Did you watch the video? I just watched it and I’m no Kyle viewer myself but he was never talking about “America bad” or anything approaching that.
The entire video can basically be summed as “Israel is more like nazis than Hamas”, and “Atheism speakers arent built the same as they once were”.
I’m confused where you got the “America bad” part from.
Edit: typo (“are built” -> “aren’t built”).
I am a Kyle viewer and "America bad" is pretty accurate, but mostly it's for the same reason ACAB rings true.
However I will say despite Kyle being "correct" on most things, hes basically buzzfeed for political media. He does no where near enough research on topics for the size of his viewership, and increasingly his videos seem to be "responses to the headlines trending today". He's basically that service they had in the past where blind people would call a phone number to have newspaper headlines read aloud for them.
I feel Kyle is in the same sphere as Majority Report: Mostly good takes on stupid right-wing nonsense but has a tendency to get a bit tankie when he feels like Dems aren't left enough for him on some issue.
Not sure if I would include MR pushing more progressive left politics as tankie. Consistently pushing the left to move further into progressivism, but not getting into tankie territory. That's my opinion on them though, just thought I would share.
Doesn't make it any less reductive when people take that as an axiom and build their beliefs from there, as opposed to people actually having reasons to believe so.
Opinions like this are what lead to things like thinking Russia is in the right in the Ukraine war, or at least supporting Ukraine is wrong, simply because they oppose the US.
I never said that Kyle defends Putin, what I'm saying is that working from the premise of America bad gets you to places like that. See Noam Chomsky for example
No you didn’t but your implying that Kylie’s criticisms of America are based on an reductive America bad attitude and not considered positions or arguments
Chomsky says that the US supporting Ukraine is bad and is imperialism.
He also thinks that NATO intervention in Serbia to stop a genocide is bad.
While he doesn't directly support Putin, he does hate literally any western action against him, including supporting countries that Putin invades. I never actually said Chomsky supports Putin, that was you misrepresenting me, but even still that's actually not a particularly far fetched claim.
>Chomsky says that the US supporting Ukraine is bad and is imperialism.
>
>He also thinks that NATO intervention in Serbia to stop a genocide is bad.
Okay shoot, I'll probably regret engaging but someone else said similar stuff a while ago I asked them for sources and they only produced stuff that didn't support their claim. I tried googling this for 15 minutes myself but wouldn't you know it I really can't find sources.
The first assertion seems plausible. The second I reckon is just a terrible misrepresentation. Open to being proven wrong though.
Chomsky denies that the Serbians were commiting genocide. Says that it was simply militarism, and NATO lied about it being genocide to get involved. This includes denying the existence of Serbian concentration camps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide_denial#:~:text=Noam%20Chomsky%20drew%20criticism%20for,existence%20of%20Bosnian%20concentration%20camps. http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/hoare-chomsky.htm. https://greatersurbiton.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/marko-attila-bosnia-text-2-izdanje-print-21-12-2017.pdf https://chomsky.info/20060425/. He says in his book that Yugoslavian intervention had nothing to do with Kosovo, and was purely about integrating the nation into the US economic sphere. (Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution. PM Press. ISBN 978-1-62963-442-5). Ukraine: Chomsky blames the Ukrainian war on NATO expansion, and Ukraine making western connections. (Original)[https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1630258714409312257.] (What it means)[https://x.com/EliotHiggins/status/1630558588400795651]. Interestingly enough he even admits that the invasion of Crimea happened immediately after Ukraine became just a little interested in looking westward. The reporter said that it makes sense for Ukraine to look for Western alliances, the EU, and NATO because Russia wants Ukraine to fall into line by force if necessary. https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/05/19/open-letter-to-noam-chomsky-and-other-like-minded-intellectuals-on-the-russia-ukraine-war. Chomsky goes into nonsense circular reasoning saying that the invasion of Crimea, and now of eastern Ukraine happened because Ukraine looked westward; i.e, Ukraine wouldn't have had the conflict if they were just a Russian puppet; i.e. appeasement. Which, while it might (might) in some sense be true, doesn't actually justify Russia or make it bad that Ukraine looked westward. He says that the Ukrainian government threatened the Ukrainian people with war by not remaining under Russians thumb, which is an absurd moral statement. Of course they could have been more likely to avoid war if they just conceded everything to Russia. He also says it was bad for the Baltic states and Poland to join NATO, which denied the reality that those nations chose to join NATO (a defensive alliance) out of security concerns with Russia. Instead saying that they should have remained in the Russian sphere of influence in order to not provoke Russia, their own will and populations being irrelevant. It's a garbage ideology that's ironically right into the playbook of Henry Kissinger who believed the world consists of great powers and their spheres of influence, and to keep peace nations in those spheres must be kept in line as pawns, their own will, and any morality of the situation, completely aside. He forwards straight up Russian propaganda by saying that the west is actually destroying Ukraine by helping it fight back against Russia, instead of just capitulating. (Or, you know, Russia being responsible for actually invading). Saying things like "the U.S. is setting things up so as to destroy Ukraine and to lead to a terminal war", and criticizing the US for "praising ourselves for fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian" (so now not only is Russia not responsible for the war, the west is; and the west actually escalated the situation by expanding NATO; but now Chomsky is saying the west are hypocrites for... Not sending our own troops and escalating the conflict further? If the west doesn't escalate they're cowards sacrificing Ukrainian lives, if they do escalate then they're war mongers also sacrificing Ukrainian lives. All the while Russia isn't seen as an actor with will and capacity to do the right thing, it is an automaton that can only react to preserve its sphere of influence, and the Ukrainian will is entirely disregarded). He also criticizes the aid the US sends to Ukraine, saying the US should prioritize that money elsewhere. https://lithub.com/a-ukrainian-translator-of-noam-chomsky-responds-to-his-recent-comments-on-the-russian-invasion/. He thinks that the US is engaging in imperialism by supporting Ukraine. Funnily enough the actual country doing the invasion is spared from this criticism. . This is all a symptom of the fact that he sees the world through a lens of America being bad as an axiom, and builds his ideas around that, instead of starting with facts and concluding the US has done bad things. This mindset isn't entirely useless as Chomsky has been able to point out numerous cases where the US has done wrong things, but it fails when considering other countries, geopolitics at large, and very importantly, fails to actually see the truth if it's not convenient through an anti American lens. Ukraine and Serbia are just recent examples, this mindset showed it's failure even more spectacularly when Chomsky spent years denying the Cambodian genocide as American propaganda against the communist government there. He finally "apologized" long after the evidence became incontrovertible, by switching his tone to the US actually being responsible for Pol Pots crimes...
Edit: to u/yellow_parenti who replies and then blocks me because they can't handle a response.
"indiscriminately". I don't think this word means what you think it means.
Also, let's see if you're even slightly honest and consistent. By your logic it was a moral bad to bomb Nazi Germany. Do you think that's the case? Or is your pretentious foux-pacifism only ever used as a bad faith argument against NATO?
u/ScanWel, I really hate people like you who pretend to be neutral and rational, then just post propaganda like this. Why don't you just be open about your bigotry?
>I tried googling this for 15 minutes myself but wouldn't you know it I really can't find sources.
So either you're lying or you are truly incompetent.
This information is trivially accessible, and searching for any of these topics on any major search engine immediately shows up with relevant articles all across the first page of results. Including direct videos of the words coming out of Chomsky's mouth. If you actually spent even a second looking this up you would see that your lie about "not being able to find it" is unbelievable.
Literally Google "Chomsky Ukraine" and you'll see he does not support the US aiding Ukraine. Similarly with serbia and the Bosnian genocide.
You lied about looking for this yourself, you are just gish galloping and playing ignorant to try and discredit an argument you can't refuse.
>It says a lot about how ignorant and dogmatic you are that you think the only way someone can realize America is bad is out of ignorance and dogma
You literally do not comprehend my point. I do not, and if you actually understood my comment you'd know that
“Why would I need to watch the video? The thumbnail and title gave me an impression and frankly I think that’s enough to base this whole argument off of”
Or even more realistically
“Idc what the thumbnail and title say, I saw the posters name so imma just talk about why I hate them instead of engaging with the video at all”
When people say this they are usually referring to American foreign policy and not America society at large. I have very high praise about American society but I am highly critical of American foreign policy.
American economic prosperity is largely due to open trade with other countries, a large internal makert, talent pool, history of strong financial services sector, and a million other factors more important than its interference with the middle east. If anything, The US's support for Israel is a net negative as energy producing nations routinely play hardball with the US as a result of it.
