By David Futrelle
Our old friend Stefan Molyneux, the racist YouTube “philosopher” and sort-of cult leader, has a new obsession. Can you guess what it is?
Hint: I starts with a “c” and rhymes with “momunism,” as in “momunism unleashed the coronavirus on the world.”
So people who catch the coronavirus turn into communists? I’m a little confused here.
In addition to yelling about the “totalitarian Chinese communist government that unleashed a worldwide pandemic,” Stefan also enjoys calling people he doesn’t like communists.
Like, for example, Hollywood, the media, and academia:
… and Bernie:
… and Obama:
… and Swedish feminists.
… and people who worry about overpopulation:
… and people who worry about racism.
… and even the forces of capitalism themselves:
About the only thing he doesn’t think is communist is … communist China?
WAIT A MINUTE HERE
So Stefan has spent much of the past several months attacking communist China, and communism in general, for “unleashing” the coronoavirus on the world. But back in December he was saying that China isn’t communist?
You’ll have to find a more experienced Stefan-Molyneux-explainer to explain this one to you, because honestly I’m just baffled by this one. I guess anticommunism is more complicated than I thought.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
@Naglfar I believe a Sanders candidacy would be capable of pulling votes from red and blue, and it’s a hell of a lot better than just voting for one of two right wingers for all the reasons Surplus went through above
@Turtle
If Sanders had gotten the nomination he could have had a shot at that, but if Biden has the nom Biden will get a lot more money, the DNC will do everything it can to stop Sanders, and far more center and center-left people will go for Biden.
I’d much prefer a Sanders presidency and I think Sanders would have been a much better nominee, but I unfortunately don’t see that panning out.
@Turtle
Why? Why do you believe this? I see no evidence for this whatsoever.
@Cindy
Go fuck yourself. Go spit on someone else trauma for a agenda.
Impish Pepper,
I really, really hope this site between now and November is not going to be people commenting about how they don’t want to vote in the general and then getting pissy when someone pushes back.
I have very much avoided going after Sanders supporters and insisting they vote for him. Because I want you all to space to grieve. But you brought it up. Even though it’s not on topic to the post. Without any indication that you were engaging in hyperbole. I’m not going to sit by and let a 7-2 right wing SCOTUS court happen, so I’m going to push back against any kind of both sides are equally bad talk. Because it’s false, dangerous and exactly what Trump wants.
@Yutolia
I’m pretty sure cindy is the same person who wanted autistic people to be forcibly sterilized if they say things that she doesn’t like. There an asshole no matter what with a smugness about them. It was incredibly trigging to me as well to see a “so he’s a rapist so what?”
@WWTH
Same here. I‘m not interested in this argument.
@Lainy
She did say that.
The problem with Biden (beyond the fact that he’s a racist, rapist, partially responsible for the war on drugs and creating concentration camps for children and the Iraq war) is that the world is running out of time, we need to take drastic action to lessen the effects of climate change now and we aren’t going to. At least if Trump wins we might in 4 years if Biden wins it will be at least 8 if not 16 before anything is done.
@weirwoodtreehugger
Let’s be realistic, we’re stuck between a choice of Bad vs. Awful for this election once more. I certainly won’t take any pleasure in voting for Biden, but a write-in for Sanders is a waste of time in our current electoral system and despite his track record Biden (as far as we know) doesn’t aspire to dictatorship. If we’re really lucky, he might even nominate a VP that does care about progressive causes (and with even more luck, said VP would take over in the middle of the term due to Biden’s advanced age), but I’m not holding my breath. At minimum, it’s unlikely that anything he can do will be as actively destructive as what Trump could do.
No doubt the legislative branch and state positions are going to be much more important for any gains in the near future, although the types of things Surplus was speculating about are more likely to be what gets martial law declared than anything else, not to mention that now is a terrible time to end up going without the federal government’s resources.
@Lainy: that’s right! I knew I’d seen her say sketchy things before.
@ Autistic Giraffe
I kind of feel like you have to be willfully ignoring the dynamics of what the campaign was in order to deny this. You know how a lot of liberals and democrats would always criticize Bernie for “not being a real democrat”? Yeah.
It’s a criticism that always made no sense to me because 1) from a personal level, I never understood why blind party membership/loyalty is more important than a candidate’s actual policy positions, record and integrity levels, but much more importantly 2) from a basic understanding of political strategy level — that’s kind of the point. Most people aren’t democrats and most people don’t like democrats (or republicans). The fact that he was an independent who many people recognized as an outsider was a selling point for literally every left-leaning (especially economically left-leaning) person who wasn’t part of the reliable democratic voting bloc that will actually vote blue no matter who. His ability to pull “apolitical” and unaffiliated voters across the traditionally conceived of political spectrum is very well documented in both primaries, election results and demographic polling.
