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Notes -
The Persecution of the Internet Historian
Internet Historian is a popular YouTuber whose best content is retelling interesting, fairly obscure stories with janky animation and luscious voice over. He’s an excellent storyteller and the videos are insanely easy to watch.
Left wing breadtuber Hbomberguy recently released an almost 4 hour video about plagiarism on YouTube. One of the subjects of the video was Internet Historian, and I think Hbomberguy credibly shows that IH was in the wrong. For his most watched video, Man in Hole, IH heavily copied the story and format of a Mental Floss article, as well as directly quoting entire paragraphs. IIRC, IH did cite the Mental Floss article in the original video, but it would be fairer to say that the entire video was an animated telling of the original article, and IH should have described it as such.
Furthermore, after Man in Hole was DMCAed, IH seemingly purposefully concealed what he had done, made excuses, and never fully acknowledged the extent to which he plagiarized, even after reuploading the video with heavy edits.
I think IH did a bad thing by committing plagiarism. Then he did another bad thing by trying to cover it up. I don’t think his life should be destroyed, but I think he deserves some score for this and my opinion of him has been lowered.
But if you ask some very online leftist people what’s wrong with IH, they won’t say plagiarism, they will say he is a literal Nazi - https://old.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/comments/18dotzf/internet_historian_is_a_nazi/
That thread is by far the most popular ever on that subreddit, and lists evidence that IH is a Nazi. I’d summarize the evidence as “IH has a 4-chany sense of humor, has made some edgy jokes, and follows mainstream conservatives on Twitter.”
What I find most interesting about this affair is how difficult to convey to the breadtubey online leftists how vapid and dumb I think this evidence is. I think that’s because there’s actually a lot of cultural complexity here tied into some big gaps in moral intuition.
For instance, many of the evidence points are that IH has made jokes in his videos about Nazis and the KKK. In one video, he put 14/88 in the background, in another he uses a KKK caricature, and he has also sarcastically listed his birthday as 4/20 (Hitler’s birthday, though this might also just be a weed lmao thing). To the OP and most of the commenters, this is strong evidence that IH is a literal Nazi. Even if they acknowledge that these are edgy jokes, they can’t comprehend why someone would make light of something so awful unless they were secretly sympathetic to it. Or they just say that IH is straight up “dogwhistling” to align himself with all the Nazis watching his videos.
These arguments strike me as so divorced from reality that it’s difficult to bridge the gap. These jokes are not actually making light of Hitler, Nazis, and the KKK. They are making light of online lefties being pathologically obsessed with speech. Referencing Hitler isn’t funny; what’s funny is watching online lefties think that referencing Hitler indicates a deep seated hatred of Judaism and a real desire to exterminate non-whites. It’s the overreaction that’s funny. Or another way to put it – edgy Hitler jokes are shibboleths indicating that the speaker doesn’t buy into the predominant lefty internet culture. The speaker signals that he has such little concern for the culture that he considers stifling, censorious, and ridiculous, that he invokes the greatest taboo possible. IMO, this is the essence of edgy 4-chan humor.
Is this an accurate take? Or am I being too nice to IH?
To talk about the plagarism allegation specifically:
Such an allegation is a bit rich when Hbomberguy is close friends with Hasan Piker, is who is the king of freebooting and stealing content. But I guess it's okay because in the video Hbomberguy makes one, tiny joke about Hasan where he doesn't even mention him by name and he got permission from Hasan to make the joke beforehand. So I guess that's fair and Hbomberguy is principled in criticising everyone, right.
The whole of "BreadTube" rife with plagarism and stealing content - it's just selective outrage against IH because he's an ideological enemy. At the very least, IH did cite the article and substantially valued added even if he could have done more.
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It's not a particularly surprising reaction, no.
Nor is the rolling over and acting offended that people reacted to IH the way that was entirely expected and predictable?
"Ah yes, these edgy jokes we used caused the expected reaction. Now, we will be offended on IH's behalf toward the people who took the bait."
It would be bad bait if no one took it, no?
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I feel like Popehat's Rule of Goats applies. "Yea I made a bunch of Nazi references, but I wasn't doing it sincerely!" Ok, well you still made a bunch of Nazi references. I am somewhat sympathetic since I had my own edgy-4-chan-humor phase when I was younger, but I also did actually have a bunch of unironically racist opinions at the time.