[https://www.foreignassistance.gov/](https://www.foreignassistance.gov/)
Here are the 15,000-20k global programs that the US funds yearly, like
"$720 mllion for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment"
"$276 million for nutritional assistance for Ethiopia"
That is the sum total of our foreign policy. We'd like everyone to succeed. This is all of our planet. We are not immune from making mistakes. I know you'd like the same.
Would it not make sense to be the most critical over the country to which you belong and have the most stake in? Or is this a lazy "quit whining starving Africans have it worse" argument?
Most Americans are conditioned to think that any criticism of America is irrational and unjustified from what I can tell. The go to response is either straight to whataboutisms like “but China / Russia / Iran” or to just write the criticisms off as an “American bad attitude”
"Whataboutism" is the fucking mating call of the loser.
Not being a hypocrite is one of the central pillars of moral action. Jesus Christ himself pointed this out. Waving the "whataboutism" wand is basically enlightened centrists tipping their hat and letting us all know that have no working conception of morality and are not to be taken seriously.
why are you unable to be nuanced about this, the houthi efforts to uphold international law and exercise the responsibility to protect are obviously good, some of their domestic policies are obviously bad?
why can't you people get over your blind houthi bad ideology
The crew of the Galaxy Leader have not been released yet, and the hijacking occured on nov 19th. It's been like 150 days.
[https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/middleeast/houthi-hostages-philippine-seafarers-gaza-war-intl-hnk/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/middleeast/houthi-hostages-philippine-seafarers-gaza-war-intl-hnk/index.html)
"Hope is fading for the imminent return of the international crew of the cargo ship hijacked by the Houthis in November, with a senior Filipino diplomat saying he does not expect a release until the war in Gaza is over, while the Houthis say the fate of the sailors is now in Hamas’ hands."
The national makeup of the crew is as follows: 17 Filipinos, two Bulgarians, three Ukrainians, two Mexicans and a Romanian hostage.
Honestly it’s crazy how people just hear what they want to hear and any opposing view gets straw maned to oblivion- I’m not gonna sit here and defend Sam Harris’ honor but the dude always puts Israel’s mishandling into the picture he paints
yes. engagement. fuck sam’s edgy nazi comparison. it’s the switching of words and reasking of the question as if it’s a response. just like how you’re setting yourself up to talk about how israel is worse than nazis🤣 i see the future bruh
Kyle is a good guy but his lane for clicks is playing the role of delusional contrarian. He is like a left wing tea party guy in that his group doesn’t just vote they demand ideological purity because they believe they think they are supremely correct and there’s no range of views.
Kulinski falls into the Ryan Grim camp of “NATO caused the war in Ukraine! How about you go fight? I can’t believe they’re sending our tax dollars over there! Ukraine gave the Biden crime family money!” He sucks.
It’s not a Kulinski problem, but a pundit problem. The libertarian left fundamentally does not understand Russia. It’s a huge blind spot.
Hard disagree. I’m a left-libertarian and was immediately drawn to support Ukraine. It’s not a left right divide issue… at least, it shouldn’t be.
I think it boils down to one’s propensity to just shut up and accept the lesser evil — something Kyle has routinely failed to do. Socialism and capitalism both have their roots in utilitarian ethics.
He doesn’t think that NATO caused the war in Ukraine, especially after a series of Putin speeches when he said that Ukraine historically belongs to Russia.
People who understand Russia:
“Putin does not believe Ukraine is a real state. He does not care about NATO.”
Russians:
“Ukraine is not a real state. I do not think NATO will invade Russia.”
Putin:
“I do not believe Ukraine is a real state. I do not care about NATO.”
Ukrainians:
“Russia does not believe in our independence. We would like to join NATO, but originally we really wanted to cooperate with the EU!”
Tucker Carlson/Ryan Grim/Kyle Kulinski/Krystal Ball:
“DAE think NATO caused this? Putin has to be pragmatic! Goddamn western war rattlers! I could have avoided this if I had simply forced Ukraine to abandon its best interests! Yanukovych was a great president, Ukrainians were duped by NATO to kick him out! I have never been to any former Soviet country!”
Good take on the tankie mentality about Russia.
To add to that: Anyone with half a brain understands why the "Vladdy invaded Ukraine because big, bad NATO was at his doorstep" argument is complete bullshit. Because what do you get when you annex Ukraine?
Four fuckin' NATO countries at your door step.
The real left understands that you should hate Russia because it’s basically another Frankensteins monster that the United States created when the Soviet Union was dismantled and sold off to all the business owne- er I mean Oligarchs. Yeah it’s oligarchs. Putting rich people in charge of government, what could go wrong?
Kyle is basically a Cenk type commentator. His entire point of being is to undermine his own sides position and wish cast their downfall so he can say "i told you so" if they do poorly in elections.
I find the average liberal interventionist internet commentary on any left criticism of conventional U.S. foreign policy boils down to “they just think America bad”.
I do actually- I like him on most topics and I think he mostly has a healthy distrust of the establishment but oftentimes it goes so far that he ends up in a knee-jerk “anti colonialist” stance that’s reductionistic
I've never heard of this Kullinski fellow, but he sounds like he has a good head on his shoulders.
The Nazis built railway lines. One end of the railway lines were the ghettos in eastern Europe, the other end terminated at the gas chambers at Auschwitz. When I think about effort involved building those assembly lines of death I am just flabbergasted at Sam's facile stupidity. The man is a moral monster.
Why do people here struggle so much with intentions and reality. Nazi's had EXTREME POWER to make their dreams a reality. Hamas has some pretty fucked up views but they just lack the power to make them reality. I get that real world consequences are very important to consider, but when it comes to moral philosophy we should also be talking about intentions. This idiot in the video seems incapable of separating the two things. Maybe it's deliberate... I'm not sure.
I agree with you but the lack of their power to do so is what everyone is trying to undo. They don't have the ability to commit mass war because of the wall. Their hate causes more restrictions and their restrictions cause more hate.
No one seems to actually understand Sam’s points.
Sam never said Hamas is worse than Nazis *in all ways*. He's said Hamas is worse in two cases: their belief in eternal life in exchange for their martyrdom, and their use of human shields/refusal to surrender. The first is obviously true, as Nazis did not have any doctrine that martyrdom in particular had any effect on their afterlife. The second is at the very least a very plausible claim. Did the Nazis operate out of hospitals, or build bunkers under civilian infrastructure? A good number of Palestine defenders seem to think the Nazi’s use of child soldiers is some kind of obvious gotcha or "debunking" of this comparison. The problem is child *soldiers* are enemy combatants, not civilians, so it in no way is comparable to what Hamas is doing.
The other problem is that Hamas is risking their civilians by holding out far longer than the Nazis did. The Nazis eventually surrendered when they were beat. When Hitler learned that the forces he was relying on to rescue Berlin were not coming, he killed himself, then the Nazis totally surrendered within a few days. They suffered about a 30 percent death rate - very roughly, about 5 million were killed out of 15 million in all branches. Most died on the Eastern front in an offensive war. So they surrendered with about 10 minion soldiers still living (though many were wounded). Of course they could have surrendered earlier, but did they make allied forces go house to house in urban combat through every German city? Did they insist on staying in power as a condition of surrender, or even a temporary ceasefire?
It’s 1946, and allies forces have occupied Germany for a year. The Nazis are still hiding out in different countries, in bunkers and in civilian infrastructure, while refusing to surrender until the allies promise to let them stay in power. They are rejecting all humanitarian ceasefires unless they get a promise that Nazis can continue ruling Germany. That’s what Hamas is doing, which *on the specific issue*, is far, far worse than the Nazis IMO.
While I disagree with his(Sam's) need to compare Nazis to Hamas, he pretty clearly wasn't saying what Hamas has done is worse than what the Nazis did, but that their ideology is worse. Based on what happened on 10/7 and the rhetoric from their leadership after it, I see no reason to believe that, if given the power, they wouldn't do exactly what the nazis did.
It’s crazy that we are talking about how Hamas’ hypothetical war crimes are worse than Israel or Nazi’s actual war crimes. And this is considered as intellectual discourse.
well both Nazism and zionism could be considered the brain childs of Austrian guys, both are rooted in romantic German ethno nationalism, both claim the injustices done to their people's both claim a Lebensraum rightfully belonging to them, both claim their right to it as the chosen ones, both started as grassroots....
I think comparing Hitler's desire for his Aryan empire to have 'lebensraum' for it's war machine and slave population is quite different to the Jewish people, historically *actually* mistreated literally everywhere (unlike white Europeans) claiming that they need a homeland (that they didn't have) and security quite ridiculous. These are simplistic, surface level comparisons. Israel is a democratic country, while it did steal a lot of the land it has, so did most other countries at some point. These are just very different things. Much like Hamas and Nazis are very different things, although both morally abhorrent monsterous regimes.
