Recently started looking into actual decent hard-left content creators, discovered BadEmpanada. I could give more detail, but I’m more interested on any critiques from those who know him or his content better.
His videos on Uyghurs and Crimea are shit.
This has been of interest to me, it’s a blind spot for Radio War Nerd & others yet fans I speak to who listen to more episodes than me seem surprised. I’ll get into RWN, as well as The Deprogram’s Russia takes another time.
I think they did Empanada well on /r/TheDeprogram
https://libreddit.kavin.rocks/r/TheDeprogram/comments/11s7x4u/badempanada_uyhgers_video/
https://archive.is/LJd6A Long deleted Asatar Bair thread linked in the comments which is easy to miss
So the video begins with BE defining the two extremes: (1) a group that is so fanatically loyal to China that literally no injustice would sway them and (2) State Dept propaganda that claims there is a genocide based on dubious sources like Adrian Zenz My first thought is, where is this group of fanatical China defenders? I have not seen them. As the video unfolds over the first 40 min, I’m starting to notice that for something that is trying to strike a balance of some sort between two camps, all this video has been about so far has been how ‘suspicious’ China is, and does a kind of frame-by-frame analysis of witness testimony, searching for differences in mood and expression to get at the deeper meaning. BE is good at this, and tells a compelling story However, I’m wondering when we get to the part where there is an incredible US-led propaganda campaign alleging a genocide going on rn, and I’m not sure the dimensions of it are clarified by what is essentially literary analysis of video, even by someone good at such things Nowhere is there a discussion of the broader context of massive, rapid economic and social dvlpmt in XJ. Nowhere is there a discussion of how on earth a genocide could be occurring in a region that has rapid pop growth, rising life expectancy, very rapid GDP growth of 8% /yr, and hundreds of millions of tourist visits per year. No, it’s all about how China didn’t give the press universal access to its facilities, and how sus that is What comes through most clearly is BE sneering at China’s badly staged patriotic displays, suggesting that ethnic cleansing must be happening, because China’s whole mood is just so suspicious, y’know? Like anytime a govt clumsily tries to control a narrative in the press, it’s obviously to conceal their genocidal intent, as though genocide were a secret desire that all countries cannot wait to get into Then he spends nearly 20 minutes getting into a personal story of a passport denial and a family that is separated. No doubt it is a sad story, but to not even get into the larger issues and spend this amount of time on it? Where is the bearing on the charges of genocide; BE doesn’t seem clear on what these charges are, but on something much hazier -- is a govt sus or not? Of course, BE also makes it clear where he stands on that, saying that (paraphrasing here) "no govt has ever cared for its minorities, nor even the average person in the majority group". It almost sounds as if he does not believe in govt at all. Could a govt, hypothetically, care about its minorities or its working class majority? What concrete policies would they pursue? What if such a country has powerful enemies, who have tried to parcel it up, colonize it, and otherwise control it in the recent past? What if the country must have certain controls in place to prevent such things from occurring? What if this results in the restriction of free speech, for example? BE seems to me to be the kind of leftist that the authorities most like. Naively assuming that all govts are bad, by hating everything, he becomes exactly the kind of naive rube that he continually ridicules others for being when they believe a govt might do something good This kind of critic is easily controllable, for they will always point out ‘authoritarianism on both sides’. That is the perfect person to manipulate. All we have to do is convince this kind of person that the other side is just a little bit worse -- 1% worse is enough and they’ll spend most of their time criticizing a country that is our enemy, and not opposing actions we take against that country. Sure, maybe there will be some finger wagging, for say, the concentration camps on the US border, but not real opposition At the very end of the video, he makes a bizarre comparison between vocational centers and Guantanamo bay prison, providing a confusing comparison that is somehow based on the idea that Gitmo represents the only place terrorists were imprisoned, and it was only a few hundred, as a way of implicating China’s higher detention numbers; no context is given for what the War on Terror did to the Islamic world, the millions killed and displaced, so I truly don’t get the comparison The whole emphasis is on China controlling the narrative, somehow proving how sus the CPC is, how authoritarian, how unsophisticated are their propaganda. For BE to present China as the major player of propaganda in the western press is naive at best. China has almost no influence over the western media; the claims of genocide have been orchestrated by the State Dept. Witness the number of key US political players at a recent conference of the WUC; does Nancy Pelosi and Marco Rubio attend just anyone’s party, do you think? The star-studded guest list begins on p 4, and we can see the bipartisan interest in funding separatism, for all the DC attendees refer to the region as ‘East Turkestan’ . . . Continuedhttps://archive.is/o/LJd6A/https://www.uyghurcongress.