I am confused. If this is what IH is doing then isn't getting threads like the ones you've linked the point? Those threads (the leftist overreaction) are the punchline to the joking references, right? The point of the jokes was to make leftists think he was a Nazi! Is it surprising or disturbing that he succeeded? So he spent a bunch of time and energy making references to try and convince certain people he was a Nazi, he succeeded, and now... those same people need to be convinced he's not a Nazi? Why spend all the time and energy in the first place convincing people you were a Nazi!
One of the important points this misses is that, when they don't actually have power over you, Hitler and the Nazis are funny, in the sense of ridiculous, starting from that mustache and going on down to the troops. Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" made use of this during his reign, and many have done so since. The Downfall memes and Inglourious Basterds could never be made about Stalin, for instance. The serious Stalag 13 was recast into the successful and humorous Hogan's Heroes... SCHULTZ!. Goose-stepping troops became a staple of comedy. So yeah, the Nazis are a great source of humor, and a great source of humor your opponents find it offensive to use... that's even greater.
(ETA: the KKK is ridiculous too, from the titles to the bedsheets)
Otoh, there was Death of Stalin, though it featured comparatively little of Stalin.
The relative lack of literal Stalin isn't really a strike against the comparison, since the whole plot revolved around the ruthless power struggle around who will succeed him. But Death of Stalin is notable precisely because it is so uncommon to poke fun at the communists.
There’s team america world police and the interview, featuring stalin’s premier fan family.
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And even when it did it treated him with deadly seriousness right up until the second he died, unlike rest of the cast, the flesh lumps in waistcoats. Regardless, fantastic movie!
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Why do Satanists spend so much time and energy convincing Christians they literally worship Satan? Because, they know it will strike a nerve.
They could just be garden variety secular atheists, but that doesn't get the same kind of reaction in the post-war world.
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Mocking someone's beliefs or taboos does not mean you like the thing you are mocking, even though if it vanished that would remove the assumed context for your work. Making Postal 2 doesn't mean you want people to believe that violent videogames cause violence, rather the fact that they already believe that is part of the premise and context. Chris Ofili can make The Holy Virgin Mary and sell it for £2.9 million regardless of what his own views might be on taboos involving pornography, dung, or christianity.
I agree in general but it's not clear to me the IH references in question, as described, are mocking the things they're referring to.
I think the simple answer is, it's probably not so rational, precise, and conscious an effort as OP sells it. It's transgression as catharsis, nothing more, nothing less. "Vibes", all the way down. As stated:
The response is not at all surprising, it never is, but that's doesn't mean I don't understand the temptation to transgress.
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If he made the references out of indifference towards those who find those references taboo, then that is even less reason to believe "The point of the jokes was to make leftists think he was a Nazi!". Same thing if he made those references without knowing that some people would consider them proof of Nazism. My point was that, even if he deliberately transgressed the taboo because it was a taboo as a means to mock those who find it objectionable, that does not mean he 'wants to be viewed as a Nazi'. As tends to be the case with people engaging in deliberate transgression, he does not actually support the existence of the taboo he is transgressing. Like most 4channers, he would probably prefer the internet of 15 or so years ago when people made Nazi references and jokes all the time and nobody of relevance tried to harm them over it.
Incidentally this inspired me to look at the KYM page for Downfall memes. The meme dates back to 2006 and the first controversy mentioned was 2010:
The interesting thing is that if you look at the linked Huffington Post article from 2013, the most left-leaning source linked, there is absolutely no mention of the idea that sharing Hitler memes (as part of your job in the official newsletter for an investment bank!) is offensive or creates a hostile work environment for minorities or is dogwhisting by making light of Nazism or anything like that. In fact even the company's argument quoted in the Bloomberg article is just that it “insulted in a quite humiliating way a competitor and business partner”.
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I think IH was certainly at least alt-right, he had a whole series of videos about how /pol/ left Shia permanently divided (which was pretty funny) and had another one about how they hunted down bike-lock man who tried to beat up some rightists at a protest. And there was another one about Tay AI. We can assume that he spent a fair bit of time on /pol/. He had a bunch of standard /pol/ perspectives. That plus the 14/88 in the bikelock video makes it a pretty reasonable argument IMO. How is 1488 a joke? It's a political statement in its purest form!