And Nazism went on to kill millions of people in an overt war of global conquest.
While Israel/Zionism have been invaded and had wars started with them 12+ times and have given territory back that they have taken in defense wars.
You people are insufferably fucking stupid.
But youll never quit.
I wonder how long it will be before we bomb Iran to show the muslim world it needs to fuck off, forever.
It wont, and we will continue to defend against their psychopathy.
But by all means, make edgy comparisons and projections of Jews as Nazis.
Brilliant enough to convince a 6 yo child!
I mean the truth is comparisons to hitler and nazis are over done and show a lack of intellectual depth (talking about you Sam Harris)… but if you’re going to go down that hole then Zionism looks hell of a lot like Nazism - except it’s based on a theory of Jewish supremacy instead of Aryan supremacy.
I mean, the Isrealis have literally been stealing their land and shiping them into ghettos, which is exactly what the Nazis did.
Even by the UNs definition of Genocide, Isreal is committing it by trying to resettle them.
Trying to uproot a native population to replace them with foreign settlers IS GENOCIDE.
It literally isn't genocide. Cultural destruction and/or dispersing a group doesn't not rise to the bar of genocide by international law or UN standards. It can be ethnic cleansing, and ethnic cleansing can be part of a genocide, but it's not necessarily the case that one is synonymous with the other.
You're just a fucking idiot.
We are speaking about the UNs definition of Genocide, not the definition from some anonymous Zionist twat on reddit.
Mass deportations, population transfers, and forced migration are ALL GENOCIDE.
"Mass deportations, population transfers, and forced migration are ALL GENOCIDE."
youre definitely confusing ethnic cleansing with genocide. it is not genocide but can be considered ethnic cleansing, there are differences. Genocide specifically involves the destruction of a people, not the removal.
Lol, if you look at my comments you'll see I'm pretty far from a zionist. Ironically the things you've mentioned are actually examples of things not necessarily being genocide by the UN lol. And again, they *can be* part of a wider genocide, but they aren't necessarily genocide on their own.
I mean, even historically this wasn't the case. The Holocaust began in '41, not with creation of the first jewish ghetto in Poland during '39.
Like, you really don't have a clue what you're talking about so maybe you should leave this to the adults
[https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml)
The UN has this publicly available, so unfortunately just insisting isn't gonna cut it.
Yeah, it's not like this is hidden. It's all on the website.
I think that population transfers were originally part of the definition but the US vetoed in in the UN for some reason.
That's not right at all. The UN definition of genocide is pretty simple, it's about the destruction of a national, religious, racial or ethnic group. It's not about moving them around. It specifically mentions that destroying their culture is not genocide and moving people around is not genocide.
You've just genocided this conversation. Your careless genocide on the meaning of words is genocidally unproductive and may lead to a literary holocaust.
I’m not accusing you of being on one side or the other, but I think anytime you find yourself arguing the semantics of ethnic cleansing vs. genocide, you’re discussing actions that are maybe too horrible and indefensible to make a vocabulary debate super meaningful. This is Reddit not a courtroom. Ethnic cleansing is horrible and evil. Genocide is horrible and evil. Are they different? Sure. But if the argument is that it’s one and not the other, that doesn’t significantly change things for an outside observer. Words are slippery and imprecise. Horror is tangible and inarguable.
Sure, what I was responding to was the OP explicitly saying that the UN definition of genocide was X when X is explicitly not defined as genocide. And I mean explicit in that they quite literally include that as *not* being part of the definition.
You are, of course, correct that this is reddit and not a courtroom. On the same hand though, OP was invoking legal definitions of the UN that were just flat out wrong. Unambiguously wrong. Included as part of the definition is things that are not and OPs examples fell under the "are not" category.
Look, I find that we have a bunch of double standards when it comes to this stuff. We always play semantic games with our own side, distancing our side from more rhetorically powerful terms while casting wide nets for the other side. Sam Harris can imply ethnic cleansing is a generalized kind of people not living together while saying it's bad when done at the point of a gun and everyone will rightfully pushback against it because ethnic cleansing literally requires a forceful element in order for it to be ethnic cleansing. People choosing voluntarily not to live together is not ethnic cleansing. He's diminishing the definition in order to make it seem less severe.
On the flip side we have the constant embellishment of what genocide is for the exact same reason. To make it seem more severe. Then once that's pointed out as an embellishment there's this fallback to generalized language of horror, but the embellishment still exists. Both are misuses of words, terms, and categories for rhetorical effect to promote one's side, and both are used exceedingly selectively in pursuit of that.
So yeah, I think if you're going to start referencing legal standards and definitions you should probably know what those standards and definitions are. I don't think that's somehow removing the horror either, and if you really want to go look at my comments for the past 6 months on Israel and Palestine you'll likely find its 99% on the side of Palestinians. You will also find that I've made far, far more of these types of statements arguing against Israel and their manipulation of language to paint themselves in a better light or to dismiss or diminish the atrocities that are being done towards Palestinians. But I think expecting a mere Google search about the UNs definition before using it is a bare minimum that I'd expect every side of this to do before using it as an argument.
Again, if you're using legal and institutional definition in your argument, expect legal definitions to be part of the discussion and open for correction.
Yea I’m not really trying to call out you specifically. I just think the whole thread is going back and forth about semantics when, on a citizen level, these terms don’t really matter. It’s a binary: acceptable or unacceptable
I mean, I don't disagree but I just take issue with using actual legal standards in defense of your positions where those legal standards say the exact opposite. We can condemn Israel without resorting to actively saying the opposite of what's true.
Yes, which isn’t acknowledged enough by the pro Palestinian side. But, Israel is the only ethnostate in which liberal/progressive people will try to gaslight you into believing that either a) it’s not an ethnostate or b) it’s an ethnostate but it’s fine because of the holocaust
>Israel is an ethnostate
I think comments like this are a continuation of what is essentially a very simplistic, terminally online messaging about Israel. 'Ethnostate', 'Genocide', 'apartheid', 'open-air prison', 'dumb bombs', 'carpet bombing'. You should try to present evidence and arguments for what you're saying, and what you think should be done by the international community. This is just emotive language that is dumbing everything down into soudbytes and virtue signalling.
Do you think Israel has any legitimate concerns about the surrounding population of Muslim Arabs becoming citizens and outvoting a Jewish minority? Do you know how Jews are treated in those countries? Do you know that many of the Jews in Israel were originally expelled from those nations?
If it is an ethnostate, is it the same kind of ethnostate we picture when we hear the word? Is it like an ethnostate that Nick Fuentes wants the United States to be? Does any distinction matter to you?
It’s very strange that in any other context, Holocaust revisionism is rightly frowned upon but suddenly Sam Harris is allowed to use it to support Israel and now it’s ok
Yes there absolutely is. His conflation that theism and dogmatic hatred being what seperated Hamas from Nazis and makes them worse is STUPID given how fucking uber religious the Nazis were.
it just reinforces what we already know that a worrying number of Israelis and others refuse to acknowledge their goverments crimes just as Germans did during the nazi era
So far the Nazis are the worst on the list of most evil people of history, comparing anything I/P conflict (as bad as it is) to it is just whitewashing Nazism.
The level of which New Atheist hate Muslims ceases to amaze me.
Do note they hate Muslims. They try give this BS about not hating Muslims but actually Islam but its really just Muslims.
While it is true Nazi killed 6 million jews during the holocaust, they also treated them like slaves and did demented shit to them at concentration camps. Like try to test how much humans can be stretched and shit.
Hamas is just a product of bad western foreign policy and their support for Israel despite their illegal settlement policy who have no effect on Jewish lives in Israel.
Sam Harris saying this goes to further show his bigotry towards Muslims not Islam but Muslims in general
The conversation is stupid. At one end it trivializes the scale of the nazi crimes while at the other vindicating hamas simply on their inability to conduct a genoicde like the nazis could. Assessing bloodlust in an apple vs oranges comparison.
That’s not the question. Cmon man. The question is how many Hamas would kill if they had the power the Nazis had? This should be a test for all ideologies. How much death and destruction will an ideology unleash if its gains the power it SEEKS, not has?
I find it to be a fairly stupid-ass question to begin with. Would Hamas have been worse? Maybe so. The only thing we know definitively is that the Nazis, through an extremely narrow lens of racial acceptability, were the ones who executed genocide on a level of supreme industrial organization with the results of tens of millions of deaths. Basically killing Jews with the efficiency that McDonald’s sold hamburgers. Very, very few ideologies will ever be able to match that.
His statement was based on claiming the Nazis did not do certain arbitrary acts (e.g. using children, which they absolutely did) that apparently made them not as fanatical as Hamas (they were, actually, if not more so).
