Recently, I was watching a video from one of my favorite YouTubers, Channel 5, when I felt a bit weirded out by the editing. As I continued to watch, I got the feeling that the goofy street interview channel was pivoting to centrist social commentary masquerading as objective reporting. While I think it’s too early to say, I wanted to call some attention to a couple of their latest videos.
Table of Contents
Understanding Centrism
In the US, politics is a very interesting space because we largely view political discussion through a left-right lens. If FOX news talks about something, it must be right wing. If MSNBC talks about something, it must be left wing.
Of course, the left-right lens doesn’t really account for the complexity of actual politics, and it also allows for the truly stupid idea that somehow you can go far enough to one side that you wrap around (i.e., horseshoe theory). As a result, a lot of people find enlightenment in the political center: an area where supposed true objective analysis can occur.
Now, obviously I don’t agree that politics can fit into a linear or even two-dimensional space. Even if it did, I don’t believe that centrism would ever be a fixed point in space but rather one that moves as the culture moves. Therefore, centrism is not grounded in any principled stance but rather follows the winds of fate.
As it turns out, the winds of fate in the US often places centrism directly within an economically right-wing framework. What I mean by that is that “the left” in the US is liberalism while “the right” is conservatism, both of which are economically right-wing positions (i.e., both are pro-capitalism). In addition, in terms of social issues, someone who is at the center of “transgenders should exist” and “transgenders shouldn’t exist” has to find some necessarily bigoted middle ground (e.g., “they should exist but not near me”).
Finally, and this is just a personal gripe of mine, but I find that folks who align themselves with the center are often simply contrarian. They hold no actual beliefs or values and instead force themselves to be the opposition to any mainstream position. They perceive being critical as intelligence but hold no actual positions of their own. They can never be critiqued because they can never be pinned down.
That said, instead of deconstructing the idea of centrism, I want to take a moment to look at a YouTube channel today. It’s a channel that I’ve spent a lot of time watching over the years, and I think it’s starting to fall into the centrism trap: one where all perspectives are rejected in the name of some objective middle ground. Hopefully, by looking at this case study, we can see why centrism is an ineffective lens for viewing the world.
A Case Study on Channel 5
A lot of folks have probably seen the work of Channel 5
, previously known as All Gas No Breaks. It’s a YouTube channel that does a bit of “on-the-ground” reporting similar to what you might see from outlets like Vice. However, it’s probably more in the realm of street interview-style content from the likes of Walter Masterson and Tyler Oliveira—though, I think all three do very different styles of content.
Generally, one of the things that I think sets Channel 5 apart from the usual street interview content is that the crew is always in the center of political movements. For instance, at the time of writing, their channel has videos on an anti-ice rally, an anti-elon rally, Trump’s inauguration, a white lives matter rally, and more.
What makes these videos so compelling is that so much of the content is focused on what the average person in the crowd has to say. In other words, you get to see a smattering of talking points across the political spectrum, though Channel 5 often presents the arguments through the lenses of “left vs. right” and “theory vs. practice.” To see how, just check out his video on Pennsylvania before the election.
Right off the bat in his Pennsylvania video, Andrew showcases a person spewing all sorts of hateful rhetoric about Kamala Harris in direct contrast to a woman worrying about losing social security. In this initial framing alone, Andrew sets up the video to give a certain narrative around Republicans and Democrats in Pennsylvania. As someone who grew up in the biggest swing district in the country in Pennsylvania, I experienced this video viscerally: it was like having a conversation with my parents who fell almost comically on that left-right dichotomy.
By the 40-second mark, the video highlights what I would consider to be the average person: someone who doesn’t want to associate with politics because they don’t believe either party will help them. They represent a segment of the country that is just trying to make ends meet. These are the types of people I have a lot of empathy for because they’re workers who are just trying to survive.
The problem is that they can’t live apolitical lives. From a political standpoint, one party is very much going to make their lives worse (i.e., republicans) while another party is going to change basically nothing (i.e., democrats). When you live in this kind of society, it’s appealing to want to elect someone who promises to blow things up. I know this because it’s a sentiment I hear from my PA friends and family, and it’s a sentiment that is shared in Andrew’s video.