However, Internet Historian's content as a whole is not Nazist or even altright - he still has a youtube channel for one thing. It's overwhelmingly about funny videos and he's gotten markedly less political over time. You can sort of see the same thing with E;R. He's done a bunch of dog-whistling and hinting and it's pretty obvious where he is politically but primarily his content is about critiquing media.
If someone says 'Mao was right about landlords' then you can assume they lean in a Maoist direction, that they could be described as a Maoist. They might not be serious hardcore Maoists or know much about it, they might not be violent or do much more than wishing (on occasion) to kill their landlords and complain on twitter. But it's not unreasonable to call them a Maoist or a communist. They come out and say that, it's a window into what they believe.
It's like when leftist youtubers put in anti-capitalist digs to their videos, or make references or you can just tell from their presentation/word choice/choice of what they make videos about... Their content might not be predominantly political but we can use human wisdom to tell what the creator thinks.
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The issue with the bolded part is that that's not a defense. In particular, the ones they cite are Libs Of Tik Tok, Gavin McInnes, and Ron Desantis. You could maybe excuse Desantis, but you still have to grapple with the question of whether mainstream conservatism itself moved in the direction of Nazism in recent years, which is probably something IH's accusers don't have any issue believing. They might be wrong, but it's not a trivially dismissed point of evidence.
You're improperly summarizing the actual point that post made - The game being referenced where he put "14/88" in doesn't allow values for that field if they aren't divisible by 5. He had to choose that number.
This is a valid defense, but it's impossible to prove just from IH's actions where he actually stands on the topic, and so you can't tell he's saying these things to just mock the left or he's doing it because he's inserting what he actually thinks as jokes. It's not an unheard of strategy - Nick Fuentes has a clip of him saying that humor was a way to promote his brand of politics and that he couldn't obviously be forthcoming about what he actually believed.
I've watch IH's videos, including the ones mentioned in the post you linked. The Bike-lock professor one was straight up "4chan does good thing by catching attacker" and mocks neopronouns at the beginning of the video. Which part of this is mocking the lefties?
Ultimately, IH needs to cease his policy of silence and be forthcoming - both about the plagiarizing and where his actual politics stand. That's inherently the burden you take on when you aren't in the Overton Window. That applies to literally anything a person does.
Gavin McInnes is the only one alt-right of those three, and even that's debatable.
Umm, following Desantis and Libs of Tiktok in particular doesn't necessarily mean that a body supports them, though, does it? It seems to me that if you were making a list of top 100 accounts to follow to keep ahead of current controversies, those two would be on it. And Mcinnes seems in the general wheelhouse if not quite as notable.
I looked at the IH's followers, but I can't see the whole list (746 total, but I only see about 50). I was going to argue that he doesn't seem to be following politics accounts in general or whatever and so it might be more informative that he follows people like DeSantis, LoTT, McInnes, etc. But I can't see all his follows, so I can't say for sure.
I'm fine with the idea that he might be following just to see what they say, but if the sampling I got from the "follows" tab for him were accurate, it's like 90% various e-celebs (on the Youtube/Twitch space) and some conservative figures. I don't think it's unrealistic to imagine he follows because he's at least partially attuned to the message.
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The idea that someone needs an excuse to follow a popular Republican governor and presidental candidate is absurd.
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What kind of statement would you like "I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the nazi party"? I'm not defending the plagiarism, but this is ideological witch-hunting. Does every reference to che guevara have to result in a groveling apology for the crimes of communism?
I don’t know why he bothered with the edgy jokes and dogswhistles. He should have simply called for the genocide of jews, then the presidents of harvard and co would find his behaviour compatible with a strongly inclusive code of conduct.
No, just a statement about what he actually thinks would be enough for me. I'm not on the anti-IH train.
If you insert sneaky references to Che and make videos portraying him in a positive light, then yeah, people are going to think you support Che. The "it's just a joke" thing is a valid defense if you actually explain your position as not defending him or just sticking it to the Che haters, otherwise you're remaining in ambiguity and might suffer some consequences if anti-Che sentiment becomes so powerful that they start demanding people be socially ostracized for any perceived defense of Che.
Is it good? Probably not. Is there a clear way out? Yes.
Can you indicate to me a prior instance in which a Harvard student was punished for stating "death to all (insert progressive-favored group here}" to no one in particular?