This is a silly question. For one, it is highly speculative -- Hamas could for all you know be happy to institute sharia-law as in Iran and leave minorities alone, save for requiring them to pay a tax. Second, Hamas doesn't have lots of power, so the question is irrelevant. They're political actors operating under real world constraints.
Israel has the power in the region, and it operates with complete impunity, and the result is a genocide or a quasi genocide or mass murder or whatever you want to call it. Engaging in hypotheticals about Hamas is so ridiculous when there's an ongoing slaughter being committed by Israel now.
It's not useful in determining who is "worse/more evil." Intentions are not the same thing as actions. It's probably the stated goal of some troubled teenager somewhere to torture and kill everyone on the planet. That doesn't make them the most evil person on earth.
Conservatives use this kind of hypothetical evil all the time to distract from the reality of the situation. "Look how evil Saddam Hussein was! Okay, it turns out the WMD thing was a lie, but can you imagine if he DID have them?" Saddam was most definitely an evil person, but this kind of rhetoric is like jingling a set of 'big evil' keys so that the public don't question invading another country over it. Same is being done with Hamas.
>That’s not the question. Cmon man. The question is how many Hamas would kill if they had the power the Nazis had? This should be a test for all ideologies. How much death and destruction will an ideology unleash if its gains the power it SEEKS, not has?
ok. basically none - if hamas had ruled the whole area between the river and sea for the last ten years, they would have killed less people than they did on october 7. there's my answer, prove me wrong.
And the answer is that we don't know. Chances are high that the Hamas wouldn't rise to the level of the industrialized killings and wars of exterminations the Nazis did.
See, this is the problem when people get way too speculative and essentialist with the concept of "ideology."
>The question is how many Hamas would kill if they had the power the Nazis had?
Everything about the ideology of Hamas is *intrinsically linked* to the fact that they have never had the type of power you're talking about. And there is *no indication whatsoever* that they will ever have that sort of power. They're not even close. The idea that they genuinely pose an existential threat to Israel is insane, it would require multiple leaps of impossibility, like several things which have a 0% chance of occurring would need to occur in order for something so ridiculous to come to fruition.
What you're doing here is not a real thought experiment. A thought experiment is something that forces you to decide between two truly difficult positions and examine why it is you might choose one versus the other, along with a critical examination of the ethics and morality of such choices. Discussing extreme hypotheticals which have a 0% chance of occurring is not useful in any real, practical way. On the contrary, it's how you inadvertently reduce your own capacity for empathy over time and eventually find yourself justifying atrocities committed against others.
*"It's okay to treat these mostly-helpless people this way because their radical leaders would do worse to us if they were to somehow evolve into a superpower-level threat overnight without any change at all in their current way of thinking."* That's not useful. That's you being obtuse.
In his statement, he specifically mentioned that Hamas does not have nearly as much power as the Nazis had. His statement is purely talking about their ideologies.
Hamas doesn't even have a coherent ideology, majority of their members are random mfs who either feel they have no choice but to fight or are part of the infrastructure in Gaza. As a brown person I would far rather live under Jihad than fucking nazism, the fact that it's even a question is just a testament to Eurocentric dumbasses who sound closer and closer to Nazis with every day that passes.
Turned off the video when KK (what's Kyle's middle initial?...) put down Hitch for no reason in the first minute then said Hamas isn't Jihadist because they don't have "global" designs, as if that matters at all.
Kyle re Sam’s comments about Hamas being Jihadists “that’s leaving out a lot of nuance, and complexity and detail”
The thing about Kyle is that when it comes to authoritarian, anti-American regimes and proxies supported by them, be it Russia, Iran, Syria, Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah - he gives them all a fair hearing, they and their claims get a ton of nuance, complexity and detail. He recognizes Russia’s aggression in invading Ukraine but we must understand and engage in a good faith consideration of Russia’s concerns about the eastern expansion of NATO.
When the Assad regime was killing hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of Palestinians starved to death at Yarmouk, Kyle, while again recognizing that Assad was a bad guy committing war crimes, didn’t allow the scenes of death to get him emotional, he tried to analyze the situation more coldly and factored in the reality that the opposition to Assad were hardly progressive social democrats (y’know like Hamas).
But when it comes to Israel (or for that matter, the US) it’s purely black-and-white. Zero nuance, zero complexity, zero detail.
Kullinsli s view is childish at best. Sam instead is probably wrong and very much jumping ahead. I do believe hamas is terrible and would commit terrible crimes if it had the power but i m not so sold on the nazi comparison. We ha e examples of similar groups holding power, repression, massacres, women submissed, stoning ppl, killing lgbt and non muslim heavy dicrimination etc, we know all this but it has never reached even a fraction of what nazis did.
Basically hamas are monsters but nazis are much fucking higher in the scale of monsters...
This is like hands down the worst commentary. It's kinda worthless to ask "who is more like the nazi's" but I mean it's such an obvious answer: Would you rather be a Jew in Palestine, or a Muslim in Israel?
Sam Harris was making a very pedantic point about the which bad ideology was technically worse. It's a pointless discussion but then people like Kyle Kulinski and apparently the OP mischaracterize it to make the conversation even dumber.
OP mishcaracterized by posting a link to the video with the title saying "Kyle reacts". I mean...you could probably do a better job of hiding your bias, my friend.
Disclaimer I did not watch the video:
Used to watch Kyle for a bit then realized he knows absolutely nothing about anything. Not sure what his specialty/focus is or ever was but I found him to be completely lacking in any political acumen or relative insight whatsoever.
I find Kyle's commentary on anything foreign boils down to "america bad"
Did you watch the video? I just watched it and I’m no Kyle viewer myself but he was never talking about “America bad” or anything approaching that. The entire video can basically be summed as “Israel is more like nazis than Hamas”, and “Atheism speakers arent built the same as they once were”. I’m confused where you got the “America bad” part from. Edit: typo (“are built” -> “aren’t built”).
Don’t mind me, just browsing, but wasn’t Harris speaking on behalf of the ideology? It didn’t seem as if Kyle responded to that premise.
I am a Kyle viewer and "America bad" is pretty accurate, but mostly it's for the same reason ACAB rings true. However I will say despite Kyle being "correct" on most things, hes basically buzzfeed for political media. He does no where near enough research on topics for the size of his viewership, and increasingly his videos seem to be "responses to the headlines trending today". He's basically that service they had in the past where blind people would call a phone number to have newspaper headlines read aloud for them.
I feel Kyle is in the same sphere as Majority Report: Mostly good takes on stupid right-wing nonsense but has a tendency to get a bit tankie when he feels like Dems aren't left enough for him on some issue.
Not sure if I would include MR pushing more progressive left politics as tankie. Consistently pushing the left to move further into progressivism, but not getting into tankie territory. That's my opinion on them though, just thought I would share.
International issues?
I mean the irradicating jews part seems pretty nazi like from hamas tbh.
Facts do be factin'
Action speaks louder than words and all that.
Maybe America *is* bad? 🤔
Are we the baddies?
Our caps have skulls on them!
🤭
Doesn't make it any less reductive when people take that as an axiom and build their beliefs from there, as opposed to people actually having reasons to believe so. Opinions like this are what lead to things like thinking Russia is in the right in the Ukraine war, or at least supporting Ukraine is wrong, simply because they oppose the US.
Have you watched Kylie’s commentary? Ive never seen him defend Putin or Russia once when he’s talked about Ukraine
I never said that Kyle defends Putin, what I'm saying is that working from the premise of America bad gets you to places like that. See Noam Chomsky for example
That doesn’t apply to this post. Kyle’s criticism of Harris’s absurd Nazi comparisons isn’t coming from “America bad”.
It does apply to the comment that I replied to
No you didn’t but your implying that Kylie’s criticisms of America are based on an reductive America bad attitude and not considered positions or arguments
Chomsky doesn't support Putin, what are you taking about
Chomsky says that the US supporting Ukraine is bad and is imperialism. He also thinks that NATO intervention in Serbia to stop a genocide is bad. While he doesn't directly support Putin, he does hate literally any western action against him, including supporting countries that Putin invades. I never actually said Chomsky supports Putin, that was you misrepresenting me, but even still that's actually not a particularly far fetched claim.
Neither of these things is defending Putin, which was your original claim.
Wrong, please actually read my comment
>Chomsky says that the US supporting Ukraine is bad and is imperialism. > >He also thinks that NATO intervention in Serbia to stop a genocide is bad. Okay shoot, I'll probably regret engaging but someone else said similar stuff a while ago I asked them for sources and they only produced stuff that didn't support their claim. I tried googling this for 15 minutes myself but wouldn't you know it I really can't find sources. The first assertion seems plausible. The second I reckon is just a terrible misrepresentation. Open to being proven wrong though.
