAN: I
don’t think you understand why people thought you were a white nationalist. It
wasn’t because of your concerns about mass immigration—there’s plenty of valid
reasons to be concerned about that—but because you voiced your concern in ways
that were virtually indistinguishable from white nationalist sentiment. You
brought up genetics a few times, you said some things about “demographic
displacement,” you voiced some…frankly conspiratorial sentiments about ethnic
enclaves and I think at one point you said something about the “global elites.”
These aren’t the concerns of a well-informed individual; these are pretty
extreme statements that I think are deserving of a fair but of scrutiny. Let’s
start from the beginning.
(Title
Card: “Steve King’s Comments”)
EVAN: This was
all sparked by comments made by Republican Representative Steve King on
Twitter. He tweeted out in support of far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders.
(Picture of tweet) “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our
destiny. We can’t restore civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
EVAN: An
obsession with demographics defines white nationalism, and it fuels their
biggest conspiracy theory: White Genocide. White nationalists are terrified of
the white race losing their demographic majority, either through low birth
rates or immigration of non-whites. They view non-whites as a sinister “other.”
King was tapping into white nationalist sentiment with that tweet.
EVAN: Where
does JonTron come in? Well, he tweeted out in support of King, saying, “How
scandalous, Steve King doesn’t want his country invaded by people who have
contempt for his culture and people! NAZI!” (Picture of tweet)
EVAN: Woah,
wait, wait, wait. “Invaded?” That’s a pretty extreme sentiment, don’t you
think? It paints a picture of immigrants as this massive foreign army coming to
destroy us. It’s not a statement that you can make without getting criticism,
and he got a lot of it.
EVAN:
Another YouTuber, Chris Ray Gun (picture of Chris Ray Gun), chimed in, calling
Steve King’s comments, “stupid,” but questioning why multiculturalism is only
championed in white-majority countries. He followed it up by saying, everyone’s
fine with Asia/Africa/India being majority native, but it’s a problem in Europe
and America for some reason. (picture of tweets) He’s wrong about India and
Africa, those are both hugely multicultural countries—a whole multicultural continent in Africa’s case—but I won’t
go into that too much, it’s off topic. Jon showed up with THIS tweet (picture
of the tweet): “That’s exactly it, it’s only white nations that aren’t allowed
to protect their culture.”
(Overlay of
the WTF Tree meme over next segment)
EVAN: “Not
allowed to protect our—“ what? Is our culture in need of protecting, is it
under some dire threat? And is there even a universally agreed upon standard as
to what the culture of “white nations,” is? No two nations are identical to the
other, Jon. It’s difficult to define what “white culture” is.
(Overlay of
Twitter thread in next segment)
EVAN: He
got into an argument with a few people, claiming that his statements were about
mass immigration, rather than race. Twitch streamer Destiny joined in, bringing
up previous periods of mass immigration, such as the Irish and Italians.
(I proceed to
read out the tweet thread up until Jon and Destiny agree to continue the debate
in a live stream)
EVAN: They
agreed to this stream, and this is the source of the main controversy. This is
where Jon made some his questionable and extreme statements. Well, that, and
this tweet: (tweet of Jon: “and that’s even going as far to say colonization
wasn’t a net benefit for the third world (it was)”) …yeah.
(Overlay of parts of the stream
over next segment)
EVAN:
Before I get into this I want to say that I don’t agree completely with Destiny
on everything, and he’s said some pretty ignorant shit too about YouTube
animators (pictures of his tweets), but his comments from this particular
stream are on point for the most part, so I don’t want to see any comments about
how I’m just a fanboy of his, I literally had no idea who he was until this
controversy broke out. I’m here to address the comments made in this stream and
either prove them or debunk them with evidence.
DESTINY: The first thing that you said doesn’t
really make sense, it was a European nation. Like in the late 1800s and early
1900s Italians and Irishmen were discriminated against massively coming to the
United States. I think Irish people were called the “Inside-Out Negros.”
JONTRON:
They’re still European though.
DESTINY:
Well, we didn’t see it like that in the United States going back a hundred some
fifty years, they’re European, that’s not how we saw it.
EVAN:
There’s a fascinating—and depressing—history of racism faced by the Irish, both
in America and in the UK. Scientific racism was huge in the Victorian Era, and
one such scientist by the name of John Beddoe, wrote in his 1862 book Races of Britain, that all men of genius
were orthognathous (which means they had less prominent jaw bones) while the
Irish and Welsh were prognathous and the Celt was related to the Cro-Magnon man
(the early modern homo sapiens),
which, in turn, was linked to the “Africanoid.” Beddoe even had some called the
“Index of Nigrescence” where the Celt was placed much lower than the
Anglo-Saxon.
(During the
above segment, all people, scientific statements, and the index are given requisite
pictures that appear when mentioned, source is an essay by Anthony S. Wohl,
Professor of History at Vassar College, entitled, “Racism and Anti-Irish
Prejudice in Victorian England.”)
EVAN:
Political cartoons, both here and in Britain, compared the Irish to apes a lot
during this time period. (Examples of such cartoons are shown) I’ll go into
this more a little later, for now let’s return to the debate.
JONTRON: I
understand what you’re saying. While none of this would been a problem had
the…I guess you could call them the extreme left…started bringing identity
politics to the forefront because when you have a nation…a nation is supposed
to be a people that are all bound by…at least culture, if not…genetics or
whatever you want to say.
(Record
scratch)
EVAN: Woah!
