Vaush

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Vaush /ˈvaʊʃ/ (or VaushV) is an American socialist[1] YouTuber and occasional troll[2] who advocates for "pro-markets" libertarian socialism to replace capitalism as an economic system in the near future. He's gained a modest amount of fame online for his videos criticizing and debating reactionaries such as Sargon of Akkad, Blaire White, Stefan Molyneux, Count Dankula, and Jesse Lee Peterson, but also for controversial sexual harassment incidents under his previous moniker.[3] Before making his own channel, he went by IrishLaddie and was predominantly known for his appearances on Destiny’s streams. He is far edgier than the majority of BreadTubers, which is something that gained him considerable controversy, like when he joked about genociding transgender people ("The Trans Question", which is a reference to the Jewish Question and how it led to the mass extermination of Jews in Europe).[4]

His avatar.

As of February 2021, Vaush's YouTube channel has over 101 million views and 340,000 subscribers.

General positions

Vaush supports libertarian socialism in the short term and anarcho-syndicalism farther into the future. Vaush believes that while market economies have their downsides, they are necessary for technological development.
As a socialist, he is generally pro-union and pro-workplace democracy (worker co-ops). However, he believes that police unions shouldn't have as much power as others, since police already have a position of authority by being police.
As an extension of the above, he is pro-Black Lives Matter, and believes the American police are a tool for white supremacists and capitalists to organize systemic oppression.
He is pansexual and a vocal LGBT rights advocate. More specifically, many of his videos debunk transphobic fearmongering.[5]
Vaush believes that despite calling themselves Jewish nationalists, Zionists have a very strong tendency to be anti-Semitic and racists themselves.
Based on his video about Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, he believes it is okay to criticize political correctness as long as it isn’t being used as a dog whistle for a conservative and/or fascist agenda.
Despite his general opposition to more “anti-SJW” types, he is good friends with June Lapine (Shoe0nHead) and is amicable towards The Amazing Atheist and Chris Ray Gun. He is also on friendly terms with former conservative-turned-centrist YouTuber Hunter Avallone.
He loathes neoliberal identity politics and "pop feminism", and strongly advocates for free speech while also not supporting state-controlled hate speech laws.
He supported Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign for President of the United States, and like most Sanders supporters, he voted for Joe Biden in the general election since Sanders dropped out of the primary race.[6] He later defended his position with the use of revolutionary theory he claimed he read recently.[7] According to some critics, Vaush quote-mined and read summaries of works instead of reading from the works he referenced, arriving at a misreading of the theoretical works.[8] [9] However, in a recent stream, Vaush reviews his criticisms and claims that they misunderstood his use of theory and his arguments. For example, analyzing the critique by Hakim, Vaush claims that they misunderstood his thesis (“voting for Joe Biden is better than Donald Trump, and how that’s supported in socialist thinking”) as support for centrist neoliberal corporatism rather than as a tool to spread libertarian socialism in direct democracy, and that the critiques presented are overly pedantic and not worth discourse over, with little grounding in the theory that he was quotemining.[10] It's worth noting that he has made a video talking with one of these detractors, Hakim, and they have largely made up their differences.[11]

Debates

Vaush has debated fascists, neo-Nazis, social democrats, Stalinists, conservatives, right-wing libertarians, and neoliberals. His debating style could be considered a more aggressive version of Destiny's conservative arc debates. While he occasionally does rather poorly (his first debate with Sargon wasn't his most impressive moment), he is arguably the best person at debating extreme right-wingers at the moment (exemplified through his second debate with Sargon and his debate with Stefan Molyneux). Here's a list of the most prominent people he has debated:

Coach Red Pill[12]
Count Dankula[13]
Destiny[14][15][16][17][18]
James Allsup and Eric Striker (teamed with Destiny)[19]
Hunter Avallone[20]
I,Hypocrite[21]
Caleb Maupin[22]
Sargon of Akkad[23][24]
Stefan Molyneux[25]
Adam Kokesh[26]
Vegan Gains[27]
Tim Pool — Notably, the Tim Pool debate led to some backlash against Tim within online conservative circles for, ironically, "platforming" him.[28]

Vaush has also made appearances on the Drunken Peasants Podcast, where he has debated Vee[29], Ethan Ralph[30], and Doug TenNapel[31].