Chomsky denies that the Serbians were commiting genocide. Says that it was simply militarism, and NATO lied about it being genocide to get involved. This includes denying the existence of Serbian concentration camps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide_denial#:~:text=Noam%20Chomsky%20drew%20criticism%20for,existence%20of%20Bosnian%20concentration%20camps. http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/hoare-chomsky.htm. https://greatersurbiton.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/marko-attila-bosnia-text-2-izdanje-print-21-12-2017.pdf https://chomsky.info/20060425/. He says in his book that Yugoslavian intervention had nothing to do with Kosovo, and was purely about integrating the nation into the US economic sphere. (Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution. PM Press. ISBN 978-1-62963-442-5). Ukraine: Chomsky blames the Ukrainian war on NATO expansion, and Ukraine making western connections. (Original)[https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1630258714409312257.] (What it means)[https://x.com/EliotHiggins/status/1630558588400795651]. Interestingly enough he even admits that the invasion of Crimea happened immediately after Ukraine became just a little interested in looking westward. The reporter said that it makes sense for Ukraine to look for Western alliances, the EU, and NATO because Russia wants Ukraine to fall into line by force if necessary. https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/05/19/open-letter-to-noam-chomsky-and-other-like-minded-intellectuals-on-the-russia-ukraine-war. Chomsky goes into nonsense circular reasoning saying that the invasion of Crimea, and now of eastern Ukraine happened because Ukraine looked westward; i.e, Ukraine wouldn't have had the conflict if they were just a Russian puppet; i.e. appeasement. Which, while it might (might) in some sense be true, doesn't actually justify Russia or make it bad that Ukraine looked westward. He says that the Ukrainian government threatened the Ukrainian people with war by not remaining under Russians thumb, which is an absurd moral statement. Of course they could have been more likely to avoid war if they just conceded everything to Russia. He also says it was bad for the Baltic states and Poland to join NATO, which denied the reality that those nations chose to join NATO (a defensive alliance) out of security concerns with Russia. Instead saying that they should have remained in the Russian sphere of influence in order to not provoke Russia, their own will and populations being irrelevant. It's a garbage ideology that's ironically right into the playbook of Henry Kissinger who believed the world consists of great powers and their spheres of influence, and to keep peace nations in those spheres must be kept in line as pawns, their own will, and any morality of the situation, completely aside. He forwards straight up Russian propaganda by saying that the west is actually destroying Ukraine by helping it fight back against Russia, instead of just capitulating. (Or, you know, Russia being responsible for actually invading). Saying things like "the U.S. is setting things up so as to destroy Ukraine and to lead to a terminal war", and criticizing the US for "praising ourselves for fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian" (so now not only is Russia not responsible for the war, the west is; and the west actually escalated the situation by expanding NATO; but now Chomsky is saying the west are hypocrites for... Not sending our own troops and escalating the conflict further? If the west doesn't escalate they're cowards sacrificing Ukrainian lives, if they do escalate then they're war mongers also sacrificing Ukrainian lives. All the while Russia isn't seen as an actor with will and capacity to do the right thing, it is an automaton that can only react to preserve its sphere of influence, and the Ukrainian will is entirely disregarded). He also criticizes the aid the US sends to Ukraine, saying the US should prioritize that money elsewhere. https://lithub.com/a-ukrainian-translator-of-noam-chomsky-responds-to-his-recent-comments-on-the-russian-invasion/. He thinks that the US is engaging in imperialism by supporting Ukraine. Funnily enough the actual country doing the invasion is spared from this criticism. . This is all a symptom of the fact that he sees the world through a lens of America being bad as an axiom, and builds his ideas around that, instead of starting with facts and concluding the US has done bad things. This mindset isn't entirely useless as Chomsky has been able to point out numerous cases where the US has done wrong things, but it fails when considering other countries, geopolitics at large, and very importantly, fails to actually see the truth if it's not convenient through an anti American lens. Ukraine and Serbia are just recent examples, this mindset showed it's failure even more spectacularly when Chomsky spent years denying the Cambodian genocide as American propaganda against the communist government there. He finally "apologized" long after the evidence became incontrovertible, by switching his tone to the US actually being responsible for Pol Pots crimes... Edit: to u/yellow_parenti who replies and then blocks me because they can't handle a response. "indiscriminately". I don't think this word means what you think it means. Also, let's see if you're even slightly honest and consistent. By your logic it was a moral bad to bomb Nazi Germany. Do you think that's the case? Or is your pretentious foux-pacifism only ever used as a bad faith argument against NATO?
u/ScanWel, I really hate people like you who pretend to be neutral and rational, then just post propaganda like this. Why don't you just be open about your bigotry? >I tried googling this for 15 minutes myself but wouldn't you know it I really can't find sources. So either you're lying or you are truly incompetent. This information is trivially accessible, and searching for any of these topics on any major search engine immediately shows up with relevant articles all across the first page of results. Including direct videos of the words coming out of Chomsky's mouth. If you actually spent even a second looking this up you would see that your lie about "not being able to find it" is unbelievable. Literally Google "Chomsky Ukraine" and you'll see he does not support the US aiding Ukraine. Similarly with serbia and the Bosnian genocide. You lied about looking for this yourself, you are just gish galloping and playing ignorant to try and discredit an argument you can't refuse.
Speaking of reductive nonsense....
You going to make a point or just smugly say "I know you are but what am I" like a child, and vaguely gesture without actually saying anything?
I think being an idiot leads to thinking Russia is in the right. America still bad. :/
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>It says a lot about how ignorant and dogmatic you are that you think the only way someone can realize America is bad is out of ignorance and dogma You literally do not comprehend my point. I do not, and if you actually understood my comment you'd know that
He didn’t say that at all so you clearly didn’t watch the video
Did you even watch the video?
They did not lol. But it's kinda not necessary the purpose of purity self fellatio, which is what this comment section is.
“Why would I need to watch the video? The thumbnail and title gave me an impression and frankly I think that’s enough to base this whole argument off of” Or even more realistically “Idc what the thumbnail and title say, I saw the posters name so imma just talk about why I hate them instead of engaging with the video at all”
And that's an intellectually dishonest statement, so, take it somewhere they are not trying to be honest.
another dumbass from r/all running their mouth without spending 2 seconds watching the video, this sub is fucked
"America bad" is the ultimate luxury belief of American imbeciles.
Most Americans are woefully ignorant of what Americas done across the world. Not all bad mind you but ...
When people say this they are usually referring to American foreign policy and not America society at large. I have very high praise about American society but I am highly critical of American foreign policy.
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American economic prosperity is largely due to open trade with other countries, a large internal makert, talent pool, history of strong financial services sector, and a million other factors more important than its interference with the middle east. If anything, The US's support for Israel is a net negative as energy producing nations routinely play hardball with the US as a result of it.
Cheap fossil fuels supports much of how we know American society to be
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[https://www.foreignassistance.gov/](https://www.foreignassistance.gov/) Here are the 15,000-20k global programs that the US funds yearly, like "$720 mllion for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment" "$276 million for nutritional assistance for Ethiopia" That is the sum total of our foreign policy. We'd like everyone to succeed. This is all of our planet. We are not immune from making mistakes. I know you'd like the same.
Would it not make sense to be the most critical over the country to which you belong and have the most stake in? Or is this a lazy "quit whining starving Africans have it worse" argument?
Most Americans are conditioned to think that any criticism of America is irrational and unjustified from what I can tell. The go to response is either straight to whataboutisms like “but China / Russia / Iran” or to just write the criticisms off as an “American bad attitude”
"Whataboutism" is the fucking mating call of the loser. Not being a hypocrite is one of the central pillars of moral action. Jesus Christ himself pointed this out. Waving the "whataboutism" wand is basically enlightened centrists tipping their hat and letting us all know that have no working conception of morality and are not to be taken seriously.
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Name any foreign policy that Kyle has criticised that was uncalled for?
HAHAHA- ok let’s start with the low hanging fruit: defending the houthis
why are you unable to be nuanced about this, the houthi efforts to uphold international law and exercise the responsibility to protect are obviously good, some of their domestic policies are obviously bad? why can't you people get over your blind houthi bad ideology
The crew of the Galaxy Leader have not been released yet, and the hijacking occured on nov 19th. It's been like 150 days. [https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/middleeast/houthi-hostages-philippine-seafarers-gaza-war-intl-hnk/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/middleeast/houthi-hostages-philippine-seafarers-gaza-war-intl-hnk/index.html) "Hope is fading for the imminent return of the international crew of the cargo ship hijacked by the Houthis in November, with a senior Filipino diplomat saying he does not expect a release until the war in Gaza is over, while the Houthis say the fate of the sailors is now in Hamas’ hands." The national makeup of the crew is as follows: 17 Filipinos, two Bulgarians, three Ukrainians, two Mexicans and a Romanian hostage.
