How would you deal with Vladimir Jaffe?

[CaptainCool309]

Have any of you heard of this guy? For those who haven't heard of him, He's basically a former soviet-citizen turned conservative activist who goes out to Occupy Movements, May Day Parades, Environmental rallies...(basically any leftist movement he can), and tries to chat with the leftists about how they are wrong and he is right. He has his own YouTube channel (that's how he's become popular) and he has lots of videos of his confrontations with leftists.

The five main points Vladimir Jaffe loves to bring up when he's confronting leftists are:

1. Communism murdered 100,000,000 people. I lived in the USSR and it was a horrible totalitarian system. All efforts to form a socialist society will end up in a corrupt totalitarian system, just as history has shown us. Capitalism has proven to be the best system and the U.S.A. is the best country in the world.

2. Since capitalism is so "bad," give me your vision on how socialism can be achieved? Give it to me by steps. Step 1. Step 2. Step 3. etc...(He then goes on to critique and argue every point a leftist tries to bring up)

3. Humans don't have anything to do with Global Warming. Any climate change that's going on is just the natural order of things and has nothing to do with human intervention.

4. Che Guevara was one of the worst terrorists of all time. He was a racist, a homophobe, and a murderer. In fact all communist "heroes" (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc...) are terrorists!

5. Health Care is not a right, it's a privilege. All single payer socialized healthcare systems throughout the world are crap, and the U.S. has the best healthcare system in the world, but "socialized" Obama-Care could screw everything up.

So if you were at one of these leftist rallies, and Vladimir Jaffe came up to you and started harassing you about with these points (He discusses many other topics/points than just the 5 main ones I listed above, you can watch more of his confrontation videos with leftists on YouTube) how would you respond to him? Or would you even respond to him at all? Would you just ignore him completely, or on the opposite spectrum of that, get violent and start verbally or physically attacking him?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Preempt him. Show up at his house with a video camera and lists of American atrocities. Demand he account for all of them. Insist he explain, step by step how you could possibly have a capitalist system that isn't violently racist and horrendously destructive.

Also, climate change denial. What?

[#FF0000]

Preempt him. Show up at his house with a video camera and lists of American atrocities. Demand he account for all of them. Insist he explain, step by step how you could possibly have a capitalist system that isn't violently racist and horrendously destructive.

Also, climate change denial. What?

Pretty much this. There's really no way to deal with a sophist no matter what the point you're trying to argue is.

[Bala Perdida]

He always brings up gulags, and I saw a video where he met with the scum bag Joe Arapio and complemented him. The closest thing to gulags in the U.S. and he defends them!?? Anyways, there's some Stalinists in an occupy movement that I think held their ground pretty good against him. I think they where called the Student Revolutionary Guard or something.
I also saw him debating with some laissiez-faire anarcho-libertarians or some weird shit like that. I thought it was pretty funny, but I didn't watch more than 2 mins of it.

[Redistribute the Rep]

You forgot number 6:

North Korea.

[Vanguard1917]

I'd say that the crux of points 1 and 2 aren't controversial in the least for the vast majority of people, as least in the West. The right-wing says 'there's no alternative' and the bulk of the 'left' basically agrees. Sentence 3 of point 1 is essentially what postmodernist leftie types have been arguing for decades: that political programmes to change the world are totalitarian and lead directly to the gulag; so the best we can aim for is piecemeal change which takes into account contesting narratives or whatever.

The rest of the points also have a vast following and are by no means the arguments solely of cranks. On point 3: regardless of whether you believe man-made global warming is a fact (my personal understanding is that it most likely is to some degree), the petit-bourgeois Malthusians who make up the core of the environmental movement have nothing in common with socialism, at least not that of the Marxist variety. If you're a Marxist, you have to challenge their bullshit, too.

The essential moral of the story: you have to be able to win an argument, both as an individual and as an organisation of individuals. Whether you think it's worthwhile to argue with a certain individual is, of course, a matter of judgement. But in general you can't just run away from arguments you don't like - especially when those arguments are the dominant arguments in society - and retreat into your safe enclave with a few like-minded friends.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

He should be ignored. He's a professional troll.

[#FF0000]

You're not running away from an argument if the person you're ignoring isn't interested in an actual discussion. If you do hold up well, I doubt he'd post the video.

[Vanguard1917]

You're not running away from an argument if the person you're ignoring isn't interested in an actual discussion. If you do hold up well, I doubt he'd post the video.