Answering legitimizes the witch-hunt. Their goal is not to discuss, but to silence. Their language is that of power. That behaviour is incompatible with a free and open society.
What? Professors have to write DEI statements (also known as “I love pocs” statements) as part of the application process. Mere indifference towards protected classes, not murderous intent, is disqualifying, insufficiently inclusive.
This fire article has a few examples of the free speech atmosphere at harvard, notably a student whose acceptance was revoked over comments he made on social media as a 16-year-old, which contained racial slurs.
Or for Penn:
I can't find calls for genocide because conservatives already get banned for expressing any antagonism at all. But if you have examples of calls for the genocide of protected classes that went unpunished, I'm all ears.
As I said elsewhere, the existence of bad actors shouldn't be a justification to avoid responding.
That's not what I asked for. I explicitly said "student", not "acceptee". The reason I was specific here is that I'm aware of this case, but I don't see why it compares. I don't see a reason why the body of students should necessarily be held to exactly the same standard as the body of those who would be joining the school eventually. Maybe there's a good argument for it, but I'm not aware of one.
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I don't believe that you believe that.
Originally I wrote that this is like demanding that progressives cease their policy of silence about grooming, but even setting aside accusations of hypocrisy, how, given everything we've seen over the years, can you say that? Even if he becomes "forthcoming" and declares his political beliefs, and it turns out that (surprise, surprise) they're not anywhere near Nazi, how will that help? If he says he's conservative, he'll still be a Nazi in the eyes of the people you're defending. If he says he's a liberal who doesn't like the woke, he'll still be a Nazi. If he says he's an outright Leftist, who doesn't like the woke, he'll still be a Nazi.
I've seen all of these variations happening to all sorts of people. I've never seen the progressive mob back down when someone explained their beliefs in good faith. You've been here long enough that you should know that, and I feel like if you're putting this argument forward in good faith, you should pre-emptively bring evidence for how this step could result in anything good-to-neutral for IH.
You cannot use the existence of bad actors to hand-wave away the need for good or proper behavior. There are people who will never see socialism in a good light or give it a fair hearing, that doesn't absolve any good-faith socialist from being truthful and honest in their argumentation.
So if someone is accused of believing in something, they are duty bound to be open and forthcoming about what their political beliefs actually are, regardless of how flimsy the evidence presented that they believe in it?
Hard not to see this as just a more elaborate form of "have you stopped beating your wife?" If you hear IH jokingly stating that his birthday is 4/20 and your brain immediately goes to "Hitler's birthday" and not "dude weed lmao", I'm going to assume you see the face of Jesus Christ in the last piece of toast you ate too.
Check out how uncharitable one can be:
Back in the real world, I didn't look at your username and think "wow, this guy supports lowering the age of consent". Nor would any reasonable person acting in good faith. I thought "hehe, the guy with the blue cock lol". But if you're setting up a societal standard of "if you're accused of believing in something, you can't just stay silent - you have to immediately be forthcoming about what you really believe, even if the evidence presented is flimsy and weak", that's just incentivising bad actors to look for flimsy evidence with which to smear anyone they dislike, and you are duty-bound to respond to my (ironic) accusations above. Given Brandolini's law, smearing your enemies like this and interpreting their remaining silent as an admission of guilt amounts to a sort of interpersonal lawfare, functionally equivalent to SLAPP lawsuits: if you can't get someone you hate to stop expressing their opinions altogether, forcing them to waste hours and hours of their time laboriously refuting bullshit accusations made in bad faith is the next best thing.
Perhaps "good" is a bit much, I'll stand back from that claim. But I do think it would be useful for him to actually clarify, now that it's a subject of discussion.
If he doesn't, then so be it. But he'd avoid quite a bit of headache if he at least stated it was all humor. Then we can have a more rational conversation in his defense. Until then, we're just left fumbling in the dark.
Wow, haha, that is a crazy coincidence. Genuinely, I didn't pick the numbers with any mind for his girlfriend, I was actually just 16 at the time and had read the Watchmen comic.
In any case, the point I'm getting at is that bad actors will do what they want, but there can be obligations or good ideas which one should obey regardless. I have no doubt that a statement would do nothing for his accusers, in the same way that you could just dismiss the defense I gave above as obviously a pro-ephebophile person trying to hide their stance. But rational discussion would probably be aided by such a statement regardless.
