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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?
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.
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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