You know that statistic that people bring up, the 12% of Bernie supporters who voted for Trump in 2016? Those weren’t leftists and progressives. They were alienated and populist-leaning conservatives, who Bernie was able to pull away from Trump, but who went right back to him once Bernie was out of the race. And to anyone actually interested in building a coalition (read: not any media pundit), pulling votes away from your opponent is actually a good thing.
@weirwood tree hugger
Don’t really think this is a fair characterization. I could just as easily describe your comments as berating people into toeing the party line and getting pissy when someone pushes back with a different opinion. Because it wasn’t about “pushing back” in and of itself, it was about how you pushed back, substantively.
You immediately responded to concerns about dedicating energy to ensuring a Biden presidency by validating their point, differentiating Trump and Biden with a descriptor that also applies to Biden. (Pretty sure aggressively supporting our wars of aggressive in the ME and actively participating in/praising an administration that achieved record level drone strike devastation, and destabilized many a developing nation is pretty genocidal.) Then you went into a whole “I guess you couldn’t possibly care about/comprehend justice” thing when they still didn’t agree with you.
I honestly don’t think anyone will get very far trying to pump up Biden on actual policy. The main substantive advantage I think that Biden has over Trump is lack of overt bigotry. Not that I don’t have my obvious problems with the way that Biden approaches progressive social politics, but I also don’t see him rallying people around policies that explicitly characterize entire ethnic groups as rapists and thieves. Also, he has a better overall attitude towards science (omitting his awful and feckless climate plan).
Re: voting in general
I also think it’s important to point out that most of our votes quite literally don’t matter. Again, I’m voting Biden because I live in North Carolina, but if I lived in California, absolutely not. The point being that if we’re gonna be urging people to vote against their conscience, we might as well make sure they don’t live in California, cause it’ll just upset both parties and be a waste of time regardless.
But still encourage people in those solid red or blue states to research the down ballot candidates of course. They can vote for them even if they leave the presidential category blank.
@Perry
Even then, I think this kind of thinking can lead to a tragedy of the commons type effect. If every person in California who would have voted for Biden but doesn’t like him much doesn’t vote, Trump would win. Even if each individual vote doesn’t make a difference, if millions are convinced to stay home when they would have voted otherwise, that has an effect.
@Wwth
If you don’t act like Biden is a worthwhile candidate or person, we won’t have to point out, again, all the reasons he’s neither.
Too bad, because barring Surplus’ suggestion the window for that’s gone now. A right-wing appointee is what we’re getting under Trump or under Biden. Biden will look for one who’s pretended to be a centrist in the past, maybe.
The question no one is addressing is, if Sanders is such a great candidate and the only one who could beat Trump, why didn’t he sweep the primaries? Why didn’t all those young, passionate people get out there and actually vote? Many voters had to wait in obscenely long lines and in atrocious weather, but they showed up and voted. (I mean, not everyone had to suffer to vote – I waltzed in and out to cast my vote for Warren in about 3 minutes on an unseasonably pleasant day, but look at Wisconsin or Texas – long lines, bad weather, but people still voted).
I’m also disappointed that my candidate didn’t make it, but I’m not going to stomp my foot and declare that since she didn’t make the final cut, the American people are all evil or stupid and deserve to suffer another 4 years under Trump.
Instead, I’m going to sigh, continue to campaign for issues I care about, give money and time when I can to the groups who work for those issues, and vote for candidates who also care about those issues. Biden isn’t who I’d pick, but he cares about my issues a lot more than Trump.
Is this Stefan guy 12? Has he never seen any movies, watched a news programs, attended a college class, or read a textbook or scholarly book?
As I recall from my History of Communism class, Stalin and Mao murdered millions. I’d say that the mention of that fact is an implicit criticism of the type of communism (which was actually totalitarianism) they practiced.
Oh wait. Wikipedia tells me that this Stefan person is 53, not 12. So he’s just talking trash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Molyneux
@Another Laura:
I’d kind of like to know myself. I’ve been voting every election since I was 19, and back during those days I was surprised to find that everyone I knew who was in their mid-20s or younger never voted (except my younger brother, who first voted a few years later when he was 18). They weren’t politically motivated, though, being far more preoccupied with college or career or finding themselves or whatever. I have no idea why the more politically motivated ones apparently don’t do much better, as I don’t run in those circles and don’t talk politics in the circles I do run in.
@Kat
If Stefan were 12, I’d have some forgiveness for him and would hope he could change. He isn’t, so I doubt he will come around.
I JUST had a friend flip out over how “Bernie Bro is a hurtful stereotype” and that he can’t even talk to me if I “keep attacking Bernie.”
My attack consisted of “I have issues with Bernie (mostly intersectionality problems and a lack of faith in his ability to accomplish his goals), but I voted for him in the 2016 primary, and, after Warren dropped out, was going to vote for him in this primary.”