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Oh Jesus, what an unfortunate set of numbers to append to your username.
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There's nothing bad or improper about what he did, or didn't do, regarding the sharing of his political beliefs. And I can use the existence of bad faith actors to point out that these demands for transparency are dishonest. This is like demanding people be honest when responding to Nazis asking if there are Jews in your basement.
Also, if a commie wants to make funny videos with an occasional "eat the rich" meme thrown in, he should be able to do so, without being forced to go through bizarre struggle sessions.
It is nothing like this. The appropriate analogy would be someone accusing you of hiding Jews in your basement under Nazi Germany. You should probably issue a denial regardless of what those people say.
The question is precisely if he is or isn't a commie, in this case. Which you can certainly be, but if you're not, it would probably be better to clarify once this level of scrutiny arrives.
I will back down from "good/proper behavior" to "useful behavior", though.
Fair, I'll take that bit of constructive criticism.
Allow me to rephrase then - if a person is making funny videos on the internet, with occasional jokes about eating the rich / gulags / etc., I don't think the question should be if he's a commie, or not.
Well, I can't tell you what's useful to you, so fair enough.
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Plagiarism aside, this is a terrible idea. I have never seen this go well for anyone ever. Even a groveling apology/delete videos/promise to
dobe better rarely works.Ever since I read FCfromSSC's Quality Contribution it's been stuck in my head. This part in particular seems relevant:
There is no way for IH to be forthcoming on what he believes without it being used as more evidence that he is a Nazi. IH's crimes are that he is clearly not a leftist and he has used many 4chan memes, including but not limited to Hitler references. For some, that is enough. For everyone else, the best he can do is not give the Stasi any more ammunition.
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In a Bayesian sense, following mainstream MAGA Republican accounts on Twitter is very weak circumstantial evidence that someone is a "Nazi" (in the sense that the Very Online left use the term - which encompasses a lot of alt-right politics that has nothing to do with the OG NSDAP) - most MAGA Republicans are not alt-right, but most alt-right Americans are MAGA. Following GOPe accounts on Twitter is circumstantial evidence that someone is not a "Nazi" - the GOPe despise both actual Nazis and the "Nazi" alt-right as much as the left does. Whether DeSantis counts as mainstream or GOPe is left as an exercise to the reader.
But that isn't the context. The question is given that we all know the guy posts 14/88 memes, is he doing so because he actually has "Nazi" political views, or is he posting ironically. And in that context, affiliation with mainstream Republicans is much stronger evidence that the guy is serious - the overlap between "mainstream Republican" and "posts 14/88 memes ironically" is basically zero. People who post 14/88 memes ironically are either nihilistic trolls or lefties, and following mainstream Republicans on social media is good Bayesian evidence that someone is neither of those things.
In any case, I am happy to enforce the Rule of Goats against someone who LARPs as a Nazi absent very strong evidence that their heart is in the right place. As in I actually want to the Nazi character get chased round Europe by an old drunk and a cripple, or at least slip on a banana skin while goose-stepping.
No, it isn't. It's bayesian evidence of wanting to keep abreast of political news.
Which, in my experience, is negatively correlated with being a nihilistic troll.
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That's a hell of a lot of sweeping generalisations based on the use of four digits, twice. Yeah no one on the planet has ever been an edgy idiot saying stupid shit because it causes a reaction. No, we're rationalists, we're smart, we're Bayesian so we can calculate that 1488 + nihilist/leftist = irony and 1488 + any affiliation with mainstream republicans = hide and protect the Jews.
The funny thing is, the rule of goats says I have to pretend I don't understand trolling either and treat you like an IFLS short busser.
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There was a running non joke that white supremacy is the most inclusive social movement right now since people accused of being white supremacists included - whites, blacks, Indians, Hispanics and east asians. With libs of tik tok being run by a jewish woman - seems like nazism with will be the next wide tent pole coalition.
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"He Must Respond" is a tactic used to justify further attacks against the target in environments where the original accusations don't carry enough weight.
When the attackers use the response as an excuse to escalate because the victim "did not reflect on his guilt" or "perpetuated further harm by minimizing his offenses", the debate can be shifted away from the original accusations to a deconstruction of the victim's conduct during the ordeal.