I don't know who this man is - hence the disclaimer in my last paragraph about exercising judgement. I was a bit off topic, considering that the OP was referring to a specific scenario. But in my experience, a love of debate is not exactly one of the main characteristics of the left these days, particularly in the US, where being 'left-wing' (even at Occupy) usually means little more than being a 'liberal' who thinks people hold opposing views because they're stupid or brainwashed. The implication, of course, is that such people shouldn't be engaged with as adults, only 'educated' - i.e. preached to - by the sanctimonious liberal establishment. To be frank, on a number issues - freedom of speech, gun control, Malthusian environmentalism, prohibition* - if anyone's dumb, it's firstly these 'liberals', not the right.


* The 'liberals' tend to want their drug of choice, weed, decriminalised, while calling for more state meddling against 'bad' drugs like tobacco and alcohol.

[Red Commissar]

These guys intentionally try to seek out the weakest or more unstable elements of protests and try to use them to represent the movement, or make themselves sound more reasonable and authoritative by comparison. Failing that they will edit the footage to feed their egos anyways- this isn't exclusive to Jaffe or right-wing trolls either.

Their subscribers are more often than not likeminded people, especially those with serious persecution complexes who think that there's a conspiracy by college academics, George Soros, and the media to create socialism.

[Geiseric]

He left the Soviet union due to Stalinism, which is why communism is a bad idea, which is why stalin murdered nearly every prominent communist of the time period? I'm not sure he's thought this out all the way.

[Redistribute the Rep]

He left the Soviet union due to Stalinism, which is why communism is a bad idea, which is why stalin murdered nearly every prominent communist of the time period? I'm not sure he's thought this out all the way.

The guy has major issues. On his channel he said that "communism has never actually occurred" and North Korea and Cuba are only nominally communist. But then in all of his videos he says communism has killed millions of people when it suits his arguments? I remember in one of his videos he said it was a good thing for the Europeans to come to America and steal all the natives land because they weren't as technologically advanced and it was helping them! This guy's not worth anyone's time.

[CaptainCool309]

He always brings up gulags, and I saw a video where he met with the scum bag Joe Arapio and complemented him. The closest thing to gulags in the U.S. and he defends them!?? Anyways, there's some Stalinists in an occupy movement that I think held their ground pretty good against him. I think they where called the Student Revolutionary Guard or something.

Yeah I forgot to mention that into my first point, he does love to bring up Gulags. He makes it sound as if gulags were just a common thing in the USSR and if you slipped up and did something wrong you were immediately sent to the gulags to suffer indefinitely. And yeah I saw that video and those students did a pretty good job of standing up to him.

You forgot number 6:

North Korea.

I did see a video where he argued with these two communist supporters over which Korea is better to live in: North or South. I think this was one of the few times I agreed with Jaffe, that living in South Korea is probably better than living in North Korea. Unless someone wants to enlighten me on how the DPRK is better to live in than South Korea...

He should be ignored. He's a professional troll.

There's a guy in a some of Jaffe's anti-environmentalist videos that says exactly that. He calls Jaffe a troll, and tells the people that Jaffe is interviewing that they should just completely ignore him. To which Jaffe generally responds: "Don't you want to have a discussion? I like discussions! Do you like discussions? You give me your viewpoint, I give you mine...Cm on' let's just talk!"

The guy has major issues. On his channel he said that "communism has never actually occurred" and North Korea and Cuba are only nominally communist. But then in all of his videos he says communism has killed millions of people when it suits his arguments? I remember in one of his videos he said it was a good thing for the Europeans to come to America and steal all the natives land because they weren't as technologically advanced and it was helping them! This guy's not worth anyone's time.

Yeah I can't stand reading through his six main bullet-points of his political beliefs on his YouTube channel. And I do remember in one of the videos I remember him saying something like, "It was a good thing for the Europeans to come to America and steal all the natives land because they weren't as technologically advanced and it was helping them!" I couldn't believe what I just heard. I had to repeat it over again just to see if I was hearing correctly. I think after that I raged quit that video and went on to do something productive with my time.

[Loony Le Fist]

1. Communism murdered 100,000,000 people. I lived in the USSR and it was a horrible totalitarian system. All efforts to form a socialist society will end up in a corrupt totalitarian system, just as history has shown us. Capitalism has proven to be the best system and the U.S.A. is the best country in the world.