Let’s just stop right here for a moment. Because this is only the first time
Jon brings up genetics in this debate, yes he does it several times, and
Destiny doesn’t really address it, he asks him what he means by “identity
politics” and the “extreme Left.” But I the genetics thing is what really made
me uncomfortable and I think that’s why people are worried he might be a racist
or a white nationalist. Because a lot of racism that happened in the past was
given scientific justification by bringing up genetics.
(Pictures
relevant to the topics I bring up appear when I say the words during the next two
segments)
EVAN: There
was a German polygenist named Christoph Meiners who believed that each race had
a separate origin. He split mankind into two divisions, which he labelled the
“beautiful peoples,” and the “ugly peoples.” Meiners believed that the dark “ugly”
people where distinct from the “beautiful” white people because they lacked
virtue and were possessed of “terrible vice.” He claimed that the “Negro” was
the unhealthiest race on Earth because of its poor diet, mode of living, and
lack of morals. (source: Das Gupta, Tania (2007) Race and Racialization: Essential Readings. Pp. 25-26) Basically,
this guy may well have founded white supremacy.
EVAN: There
was an entire pseudoscientific movement in the form of eugenics in the early 20th
century that aimed to “improve the genetic quality of the human population.” This
wasn’t some fringe theory, it was an actual academic discipline at many
Universities, and many eugenics programs received government grant funding. It
was built on the theory of “genetic determinism,” in which human character was
due to genes rather than living conditions or education levels. Eugenics were
used to justify discrimination against other races because they had “inferior”
genes, up to denying certain ethnic groups entry into America entirely.
EVAN:
Obviously, I’m not accusing JonTron of believing in any of this. In fact, I
don’t he think understands what genetics are. I don’t really understand them,
either, it’s complicated, but I know enough about history to know that it’s
never a good idea to bring up genetics when talking about what a nation is. Jon
should have thought about his choice of words more carefully.
JONTRON:
Okay, by the argument is that white people are what caused them to be in those
places—that’s the implicit argument, not that they had any agency of their own.
DESTINY:
Who do you think was responsible for Jim Crow laws?
JONTRON:
Well, it was white people, of course, I’m not arguing for Jim Crow (laughs)
DESTINY:
Well, if you go back 50-200 years, yeah, it was kind of white people that did
it. Now I’m not saying that we need to lock up white people now or bring back
reparations, but it seems that, and I’ve noticed this a lot because I watched
your entire conversation with Sargon, is that—I know there are extremists on
the left that want to play the blame game with that fucking white guilt
bullshit, I’m not into that shit, I’m not that extreme. You know how people
need to bow their head everywhere and be solemn and check their privilege all
the time, I think that’s stupid. But it’s difficult to have a conversation
about these topics when a lot of white people won’t even acknowledge that they
exist.
EVAN:
Destiny hits on an important topic here in that many white people want to think
that society has moved passed racism and discrimination, but as I’ve shown
earlier, this is not the case.
DESTINY:
The argument that I’m getting into is that your environment shapes you a lot. If
you have a family that dates back hundreds of years, if you’ve got parents that
help you, these things have a major impact on your life. If you have
grandparents that were directly affected by Jim Crow, you have parents that
were born to people who were directly discriminated against by the state. We’re
not that far removed from Jim Crow.
JONTRON:
Yeah, well the United Kingdom didn’t have Jim Crow. France didn’t have Jim
Crow. We still have riots—we still have Muslim riots over there. And Sweden
didn’t have Jim Crow, and we still have riots in the streets of Stockholm. So,
at what point do we—okay, so Jim Crow, one aspect of it here in America, but as
far as the rest of the Western World, we don’t have these same precedents. And
there’s disproportionate crime in those communities.
EVAN: I’m
sorry, there was no Jim Crow in Europe, is that what you said? I mean, you’re
right, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t discrimination against minorities in
those countries. Cultural discrimination can have the same detrimental effects
as legal discrimination. Racist caricatures of minorities in the media happened
just as often in Europe as it did here in the old days.
JONTRON: I
would argue that—I don’t want to get too raunchy with this, but—I think what
I’m saying is…nobody would ask Japan if it was okay that, you know, Japan
become a minority Japanese nation.
DESTINY:
But we’re not Japan!
EVAN: If
you want some context here, it won’t help. Destiny had talked about the
detrimental effects of Jim Crow and said that it’s difficult for a discussion
on race to happen when the Right is often accusing you to “turning people
against each other.” Jon’s comment on Japan comes out of left field.
DESTINY: If
you want to draw another parallel to another homogenous society, Japan is the
worst go-to argument. It’s also a dying country of people, who because they
refuse to let anyone in, are having horrible problems with their population,
they’re having world record setting suicide rates, I don’t think Japan is the
one to point to as your model homogenous society.
(Relevant
graphics and images overlay during the next segment)
EVAN: The
situation in Japan is more complicated than most people think. The CIA World
Factbook has Japan has ethnically being 98.5% Japanese, making it a pretty
homogenous nation. (source: www.indexmundi.com/japan/ethnic_groups.html)
However, Japan’s census counts citizenship rather than ethnicity, and domestic
minorities and the few immigrants who manage to become nationalized citizens
are simply counted as, “Japanese.” (source: “Census Blind to Japan’s True
Diversity,” Japan Times. 2010,
October 5) The naturalization process for immigrants is very strict. You must
have lived in Japan for ten years, and you have to have renounced any citizen
you had with another country—dual citizenship is not allowed. (source: www.economist.com/news/asia/21705375-getting-passport-not-easy-inspectors-knock)
The applications can take 18 months to process, and in 2015, the government
received just 12,442 applications and granted citizenship to 9,469 people. The
tight restriction of immigration, coupled with a low birth rate (1.46 per woman
in 2015, the fourth-lowest in the developed world), has caused Japan’s
population to shrink in recent years, having declined by a million people since
2010. (source: “Japan’s Population declines in 2015 for the first time since
1920,” Japan Times.)