This tactic works extremely well on discussion forums where people are inclined to entertain hypotheticals and can be led away from the original topic. For example, the endless rounds of "Damore should have phrased it better," which ignored the absurdity of the accusations and shifted the burden of proof back to the defender.
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None of them are Nazis. Easy.
It is trivially dismissed, it's a classic Motte and Bailey. Libs of TikTok is a Nazi -- No she's not -- OK, but she represents a Nazi-ward shift in the Republican base -- -- -- Stop there, that's a different (unjudgeable) question.
I didn't say any of them were. I said moving in that direction.
Half of all available moves will be "moves in the direction of" if you assume a one-dimensional axis, with arbitrarily chosen endpoints. The left has been steadily moving in the direction of pedophilia, for example.
Sure, I'm willing to admit that my evaluation of his political follows was incorrect. I was correcting someone for what I had actually said.
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X believes Y implies Z. Of course, their belief is batshit insane. So if A is Y, then yes to X that is evidence of Z. But the problem isn’t A; it is X having an idiot view.
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I dunno, this seems basic information theory. Meta can't be decoded without other info, ie if you share the signal as another meaning there is no way for the receiver to disambiguate, without extra info.
Now your Bayesian based on his work etc leads you to conclusion X. But you also have to account for his potentially hiding his true views. Perhaps he's hiding his true depth of nazi feeling, trying to fly undercover with a few subtle references here and there?
Perhaps he actually doesn't know his own Nazi sympathies because coming from 4chan world he has constantly engaged with meta that can't be unambiguously decoded as meta, and his mind is the same superposition?
I think honestly if this is the state of the evidence, I would not take it seriously. Sarcastic references don’t mean much, especially if he doesn’t seem to hold any position that Nazis actually hold. It’s never been my experience with political radicals that a person can hide a set of beliefs far outside of the mainstream for long periods of time. There don’t appear to be any posts or comments on his Twitter or other accounts that even the Nazi-hunters find out of line — and they were definitely looking for it. How is it that someone could seriously believe in Great Replacement and be putting “references” in his videos yet never ever talk about that belief anywhere. I follow some breadtubers and it’s very obvious where they’re coming from. They don’t make vague references, they’re definitely on the left.
Yeah, I can imagine finding it humorous to get the internet a-stir with these things, and there is a legitimate point you can make so sounds credible.
My go to tell over whether a person actually means what they’re (accused of) saying is watching what they do. If you’re only making jokes about a topic, but never expressing the belief behind that action anywhere and not acting as if you think it’s true, I see no reason not to be charitable and say that sometimes a joke is actually just a joke or a story is just a story, or whatever the case may be. People do take creative license with their art and their shows. IH may well be playing a character that’s nothing like who he actually is. His persona doesn’t seem to be him.
I think so many people especially on the left have no understanding that someone might well create a persona for the purpose of making a video much like an actor might take on a role that’s nothing like who they are off the set. John deLancie has played a demigod, a Nazi, an evil pony, and I’m sure lots of other things. None of those things are who he is. Why couldn’t an influencer on YouTube do the say thing and create and play a character who isn’t them?
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Well said. I've had arguments along these lines with leftist family members before, about how making Hitler memes online is basically just the disenfranchised-feeling white persons equivalent of BLM rioting. "No one condones looting, but you have to sympathize with people who feel like they don't have other options." Edgelords don't post the n-word because they are racist (well, some maybe), they post it simply because they know it is the worst thing you can possibly say, so saying it is cathartic in a similar way I'd imagine smashing a windshield is.
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While in some cases I'm sure some people are taking "conservative" and "edgy 4chan humor" to extrapolate to "actually a Nazi using the pretense of irony to cover for it", for others "conservative" + "edgy 4chan humor" = "Nazi", no further layers needed.
They don't even need the edgy 4chan humor part. That reddit post listed "follows Ron Desantis on Twitter" as evidence of Nazism.
And you have people here suggesting maybe that is unfair. Think about that for a second.
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I thought about making a similar post on Internet Historian (IH) here, but I thought it might be a bit too much like aping /r/drama, which would be this site's most obvious failure-mode. People seem fine with it though (which might be a bad sign, or I might be just reading too much into it), so I'll leave my thoughts.