The Anti-ICE Rally
Given how well put together I thought Andrew’s PA video was, consider my surprise when I watched his Anti-ICE Rally video. Based on the title, I would have assumed the commentary would be around ICE and what sort of atrocities the organization has committed. Yet, it has almost no discussion of ICE at all.
The closest we get to any discussion of ICE or at least deportations is early in the video (~1:44) where one man states:
There’s a lot of people that don’t want to come out. They’re scared to come out. They’re scared to die out here. They’re scared to get taken from these streets. Some of us are never going to get taken from here, so we’re willing to die for those voices that are lost. We’re here to speak and do for those that can’t.
To me, this was one of the more heartwarming segments of the video, but unfortunately it goes downhill fast.
The PSL Reps
In the early part of the video, Andrew attends an anti-ICE rally. Specifically, he centers a few women as interviewees who are clearly a part of PSL, the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Given Andrew’s past, I had assumed that maybe he was centering them because he wanted to bring some attention to their cause.
Instead, he centered them as a way of mocking them. It becomes very clear early on as he offers some odd pushback on some of their talking points. For example, at about the 5:28 mark in the video, Andrew asks one of the PSL representatives, “how do you feel about the designation of cartels as terrorist organizations?” Immediately, the music cuts from the video, as if to draw attention to her statement (perhaps because the editor thinks she sounds stupid).
At this point, she correctly, in my opinion, pushes back on the question. By asking about cartels, you’re insinuating that migrants and cartels are one and the same. She states this, which results in Andrew clarifying his position (i.e., that cartels are bad). No one is disputing this. It’s akin to talking about the genocide in Palestine and a guy turning around and saying “but do you condemn Hamas?”
A similar conversation happens around the 7:57 mark, where another PSL rep talks about the material conditions that might lead to someone joining the cartel. She perhaps words it awkwardly—it’s a street interview after all—but Andrew (and most of the commenters) interpret this as justifying the existence of cartels. It’s also cut in such a way that the original rep is folded into this argument, which makes it seem like she’s arguing that people become cartel members because they aren’t getting adequate education.
It’s specifically at this point where the editing starts to produce a narrative. None of the speakers get a chance to really make their point without Andrew weaving in graphic news stories between every couple of words. In fact, he just straight up cuts one of the reps off at 8:45 and pivots to his new segment “theory vs. reality.”
The Cartel Narrative
Of course, Andrew has recently pushed back on a lot of the interviewees, so you may not have noticed or even been bothered by it. After all, even the mower guy in the PA video gets some solid pushback on vaccines from Andrew, so it’s part of his repertoire as an interviewer now.
But then, the video starts to take a bit of a turn. Around the 8:45 mark, Andrew transitions to a huge narrative piece about drug cartels. During this portion of the video, it keeps cutting back to the statements of the PSL folks while zooming in on their tattoos and stickers. For example, Andrew uses the phrase “relatively bad faith statements that are made by passionate Americans” while cutting to a closeup of one of the PSL rep’s “I <3 Inmigrantes” sticker.
Later (~19:20), there’s this really strange segment where one of the interviewees talks about how difficult immigration is and the video cuts to a flowchart drastically oversimplifying the process as if to further belittle the speaker. This is particularly confusing because Andrew himself takes a shot at Biden (justifiably) for making immigration harder. So, which is it?
Given that Andrew straight up claims that the PSL reps are “undermining” the “very really danger and threat posed by the Mexican drug cartels,” it’s really strange to then see him praise Bukele around the 16:10 mark after admitting to the atrocities in the detention center: “El Salvador is no joke twenty times safer than it was five years ago.” It’s like thinking Light is the good guy because crime went down in Death Note.
The Ground News Sponsorship
Near the end of the video (~20:00), Andrew jumps into a Ground News sponsorship, which is convenient timing considering what I can only describe as his centrism pivot. After all, Ground News is a platform that is supposed to help you sift through political bias in reporting. It also explains why Andrew uses so many News Nation clips because they’re supposed to be “unbiased.”
Andrew specifically uses the ad read to talk about how “the left” isn’t covering a story about “2 cartel-linked human smugglers being arrested for trafficking 20,000 into LA.” This is why I can never take centrists seriously because they spend the majority of their time criticizing “the left.” They constantly use terms like “echo chamber” (as Andrew literally does in the ad read) to convince people to see both sides. Of course, the problem with this framing is that it asks chickens to consider the perspective of KFC.