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Washington-DC-Event-Agenda-FULL-DRAFT-11.01.19.pdf One of the worst aspects of this video was BE’s uncritical acceptance of the XJ victim database. This database is quite frankly a fraud. BE gushes over the ‘sheer, overwhelming volume of testimonies’, missing that all but 46 of the >13k testimonies are secondhand, that is they are hearsay. He does mention that ~3k come directly from Zenz, but only describes why that is problematic much later. There simply are not mountains of testimonies, there are a few dozen BE provides almost no discussion whatsoever of terrorism in the region, apart from a single mention that there were a few ‘dozen’ terrorist attacks. I’m afraid that is a severe misreading of the history there, which BE seems not to care about, because his causality is: Govt exists and naturally causes oppression → terrorism → repression → more govt oppression. What a naive and simplistic view, which is utterly at odds with the history of the region. There is no discussion of the absolutely massive funding of violently fundamentalist Islamic groups in Central Asia by the US, in addition to chaos from the poorly-chosen Soviet involvement in Afghanistan There is no discussion of how nearly two decades of US occupation of Afghanistan has strengthened Islamic radicalism in the region. No discussion of how thousands of XJ separatists trained with al Qaeda and ISIS, as the US took the main separatist group (ETIM), off the terrorist watchlist, despite the well-known connection with terrorist groups. For a fan of video, BE doesn’t seem to have watched this one: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=BjgSOYRZqIo Given that BE doesn’t understand the scale or magnitude of the terrorism, nor its roots, how does he think a govt should deal with it? It’s easy to criticize, especially when western govts provide so many examples of evil govt action, but its hard to say what you’d do. Is China supposed to let XJ secede? Where is the evidence that is what most Uyghurs would want? BE consistently gives China's efforts at assimilation and teaching another language a sinister spin. The school pop going from 400k to 900k is reported without context, without providing the info on how many schoolchildren there are among the Uyghurs https://nitter.kavin.rocks/asatarbair/status/1371622527458365443 While this doesn’t give us the exact number of Uyghur school children, if we assume its about 4 million, a move from 400k to 900k is a shift of only a small fraction, and not necessarily some kind of sinister plot At 1:03, so over an hour in, he says that the most bombastic claims are mostly bullshit -- that’s great, but the first hour has been, ‘why China is sus’ Finally we get to the takeaway: “Is it a cultural genocide? That seems very possible, yes. Does it meet the UN definition? That seems far less likely” Wow, saying there is ‘probably’ a cultural genocide is actually exactly what Zenz says, so despite BE’s valid criticisms of Zenz made pretty late in the video, it sounds like BE actually agrees with Zenz on the larger point Perhaps this is why the criticism of Zenz is mostly on his background and Christian fundamentalist beliefs, not so much on his argument, which it seems BE largely agrees with The smoking gun is a Chinese govt document about the policies of “strengthening political education, nationally common language education, and skill training”. It is fascinating to me how this becomes the proof. That China’s explicit, stated desire for a unified nation in which people share a language -- despite massive affirmative action toward ethnic minorities, despite massive improvements in the lives of these minorities, and all working people -- no, this stated desire is far more important. In Marxism, this is called “idealism”, the belief that it is the ideas that matter, and clearly, anything that sounds like ‘assimilation’ or ‘nation-building’ sounds sinister to the western ear.Continued
To western eyes, the old is swept away before the new and more powerful, this has always been the way, so why would it be different with the rise of China? It is eminently believable that China would sweep away its ethnic minorities, that of course they want to do genocide, that sounds exactly like we did to the Native Americans. What BE cannot conceive of is a govt that actually tries, with great earnestness, and mostly with success, to achieve a great national project in a way that helps the average person as much as possible. So there are no statistics here about the elimination of poverty, about the movement from a largely illiterate population, particularly among the traditional culture of the Uyghurs, about the massive reduction in infant mortality that has come along with this, and the prosperity enjoyed by millions more people as the pop has grown. These are in fact the effects of China’s policies in XJ. No, we are supposed to always have the utmost respect for ‘traditional’ Uyghur culture instead; never is it mentioned that life was quite a bit worse in XJ just a few decades ago, that women had a very low rate of literacy and were trapped in childrearing & household labor roles, having