The only thing to really fault IH for is insufficiently crediting the article in his original video. He did credit it, but should have been more explicit that the video was a dramatization. Even with this, though, there's leeway since copying is absolutely rampant on the internet. 95% of modern journalism articles are regurgitated from social media or copied from other journalists. Most prestige articles from things like Substack are using the main arguments from other people, repackaging them, and changing them only slightly. It's how humans work, and usually nobody bothers to cite sources. In many cases it would be very difficult to tell where one person's thoughts start and another's begin. HBomber seemed to think copying words was the obvious smoking gun, but apart from a few segments most of IH's video was so heavily paraphrased that this mostly falls flat.
The supposed "coverup" is just a maximally uncharitable way of looking at the situation. HBomber is trying to collect a scalp here so he's taking things out of context and manipulating the story to seem as damaging as possible.
Then the wider internet gets involved, and since IH tilts conservative the cancel-happy leftists see blood in the water and out come the Hitler analogies. By their own logic, anyone who's made a dead baby joke should be presumed to be a murderer.
Honestly given the amount of work it takes to make his particular style of video and the fact he's retelling historical fact, it's just silly to accuse him of plagiarism. At worst he wasn't sufficiently forthcoming with his sources.
Being a journalist, which is what IH is at core, is literally just retelling what others already told in a more entertaining or more accessible way. And if making intricate animation on top of historical fact that is inherently impossible to alter or copyright isn't transformative enough to prevent accusations of plagiarism, then nothing is.
Nobody believes this is anything but a political hit job.
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You're thinking about it wrong.
Internet leftists have decreed it is okay to Punch Nazis and to advocate for punching Nazis. Therefore, if you dislike someone, the way to get the green light to assault them or call for others to assault them is to contort and twist until you can paint them as a Nazi, and then anything you want to do to them is a-ok.
Internet leftism and especially "breadtube" is a mean girls' club of spiteful bullies who justify their bullying by contriving reasons as to why their targets "deserve" it, while cloaking themselves in the shallow virtue of selling out their own racial group/sex for minority approval.
They don't hate IH because he's a Nazi, IH is a Nazi because they hate him. If it wasn't him it would be someone else, the group always needs some target to pick on.
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There's like a 98% chance this is a weed joke. Maybe more like 99%.
It's the 100th anniversary of his birthday, which imo decreases those odds somewhat.
Hitler was not in his teens and twenties when he was Furher.
I don't know if I'm getting wooshed here, but the "it's" was referring to "4/20, 1989" which was the birthday IH listed. Not "it's" as in "it is right now".
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The 100th anniversary of his 34th birthday
Hitler turned 34 on april 20, 1923. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything; IH listed his birthday as 4/20(almost certainly a weed reference) 1989(probably his real birth year, but also 100 years after Hitler was born).
That sounds more likely to be a real answer. Mine was not a real answer.
Btw have 4channers tried to spread a "stoners are secret nazis because 420 is Hitler's birthday" story yet?
Dunno, but a google search turned up 1) a history channel documentary called "High Hitler" which appeared to have been produced in their transition from "WWII 24/7" to "aliens and reality shows" and 2) a failed segregationist politician named J.B. Stoner who apparently described Adolf Hitler as "too moderate".
I can't be the only one who has noticed that nazi official's tended to get fired while soviet's tended to get shot
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The most important anniversary of course
Albert Einstein? Moses? Yeshua ben Joseph?
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It was just sarcasm on my part
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How sure are we that internet historian didn't just change the birth date in his real birth year? That would be my initial assumption when seeing an internet personality list a birthday of 4/20.
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I think to online Internet lefties, the term for outgroup members is Nazi. IH has signaled that he is outgroup through his jokes. Therefore they call him a Nazi. You're taking too literal a meaning to the term.
In general, it seems apparent that leftists typically believe whole swathes of all possible political ideologies are either overt fascists, crypto-fascists, fascists in training or fascists in denial.
Understanding this explains a tremendous amount of their behavior & speech.
It’s also additionally amusing because these same people make fun of their republican uncle for saying something like “single payer is communist.” They do the same thing except even worse because it’s even less accurate.
The idea that a beltway libertarian or classical liberal is a fascist but just doesn’t know it yet is so absurd on its face that’s it’s laughable. But it’s a common belief on the hard left.
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