While Ground News is probably fine as a resource, I definitely recommend folks check out friendlyjordies video on it. While I can’t speak on Jordan’s (of friendlyjordies) politics, he quite directly argues there’s not a single news source out there that isn’t biased, so it’s sort of silly to even present yourself as one. As a bonus, Jordan makes a nice case for why its silly to consume politics through a left-right lens, and why it’s silly to even consider a media company to be “left-leaning.”
Mass Deportations
Now, interestingly, while I was writing this article, I was only speculating that Andrew was starting to push a more explicit centrist narrative. Then, I noticed that he had released another video on essentially the same topic titled “Mass Deportations.” In this video, Andrew and one of his colleagues tackle the issue of mass deportations from both sides of the US-Mexico border.
In general, I thought this video was significantly better in terms of just letting the people speak and not trying to belittle them. Perhaps the most shining example of this was when the video cut to an extended interview with Ruben Garcia around 18:45.
Ruben speaks incredibly knowledgably about migrants, their rights, and the issues impacting them. He speaks from a place of experience as someone who runs a refugee shelter in El Paso, Texas. I highly recommend you watch the video.
With that said, Andrew couldn’t quite help himself during the interview. He clearly wanted to once again talk about the issue of cartels, and Ruben really didn’t entertain the idea at all. In the rest of this section, I’ll walk you through what I mean.
An Overview of the Shelter and the History of Migration
Andrew starts the conversation by asking Ruben, “what can you tell us about this place?” Ruben briefly describes the shelter as a place for refugees and migrants for the last fifty years. Andrew then asks Ruben if “there was a particular experience that made him want to get involved in this kind of work?” Ruben then talks about growing up in El Paso before Andrew asks about the services they offer, which includes primarily hospitality services.
Up to this point, the interview is pretty standard. Then, Andrew starts getting into specifics. He starts by asking where the migrants are coming from. To answer the question, Ruben broadly points to Central America before specifically pointing to Venezuela. Then, Andrew asks why immigrants are coming from Central America.
It’s at this point that Ruben starts to share his expertise. He shares the history of how migration north has been happening for 400 years, and the reasoning is generally fear and hunger. He then pivots into a conversation of how politicians make a big deal out of migration to earn votes, despite the fact that migration has been happening this whole time.
Interestingly, Ruben continues by talking about how Americans aren’t leaving the country despite all the problems we have, which hints at the idea that perhaps migrants who travel hundreds of miles have a genuine claim to asylum. He then talks about how “putting up a fence” or “bringing down the army” is not going to solve the problem in Venezuela. He furthers this argument by dispelling the myth that Venezuelans don’t all migrate to the US, and that most of them fled to nearby countries like Ecuador and Peru (i.e., there’s no uniquely American border crisis).
Discussing Mass Deportations
After Ruben shares his wonderful analysis, Andrew asks about mass deportations. At this point, Ruben seems to go a bit on the defense by first taking issue with the term “mass deportation.” Specifically, he rhetorically asks, “what do you classify as mass deportation?” He then goes into the issue of logistics by asking questions like “how are you going to find them?”, “how are you going to identify them?”, and “how are you going to remove them?”
From there, Ruben starts talking about the legality of mass deportations. For example, he points to certain migrant rights through questions like “have you been living in the United States?” and “do you have citizen children?” Finally, he states that migrants have the right to explain to a judge why they shouldn’t have to go back.
To illustrate the nuance of deportations, Ruben shares an anecdote about a family that escaped violence who found their lives in the US but are still not documented. He argues that if Border Patrol were ever to find that family, they would have the right to stand before a judge to explain themselves. They cannot simply be deported.
Engaging in Centrist Rhetoric
It’s unclear at this point if Ruben is claiming that mass deportations are not actually happening or that they are happening but illegally. Regardless, Andrew uses this opportunity to flex his enlightenment by asking, “so you think a lot of the sensational optics about you know mass roundups and just dropping people off at the border is sort of meant to push a political agenda as opposed to being reflective of reality?” To which Ruben responds after a hard cut, “we know it’s a political agenda.”
