Last week I was walking through Kingsdown to play football when I stumbled upon a far right YouTuber and his latest attempt to monetise hate. I won’t name the ‘young’ YouTuber. I’m sure many of you will know who I mean. You’ve probably seen him around, filming at protests, trying to provoke people into fights he can clip up for content that owns the libs or whatever. His entire schtick is setting up a debate table, giving you a prompt – one of his opinions – and asking you to change his mind.
I’m here to tell you, don’t bother, pal. He doesn’t care what you think. The two prompts I saw that day were, and I’m sorry for spreading his hate here, but I want to make a point: “The LGBTQIA+ community is mentally ill. Change my mind.” And: “I think we should deport millions. Change my mind.”
His starting point is extreme. It’s there to provoke you. But the thing is, these are not fair terms. When he sets the terms of the debate, he’s forcing people into polarised positions. And any of us debating him have no control over the final edit and don’t know how we’ll be represented. So don’t engage. Do you know this person? Do you care enough about what he thinks to try and ‘convince him’ that someone’s sexuality is their identity, a core part of who they are, and not a mental illness?
I was invited, earlier this year, to take part in the Oxford Union’s prestigious debate. They’ve invited me multiple times and each time I’ve said no. This year was no different. They wanted me to debate whether the West is right to be suspicious of Islam. I said no on principle. There is so much wrong with that as a premise – it puts any Muslim, and any person who believes in mutual respect, tolerance and kindness on the back foot. So I swerved with the quickness. I was right to, because months later, Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox and Jacob Rees-Mogg were all announced as debaters. I was astonished to think this was worth anyone’s time.
It’s the same with this particular far-right YouTuber. You’ll probably see him outside the University of Bristol students’ union from time to time over the coming year. Because he loves coming here for some reason. And you may think free speech is free speech, but I urge you to consider whether hate speech is free speech. I heard him utter many slurs at passers-by who were showing their annoyance. I watched with horror as he called a protestor, who bravely stood in front of his table, many awful things. Things that the police deemed to not be red lines. It made me wonder, what is the line, and where must we tread it?
I watched the spectacle for hours. People wanted him to move but he was technically on public property. People told the police the many slurs he uttered, but they weren’t enough to move him on. People expressed their annoyance. Yet he continued to sit there, goading us. I observed his debate tactics: pull you into a straw-man cul-de-sac in order to a-haaa your hypocrisy; wait for you to pick up on the unsaid things in his statements so he can challenge you; resort to assumptions about what it is to be on the left; and slurs. Always slurs.
I’m not here to lecture anyone about free speech, its limits or when it becomes hate speech. All I’ll say is this: do you want to be on the internet, debating a known racist, who is schooled in all the ways you’ll try to school him, is in control of how the piece gets edited, and has already decided what he thinks? He’s telling you what he thinks. There’s no changing his mind. If there was, he wouldn’t be filming it for clicks. Because this dude knows his audience.
The most important conversations, the bravest ones we can have, are with those we love. We all have friends, family members, colleagues who may think things we find offensive or upsetting. It’s up to us to have the hard conversations with them, because those matter. We can decide afterwards what sort of relationship we have with them. We can change their mind. And if we can’t, well, let the chips fall where they may. Hasan Piker recently said on a Pod Save The UK interview: “Be kind to people, be cruel to institutions.”This particular far right YouTuber is part of a trend, one that monetises our anger. We don’t need to engage with him or the trend he represents. We can be kind to people. The ones who matter.
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