EVAN: There
are also other factors regarding personal prejudice in Japanese society that
I’m not educated enough to talk about. But, yeah, Japan is dealing with some
complex problems, and it’s not really an ideal society.
JONTRON:
I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about mass immigration, when they want to
go and basically—I’m mean they’ve gone and said it on the DNC platform, that lady
said, “white people need to shut up, and listen.” Is that the kind of discourse
we’re looking at for the future of this country?”
EVAN: The
lady in question was a DNC Candidate at last year’s forum in Washington DC, who
had this to say.
DNC
CANDIDATE: My job is to listen and be a voice. And my job is to shut other
white people down when they want to interrupt. My job is to shut other white
people down when they say, “oh no, I’m not prejudiced. I’m a Democrat. I’m
accepting.”
EVAN: In
this context, it’s a different message than what Jon seemed to get. She appears
to be talking about a problem that white liberals have with acknowledging
racism and prejudice amongst themselves, saying that they can’t be prejudiced
because they’re liberals, but then interrupting and talking over the top of
black people when they try to speak about the issues facing them. She probably
could have worded things better than she did, “shut other white people down,”
isn’t a very comforting statement, but in context, it was not the anti-white
statement that Jon seems to think it is.
DESTINY:
You’re talking about identity politics, dawg. Half the people who were tweeting
at me in response to you were literally neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
JONTRON:
Look man, it’s this guilt-by-association shit, why you don’t you denounce all
the communists in your movement!
DESTINY:
What’s…what does communism have to do with this?
JONTRON:
Well, what do Nazis have to do with this?
DESTINY:
Well, Nazis are—it’s a political and race ideology, communism is an economic
ideology.
JONTRON:
Oh, it’s just an economic thing…okay, Nazis were a movement in 1930s Germany,
they have absolutely nothing to do with any of this, Americans are the ones who
beat the Nazis, so why are we bringing Nazis into anything?
EVAN: Both
of you guys got some things wrong here. It’s true that communism is an ideology
rooting in economics—specifically regarding social class—but it’s also an
authoritarian system requiring autocratic government and repression of human
rights and civil liberties to in order to remain in power. Communist
governments have killed tens of millions of people. And Nazis weren’t just a
movement in 1930s Germany, it originated in Germany, but there were Nazi
parties in most Western countries at the time. Greece, Denmark, the UK, the US,
Norway, Sweden, France, Canada, all of them had a Nazi party at the time. And
Nazis didn’t just go away after World War II, they went to in to hiding.
They’re resurfaced as neo-Nazis at various times in the last seventy years. During
the 1970s and 80s, you could find these people as part of the skinhead
subculture, “white power punk” being a subgenre of punk music that these guys
liked to listen to. Today, you’ll find these guys among the alt-right,
particularly on image boards like 4chan, and they a have a notable presence in
the trolling and hacking subcultures, and they enjoy using memes like Pepe the
Frog and “Kek.” It’s the alt-right who were tweeting at Destiny when he was
responding to JonTron. More importantly, the statements that Steve King made
about demographics have made alt-right and white nationalist websites pretty
excited. These people believe that white people are under attack, and they
think that nationalism is the only way to stave off the nefarious “others,” who
threaten them. This is why Steve King got so much criticism, and it’s why
JonTron got a lot of heat as well.
JONTRON:
And I don’t think that pure society is possible, like I don’t think that’s
possible, but in terms of a demographic majority, I don’t know that a nation
can exist without one. This truly multicultural—everyone is a different race or
religion—I don’t really know if that’s sustainable in the long-term.
DESTINY:
But, what’s wrong with there being all these different—
JONTORN:
Well, have you seen the last four years my friend!? This is the thing with
people like you, you gaslight! You pretend the last four to eight years didn’t
fucking happen!”
DESTINY:
Wait a minute, your side is the side that’s fucking gas lighting, you’re
telling me that there are riots all over Europe and—
JONTRON:
THERE ARE! THERE FUCKING ARE!
DESTINY: No,
they’re not, do you think that Sweden is falling apart under mass immigration?
JONTRON:
You ever heard of boiling the frog slowly? Doesn’t notice.
EVAN: Jon
is correct about there being riots in Europe, but that’s more do to cultural
clashes, poverty, and alienation, it’s not because of their race. Europe does
have a more difficult time assimilating the mostly Muslim Middle-Eastern
immigrants and refugees into their secular democracies than America does in
assimilating the mostly Catholic Central-American immigrants into ours. Let me
put it this way, America is mostly Christian despite having largely secular
laws, our people are mostly Christian, and it’s reflected in the fact that
almost all of our politician’s mention God when running for office. Despite
cultural differences and ethnic differences, for the most part it isn’t too
difficult for Central-American immigrants to assimilate into our culture
because they are also largely Christian.
EVAN: The
situation in Europe is..a lot different. Europe is a lot less religious than
America, it’s much more secular, and they don’t have the “Golden Door” mythos
that we have. Also, the immigrants coming into Europe are mostly Muslims, and
while the majority of them probably aren’t terrorists and probably aren’t
coming with intent on committing terrorism, there’s still a lot of problems. Many
of them are poor, many of them can’t find jobs (because the European labor
market is less flexible than the American one), and many of them become
socially isolated as a consequence. Crime and poor living conditions are a
problem among them, and this has occasionally broken out into rioting, as we’ve
seen in Malmo a month ago.