Controversies

Sexual harassment

In March 2019, several direct messages were leaked in which Vaush (previously known as IrishLaddie) was acting creepily towards members of Destiny's Discord server. Before logs being leaked of the event, and discussed by Destiny,[32] he considered confronting one of the victims as shown in a photo of his discord.[33] And his accusers claim that he considered doxxing them^{[citation needed]}. In response to the leaked image of the former, Vaush has claimed that the reason he considered it was because he had reason to believe they were going to spread false information about him. He adds that he changed his mind in the same conversation, after his discord expressed a negative reaction to his plan.[34] After this drama occurred, Vaush and his admins/mods White Nervosa and Rodriguez commented that he was trying to dissociate from his old moniker IrishLaddie in favor of VaushVidya, which he had already been using for some time, in order to deflect some backlash. Since the event, Vaush has released all the logs from the event, apologised extensively for his behaviour, and has promised to do better in future.[35]

Allegations of transphobia

In June 2019, Vaush received pushback among several Twitter users, ^{[citation needed]} ranging from some of his own fanbase to the compilation account HotCisTakes, for posting a tweet that starts with “Honestly fuck trans people” that many interpreted to be dismissive of trans people offended by misgendering. Vaush insisted it was a joke intended to mock transphobes and that he meant no ill will towards trans people (his YouTube content is remarkably pro-trans, especially by the standards of the site, and he has supported trans content creators ranging from ContraPoints to Comrade Cora). Many rejected this characterization, citing that the tweet sounded far too similar to something actual transphobes would say to justify committing violence against trans people, almost as if he was making light of such a serious issue as transphobia.

This was further compounded with video resurfacing in December 2019 where he went on a queer- and transphobic rant. In looking back on the video, he defended everything about his remarks except the idea that these are reactionary statements. [36]

More video would surface in 2020 of a 4 hour stream featuring numerous rants against "wokescolds" and trans people. [37]

Slurs

Vaush sometimes uses slurs for irony value and shock provocation, supposedly to break the stereotype of BreadTube as a bunch of "easily triggered SJWs", a characterization usually only adopted by the far-right, and also as a way to attract and potentially de-radicalize right-wing chuds. He has also said the n-word on his stream.[38] This has been done in the context of the Killstream (the specific timestamp is 1:33:20), where he was debating multiple neo-Nazis who, after having already said several unfiltered homophobic slurs, jumped around saying the phrase “The N-word”, to which he then boldly responds by asking “Dude, you can just say 'niggers'.” to prove that he wasn’t afraid of their kind of speech. Inevitably, this caught them off guard and silenced them promptly; he has gone on to say that while he believes use of the word is harmful and inadvisable and he will not use it again, he stands by his use of it in this context.

Accusations of pedophilia

Vaush has been accused of supporting the usage of child pornography, particularly through a viral clipped segment from an early 2019 Dead Cells stream.[39] In reality, he is openly against it and had compared the production of child pornography to production of goods involving child slavery (e.g. coltan/lithium in smartphones, mica in beauty products) as both involve the exploitation of children.[40][41]

Context aside, and despite his insistence at the time, it is still really not a good look (by framing it initially as not having heard any convincing moral/legal arguments as to why the possession of CP should be illegal, the differences between labor exploitation and sexual exploitation, etc.). He has since admitted he "phrased [his] arguments terribly in that... discussion."[42]

He has also been accused of supporting and lowering the age of consent under an stateless and classless anarchist society as he viewed it as an unjust hierarchy.[43] He claimed in September 2020 to have reversed his previous position on this and now advocates to increase it instead.[44]

gollark: It caused that rather apiformic bug in Emu War.

gollark: I see.

gollark: ?

gollark: C bad in cases where you are writing higher-level applications.