Who would be the best leftist to debate Stefan Molyneux over socioeconomics and political philosophy?

Who would be the best leftist to debate Stefan Molyneux over socioeconomics and political philosophy?

My vote goes to Chris Hedges.

Peter Joseph was far too wordy, technical and polite in his debate with Stefan. Professor Richard Wolff would also be too polite and seen as "weak". Abby Martin wouldn't be able to keep her cool and would just rage-quit halfway. Chomsky is too old and you could tell Stefan was pulling punches (he didn't do his usual hyper-reductionist douchebaggery and emotional manipulation techniques) and made the "debate" more of an interview, which made his viewers assume he tried to avoid appearing like a mean guy beating up an over-the-hill academic instead of revealing the truth in that he has no argument. Other YouTube leftist/left-leaning celebrities (too numerous to name) would get trapped by Molyneux's gotchas and gaslightings and appear like young, naive incompetents.

But Chris Hedges? Chris would smoke him. It wouldn't be close. He would expose Stefan Molyneux as the arrogant schizoid sociopath that he is for all to see. You think Stefan would be able to get away with his usual appeal-to-emotion reductionist arguments? Bitch, please. Chris is the master of imagery, specialized in conveying the existing dread, despair and decadence in as few words as possible. You, as a mere theater schoolboy, could never out-dread the dread god who's personally witnessed the brutalities of the system you're trying to defend. Stefan considers himself a social critic? Chris would effortlessly unveil him as the cultural gatekeeper. Should Stefan Molyneux manage to come out alive from his public debate with Chris Hedges, he would forever be branded to the public as one of the 1 Percent’s Useful Idiots.

What say you? Who do you believe would be the best person to put this popular right-wing propagandist in his place, who's been successfully pulling in millions of disillusioned millennials (largely white males due to racist pandering and scapegoating) to his ideology and cult?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtu.be/1TgdLkGwbTw
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Chirs Hedges is a fag who can't hold a steady opinion but Molymeme is a retard who can only "debate" Lauren Southern larping as a ML.

Tbh, what would we gain by debating stefan? The majority of his audience will blindly agree with anything he talks about.

You need to emphasize that imperialism is the biggest problem faced by the modern right.
It caused multiculturalism, the immigration crisis, and endless debt for wars that only caused terrorism and more money for porky.

These people can be easily subverted into further reasearching things that align with their worldview like anti-imperialism.
You can use these words without refrencing Marx and you will be able to easily persuade many of them.
Also if you get lucky their idpol will lead them away from anti-imperialism based upon idpol and to better arguments.

not likely, since for them things like imperialism are just crony capitalism/big government/necessary because we're bringing civilization to the darkies (remember how Molyneux did apologetics for Apartheid South Africa and British colonialism in India)
Stefan is a literal cult leader so I doubt many of his followers can be convinced

What's the point of debates? It's all masturbation for both sides. Only guy who should debate him is Zizek

molymeme would win with pure bullshitting ability.
hedges is a poor debater even though he's usually right.

throw him the cocaine sniffing man and you got a legendary shitpost dressed as a debate

The guy just yells and dramatizes in front of his cult crowd, nobody can debate him.

This really was the first thing that came to mind, but honestly it seems like kind of stooping a bit for Zizek. Like, honestly, doesn't the guy have something more dignified to do like drinking from a garden hose or something?

no

Le argumend man would get roasted by the average community college debate squad benchwarmer

No one
Leftists E-celebs are shit

And Stephen makes sure to own the conversation so even if he got BTFO he would just kick the chessboard and claim to be the victor and his fans would accept that because of confirmation bias
Just Ignore the YouTube right and let them wallow in their own shit

The point is to plant seeds in the minds of the people on the sidelines watching. Years of reading debates online is why I'm a Communist to begin with.

Right wingers always win because they appeal to the selfishness of their audience while leftism demands struggle and sacrifice. There is no point debating.

what do you mean? You can totally argue in favour of communism and selfishness simultaneously. It's in my self-interest as a worker to struggle for socialism. Even if they take a Hobbesian route and argue that might is right (which fascists tend to do), then you can easily argue that capitalism is only legitimate insofar as it's the prevailing mode of production. So, again, it's in my interest to struggle for socialism because if the proles win then I have everything to gain.

Read Stirner.

We used to have a thread about Stefan's book, The Art of the Argument, and people only read the first dozen pages or so and nitpicked stuff. I read the whole thing, but didn't post my analysis because the thread vanished before I could do that. You all made fun of him because of the nitpicked quotes. What if I told you that the rest of the book is fucking terrible, and even worse than you thought?