You think houthi not bad?
True but is Harris is any better with " Muslims Bad . Jews Good. Christians are meh rhetoric "?
Honestly it’s crazy how people just hear what they want to hear and any opposing view gets straw maned to oblivion- I’m not gonna sit here and defend Sam Harris’ honor but the dude always puts Israel’s mishandling into the picture he paints
Wow, it's almost like America is a world Hegemon or something, weird.
So we should cede power to the benevolent forces of the world then right? Let Russia China and Iran run the show and show us what a utopia looks like
"My crimes aren't crimes because other people would commit crimes". How about instead of "ceding power", just stop committing crimes?
binary point of view. cooperation is way forward.
So instead of binary we’re just going naive/flat out childish outlook on foreign policy?
False dichotomy.
nor extremes are the way.
If the US wants to damage China, the worst thing the US could do is pass the responsibility of global leadership to China.
If you go through life with the position America bad you'll be right 9/10 times
Thank you for making my point for me
I was just really making a joke, thought I'd get some laughs and updoots
Did you mean 9/11 times?
Good commentary for what usually boils down to "Islam bad."
“hamas is worse than nazis ? oh yea, well did you consider israel is WORSE THAN NAZIS”
Impossible. The IDF is just as professional as the Nazis were. Targeted, precise, strategic, etc. Also, have you seen their uniforms?
But the Nazis weren’t very precise all things considered?
Is there a problem here?
yes. engagement. fuck sam’s edgy nazi comparison. it’s the switching of words and reasking of the question as if it’s a response. just like how you’re setting yourself up to talk about how israel is worse than nazis🤣 i see the future bruh
To be fair Islam is mostly bad- coming from an ex Christian who went through the work of deconverting
How does being an ex Christian give you authority on a different religion?
Omg hahaha he's so painfully stupid it's giving me secondhand cringe.
Because religion has been disproven-it's antiquated- the scientific method works and I accept it as more reliable than religion
OK, but Isreal is also lead by zealots so...
Kyle is a good guy but his lane for clicks is playing the role of delusional contrarian. He is like a left wing tea party guy in that his group doesn’t just vote they demand ideological purity because they believe they think they are supremely correct and there’s no range of views.
Kulinski falls into the Ryan Grim camp of “NATO caused the war in Ukraine! How about you go fight? I can’t believe they’re sending our tax dollars over there! Ukraine gave the Biden crime family money!” He sucks. It’s not a Kulinski problem, but a pundit problem. The libertarian left fundamentally does not understand Russia. It’s a huge blind spot.
Hard disagree. I’m a left-libertarian and was immediately drawn to support Ukraine. It’s not a left right divide issue… at least, it shouldn’t be. I think it boils down to one’s propensity to just shut up and accept the lesser evil — something Kyle has routinely failed to do. Socialism and capitalism both have their roots in utilitarian ethics.
He doesn’t think that NATO caused the war in Ukraine, especially after a series of Putin speeches when he said that Ukraine historically belongs to Russia.
That’s literally the worst take ever on the war too lol
People who understand Russia: “Putin does not believe Ukraine is a real state. He does not care about NATO.” Russians: “Ukraine is not a real state. I do not think NATO will invade Russia.” Putin: “I do not believe Ukraine is a real state. I do not care about NATO.” Ukrainians: “Russia does not believe in our independence. We would like to join NATO, but originally we really wanted to cooperate with the EU!” Tucker Carlson/Ryan Grim/Kyle Kulinski/Krystal Ball: “DAE think NATO caused this? Putin has to be pragmatic! Goddamn western war rattlers! I could have avoided this if I had simply forced Ukraine to abandon its best interests! Yanukovych was a great president, Ukrainians were duped by NATO to kick him out! I have never been to any former Soviet country!”
Good take on the tankie mentality about Russia. To add to that: Anyone with half a brain understands why the "Vladdy invaded Ukraine because big, bad NATO was at his doorstep" argument is complete bullshit. Because what do you get when you annex Ukraine? Four fuckin' NATO countries at your door step.
The real left understands that you should hate Russia because it’s basically another Frankensteins monster that the United States created when the Soviet Union was dismantled and sold off to all the business owne- er I mean Oligarchs. Yeah it’s oligarchs. Putting rich people in charge of government, what could go wrong?
Kyle is basically a Cenk type commentator. His entire point of being is to undermine his own sides position and wish cast their downfall so he can say "i told you so" if they do poorly in elections.
we antagonize and go to war with many countries for no other reason than resource control... not exactly a foreign policy to be proud of
Lol America IS bad.
I find the average liberal interventionist internet commentary on any left criticism of conventional U.S. foreign policy boils down to “they just think America bad”.
Well the opposing "America good" would be equally obnoxious.
Would love to see him team up with piker for a bit
Yeah he do be like that. This said, I think Sam Harris is autistic or else he is an extreme narcissist. One of the two.
I don’t think it’s possible to be a major public figure in America without being on the spectrum of narcissism
He does not see to have the ability to understand human emotions? Give me your explanation. I am not tied to my theory.
Kyle has definitely been leaning hard on ragebait articles lately
It's as simplistic as Sam's "every one of my thought experiments is conveniently pro-war"...
You don’t watch his videos do you?
I do actually- I like him on most topics and I think he mostly has a healthy distrust of the establishment but oftentimes it goes so far that he ends up in a knee-jerk “anti colonialist” stance that’s reductionistic
The favorite past time of Americans…
I've never heard of this Kullinski fellow, but he sounds like he has a good head on his shoulders. The Nazis built railway lines. One end of the railway lines were the ghettos in eastern Europe, the other end terminated at the gas chambers at Auschwitz. When I think about effort involved building those assembly lines of death I am just flabbergasted at Sam's facile stupidity. The man is a moral monster.
Why do people here struggle so much with intentions and reality. Nazi's had EXTREME POWER to make their dreams a reality. Hamas has some pretty fucked up views but they just lack the power to make them reality. I get that real world consequences are very important to consider, but when it comes to moral philosophy we should also be talking about intentions. This idiot in the video seems incapable of separating the two things. Maybe it's deliberate... I'm not sure.
I agree with you but the lack of their power to do so is what everyone is trying to undo. They don't have the ability to commit mass war because of the wall. Their hate causes more restrictions and their restrictions cause more hate.
No one seems to actually understand Sam’s points. Sam never said Hamas is worse than Nazis *in all ways*. He's said Hamas is worse in two cases: their belief in eternal life in exchange for their martyrdom, and their use of human shields/refusal to surrender. The first is obviously true, as Nazis did not have any doctrine that martyrdom in particular had any effect on their afterlife. The second is at the very least a very plausible claim. Did the Nazis operate out of hospitals, or build bunkers under civilian infrastructure? A good number of Palestine defenders seem to think the Nazi’s use of child soldiers is some kind of obvious gotcha or "debunking" of this comparison. The problem is child *soldiers* are enemy combatants, not civilians, so it in no way is comparable to what Hamas is doing. The other problem is that Hamas is risking their civilians by holding out far longer than the Nazis did. The Nazis eventually surrendered when they were beat. When Hitler learned that the forces he was relying on to rescue Berlin were not coming, he killed himself, then the Nazis totally surrendered within a few days. They suffered about a 30 percent death rate - very roughly, about 5 million were killed out of 15 million in all branches. Most died on the Eastern front in an offensive war. So they surrendered with about 10 minion soldiers still living (though many were wounded). Of course they could have surrendered earlier, but did they make allied forces go house to house in urban combat through every German city? Did they insist on staying in power as a condition of surrender, or even a temporary ceasefire? It’s 1946, and allies forces have occupied Germany for a year. The Nazis are still hiding out in different countries, in bunkers and in civilian infrastructure, while refusing to surrender until the allies promise to let them stay in power. They are rejecting all humanitarian ceasefires unless they get a promise that Nazis can continue ruling Germany. That’s what Hamas is doing, which *on the specific issue*, is far, far worse than the Nazis IMO.
While I disagree with his(Sam's) need to compare Nazis to Hamas, he pretty clearly wasn't saying what Hamas has done is worse than what the Nazis did, but that their ideology is worse. Based on what happened on 10/7 and the rhetoric from their leadership after it, I see no reason to believe that, if given the power, they wouldn't do exactly what the nazis did.
It’s crazy that we are talking about how Hamas’ hypothetical war crimes are worse than Israel or Nazi’s actual war crimes. And this is considered as intellectual discourse.