EVAN: I
don’t see what any of this has to do with a nation having a “demographic
majority.” We’re having less problems with immigration and assimilation than
Europe is, and we take in more immigrants than they do. Most European countries
have a large white majority population than America does. And yet they have
more problems than we do. So why does Jon seem to think demographics are an
issue when culture, poverty, and social isolation seem to be much bigger
issues?
DESTINY:
100 years—150 years ago, Italians and Irish wouldn’t even have been considered
white people, let alone Americans.
JONTRON: I
don’t know if that’s true. That’s just a myth, they were considred white. I
don’t know where this thing that the Irish and Italians weren’t white, that’s
ridiculous, the Irish are like the whitest people around, that’s just a fucking
myth.
EVAN:
Remember the article I talked about earlier, about the “scientist” named Jon
Beddoe? There were definitely people
who didn’t see the Irish as truly white. It’s no myth, if anything Destiny is
downplaying the shit the Irish received. There were people that didn’t even see
them as fully evolved humans!
DESTINY:
These people were treated horribly, they were called “ reverse Negros.”
JONTRON:
…maybe they were a bunch of dicks, huh?
DESTINY:
…no, I don’t think so!
JONTRON: (mocking laugh)
JONTRON: (mocking laugh)
EVAN: Can I
just say this? Like, this was not the right time for Jon to attempt a joke, it
makes it look like he’s not taking the debate seriously at all, and he comes
off as extremely arrogant and ignorant.
JONTRON:
People not liking the Italians and people not liking the Irish doesn’t make
them non-white, it just makes them not liked, perhaps they had some traits that
were undesirable. I hear the Italian mafia made the rounds. But that would have
been a good argument to restrict Italian immigration, then!
EVAN: Okay,
I think Jon is trying to make a joke here, but it’s not helping his case
considering some of the other thing’s he’s been saying, and what he’s going to
say later on. Because, joke or no, this is literally how people 100 years ago
justified laws against Italian immigration.
DESTINY: If
you’re saying it has nothing to do with Mexicans, then why is it so important
that whites remain the majority in the United States?
JONTRON:
Look, I’m not actually making the argument that whites should remain the
majority in the United States, I’m simply arguing that it’s clear, that whites
are not allowed to speak out against their demographic…oblivion.
{RECORD
SCRATCH}
(Clip from
Anchorman)
RON
BURGHANDY: Well, that escalated quickly!
EVAN:
Indeed. Like, wow, I think we need to talk about this, because I don’t think
you can blame poor debating skills on a quote like this.
DESTINY:
I’m sorry, did I miss the stories where all white people are getting killed by
Mexicans and black people?
JONTRON:
They’re not being killed, man. But they’re being displaced.
DESTINY:
What do you mean by displaced!
JONTRON:
You are the same person guy who says that the Europeans displaced the Native
Americans, that’s your argument, “oh you’re not a Native-American, then you can
never be a true American,” but apparently, when other people do it to white
Americans, it’s okay, because fuck white people! It’s obvious what you’re
saying!”
EVAN: Okay,
I’m…I’m going to try and make sense of what Jon is saying here. The argument is
that it’s hypocritical to get angry at white people for “speaking out against
their demographic displacement” or whatever, because whites are being displaced
by non-whites due to mass immigration, and mass immigration is apparently the
same thing as European colonization and the forced removal of Native Americans
from their ancestral homelands?
(Clip of
Will Farrell saying, “It feels like I’m taking crazy pills”)
EVAN: Like,
Jon…you have to realize how extreme this sounds, right? Like, it sounds like
you’re repeating talking points you read on white nationalist websites. These
are things that actual white nationalists have said! “Mass immigration is
demographic displacement,” “you leftists are hypocritical for condemning
European colonization but not mass immigration!” Like, no we’re not! Those are
two completely different things! For one, these immigrants aren’t equipped with
military technology that vastly more advanced than what we have! Also,
immigrants have to be let in by the government whereas colonists pretty much
just showed up and started building homes over other peoples’ lands. You can’t
just make comparisons like this!
DESTINY:
Like, what does “white displacement,” mean?
JONTRON: You
know at this rate; the whites will be a minority by 2042.
DESTINY:
But why does it matter if a person of certain skin color is a minority?
JONTRON:
Because people like you, and people of your ilk, would freak out if the
situation had been flipped. Had the situation been whites colonizing part
of—like when the Chinese colonized Tibet—
DESTINY:
But they’re not colonizing anything, these are people legally immigrating—
JONTRON:
Okay, so why when the Chinese colonized Tibet, why was that a “save Tibet
situation?”
EVAN: The
data that Jon mentioned earlier about whites losing their majority status in
2042 is mostly true, it’s explicitly non-Hispanic whites that will lose that
status. It was reported by the New York
Times back in 2008 (source: “Minorities set to become majority by 2042” by
Sam Roberts). I had to look up the part about China and Tibet since Destiny
didn’t know about it, and what I found was that in 1950, China incorporated
Tibet into the mainland, and the Chinese Communist Government forced them to
abandon their religion. During the Cultural Revolution, Tibetan farmers were
forced to change what crops to cultivate, resulting in mass starvation. Resistance
of government rule of any kind is not tolerated. The situation in Tibet is one
of forced cultural assimilation at coercion of a majority government.
