Friday, April 16, 2021

so, we're done with the flashpoint history run through, and my opinion of this channel is not very good. i let him finish like i said, and i'll spend a little time tonight consolidating comments, but i will not be subscribing and will not be keeping up. my opinion of this guy as a person is also quite negative.

first, despite his claims to the contrary, this is not a secular history channel and is not being told from an unbiased or neutral position. what this site is is a narration of real and fake history from a decidedly pro-muslim (or is it just anti-western?) bias. when he was going through the mythological origins of the ummayad caliphate, it's not like it really mattered much - it was bad methodology, as a historian, but these are little mini-films, so whatever. but, he's still reciting muslim propaganda when he gets to manzikert...

i don't know who this guy is or what his background is, but he does not appear to have been a muslim when he started this, at least - it doesn't seem like he intended to create a site dedicated to disseminating islamic myths, legends and propaganda. maybe he found an audience; maybe he found a market; maybe he found a benefactor. or, maybe he just got sucked into it. i dunno.

what i know is that the way he's approaching this is to take the muslim sources entirely uncritically as mystical or divine, and to entirely ignore the western sources as flawed and decrepit and this approach towards the islamic world from a western perspective is what edward said call orientalism. 

to be clear: the right way to do this would be to be equally critical and dismissive of both sides. unfortunately, the bias is consistent throughout, which is really forcing me to haul out the said.

second, i find the guy to be a sad excuse for a human being in terms of how he narrates the history. in the past, i've called him a nihilist in the technical sense of the term, and i think that's correct in a certain sense, but he's also demonstrated that he doesn't even adhere to a concept of master morality - he's happy to applaud attila, for example, for having the "cunning" to ravage the balkans by breaking peace treaties. he glorifies war, celebrates destruction and applauds pointless slaughter. if you call him on it, he'll probably pull back, but it seems like it's all for show.

there's a now somewhat old silver mt zion tune where the line is "power's the province of miserable pricks". and, a man who dedicates his life to worshipping miserable pricks is inevitably going to be one himself.

i don't know what's next. let me look around.