Truly, the “Bernie Bro” stereotype has no basis in fact.
@Dalillama
Thank you for posting those articles, I had not previously been aware he was actually a rapist as well.
@general
Oh please. They vote for “what’s best for the country” and mean “what’s best for above-average income whites, of which I really believe some day I will be one, even if I am poor, because at least I am not a person of color.”
@Big Titty Demon
They also mean “and what stops PoC from having any semblance of equity in society because any gains for them must be losses for white people.” Conservatives have a very zero-sum mindset.
@Naglfar
Yes, this is very true in all parts.
@ Naglfar
Good point. With deeper thought, all red and blue states aren’t created equal (some lean one way with a much more insurmountable percentage than others) and states do have the ability to flip if conditions are right.
I still believe that history and probability do matter a lot even if they’re not guarantees, so it’s way more useful to reach out to swing state residents specifically, but then again, I don’t have a strategic solution to this personally. I have no plans to invest any more time than this election other than the day I cast my vote, so it doesn’t matter to me exactly what tactics are used to convince other people to vote, and I think I conflated my own mindset with that of a person who might feel differently.
@Another Laura
If anti-racist thinking is such a good mindset and the only one that can lead to racial equity and justice, why isn’t it explicitly held by the vast majority of people? Because the premise is flawed — arguments from popularity aren’t good arguments.
While of course most people, including myself, believe in the importance of trying to engage rationally, at the end of the day everyone has their own subjective values that guide their actions. Based on my values, I think Sanders was a great candidate. A lot of people disagree, but that doesn’t mean I can’t say he was a great candidate.
And I actually did already address the second portion of the answer to your question, in this same thread. He didn’t sweep the primaries (bit of strawman btw, you can believe a candidate has a strong chance of winning with asserting that they’ll sweep) because primaries are not the same as general elections. There is a different composition of voters, and a different dynamic between the voters and the parties.
I’ve always been acknowledged that the Democratic party elites themselves would be a bigger obstacle than Trump, and that independent and conservative-leaning voters (much more likely to vote in the general than in a Dem primary) were absolutely needed as part of a general election strategy, more so than reliably blue voters.
Lastly, the same way that people with racist opinions don’t form those opinions in a vacuum, it’s ridiculous to not address the roles our institutions have on shaping our thoughts and actions. If you ignore the fact that corporate media has been attacking Bernie Sanders and progressive movements in general since day one, you can’t do a adequate analysis of what happened. And some relevant data points (https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/u-s-media-polarization-and-the-2020-election-a-nation-divided/) actually reveal something interesting about the difference Democrats (the ones more likely to have voted in the primary) and Republicans in terms of trust in media.
It’s always striking to me how the liberal Democratic arguments against Bernie’s viability borrow so much from conservative arguments against liberal viability. People always have to ignore systemic analysis in order to attack positions to the left of them.
But, yeah. Young, passionate people did get out there and actually vote. Young, unpassionate people did not. Most people don’t vote, and marginalized people are even less likely to do so based on a combination of voter suppression (unmentioned in your comment) and the realization that their voice doesn’t mean much in society.
I’m glad you recognize that not everyone can vote as easily as you (or I, fortunately for me) did, but have you considered that when you do have those long lines, bad weather, work days and cities with hundreds of thousands and people and only a couple of polling places, even if people still vote, those conditions are statistically gonna cut down on the number of people who will? And that vulnerable groups of people (literally Bernie’s base) are gonna be the first to feel that institutional pressure?
https://twitter.com/Heme0000/status/1237466829557321731
I’m not gonna pretend that I’m not disappointed in the overall turn out. But as a young, passionate person who not only got out to vote, but also dedicated so much time — down to last last hours of voting the day of — on Super Tuesday taking time away from work and school (along with many of my fellow volunteers) to stand out and canvass, I can tell you there are more factors at play than “young people just didn’t show up because Biden was better”.
Not sure who you’re characterizing here. Personally, I think the Democratic establishment is stupid and evil, whereas the Republican establishment and the government at-large are just evil, but I don’t blame regular people for that. If you’re talking about Bernie supporters who don’t support anyone but Bernie, then I don’t personally begrudge them that. Biden doesn’t automatically deserve all of Bernie’s voters just for the virtue of not being Trump, he needs to actually appeal to these people, many of whom are not democratic voters.
FTFY, Stefan.
The only reconciliation I can think of is perhaps he thinks that, while China is no longer implementing an absolutely pure form of communism, especially with regards to economics, they still hold onto the philosophical precepts and want to propogate them around the world.
Either that, or he just blabbers so much he lost track. Some people’s point is to have a point.
“Our old friend Stefan Molyneux, the racist YouTube “philosopher” and sort-of cult leader, has a new obsession. Can you guess what it is?”
I’d rather not, thanks.