few other options, that all had fewer opportunities when the economy of XJ was just a small fraction of its current size. Is that the traditional Uyghur culture that must be respected at all costs? Yes, massive economic development combined with massive investment in social spending at all levels, has changed traditional life, as it has in every single country that has industrialized BE is basically like, “maybe the separatists have a point, if your govt was oppressing you, you’d hate that govt too”. But he starts from the wrong place, his causality is: Govt -- does oppression, because all govts do -- causes people to dislike govt -- does more repression -- gets terrorism -- does more repression We so hate govt, for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has done some evil, depraved things, that we cannot see what humane economic development looks like. While it is unquestionable that China is pursuing nation-building and seeks to protect its territorial integrity and its sovereignty from the many kinds of attacks from the US and its allies, and indeed that in such an environment, authority must be exercised. Every nation uses authority. The question is, to what end? BE does not evaluate the results of China’s policies in XJ, instead choosing to focus on his expertise, which is clearly analyzing video. I respect the skill, but it does not provide evidence of any sort of cultural genocide to say that China has cracked down in XJ, or even to say that China seeks to control the PR narrative around this issue, or to say that China doesn’t provide unfettered access to its camps. All this says, in a long, roundabout way, is “China is sus”. That rather conveniently overlooks the true magnitude of the propaganda war here, which is mostly an all-out assault by the US, but you’d never know it from BE’s presentation which is overwhelmingly focused on ‘Chinese propaganda’. Overlooking and ignoring US propaganda isn’t being ‘principled’, it’s being naive And saying China is being ‘repressive’ and ignoring the massive human-centered development of the region means you care only about peoples’ thinking, not the actual quality of their lives P.S. I do see that BE has a pinned tweet that looks like this. So that’s good and I agree, but if that’s your view, why spend like 66 out of 75 min criticizing China while furthering US aims for separatism in the region?  Why aid the US by weakening resistance to the charge of genocide among at least some segment of the left? Hey, if you’ve gotten this far, you might want to check out some of my other threads on XJI am not copying the tweets in question go look in the archive bye
Fuckin annoying and his accent makes my eye twitch involuntary, and cats probably avoid him
Sometimes produces good takes I guess but also made a really shitty video on the DPRK that he walked back in a later video, but left the original up. Made a dumb chauvinistic thing about Xinjiang or whatever. Talks arrogantly when he doesn’t know jack shit. That’s the only stuff I’ve seen of his but it’s obvious he stinks, no sir I don’t like it
His shtick is so obnoxious it’ll make you question why you’re listening to some random dickhead’s takes on YouTube, so maybe there’s some good after all
He doxxed my friend BayArea415 so I hate him.
omg I miss BayArea. I hope he’s doing well
I still have his contact.
Could you in any way substantiate this claim?
No, BadEmpanada had his Twitter account banned shortly afterward and only the Discord server I come from and a few other places remember this episode. I can invite you to the server where he was advised and stuff. We have almost 3,000 so we get lots of activity. This happened years ago by this point (2020, I believe), right as Bay was on his way to hitting 40k subscribers in under a year.
Damn I liked bayarea
I and several others were advisors to BayArea415. BadEmpanada kept attacking him, especially on the point of there being no genocide in Xinjiang against the Uyghurs, and then later doxxed BayArea415, resulting in ultra-right threats to his life and several of his friends in real life.
any further details on him doxxing bayarea? I’m familiar with most of the other issues with him but not that one
He went through his history on Reddit and eventually pieced together who BayArea415 was due to Bay foolishly revealing certain details of his in a very old post.
BadEmpanada was very popular on Reddit (but larped as an actual Latino rather than an Australian who simply moved to Argentina and an expat/immigrant to the country before he was revealed not to be… I remember those days).
He has also denied the genocide in Argentina against the various Indigenous groups.
He has also denied the genocide in Argentina against the various Indigenous groups.
Where can I find a source for that claim?
Talk to Zitkato on Twitter (Bands of Turtle Island); they can show you the Tweet as I lost it.
I don’t use Twitter nor I know who Zitkato is. You should be the one providing sources for your claims, not them. With all due respect.
Okay, if you don’t use Twitter, then I can’t help you in this regard. If anyone wants to verify the genocide denial, just ask Zitkato on Twitter.
He made a video called “The First World ‘Left’ Will Never Matter Again - The Hard Truth You Need to Hear”, which is NOT a very good video. He told people in first world countries to move abroad instead of staying and trying to change material conditions.
