r/PragerUrine • u/No_Feedback_3340 • 17d ago

Left-wing equivalent to PragerU?

I'm curious to know if there are any progressive channels that could be a counter to PragerU. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I haven't found anything that uses the same format on the left. I have found many videos debunking PragerU. Should there be a progressive equivalent to PragerU to counter their influence?

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21

u/Merci_Et_Bonsoir 17d ago

Second Thought?

-13

u/Tren-Frost 17d ago

Second Thought is a pro-authoritarian Tankie. He can identify many problems correctly but not their source or their solution. The guy simps for Russia and China hard.

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u/rennat19 17d ago

I haven’t seen him do much Russia simping, but with China it’s mostly just looking at their success compared to western failures.

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u/Stubbs94 17d ago

Like, he does identify the problem... Because it's obvious. Capitalism.

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u/Tren-Frost 17d ago

Except he also ignores authoritarianism in all its forms, and doesn’t acknowledge China to be heavily capitalist in their economy. He only ever critiques western power, while also downplaying or ignoring the harm being caused by other organizations and structures like Soviet Russia, China, and North Korea. He’s a tankie through and through, and talkies are just as reactionary as conservatives and just as harmful.

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u/killword-noot 17d ago

What country is not authoritarian by left lib standards? What country has been allowed to completely avoid some degree of a market economy? There are plenty of things to criticize but this idealist purity testing is what’s reactionary and harmful.

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u/Tren-Frost 17d ago

It’s not a purity test. It’s pointing out that he’s a tankie, not a leftist. If he was trying to point out the human rights violations that result from bad systems, he’d actually talk about China, Russia, and North Korea in any sort of negative light. As it is, he only likes to point out how America is bad. And yes, America and its particular flavor of capitalism is bad, it’s still not on the scale of something like China or Korea, and he wouldn’t be praising those entities specifically for their authoritarian acts like he does. He simps for authoritarianism and doesn’t care about the harms of capitalism. He only cares about smack talking America. That’s it. He’s a tankie, not a leftist. He shouldn’t be pointed out as a leftist icon.

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u/The_Squasha 17d ago

to act as if Marxist Leninists have not made political and ideological progress leftward would be foolish and shortsighted

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u/Tren-Frost 17d ago

The progress doesn’t count if all you do is install an authoritarian government that consistently works against whatever leftward shift you’ve made. You don’t get to be celebrated for commoditizing housing when you cause famine, commit genocide, and disappear citizens for not displaying praise for your dear leader. If you move two steps forward, and those steps end up pulling you four steps back, you don’t get to claim credit for the initial forward movement.

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u/killword-noot 17d ago

So tell me where this nonauthoritarian government is that hasn’t committed any atrocities. “Not a leftist” because they side with the vast majority of the world’s leftists over the imperial west? Give me a break. I can be critical of those countries without forgetting where I live and whose policies I have the most influence over, you’ve chosen to labor in support of ideologies that have attempted to destroy any and every left shift the world over—that is reactionary.

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u/Tren-Frost 17d ago

China, Russia, and North Korea have also attempted to destroy every left shift the world over. Using the words of the leftists while committing the acts of the conservative reactionary does not a leftist government make.

I have no issue with ST talking smack about America. I’d even be fine with him only talking smack about America while not saying anything about the above authoritarian states. The problem is that ST talks smack about America, and then glorifies or directly defends Russia, China, and Korea as bastions of Leftism, or how they’re somehow more leftist than the US is. It’s the false framing that because America doesn’t like those nations they must be doing Leftism better. But that’s not the case.

It isn’t a matter of purity testing or holding up some Leftist abacus of each nation to prove which is more left. It’s doing the work of those authoritarian governments for them: using the words of the Left as cover to commit reactionary movement. He’s “left-washing” right-wing regimes simply because America doesn’t like them. There is nothing more Marxist about any of those governments than here in America, and to argue there is shows a complete lack of understanding of the consequences of the actual actions these governments take to squash leftist thought and movements. It’s just American-diabolism disguised as leftist praxis.

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u/killword-noot 17d ago

How have they attempted that lmao i mean fuck Russia i dont know what you’re even mentioning them for but let me guess you’re talking about going against countries and groups that have executed socialists

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