Interestingly, Andrew then cuts away to talk about how important immigration is for the economy. Then, the video cuts back to Ruben talking about birth rates in the US. Specifically, he talks about how important it is for the US to have immigration. Otherwise, we would see population collapse.
Ruben then ties the topic back into politics claiming that the truth about immigration is not going to get votes. Instead, it’s much more effective to talk about how migrants are rapists and murderers (much like the red scare propaganda of the 50s). He then talks about the consequences of this kind of rhetoric, which results in us talking about other humans in “derogatory terms.” Then, Ruben briefly pivots to talk about how policy should prioritize human dignity and that migrants shouldn’t be exploited, and he even humors Andrew’s obsession with criminals by talking about the extensive fingerprint databases used by governments.
It’s at this point that I would have hoped Andrew would have reflected on why people might interpret his questions about the cartels as an attack on migrants. It’s because all migrants are being stereotyped in the same way. Unfortunately, Andrew instead pushes forward by telling Ruben, “it’s hard when you have two very polarized opinions that seem to not be able to interact.” To be completely honest, I have no idea what these two perspectives are that Andrew is referring to.
What makes this conversation even more confusing is that Andrew follows up his indictment of the left-right political divide with a position that can only be described as one held by “the left”: “there should be an easier process to obtain citizenship and be able to get your papers.” In other words, the PSL activists he was clowning on in the last video are on his side here, but he’s so obsessed with the ideological labeling that he marks anything they say as propaganda. This is why centrism is so silly.
The funny bit is that Ruben then responds by saying that Andrew is right, and that most of the folks who find their way into the US undocumented are not doing crime. Andrew hears this and falls right back into his cartel obsession. Specifically, he states, “the one thing I think there is legitimately possibly reason to fear would be the cartels.”
Perhaps the funniest moment of the entire video is Ruben responding, “correct, but I can assure you cartels are not crossing the border.” If you’ve been following the article up to this point, you can probably guess that Andrew doesn’t back down here. Instead, he follows up with, “but I guess the thing is obviously most coyotes are in some way connected economically to the cartel infrastructure.”
Centering the Cartels
At this point, the video starts displaying many of the same strange editing tricks as the anti-ice rally video, which makes it really hard to make sense of Ruben’s response. For example (~27:13), Ruben responds by stating that “they’re paying to access the space to cross through, you’re correct.” Here, I think “they” refers to migrants, perhaps suggesting that they often fund the cartels in their pursuit of freedom. However, the video cuts to clips of people wading through water and people loading packages (presumably drugs) into the back of a truck—perhaps conflating migrants with drug mules.
Of course, we know that migrants aren’t the ones smuggling drugs (as stated here and here), and it would be disingenuous to argue that migrants are propping up the cartels. So, it’s weird to see Andrew get so worked up here.
After Ruben responds, Andrew jumps back in to say, “it’s unfortunate that it’s making billions for the cartel. I wish there was a way that the cartel wasn’t the one running the show.” And again, I don’t think anyone would disagree with this. The cartels are bad, but Andrew seems to be either purposely or naively missing the point in pursuit of some “balanced” and “unbiased” analysis. Because of this, he pushes the conversation into “solutions for the cartel” instead of “solutions for migrants.”
I believe Ruben correctly parries this discussion to talking about the root cause of the cartel’s existence (which he identifies as addiction, but I would argue includes other factors like interventionist policies and border policies). It’s not that people think the cartel isn’t bad. It’s that people realize the cartel is the symptom of a bigger problem. If you stop destabilizing Latin American, legalize and regulate drugs, treat addiction, and provide easier pathways to citizenship, you kill the cartel’s industry.
Discussing Addiction
After Ruben shares his take on addiction, Andrew asks Ruben to clarify his stance, “so you think without the American drug addiction, there wouldn’t be a cartel?” I think Andrew is right to ask this question because addiction is everywhere but not everywhere has a cartel. While Ruben doesn’t really answer this question, he does correctly critique our current efforts of dealing with addiction by imprisoning everyone: “tell me that we’re ready to go and declare victory.”
I think Ruben’s response somewhat confuses Andrew at this point, so he probes a bit on the topic of addiction: “do you think there’s some accountability to be taken on behalf of the medical industry here too?”