Also in the comments of the video, he downplayed what is happening with Cop City as “sitting in a forest in Atlanta” and said “No one outside the us should waste any energy on thinking about them. They sure don’t think about us.” when someone asked for international solidarity regarding it.
Dude won’t even join an org.
He isn’t wrong. As much as it hurts to think about liberal protests have accomplished almost nothing in this country and it is foolish to expect them to.
Further if I move to Cuba, blow all my money on that one rum drink they have and die in auto erotic asphyxiation I will have done more to support the global comunist movement than I will probably ever be able to do here.
I don’t think I would label the Cop City protests as “liberal”.
Are they doing any violent sabotage? If not it will ultimately be meaningless. Getting arrested and/or causing a delay will not have any effect of the kinda people as ruthless and determined as an occupying army
Communism is when you break things and injure people
Comunism is when you doing stuff that works. Getting your self beat up by the cops for no good reason doesn’t help anyone.
Do you believe that the venn diagram of “doing stuff that works” and “committing sabotage and/or assault” is a circle?
Actually they have. If you were following it, you would know about it. Don’t call things liberal you know nothing about.
That’s why I asked. That’s quite a change from anything I had heard about it. How’re they managing not to get executed?
There’s more adventurism going on than you might think. But the first rule of praxis is that if you know someone is performing direct action, no you don’t.
Then how am I supposed to know about it?
By the slow collapse of the systems of state control over many years. And of course eventually news networks cant ignore the large fires.
This isn’t propaganda of the deed, it’s generally material action.
He’s wrong because Global South countries don’t need a bunch of useless gringo sexpats dicking around being useless gringos.
The overeagerness and laziness of his uncalled for personal abuse makes me doubt the rigor of his educational materials.
His theory and long form videos are thoughtful and well researched for the most part.
His persona, on the other hand, is a good example of unwarranted self importance syndrome. He used to have more self awareness and humility about the reality concerning his place in the world a year ago. However, he has descended into being a petty, bitter, condescending, spiteful, snivelling wanker who has to be in the right about everything all the time and thinks he is hot shit just because he has a basic tertiary education in history as opposed to the vast majority of his fellow YouTube and twitch parasites who are going off US state department propaganda alone. His only saving grace is attacking neoliberals for the most part.
Tl;Dr his online persona is your average redditor except left leaning.
Examples of his bullshit:
Deleting YouTube comment threads on his videos whenever he embarrasses himself by unironically doubling down on the most ridiculous shit and is subsequently made fun of.
Tactically deadnaming a right wing trans veteran. *Even if someone is a demon there is never a good reason to be a cuckservative to “own” them.
Replying to ass-random american GoFundMe on Twitter that was raising money for water security by sneering at them for not experiencing “real” water scarcity in the 3rd world.
Bayarea415 drama.
Using the
Israel Palestine crisisPalestinian genocide as an excuse to go spew vitriol at a low tier anarchist youtuber for having uneducated opinions in a private discord server. The YouTuber in question was harassed by his fans until they became suicidal and quit.He even attacked Hakim at one point and literally said “debate me bro” (which partly popularized the word “debate-bro” though it wasn’t the only origin).
I’m surprised at that, since BE had a stream with Yugopnik who’s on a podcast with Hakim.
All I know is BE hates V*ush with a passion and that part of his too online argumentation is pretty cool.
alright, fine, i just don’t care at this point, tbh; no offense to you or anything
his long videos on his main channel are pretty good, very well sourced etc.
he is a complete prick though, and is terminally online, as you can see on his second channel
He continuously attacks people on Twitter, including a friend of mine (not just BayArea415).
He picks a “casus belli” and then goes from there; some of them are just very thin or entirely non-existent.
Yeah he’s a massive prick. I will still defend his main channel vids as being some of the best around on certain topics, but if he really was the one that doxxed bayarea that’s way beyond just being an abrasive asshole and I probably have to stop promoting his work. Frustrating.
bayarea didn’t get doxed, he posted personal info on his reddit account and then kept using that reddit account for his persona
i guess you could say steve huffan doxed him but like, fucking use alts and don’t post personal info. don’t walk outside naked if you don’t want everyone to see your ass hair.
textbook victim blaming
well yeah he functionally self-doxed.
publicizing public but not publicized information is doxxing
o
he shouldnt be doxed but come on, its like making a username “123MainStSanFranciscoCA” and wondering why people are finding your address
your username is publicized, this is not the same