EVAN: This
is not comparable to mass immigration in any way. It is comparable to European
colonization, but not to large amounts of non-white immigrants moved to white
majority countries. Also, I’ve yet to meet or see anyone defend the actions of
the Chinese government aside from the Chinese government themselves, and a few
delusional Mao apologists online.
JONTRON:
Let me ask you something, do you consider the colonization of Africa by
Europeans to be a bad thing?
DESTINY:
That’s a…that’s a really complicated issue.”
JONTRON:
It’s only complicated because it’s whites. That’s the only reason.
DESTINY:
No, it’s not, it’s really complicated!
EVAN: Yeah,
it’s extremely complicated. I’m not going to go into that, it would take a
whole series of videos to examine the history and consequences of European
colonization of Africa, so I’ll just say that it did more harm than good.
DESTINY:
We’re not talking about colonizing and imperializing people; we’re just talking
about immigration to the United States.
JONTRON: Well,
what do you call a large number of people form one specific place, coming in
and setting up their own ethnic enclaves, and then waving their own flag inside
our nation, what would you call that?
DESTINY: What do you mean by “setting up your own ethnic
enclaves and waving your own flag,” I’m pretty sure we have Mexicans who come
to the United States that wave American flags and are proud to be American.
JONTRON: Yes, of course. But there are also…large swathes
of them who don’t feel that way, who want to break parts of America back off
into Mexico, so what would you say to those?
(Overlay of “CITATION NEEDED”)
EVAN: Okay, well…there’s a new theory. I can’t say I’ve
heard that one before. They want to break parts of America back off into
Mexico, you say? I’ve heard plenty of extreme claims about some deeper
nefarious agenda of Mexican immigrants, but this the first time I’ve heard of
this in particular. And he’s basing this off of the existence of immigrant
communities were people wave the flag of their native countries? Isn’t that
something every immigrant group in America has always done? Like, you go to
Breezy Point, there’s Irish flags everywhere, so are they trying to turn that
piece of America into Ireland? Is there a conspiracy to turn Bensonhurst into
Italy? Are they trying to turn the Lower East Side into Puerto Rico? Is Jackson
Heights being turned into the Philippines? If your evidence of Mexicans turning
parts of America into Mexico is, “they set up ethnic enclaves and fly their own
flags,” then that means every single
immigrant group that has ever tried to move here has been turning parts of
America into their home country!
JONTRON:
The country was something like 92% white in 1950, it changed, now it’s about
60% non-Hispanic white, I believe, these are epic demographic changes,
unlike...I don’t know if it’s ever been seen in history. But these people, who
come here, I assume they see themselves as Mexicans, I don’t know if they come
here and the soil magically turns them into Thomas Jefferson’s direct
descendent. So why is it that white Americans resisting their own displacement
is racist?
EVAN: Can
we…can we rewind a bit?
JONTRON: I
don’t know if they come here and the soil magically turns them into Thomas
Jefferson’s direct descendent.
EVAN: I…I
don’t even know how to…WHAT!? What does Thomas Jefferson have to with…I don’t…I
JONTRON:
There is an absolute disproportionate amount of crime committed to whites, by
nonwhites. There’s no arguing that, that’s just FBI statistics.
EVAN: I’ve
looked this up, and I’ve looked at the hate crime data for 2015 made by the
FBI. The findings are that; race was reported for 5,493 known hate crime
offenders. It says that, 48.4% were White, 24.3% were Black, 9.1% were
“multiracial”, 1% were Asian, and 16.2% were unknown. For victims, 52.2% were
motivated by Anti-Black bias, 18.7% by anti-white bias, 9.3% by anti-Hispanic
bias, 3.2% by anti-Asian bias, and 1.1% by anti-Arab bias. So, the stats don’t
quite back you up here, Jon.
JONTRON: In
relative terms, in relative to wealthy whites, yes, you’re correct in that poor
whites commit more crime.
DESTINY: Do
you think that poor blacks commit more crime relative to wealthier black
people?
JONTRON: They
do. Wealthy blacks also commit more crime than poor whites. That’s a fact.
DESTINY:
Wait, what!?
JONTRON: Yeah, look it up!
JONTRON: Yeah, look it up!
EVAN: Okay,
this was by far Jon’s most questionable claim. I looked it up to see if it checks
out, and it didn’t, but I did find some interesting facts that I wasn’t expecting
to find. According the BJS’s Household Poverty and Nonfatal Violent
Victimization Survey from 2008-12, the poorest persons had the highest rates of
violence. The rate for poor Hispanics was 25.3 per 1000, the rate for poor
whites was 46.4 per 1,000, and the rate for poor blacks was, get this, 43.3 per
1,000. The rate was lower; I was not expecting that at all. It goes on to state
that the rate for poor urban blacks was 51.3 per 1,000 and the rate for poor
urban whites was 56.4 per 1,000. This was…quite something for me to learn, and
I think more people should be aware of this, because holy shit, does it punch
so many holes in the arguments of the people who write for Breitbart!
DESTINY:
I’ve read articles that say that poor white kids are less likely to go to
prison than rich black kids, but--
JONTRON:
That’s just a conjecture! That implies that court system is somehow racist.
DESTINY:
The court system disproportionately, even when controlling for socioeconomic
factors, sentences black people typically harsher sentences than white people,
even when you control for the crimes.
JONTRON: I
don’t agree with—I mean this is just ridiculous, you’re telling me that they’re
going to sentence—I don’t subscribe to that.
EVAN: I
brought this topic up earlier in the video and linked to a study that showed
that blacks got 20% longer prison sentences than whites for committing the same
crime, I’ll show it again here. There’s a definite bias in the court system
against blacks.