False analogy and even granting it, fallacy of distribution. He even says it himself--"I lived in the USSR and it was a horrible totalitarian system." That rules out socialism out the gate. False analogy. Socialism cannot exist without democracy. Even if you could argue it was an example of socialism, not all types of socialism are the same. Hence, we still have a fallacy of distribution.

2. Since capitalism is so "bad," give me your vision on how socialism can be achieved? Give it to me by steps. Step 1. Step 2. Step 3. etc...(He then goes on to critique and argue every point a leftist tries to bring up)

For me, it starts with worker ownership, empowerment, and workplace democracy. Or is he opposed to democracy and worker empowerment? The next steps will have to be decided democratically, since that's the whole point of worker empowerment. After we empower workers, and they own the means of production, it's no longer up to me anymore.

3. Humans don't have anything to do with Global Warming. Any climate change that's going on is just the natural order of things and has nothing to do with human intervention.

Now it's time to turn the tables. Ask him to provide evidence and an alternative explanation for the unprecedented warming we are experiencing, and why it's beginning happens to coincide precisely with the Industrial Revolution.

4. Che Guevara was one of the worst terrorists of all time. He was a racist, a homophobe, and a murderer. In fact all communist "heroes" (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc...) are terrorists!

Dictators and their butchers are terrorists. Not sure how that is a comment on communism or socialism. It is a comment on dictators.

5. Health Care is not a right, it's a privilege. All single payer socialized healthcare systems throughout the world are crap, and the U.S. has the best healthcare system in the world, but "socialized" Obama-Care could screw everything up.

If Obamacare is socialized, why are citizens still paying the premiums to private insurance companies?

Healthcare is a right. Even Hayek, the grandfather of all libertarians, argued for a universal basic right to well-being. All the single-payer systems around the world are so much crap that they provide equivalent or better care than the US at half the per-capita costs.

[liberlict]

I agree with 1, 2 and 5.

[Loony Le Fist]

I agree with 1, 2 and 5.

1 and 2 are up for debate, perhaps. But 5 is easily quashed. Every other advanced country other than the US has a better healthcare system that provides equal or better care (more hospital beds, doctors, and nurses per capita) at half the cost per capita. Unless you think more MRI machines per capita (Japan is pretty close) is the primary determinant of good healthcare, I would say the US isn't all that great. It also has the highest infant mortality rate of any First World country. Even Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate: 4.76 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2013, compared to 5.90 for the United States, directly from the CIAs own data.

EDIT: I'm also curious how you agree with 1 yet didn't mention agreeing with 4, which would make a reasonable corollary.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

1 and 2 are up for debate, perhaps. But 5 is easily quashed. Every other advanced country other than the US has a better healthcare system that provides equal or better care (more hospital beds, doctors, and nurses per capita) at half the cost per capita. Unless you think more MRI machines per capita (Japan is pretty close) is the primary determinant of good healthcare, I would say the US isn't all that great. It also has the highest infant mortality rate of any First World country. Even Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate: 4.76 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2013, compared to 5.90 for the United States, directly from the CIAs own data.

EDIT: I'm also curious how you agree with 1 yet didn't mention agreeing with 4, which would make a reasonable corollary.

Yeah, pretty sure I'd have died as a kid if health care weren't free.
Or my family of four would have moved into a tiny one-bedroom apartment.

(Yeah, I know, I'm such an entitled brat, right?)

[voorheis]

He always brings up gulags, and I saw a video where he met with the scum bag Joe Arapio and complemented him. The closest thing to gulags in the U.S. and he defends them!?? Anyways, there's some Stalinists in an occupy movement that I think held their ground pretty good against him. I think they where called the Student Revolutionary Guard or something.
I also saw him debating with some laissiez-faire anarcho-libertarians or some weird shit like that. I thought it was pretty funny, but I didn't watch more than 2 mins of it.

/watch?v=8Zo5EupRy_E
was that the video you were talking about?
he is also talking about this post on his facebook

[Bala Perdida]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zo5EupRy_E
was that the video you were talking about?
he is also talking about this post on his facebook

Yeah that was the video, except it's in parts from how I remember it. This seems to be one of them.

Also is he talking about the thread or my post? I don't have much access to Facebook.

[liberlict]

I'd just shake his hand and congratulate him on his trolling and ask if he wants a blowjob.