Ruben’s response somewhat perplexes me here. He starts by drawing a parallel between drugs and guns: “isn’t it interesting that you want to do that with drugs, but you don’t want to do that with guns?” He then says, “there’s no such thing as a bad gun, there is only a person who uses the gun badly, but with drugs, we want to keep going after the manufacturers of drugs.” From these statements, I can’t tell if Ruben wants manufacturers to be accountable or not because I can’t tell if he’s being facetious with the line about guns.
Andrew again seeks clarification which Ruben provides by stating, “I’m simply saying that’s where we have put the emphasis ever since Nixon declared war, and where are we today?” If I were to give a charitable interpretation, I think Ruben is essentially arguing that any effort to take down the manufacturers would be better spent on education, treatment, rehabilitation, etc. (i.e., the war on drugs hasn’t worked).
Recentering the Cartels
Of course, before we can even really unpack this confusing bit of the interview, Andrew brings it right back to the cartels when he says, “there’s certain cartel activities that seem to go far beyond economic necessity.”
Ruben responds by pointing to all the evil things that cartels do including “the abuse, the beatings, the killings, the prostitution.” He states that he does “believe that there is evil in the world.”
Andrew clearly is trying to lead Ruben down a certain line of logic: the cartels aren’t just motivated by profit, they’re uniquely evil. He even says he wonders if the cartel members even have justification for what they do and if instead “they just wake up and say ‘I like doing terrible things.'”
Again, Ruben parries this idea by saying, “I have to believe that a lot of it has to do with our culture and the need for our culture to really examine itself.” To which, Andrew asks, “do you think America is in a spiritual crisis?” Ruben agrees and states that it has been in a spiritual crisis for a long time.
At that point, the interview ends.
Reflecting on the Videos
Having reviewed both of the videos in depth, I wanted to take a moment to reflect a little more intentionally on my thoughts. To do that, I wanted to share my thoughts on centrism as well as look at what others are saying.
Centrism and Its Problems
When I watch both of these videos, it makes me wonder what is going on inside Andrew’s head. In most of his videos, he tends to play the neutral party (i.e., “I’m just asking questions”). More recently, however, he’s taken a more narrative approach to his videos.
In both his anti-ICE rally video and his mass deportations video, he seems to be dipping his toes into more explicit positions on issues. However, in the process, he’s trying to find this “middle ground” that I don’t think exists. It’s why centrism is always made fun of: imagine trying to play the middle ground on the central issue of World War II.
In this case, Andrew seems to want to say that migrants deserve rights, but he also wants to provide nuance to the situation by calling attention to all the issues surrounding migrant rights, such as the cartels and drug manufacturers.
The problem is that in the pursuit to reach some centrist position on the issue of migration, you have to push away any ideologically-aligned groups who are actually doing the activism for migrants. You have to do this because you believe ideology to be some great evil when it’s just a set of values and beliefs that influence how you view and interact with the world. That’s called bias, and we all have it.
Ironically, rather than being grounded in reality as they would suggest, centrists create this imagined reality for themselves where they’re the only ones who can filter out the noise and find the “truth.” They become so obsessed with this desire for balance that they don’t realize that they don’t even hold any coherent views. For example, Andrew uses the phrase “two things can be true at the same time” while simultaneously hyperfixating on one aspect of the argument: cartels.
And, I’m not the first to have this complaint about centrists. Nathan Robinson wrote this wonderful article titled, “Why Centrism is Morally Indefensible,” critiquing Tim Urban’s centrist enlightenment. Specifically Nathan writes:
And here you have the problem with centrists: they won’t call an atrocity an atrocity, because this would be tribal and extreme. They won’t fight to end a horrific injustice, because the very idea of a horrific injustice has no place in their vocabulary. More important than the fact that Ronald Reagan armed death squads is the way he talked, all his bullshit about how we were all in this together (even as he waged a class war). As Martin Luther King Jr. knew, and called out in “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” moderates never get anything done, because they refuse to stand resolutely for anything other than civility and restraint.
In other words, not only are centrist beliefs incoherent and unrealistic, they’re also entirely too focused on optics. In Andrew’s case, cartels are the focus because of their aesthetics. It never occurred to Andrew to consider that even a cartel could be caused by some injustice. In fact, he dismisses these kinds of discussions as “meta arguments.”