(Overlay:
The Topic shifted to immigration from Mexico for the next segment)
DESTINY: If
they were happy with Mexico, why would they come to the United States?
JONTRON:
Because better handouts…a lot of them are on welfare, you understand?
DESTINY: If
you were to drive though a neighborhood where there are construction crew
working, if you were to talk to anybody in manual labor, you would never hear
the argument passed around that Mexicans are lazy and on welfare, they do some
of the toughest jobs available in this country.
JONTRON:
Ugh, dude, you’re just virtue signaling.
EVAN: The
term, “virtue signaling,” is a term applied to people who are only advocating a
better world and acting like they want to improve the world in order to make
themselves look good. It’s basically bringing their motivations into question.
While there are people in the world who join activist movement for self-serving
reasons, the virtue signaling allegations are overused in the extreme,
especially online. And besides, attacking the motivation of the person in a
debate is form of ad hominem.
DESTINY: But why is so bad that whites become
a minority?
JONTRON:
It’s a principle! What is it so bad that they remain a majority?
DESTINY:
It’s because you’re talking about restricting immigration from all of these
places—
JONTRON:
Why do we need to take all these immigrants in?
DESTINY:
Because it takes talent from all these other areas to benefit the entire
country.
JONTRON: It
benefits the global elites, that’s the only people it benefits.
EVAN: Oh…oh
dear, he seems to be taking jargon from InfoWars, now? Seriously, Jon, the
“global elites?” That’s so vague it could mean anything. The global elites are
common bogeymen in conspiracy theories about the New World Order, and people
like Alex Jones thinks there a conspiracy to bring about a One World Government
by depriving nations of their sovereignty. Mass immigration has something to do
with it, somehow. I see a lot of people claim that mass immigration is part of
the “endgame” for “Globalists,” but they never can provide any proof or any
reasons as to why or how it undermines national sovereignty. Also, how would
destroying first-world countries help the global elites, I think it’s in their
best interests that the first-world is as prosperous as possible. To me,
“global elites” and “globalists” just seem like a convenient boogeyman for
people that don’t understand complicated world issues and want to blame an easy
enemy.
JONTRON: Listen,
listen, even though the mantra has—I mean, you’re just arguing based off the
old paradigm. Which is that if you—
DESTINY:
I’m arguing based on historical data!
JONTRON: I
don’t think you’re arguing off of data, because if you were, you wouldn’t be
saying the things you’re saying.
EVAN: And,
again, refer some of my previously sited data sources, Destiny’s argument
points check out.
JONTRON: I
do believe that we are different form Mexico, but very similar to Canada.
DESTINY:
Because we’re whiter?
JONTRON:
Because our country is derived from the same culture, and had similar founding
stock at least.
EVAN: I
would say that Canada has more French influences in its founding stock whereas
America had more British influence because of the way colonial border lines
were drawn at the time. Both were major European powers, so they’re quite
similar. But Mexico was started as a Spanish colony, which was also a European
power. So, I wouldn’t say we’re drastically different from Mexico culturally.
JONTRON:
White countries are experiencing…it is basically in white countries—historically
white countries, it’s seen as a moral imperative that whites don’t resist their
own displacement. If they resist it, they’re racist, you can see this in every
white country on planet Earth.
DESTINY:
But this just goes back to my question I’ve asked over and over which you still
haven’t answered, why is it so bad that white people become a minority?
JONTRON: I
have answered it several times, no people want to become a minority in their
own country…why should they do, to be nice, what is your argument.
DESTINY: I
just guess…when I look at what it means to be an American, being white doesn’t
seem to be part of that definition. So, I don’t understand this massive
division on racial lines when you say whites are becoming a minority. I thought
we were all Americans, I don’t understand where this white/black/brown thing
comes from.
JONTRON:
I’m inclined to agree with you, I do believe we should just see each other as
Americans. But also, we’re dealing with something that’s not that. We’re
dealing with a political paradigm in that the status quo thinks that the only
logical conclusion of the country to atone for the sins of the white past is to
keep letting in people from the third world until white people are a minority.
That’s what happened, you can deny it all you want, but that is what’s
happening.
EVAN: The
current immigration policy developed during the Civil Rights Movement of the
1960s, so I…guess that’s where Jon’s claim about “atoning for the sins of the
white past,” is coming from? I don’t really get what his point is. The old
immigration system put in place in the 1920s was indisputably racist and
restricted immigration from Asia and Africa, and also gave preference to
Northern and Western Europeans over Southern and Eastern Europeans. It had a
national origins quota for God’s sakes! There’s no way a system like that was
going to survive the cultural changes brought about by the Civil Rights
Movement!
DESTINY:
Maybe every single economist agrees that immigration improves an economy for
everybody—
JONTORN: I
don’t know if every economist agrees—
DESTINY:
Pretty much every single economist, even the leading ones who are on the “hold
off on the immigration,” side more or less agree with that—
JONTRON:
And, uh, every single pollster said that Hillary Clinton was going to win.
DESTINY: Do
you think that pollsters are at the same level as academic analysts when it
comes economic analysis, do you think that’s a fair comparison?
JONTRON:
We’re living in a political paradigm that values appearances over—of course
these people are going to say that! Because they don’t want the shitstorm!
EVAN:
What…are you…you realize that’s now how studies are done, right?
DESTINY: Wait,
of course they’re going to say what, that California’s economy is huge?
JONTRON:
No, they’re going to say things like, “immigration is wonderful, diversity is
our strength.” If you don’t say these buzz words—
DESTINY:
How do you think you grow an economy if your population begins to die off,
where do you get workers from?