A big problem that Molyneux has in that book, and that he will not be able to overcome in a revised edition as it is fundamental to lolbert thought, is how to define in a way agreeable to most the normal state of affairs against which this or that action would then constitute an act of aggression.
>The Argument' occurs every time you try to convince someone else of your position or preference without using threats or force. The Argument lives in language every time you negotiate. The Argument comes to life every time you accept being rationally opposed without resorting to punishment, either directly or indirectly.
>The Argument exists wherever people are willing to peacefully walk away from their disagreements. If you and the car dealer cannot agree on a price, nothing happens. He doesn’t get your money; you don’t get his car.
>A hostage situation is not an argument, because if The Argument fails, violence follows.
Further examples Molyneux gives for violence is a man beating his wife, a parent beating their child, and…
>A woman who pouts and withdraws emotionally if you don’t do what she wants is not using The Argument, because she punishes you for noncompliance, rather than making a reasonable case for her preferences.
That's some wisdom about women, now have some wisdom for women, how to be rational:
Simple as that! All women can read minds and even know what a man will be like in ten years while he himself doesn't know it yet. Woman, ask yourself: Do I really want to have a child with this man who will be killed by a drunk driver four years from now or isn't that exactly what only an irresponsible ho would do, hmmmm?

I'm sorry you had to suffer through that thing comrade. Thanks for your sacrifice.

So essentially his argument boils down to: real discussion can take place only when people have roughly equal power and stakes in the matter. Yet he somehow fails to see how this point undermines his political theory to the point of uselessness.

No, the right should know that we operate on higher academic standards, that they know NOTHING of actual philosophy and we're not here to school them or humor their wilful ignorance. What Holla Forums and other alt-right types need to realize, aside from the fact that they need to ditch their anti-intellectualism but that goes without saying, is that unsourced infographs, memes and Youtube videos made by squealers on their payroll do NOT constitute an actual education and this is why their positions are regularly laughed out of academia.
TL;DR They need to read a fucking book and if we lower ourselves to humor their bullshit we're just enabling them.

amusingly I've read the exact same argument but with the sides reversed

Rafiq.
Jason Unruhe.
Zizek.

Usually just avoid debates with the right because even if you smoke them they will still be disingenious fucks and claim they won.

Yeah, claiming that your opponent is selfish and that your side is ultimately good for everyone is a pretty fucking standard moral-play

Don't be sorry, you can still suffer with me. Here is more, some quotes about economics from that book:
Taxation and subsidies are incentives and disincentives for human beings, but since not everything owned by human beings is made by them, Molyneux isn't quite right here. Take a look at the land-value tax. Since biological need is not caused by other individuals, Molyneux "concludes" nobody is using force in the "free market". This leaves out nature being privatized. As he puts it:
(Even where taxation or subsidies are directly applied to jobs, it doesn't follow that the incentives work out strictly in the direction as econ101 tells you. If I have a certain level of doubt about my future prospects in employment, then it can make sense for me to work a bit longer for more money, just like econ101 tells you. However, if I am very confident about finding employment in the future as well as choice in how long I can work, then an increase in my hourly wage might as well translate into me choosing to work a shorter time.)
The Pareto distribution is about a distribution pattern often observed when it comes to wealth, the existence of the pattern does not imply a corresponding productivity. Land ownership is distributed very unevenly. Absentee landlords make money (or more accurate: get money) because of good things happening in the vicinity of the land they own, making that an attractive location for living. How on earth is that due the productivity of the landlord? Some guy once said, "Requiring definitions is our most fundamental weapon against sophistry. Sophists avoid definitions and utilize colourful language…" So, Stefan, what tortured definition of productivity do you use to arrive at your conclusion here?
Counter-example: A lot of productive capacity of a country gets wiped out by a natural disaster while the amount of currency in electronic accounts stays the same. Inflation or deflation are not intrinsic to this or that particular single thing, these concepts describe the relation between the things and services and the amount of money chasing them.
He thinks Venezuela is socialist, and apparently, so is "most of Africa".
Clever kids of entrepreneurs don't want to start at a cozy job at dad's firm or inherit any wealth, because they surely can pull up themselves by their own bootstraps!
So, the brilliant boss doesn't know enough about the work processes to figure out whether people are slumming it? Hmm. A thing that Molymeme leaves out here is that once the evil sophist work demagogues (if that's a word) his colleagues into supporting his position, how do the workers then convince the boss to make the changes? The answer is by the threat of strike. And why is a strike a threat? An individual worker alone may not make much of a difference. Indeed, unless it's a very small firm, the boss likely has some redundancy in the system. Any mediocre economist should be able to tell you that, of course, the potential cost of a group withdrawing collectively at once is much higher than the cost of an individual worker withdrawing multiplied by the number of people on strike, as there are urgent things to do and less urgent things. Said the other way around, the productivity of the group of workers divided equally among them is likely much higher than the marginal difference removing one worker would make. This is also a banal fact for the mediocre mainstream economist ("Ah, yes, the marginal productivity of the worker…"). What the mainstream economist doesn't explain is why one should believe this difference "naturally" belongs to the boss.