When I think about why centrists come to this conclusion, I think it’s because they lack a value framework for guiding their beliefs. As a result, centrists get to arbitrarily pick and choose their political beliefs based on vibes. Naturally, these vibes are often shaped by whatever stories are most evocative.
Now, I’m not saying I have some deeply reasoned value framework from which I deduce all of my political beliefs. I am certainly susceptible to reactionary thought. However, when you don’t have some lens from which you look at the world, you will inevitably run into a situation which causes you to have reactionary sentiment.
With Andrew, he seems to have this very reactionary view of the cartel. He wants migrant rights, but he’s not willing to entertain any solution that doesn’t involve centering the cartels. While he has never suggested a solution himself, the idea that he considers all cartel members to be psychopaths seems to explain why he was so giddy to talk about the effect prisons have had on the reduction in crime in El Salvador. Unfortunately, what he doesn’t realize is that he’s taking a very right-wing, borderline fascist position here: if we just imprison all the criminals, we’ll have a better society.
Of course, I still think Andrew leans left, but his recent videos have been a little strange. Because I don’t feel like there’s enough evidence to suggest that Andrew is on some right-wing pivot or grift, I’ve settled on this more centrist interpretation. Now, let’s look at what some other folks are saying.
General Confusion in the Community
Often times when I’m struggling through my analysis, I like to look at what others are saying. Naturally, after leaving the anti-ice rally video with a bad taste in my mouth, I turned to Google to see if anyone else was talking about it. Rather quickly, I found a thread in Channel 5’s own subreddit, and the comments were pretty interesting.
In general, there were several commenters like me who were equally confused about the video, such as the following:
This is andrews most right leaning video he’s ever made
I do think like all things there’s a ton of nuance to the situation and I do think sometimes we all simplify things
However I do find a few thing egregious in this video
He tried to make the girl look stupid for saying some cartel members are forced into the lifestyle due to poverty, he however has made that same argument himself for American gang members like in his O block video
I also think when the lady was talking about how the asylum process is broken and needs to be fixed and he put up a graphic showing that all you need to do to get your asylum claim approved is have a valid reason for asylum is fucking bullshit
Yes there are people who try to cross with invalid asylum claims but also there are people who DO have valid claims that have been waiting to be approved for over a year and are just stuck at the border
I stood with Andrew through a lot, I even bought a ticket to see dear Kelly live, I just don’t like the tone of this video at all
It’s one thing to disagree with the protesters but he’s kinda going out of his way to make them look stupid in some unfair and hypocritical ways
Grindhoss
The sentiment shared in this post is one that I’ve more or less outlined in my section on the same video. Why was so much effort made to make the protestors look stupid? Usually, Channel 5 just presents the people he interviews as-is. He didn’t need to say anything about that one lady in the red in the anti-Elon video. It just feels sort of strange.
Interestingly, Grindhoss wasn’t the only Redditor with concerns around the new video. As I kept reading, I saw comments like “the video wasn’t about the title lol it was so Andrew could do a cartel piece” and “What the fuck are you talking about? America is bad, moron. We made the goddamn cartels.”
Others raised similar points as myself around cartels not really being the primary concern when we talk about immigration:
… He’s kind of cornering them into a side quest by talking about the cartels, so they’re caught off-guard because it’s really not the central issue. Yes the cartel does bad things, but the issue of mass deportations and harsher immigration laws isn’t helping anything. If the path to legal migration were easier there wouldn’t be space for what they’re doing in the first place, so it’s nearly a non issue as far as immigration is concerned. Andrew using these debate-bro what-about-isms is honestly a pretty bad look
contemporaryadult
That same commenter raised a similar concern I had around Andrew’s obsession with finding some middle ground:
Fully agree – he seems to be so dedicated to finding some nuanced middle ground type of take lately that he’s becoming increasingly centrist and sliding to the right. Disheartening to see, and really goes to show that someone without clear principles and theoretical clarity is almost bound to slide to the right if they’re going for these kind of algorithm-bait hot takes. Combine that with trying so hard to appeal to the right that he makes unnecessary concessions
contemporaryadult
Obviously, Reddit isn’t exactly what I would call a good source of anything, but it was nice to see that others were bothered by Andrew’s anti-ICE rally video.