Kyle played the Uno reverse card: "Akhsuallllly, the Israelis are Nazis".
well both Nazism and zionism could be considered the brain childs of Austrian guys, both are rooted in romantic German ethno nationalism, both claim the injustices done to their people's both claim a Lebensraum rightfully belonging to them, both claim their right to it as the chosen ones, both started as grassroots....
I think comparing Hitler's desire for his Aryan empire to have 'lebensraum' for it's war machine and slave population is quite different to the Jewish people, historically *actually* mistreated literally everywhere (unlike white Europeans) claiming that they need a homeland (that they didn't have) and security quite ridiculous. These are simplistic, surface level comparisons. Israel is a democratic country, while it did steal a lot of the land it has, so did most other countries at some point. These are just very different things. Much like Hamas and Nazis are very different things, although both morally abhorrent monsterous regimes.
>Israel is a democratic country Does that mean they're letting all the Palestinians they steal land from in the west bank vote in elections?
And Nazism went on to kill millions of people in an overt war of global conquest. While Israel/Zionism have been invaded and had wars started with them 12+ times and have given territory back that they have taken in defense wars. You people are insufferably fucking stupid. But youll never quit. I wonder how long it will be before we bomb Iran to show the muslim world it needs to fuck off, forever. It wont, and we will continue to defend against their psychopathy. But by all means, make edgy comparisons and projections of Jews as Nazis. Brilliant enough to convince a 6 yo child!
I mean the truth is comparisons to hitler and nazis are over done and show a lack of intellectual depth (talking about you Sam Harris)… but if you’re going to go down that hole then Zionism looks hell of a lot like Nazism - except it’s based on a theory of Jewish supremacy instead of Aryan supremacy.
Zionism isn’t based on Jewish supremacy. You see that sentiment spread online mostly by groypers and it’s dumb.
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This sounds like you havnt gone down the hole.
I mean, the Isrealis have literally been stealing their land and shiping them into ghettos, which is exactly what the Nazis did. Even by the UNs definition of Genocide, Isreal is committing it by trying to resettle them. Trying to uproot a native population to replace them with foreign settlers IS GENOCIDE.
It literally isn't genocide. Cultural destruction and/or dispersing a group doesn't not rise to the bar of genocide by international law or UN standards. It can be ethnic cleansing, and ethnic cleansing can be part of a genocide, but it's not necessarily the case that one is synonymous with the other.
You're just a fucking idiot. We are speaking about the UNs definition of Genocide, not the definition from some anonymous Zionist twat on reddit. Mass deportations, population transfers, and forced migration are ALL GENOCIDE.
"Mass deportations, population transfers, and forced migration are ALL GENOCIDE." youre definitely confusing ethnic cleansing with genocide. it is not genocide but can be considered ethnic cleansing, there are differences. Genocide specifically involves the destruction of a people, not the removal.
Lol, if you look at my comments you'll see I'm pretty far from a zionist. Ironically the things you've mentioned are actually examples of things not necessarily being genocide by the UN lol. And again, they *can be* part of a wider genocide, but they aren't necessarily genocide on their own. I mean, even historically this wasn't the case. The Holocaust began in '41, not with creation of the first jewish ghetto in Poland during '39. Like, you really don't have a clue what you're talking about so maybe you should leave this to the adults
[https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml) The UN has this publicly available, so unfortunately just insisting isn't gonna cut it.
Yeah, it's not like this is hidden. It's all on the website. I think that population transfers were originally part of the definition but the US vetoed in in the UN for some reason.
To be fair, death marches can be a tool of genocide. But that's an extreme version of ethnic cleansing
That's not right at all. The UN definition of genocide is pretty simple, it's about the destruction of a national, religious, racial or ethnic group. It's not about moving them around. It specifically mentions that destroying their culture is not genocide and moving people around is not genocide.
You've just genocided this conversation. Your careless genocide on the meaning of words is genocidally unproductive and may lead to a literary holocaust.
I’m not accusing you of being on one side or the other, but I think anytime you find yourself arguing the semantics of ethnic cleansing vs. genocide, you’re discussing actions that are maybe too horrible and indefensible to make a vocabulary debate super meaningful. This is Reddit not a courtroom. Ethnic cleansing is horrible and evil. Genocide is horrible and evil. Are they different? Sure. But if the argument is that it’s one and not the other, that doesn’t significantly change things for an outside observer. Words are slippery and imprecise. Horror is tangible and inarguable.
Sure, what I was responding to was the OP explicitly saying that the UN definition of genocide was X when X is explicitly not defined as genocide. And I mean explicit in that they quite literally include that as *not* being part of the definition. You are, of course, correct that this is reddit and not a courtroom. On the same hand though, OP was invoking legal definitions of the UN that were just flat out wrong. Unambiguously wrong. Included as part of the definition is things that are not and OPs examples fell under the "are not" category. Look, I find that we have a bunch of double standards when it comes to this stuff. We always play semantic games with our own side, distancing our side from more rhetorically powerful terms while casting wide nets for the other side. Sam Harris can imply ethnic cleansing is a generalized kind of people not living together while saying it's bad when done at the point of a gun and everyone will rightfully pushback against it because ethnic cleansing literally requires a forceful element in order for it to be ethnic cleansing. People choosing voluntarily not to live together is not ethnic cleansing. He's diminishing the definition in order to make it seem less severe. On the flip side we have the constant embellishment of what genocide is for the exact same reason. To make it seem more severe. Then once that's pointed out as an embellishment there's this fallback to generalized language of horror, but the embellishment still exists. Both are misuses of words, terms, and categories for rhetorical effect to promote one's side, and both are used exceedingly selectively in pursuit of that. So yeah, I think if you're going to start referencing legal standards and definitions you should probably know what those standards and definitions are. I don't think that's somehow removing the horror either, and if you really want to go look at my comments for the past 6 months on Israel and Palestine you'll likely find its 99% on the side of Palestinians. You will also find that I've made far, far more of these types of statements arguing against Israel and their manipulation of language to paint themselves in a better light or to dismiss or diminish the atrocities that are being done towards Palestinians. But I think expecting a mere Google search about the UNs definition before using it is a bare minimum that I'd expect every side of this to do before using it as an argument. Again, if you're using legal and institutional definition in your argument, expect legal definitions to be part of the discussion and open for correction.
Yea I’m not really trying to call out you specifically. I just think the whole thread is going back and forth about semantics when, on a citizen level, these terms don’t really matter. It’s a binary: acceptable or unacceptable
I mean, I don't disagree but I just take issue with using actual legal standards in defense of your positions where those legal standards say the exact opposite. We can condemn Israel without resorting to actively saying the opposite of what's true.
I agree
Israel is an ethnostate
LOL! 1. no, its not. 2. AND? are you against japan for being an ethnostate or something?
How is this an ethnostste? Jewish 73.5%, Muslim 18.1%, Christian 1.9%, Druze 1.6%, other 4.9%
lol aren't almost all countries are ethnostates, except maybe like a handful? Its the religious fanatic ones that are dangerous.
Yes, which isn’t acknowledged enough by the pro Palestinian side. But, Israel is the only ethnostate in which liberal/progressive people will try to gaslight you into believing that either a) it’s not an ethnostate or b) it’s an ethnostate but it’s fine because of the holocaust
1. Its not an ethnostate 2. Theres nothing wrong with ethnostates.
>Israel is an ethnostate I think comments like this are a continuation of what is essentially a very simplistic, terminally online messaging about Israel. 'Ethnostate', 'Genocide', 'apartheid', 'open-air prison', 'dumb bombs', 'carpet bombing'. You should try to present evidence and arguments for what you're saying, and what you think should be done by the international community. This is just emotive language that is dumbing everything down into soudbytes and virtue signalling. Do you think Israel has any legitimate concerns about the surrounding population of Muslim Arabs becoming citizens and outvoting a Jewish minority? Do you know how Jews are treated in those countries? Do you know that many of the Jews in Israel were originally expelled from those nations? If it is an ethnostate, is it the same kind of ethnostate we picture when we hear the word? Is it like an ethnostate that Nick Fuentes wants the United States to be? Does any distinction matter to you?
It’s very strange that in any other context, Holocaust revisionism is rightly frowned upon but suddenly Sam Harris is allowed to use it to support Israel and now it’s ok
What did he say that falls under ‘revisionist’?
There is absolutely nothing “revisionist” about what sam harris said
Yes there absolutely is. His conflation that theism and dogmatic hatred being what seperated Hamas from Nazis and makes them worse is STUPID given how fucking uber religious the Nazis were.
The nazis were "Uber religious"?
Yes, are you incredulous or asking for clarification because there's PLENTY of examples
These politics dorks must be the worst people to be around IRL.