Chomsky

literally the best course of action

>The Argument exists wherever people are willing to peacefully walk away from their disagreements. If you and the car dealer cannot agree on a price, nothing happens. He doesn’t get your money; you don’t get his car.
This is a very common thing with how free-market types argue, and it would make perfect sense if we lived in a world of self-reliant farmers who only trade luxury goods with each other. But I need food and shelter, and every piece of land is owned by somebody. Some more actual quotes from The Argument (he puts that in bold all the time like this) in green (people can check the pdf). This is how Stefan Molyneux "proves" that education, housing, healthcare cannot be human rights:
People who work in construction must be all homeless then. After all, how can you make a house while you are in a house?? Checkmate, gommies.
Ah, so that's how that slavery thing happened. Whoopsie.
If character is strongly linked to genetics, can I define Stefan as a sexually transmitted disease? I shall name thee EUPHORIAIDS.
THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST COMMON RIGHTWING NON-SEQUITUR COMBOS. You can certainly have inequality of both opportunity and outcome. Inequality of outcome isn't proof of equality of opportunity. And you can have equality of skill among a group and equality of opportunity and inequality of outcome, most simple example being lottery. Even in a situation where people in a group have very different skills and there is equality of opportunity and unequal outcomes, this doesn't constitute by itself a proof that there is a meritocratic link between skills and outcomes. The structural argument that sophisticated lefties make is that a market-structure has inbuilt inequality. For instance, when you have AIs play Monopoly without doing any other strategy than random legal moves, the end result is very unequal, even though the players here are equally stupid. This is life in capitalism: It gets easier getting money when you already have some, and you bleed money when you have little (rebates, overdraft fees, and so on).
Steve Jobs didn't invent shit. He was some lunatic manipulative cunt with button phobia (srsly) who killed himself by trying to cure his cancer by drinking fucking fruit juice.
A Pareto distribution isn't a bell curve, you mentioned the Pareto distribution in your own stupid book, Stefan! Argh. There is some other shit I haven't dissected (muh evil state-atheists, muh evil government debt), which doesn't make the book any better. Well, Stefan, I pretty much reject your Argument book. What do you say now?
>Those who reject The Argument were themselves rejected as children.
;_;

jack angsreich

Lmao

Hue hue hue

I don't believe you. Who would do that?

A communist has already debated Molyneux only to find out he isn't intellectually honest. He will derail the conversation and obfuscate his argument whenever he is cornered.
youtu.be/1TgdLkGwbTw
It's his show, so he will interrupt you whenever he feels like and threatens to kick you when do the same.


Molyneux pretends he is against imperialism but only when it suits him, out or principle. He did advocate military intervention to topple the DPRK just two days ago.

not out of principle*

yeah i reckon molymeme would try similar evasion tactics as academic agent so jack would likely give him a drubbing.

Yeah, Angstreich would be the best choice as the would allow himself to be sidetracked. The problem is that it is Molyneux' show. If he would be this persistent, Molyneux would probably kick him or not release the video.

Never debate right-wingers on their terms. Always have a moderator.

as he would not allow himself to be sidetracked*

Any more debates with Angstreich other than the ones with AA?

Read the thread.

It doesn't take much to beat Molymeme.

I frankly don't think Hedges is well-read enough to debate economics properly. He apparently reads tons of shit and has covered impoverished communities extensively, but somehow he never seems to have an interest in economic theory. I have no doubt that he could make Molyneux look like the buffoon he is though.

Hey what happened to that Jack guy that made AcademicRetard cry. We should bring him back.

He has a lot of films to watch.

Zizek vs Zizek tbh.