JONTRON:
Why does our economy have to keep growing forever?
DESTINY:
Because that’s what our entire economy is based off of, it’s based off of
growth, would you be happy if the GDP growth was zero or started shrinking?
JONTRON:
People don’t need gadgets all the time, bigger, less expensive gadgets—
EVAN: Okay,
let me just stop you right there, Jon, because I’m utterly floored by your
sheer lack of economic knowledge. If an economy shrank for an extended period
of time, the consequences would be more than just, “less gadgets are being
made.” People would lose their jobs, their wages would decrease, their hours
would get cut, increased unemployment would put higher strain on the government
to provide aid for people who can’t find jobs. Like, this is basic stuff! You’ve been fortunate
enough to make a lot of money by being super popular on YouTube, so a recession
wouldn’t affect you that much, but it would affect a fuck ton of lot people!
DESTINY: We
could stay on the culture side, in which case, why do you think white people
are so important to the American identity, why can’t brown and black and all
these other people be included as well, why does it hurt if the demographics
shift around a little bit?
JONTRON: Because,
clearly they---ugh, are you doubting the existence of tribalism? Do you believe
in it or not?
DESTINY: I
think the fact that you are here talking to me, defending white people, as a
half-Hungarian and half-Iranian, seems to speak against the notion of tribalism
as this embedded thing that can never be changed.
EVAN: I
would also add that Jon is committing an appeal to nature fallacy here. He
brought up tribalism earlier and said it was human nature to be tribalistic. Just
because it’s in our nature doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, nor does it mean
that we shouldn’t actively by trying to avoid it. The human race has come a
long way from the days in which we all lived in caves and competed with other
tribes for food and resources by going to war. The majority of the planet seems
to want world peace these days, and while it’s not easy to obtain, it’s a noble
goal, and it shouldn’t be abandoned because “tribalism.” I don’t think we
should be afraid of non-white cultures because “tribalism,” either. Ultimately,
we are all the same species and we share the same planet. We all need to think
more about the well-being of the planet as a whole instead of thinking only
about what goes on within our own borders.
DESTINY: Do
you think that it’s okay to stifle its growth a bit in order to maintain a
homogenous cultural identity?
JONTRON:
Yeah, I think it’s fine, Japan does it.
EVAN: Yeah,
you’re right, Jon, Japan does do that? And how has that been working out for
them?
(Overlay of
economic growth stats, population stats, and employment stats for Japan, all of
which show a level of stagnation for the last 25 years—an entire generation—as
well as the country’s public debt problem as a result of its aging population
and not enough younger workers and taxpayer dollars to fund the government’s
expenses)
DESTINY: Okay, but now you’re talking about
assimilation, so what if whites became a minatory but most brown people
assimilated into the culture, would that be okay then?
JONTRON:
Yeah, but if they assimilated, they would enter the gene pool eventually, and
just, you know…
DESTINY:
BECOME WHITE!?
EVAN: Yeah,
Jon mentioned the gene pool again. I don’t think he knows how genetics work.
DESTINY:
This is what I’m trying to ask? Let’s say, you got 100 million brown people who
want to come to the United States, and they would all assimilate into the
culture immediately, whites would become the minority, would this be a good
thing or a bad thing?
JONTRON: If
they assimilated immediately?
DESTINY:
yes.
JONTRON: OF
course, that would be fine.
EVAN:
Here’s where I have to disagree with Destiny. I don’t think it’s good idea to
take in 100 million people of any ethnicity all at once, because that number is
nearly a third of the entire population of the United States. Such rapid jump
in population would be very disruptive, cause a lot of crowding problems in the
cities, and it would be a strain on the government to naturalize all of them
and give them citizenship papers and passports.
JONTRON:
I’m just talking about the ideal way to do immigration, I understand we have
people here who are white and people who are black, and I want them all to feel
respected and loved, of course. It’s ridiculous to think that I don’t want
that. I’m just talking about the demographic shift…whites are expected to just
lay down and take it.
EVAN: Wait,
so you want people of all races to be respected and loved, but you also think
that if there are too many people of other races, it means whites are being
displaced? (pause) These two sentiments do not mesh with each other.
DESTINY: So,
the problem is that young black men in the United States are disproportionately
born into single-mother households, which is a leading indicator of crime.
They’re also disproportionately born into ghettos in low-income areas, they
have access to worse education, they are born into horrible socioeconomic
conditions, all of these things are massive contributors into being a criminal
as you grow up.
JONTRON:
But you are making the argument that it’s like white people who put them there.
DESTINY:
Because they kind of sort of did over the past 200 years. They kind of bought
them over as slaves, they kind of bred them a certain way, they kind of, you
know, redlined them and gentrified them out of certain neighborhoods and
certain communities, they kind of legally discriminated against them and put
them in certain areas for a long time. They kid of disproportionately policed
them and sentenced them to higher crimes in the justice system. White people
have contributed a lot to this.
JONTRON:
So, I suppose that’s why the crime rates are pretty consistent across Africa,
too?
(Record
Scratch)
EVAN:
Wha….I…what!? What does that have to do with…what?
JONTRON: There
is one thing I came here to talk to you about. Why is it bad for white people
to resist their own demographic displacement? That is the only thing I’m here
to discuss.
DESTINY:
And your only answer was tribalism.
JONTRON:
No, I explained other things as well. When people, let’s say the French, receive
an influx of Islamic migrants who say, “you don’t give us good enough handouts,
you know, like…you’re being racist to us,” and then they’re rioting, what are
the French supposed to think?