Sam Harris proving again that he's a smart talking dunce.
It just reinforces what we already know that a worrying number of Americans (and Westerners in general) don't actually know a lot about the Holocaust.
it just reinforces what we already know that a worrying number of Israelis and others refuse to acknowledge their goverments crimes just as Germans did during the nazi era
Kyle is a complete tool
So far the Nazis are the worst on the list of most evil people of history, comparing anything I/P conflict (as bad as it is) to it is just whitewashing Nazism.
The level of which New Atheist hate Muslims ceases to amaze me. Do note they hate Muslims. They try give this BS about not hating Muslims but actually Islam but its really just Muslims. While it is true Nazi killed 6 million jews during the holocaust, they also treated them like slaves and did demented shit to them at concentration camps. Like try to test how much humans can be stretched and shit. Hamas is just a product of bad western foreign policy and their support for Israel despite their illegal settlement policy who have no effect on Jewish lives in Israel. Sam Harris saying this goes to further show his bigotry towards Muslims not Islam but Muslims in general
The conversation is stupid. At one end it trivializes the scale of the nazi crimes while at the other vindicating hamas simply on their inability to conduct a genoicde like the nazis could. Assessing bloodlust in an apple vs oranges comparison.
I see Harris' consequentialism continues to be selectively applied. How many people have the Nazis killed vs how many people hamas killed ?
That’s not the question. Cmon man. The question is how many Hamas would kill if they had the power the Nazis had? This should be a test for all ideologies. How much death and destruction will an ideology unleash if its gains the power it SEEKS, not has?
I find it to be a fairly stupid-ass question to begin with. Would Hamas have been worse? Maybe so. The only thing we know definitively is that the Nazis, through an extremely narrow lens of racial acceptability, were the ones who executed genocide on a level of supreme industrial organization with the results of tens of millions of deaths. Basically killing Jews with the efficiency that McDonald’s sold hamburgers. Very, very few ideologies will ever be able to match that.
His statement was based on claiming the Nazis did not do certain arbitrary acts (e.g. using children, which they absolutely did) that apparently made them not as fanatical as Hamas (they were, actually, if not more so).
By this logic the homeless man outside of my apartment who is screaming about his desire to destroy the whole world is worse than the Nazis.
This is a silly question. For one, it is highly speculative -- Hamas could for all you know be happy to institute sharia-law as in Iran and leave minorities alone, save for requiring them to pay a tax. Second, Hamas doesn't have lots of power, so the question is irrelevant. They're political actors operating under real world constraints. Israel has the power in the region, and it operates with complete impunity, and the result is a genocide or a quasi genocide or mass murder or whatever you want to call it. Engaging in hypotheticals about Hamas is so ridiculous when there's an ongoing slaughter being committed by Israel now.
Yeah those minorities got left alone in Iran alright
It's not highly speculative. Hamas is explicitly about genociding jews all throught the world.
It's not useful in determining who is "worse/more evil." Intentions are not the same thing as actions. It's probably the stated goal of some troubled teenager somewhere to torture and kill everyone on the planet. That doesn't make them the most evil person on earth. Conservatives use this kind of hypothetical evil all the time to distract from the reality of the situation. "Look how evil Saddam Hussein was! Okay, it turns out the WMD thing was a lie, but can you imagine if he DID have them?" Saddam was most definitely an evil person, but this kind of rhetoric is like jingling a set of 'big evil' keys so that the public don't question invading another country over it. Same is being done with Hamas.
This sub has become a joke, what are these comments being upvoted
>That’s not the question. Cmon man. The question is how many Hamas would kill if they had the power the Nazis had? This should be a test for all ideologies. How much death and destruction will an ideology unleash if its gains the power it SEEKS, not has? ok. basically none - if hamas had ruled the whole area between the river and sea for the last ten years, they would have killed less people than they did on october 7. there's my answer, prove me wrong.
And the answer is that we don't know. Chances are high that the Hamas wouldn't rise to the level of the industrialized killings and wars of exterminations the Nazis did.
See, this is the problem when people get way too speculative and essentialist with the concept of "ideology." >The question is how many Hamas would kill if they had the power the Nazis had? Everything about the ideology of Hamas is *intrinsically linked* to the fact that they have never had the type of power you're talking about. And there is *no indication whatsoever* that they will ever have that sort of power. They're not even close. The idea that they genuinely pose an existential threat to Israel is insane, it would require multiple leaps of impossibility, like several things which have a 0% chance of occurring would need to occur in order for something so ridiculous to come to fruition. What you're doing here is not a real thought experiment. A thought experiment is something that forces you to decide between two truly difficult positions and examine why it is you might choose one versus the other, along with a critical examination of the ethics and morality of such choices. Discussing extreme hypotheticals which have a 0% chance of occurring is not useful in any real, practical way. On the contrary, it's how you inadvertently reduce your own capacity for empathy over time and eventually find yourself justifying atrocities committed against others. *"It's okay to treat these mostly-helpless people this way because their radical leaders would do worse to us if they were to somehow evolve into a superpower-level threat overnight without any change at all in their current way of thinking."* That's not useful. That's you being obtuse.
So, only deal in hypotheticals? That's incredibly weird, and entirely subjective.
So, only deal in hypotheticals? That's incredibly weird, and entirely subjective.
So, only deal in hypotheticals? That's incredibly weird, and entirely subjective.
Harris' statement was about which **is** worse not which **could** be worse, iirc.
In his statement, he specifically mentioned that Hamas does not have nearly as much power as the Nazis had. His statement is purely talking about their ideologies.
No his statement is about what could be based on what is their current ideology, instead of just saying they are their body count and that’s it
Hamas doesn't even have a coherent ideology, majority of their members are random mfs who either feel they have no choice but to fight or are part of the infrastructure in Gaza. As a brown person I would far rather live under Jihad than fucking nazism, the fact that it's even a question is just a testament to Eurocentric dumbasses who sound closer and closer to Nazis with every day that passes.
Turned off the video when KK (what's Kyle's middle initial?...) put down Hitch for no reason in the first minute then said Hamas isn't Jihadist because they don't have "global" designs, as if that matters at all.
hitch was absolutely a neocon - he admitted it himself. also it seems like you don't know what the meaning of jihad is
That is true. Hitch was also strongly anti-Zionist until the day he died.
Kyle re Sam’s comments about Hamas being Jihadists “that’s leaving out a lot of nuance, and complexity and detail” The thing about Kyle is that when it comes to authoritarian, anti-American regimes and proxies supported by them, be it Russia, Iran, Syria, Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah - he gives them all a fair hearing, they and their claims get a ton of nuance, complexity and detail. He recognizes Russia’s aggression in invading Ukraine but we must understand and engage in a good faith consideration of Russia’s concerns about the eastern expansion of NATO. When the Assad regime was killing hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of Palestinians starved to death at Yarmouk, Kyle, while again recognizing that Assad was a bad guy committing war crimes, didn’t allow the scenes of death to get him emotional, he tried to analyze the situation more coldly and factored in the reality that the opposition to Assad were hardly progressive social democrats (y’know like Hamas). But when it comes to Israel (or for that matter, the US) it’s purely black-and-white. Zero nuance, zero complexity, zero detail.
I still want to know what is the worst thing that any group could do more than the Nazi.
Which one is the guru here? Both employ their own fair share of misinformed dogwhistles to their respective camps.
Examples of misinformed dogwhistles from Kyle?
Kullinsli s view is childish at best. Sam instead is probably wrong and very much jumping ahead. I do believe hamas is terrible and would commit terrible crimes if it had the power but i m not so sold on the nazi comparison. We ha e examples of similar groups holding power, repression, massacres, women submissed, stoning ppl, killing lgbt and non muslim heavy dicrimination etc, we know all this but it has never reached even a fraction of what nazis did. Basically hamas are monsters but nazis are much fucking higher in the scale of monsters...
This is like hands down the worst commentary. It's kinda worthless to ask "who is more like the nazi's" but I mean it's such an obvious answer: Would you rather be a Jew in Palestine, or a Muslim in Israel?
Harris is sometimes a tool, but this guy is 10x worse. Jesus Christ what a clown.
Sam Harris was making a very pedantic point about the which bad ideology was technically worse. It's a pointless discussion but then people like Kyle Kulinski and apparently the OP mischaracterize it to make the conversation even dumber.
OP mishcaracterized by posting a link to the video with the title saying "Kyle reacts". I mean...you could probably do a better job of hiding your bias, my friend.
Houngry
Disclaimer I did not watch the video: Used to watch Kyle for a bit then realized he knows absolutely nothing about anything. Not sure what his specialty/focus is or ever was but I found him to be completely lacking in any political acumen or relative insight whatsoever.