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Since everyone's hijacking this thread to post their opinions of Brett Devereaux, I'll just join in and do the same. But first, a digression to write about someone who bothers me even more.
I used to be an enthusiastic listener to the "Literature and History" podcast, by Doug Mezger. Overall, it's a great series. Detailed, patient, well-made, well-spoken, some depth and a lot of breadth. But about 20 episodes in, it increasingly turned into a thoroughly feminist publication. He could no longer go five minutes without injecting some moral judgement about the ancients failing to live up to modern standards of egalitarianism. He'd condemn Agamemnon and Odysseus for the violence they committed, then praise Chlytemnestra and Medea for the violence they committed. And the pattern kept repeating. A nonviolent woman is wise, a nonviolent man is indecisive, etc. Every aspect of history and literature, shown through the lense of feminism. I ended up putting a stop to my listenership, and cancelling my patreon support. What started out as very promising ended up very grating, and I am still sore about it. A capable historian, literary scholar and podcaster ruined his work because he just couldn't stop using it a political soapbox.
Brett Devereaux is, to me, not the same. He doesn't do good work and ruin it with interjections. He does a ton of middling-okay work that, as it turns out, is just him projecting his prejudices onto history and selling that to the reader, and occasionally, almost by accident, something interesting is said along the way. I used to consider him long-winded and inefficient, and something of a contrarian who chose topics on which he could be highly critical because well, otherwise there wouldn't be much to say.
But then I watched a youtube video in which Brett Deveraux and a youtuber by the name of "Dr. Lantern Jack" (who runs a Podcast by the name of "Ancient Greece Declassified", which I have not so far listened to) discuss the Spartan question. Jack mostly spent his time questioning Brett about his position, who expressed the view that Spartans were not militarily more competent than any other Greeks, that they never trained for battle, and that the Krypteia was the ritual slaughter of helots. Jack cast doubt on those claims, considering them extreme and unlikely (and coming off as at least slightly Sparta-inclined in the process), and kept trying to get Brett to justify them with more than "there's no evidence to the contrary so I'm forced to assume as much". Instead, Brett just doubled down, became increasingly irritable, invoked abstractions like "that's what the current state of The Science says!", and ended up looking very much like a weaselly ass. Lantern Jack stayed polite and patient throughout, and so came out much better even though he himself couldn't make much more of an argument than Brett either.
And so I ended up developing an actual dislike for Brett Devereaux, of whom I now think that he's just a weak specimen overall and the tries to compensate by playing tough guy versus historical entities that can't fight back anymore.
And you, dear reader, just spent two minutes reading about the completely unimportant opinions of a stranger on the internet.
What the hell else would you have me do with my time?
Go outside?
Talk to girls?
Improve myself?
Fuck outta here.
Two minutes isn't even enough time to figure out why one of my production chains is borked in Anno 1800.
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Devereaux runs a moderately successful old-style blog where he wrote a somewhat famous series of essays outlining his position on Sparta. I read them several times and found them very exhaustively researched. In a way that makes it difficult to rebut his position without going to a lot of work. But, ultimately, I thought that his theory of Sparta started with a base incredulity. He can't believe that there was ever anything about Sparta that anyone ever found admirable. So all his research is just exhaustive fact-checking to prove that whatever you the reader or other ancient Greeks liked about Sparta, well, those reasons are pants-on-fire false. A lot of historians play this game where they "prove" their moral judgments because their historical judgments are so exhaustive. (This is also how a lot of people treat Robert Caro.)
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The thing about Brett Devereaux is that his arguments tend to be right- but he likes to use them to say things his arguments don’t address. His fremen mirage series does a great job pointing out that GDP and population determines the outcomes of wars 90% of the time, but then he strongly implies this disproves all sorts of patriarchal theses. It doesn’t, he literally doesn’t address the topic. Etc, etc.
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My dear strange German, if I didn't want to read about your opinion, I would not be on the Motte. Not only am I on the Motte, but you are one of the posters I enjoy. Keep sharing your opinions, my southern kraut who is north of me.
I don't get us all. What are we doing here?
It's one of life's great mysteries isn't it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence, or is there really a God watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff. I don't know, man, but it keeps me up at night.
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