DESTINY: I
don’t know, I’m not French, I’m American, why have we gone across the seas
again?
JONTRON:
It’s all intertwined, it’s the same situation, but they speak a different
language, I don’t know why that’s so hard for you to understand.
DESTINY:
Because it’s not the same situation, those countries are in dramatically
different situations, you can’t compare them!
JONTRON:
That’s like saying a man ate a sandwich in France and a man ate a sandwich in
America, but these are not the same situations.
EVAN:
Wha….I can’t with this, I just can’t. Let’s just skip ahead to the end when
they get back to the topic on discrimination.
JONTRON: Look,
I know that there was some discrimination there, and by the way, yeah, it’s
wrong, discrimination is wrong, we have gotten rid of discrimination in our
western countries.
DESTINY:
Wait, no we haven’t, what do you mean?
JONTRON: If
you don’t think we’ve gotten rid of discrimination, you’re living in a fantasy
land.
(Video
Stops for a Second)
EVAN: I’m,
just going to take a moment to breathe in for a bit. (takes moment to breathe
in) Okay, that’s better. Just wow, there is so much ignorance to rip apart in
that statement. I’ve given examples of discrimination earlier in the video, you
can go check them out, I’ll leave the links in the video description. To
adequately document the discrimination that still exists to this day is too
much for a single YouTube video, it really is. Destiny goes on to bring up the
voter ID laws in North Carolina as evidence, which JonTron just blows off in
a…pretty pompous way. It’s an attitude you see online quite a lot, particularly
in the “Red Pill” community, where believe that they’ve woken up to the truth
and now see people who disagree with them as either willful idiots or
brainwashed sheep. A lot of what JonTron said in this stream are things you’ll
find on the Red Pill subreddit, there’s a notable overlap between them and
white nationalist groups.
EVAN: This
is close to the end of their debate, and Jon doesn’t say anything really
objectionable for the remainder of it, so I think now is good time to gather my
thoughts together and conclude this response video.
EVAN: It
took me about four days to write this script, and as I was finishing, news came
out that JonTron had been dropped from his speaking role in a Yooka-Laylee game
over his controversial statements. So, the fallout isn’t over yet. By the time
I’ve actually made this video, edited it, and uploaded it to YouTube, he’ll
have long since regained the 10,000 or subs he lost. A lot of people, including
Destiny himself, disagree with calls to “punish” Jon for his viewpoints
(Destiny criticized Playtonic Games, the makers of Yooka-Laylee, for their
decision on Twitter). I myself don’t think JonTron deserves to lose his career
over these statements, and I don’t like how hyperbolic some media headlines
have been about his comments. (It’s the kind of media sensationalism that never
leads anywhere good).
EVAN: But,
considering how his own subreddit turned on him for a while, and he actually
lost a decent number of subs, it seems his own fans were taken aback by some of
his views. Some of his statements are deserving of scrutiny and criticism, particularly
his more ignorant ones. I made this video in response to JonTron’s response
video to the controversy, because he said he wanted some civil discourse and
debate, but he didn’t really address any of the things he said, or the questionable
claims he made. I also don’t think he should just brush this under the rug and
get back to going game reviews and pretend the whole thing didn’t happen. You
can’t really make claims like, “rich blacks commit more crimes than poor
whites,” “whites are expected to accept their demographic displacement,” and “large
swatches of Mexicans want to break parts of America back off into Mexico,” and
not get criticism for it.
EVAN: As I
said previously, I think the media overreacted a little and I think it’s going too
far to call JonTron a white nationalist, even if he using a lot of white
nationalist talking points. He beliefs are fueled mostly by ignorance rather
than malice. No one really went in depth about the things Jon said, so I
decided to do so myself.
EVAN: Is
JonTron a racist? Eh...probably not, at least not openly. Is he ignorant? Oh,
yeah! Extremely misinformed. I would advise him to do some research and read a
few studies before he gets into his next debate about this kind of topic.
EVAN: Do I
think we should stop watching him because of his beliefs? No. There’s quite a
few people in Hollywood who are fuck ton of a lot more racist than JonTron (Mel
Gibson anyone?), but I still watch their movies because their movies are good.
Likewise, I think JonTron makes good content on his channel. It’s up to you, it’s
up to his fans to decide if they want to continue to support him or not. I
understand either way.
EVAN: I
want to see more rational discussions about political debates and less screaming
in the comments section and on YouTube. I want to see more intelligent and
insightful videos made in response to people who make questionable statements,
and not just the usual “SJW Feminazi Gets REKT”/”X Person Says Shocking Racist
Things” variety of bottom-of-the-barrel YouTube voyeurism. There’s far too many
of the latter and not nearly enough of the former.
EVAN: I
mean, don’t get me wrong, making fun of crazy extremists and taking the piss
out of them can be very entertaining, but I think people tend too often to do it
to people who don’t deserve it. And JonTron isn’t one of those hopelessly crazy
types. Hopefully he will able to listen in a rational debate with an
ideological opponent…and even more hopefully, he’ll learn a few things and
realize how stupid it is to worry about “white displacement.”
(Outro with
links to my social media accounts and a “like and subscribe” message appears)
EVAN: Thank
you for watching…I will try and make a video every week, hopefully I’ll be able
to because I don’t plan on making most of my videos as serious and as long as
this one. If you like what you see, subscribe to my channel and share this
video around. And remember to leave a rating and comment, all feedback is
appreciated. Be sure to follow me on all of my social media accounts, links are
in the description, and I’ll see you all in the next video.