The Importance of Activism
Ultimately, I was personally bothered by Andrew’s videos because he’s downplaying the very real concern of being deported while parroting the mostly right-wing concern around gang activity.
In the last couple months, we’ve seen a major movement toward deportations as a means of supposedly curbing gang activity while also silencing speech and violating due process. Of course, the highest profile case is Mahmoud Khalil, but there are many more like him:
- Recently engaged, beloved barber arrested by ICE | How his immigration story is questioning the system
- ‘He’s not dead, but it feels worse’: Middleburg woman’s husband deported to India
Not to mention that Trump recently deported 200+ alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process or any evidence of the claim. From what I’ve seen since, several of the people deported were just brown and had tattoos (such as a Real Madrid tattoo or a pocket watch tattoo). We don’t have to talk about “mass deportations” to be concerned that real people are being deported and that it’s not just migrants who are being affected.
In addition, I was bothered by the way Andrew treated those PSL members as they’re the ones actually organizing and mobilizing to serve their community.
Personally, I recently joined the DSA (i.e., the Democratic Socialists of America) because I was worried about my students being arrested by ICE. Now, I’m a part of a migrant rights working group that’s trying to meet the needs of the local community. At the time of writing, I’m doing research on which churches in our community serve migrants to see if we can educate them on their rights.
Ultimately, it’s people like the folks in DSA who are doing the actual work to help people in their communities. We’re not just ideologically driven debate bros as Andrew might paint us.
Looking Ahead
One thing I should mention before I wrap up is that I’m probably a bit hypersensitive to right-wing pivots from content creators. It could be that Andrew had some really dark experience that’s causing him to want to bring attention to the cartels. I can respect that. However, I would say that pivoting to the right is the easiest way to make money in content creation.
In the past few years, I have seen so many creators begin their right-wing grifts. In recent memory, I can point to streamers like Asmongold, Ethan Klein, Adin Ross, and Destiny. I can also point to news commentators like Dave Rubin and Tim Pool and to a lesser extent Ana Kasparian and Glenn Greenwald. I can point to podcasters like Joe Rogan and the Nelk Boys. I can point to influencers like Andrew Tate and to a lesser extent Brianna Wu. I can point to celebrities like Russel Brand and Chapelle. Hell, I can point to literal politicians like Tulsi Gabbard and John Fetterman. There are just countless examples of folks who claimed to be leftists or at least liberals who became rabid conservatives.
For most of these people, there was some cultural issue that made them seemingly abandon their “leftist” ideals to pursue some grift. For some, it was trans rights or general “wokeness.” For others, it was October 7th. For many others, it was cancel culture, of which Andrew himself was a victim. Perhaps, migration is Andrew’s issue. Only time will tell if the channel becomes a right-wing grift.
With that said, this is the first time I’ve really dabbled in politics on this site. I know that’s going to turn people away, but I’ve really given up on trying to appease the algorithm. Going forward, I’m going to write what I want to write about. If that turns some folks off, I think that’s okay.
However, if you’re interested in my political thoughts and analysis—not that you should be—I’ve created my first new tag in some time: politics. Perhaps in the future I’ll write a bit more. I know for sure I’m going to write about leaving Twitter, which I plan to heavily use to talk about my political journey.
Anyway, if you liked this, here are some unrelated articles (until I write a bit more about my politics):
- Is Anyone Else Bothered by How Quickly We Adopted Generative AI?
- 31 Lessons Learned as a New Dad
- Meritocracy: The Facade That Determines Who Deserves Success
In addition, you can help support the site a bit more by checking out my list of ways to grow the site. Otherwise, thanks again for even reading to this point! I appreciate it.
As is becoming a trend, I’ve been putting these little sections down here after I finish writing. Recently, Andrew was on Patrick Bet-David’s show, and I thought he did a really nice job of combatting conservative talking points. He talked a lot about the real material conditions for folks in California at one point, and I thought he did an awesome job talking about the importance of social safety nets funded by taxes. Of course, I didn’t watch the whole thing, so who knows.
Recent Blog Posts
As of March of this year, I'm off Twitter for good! In fact, at the time of writing, my old account should be deleted. Let's talk about that!
Inside the Mind of an Engineer: How to Make Societal Issues Worse
Today, it feels like things have shifted in the mindset of the average engineer, and we're unknowingly making the world a worse place to live.