Analyzing Amon (A Response To Hello Future Me)

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Hello Future Me's video: • The Philosophy of Amon...
My video on season 1 of TLOK: • The Politics Of The Le...
My other video on media analysis if you want to go deeper into that: • How To Analyze Art: Ki...

[@horricule451]

"Being gay isn't a mutant power that makes you shoot beams out of your eyes or control metal" maybe for you it's not. But I do in fact have those abilities. Get on my level you nerd

[@jamesmccallum8641]

You have betrayed the greatest secret of the sinister gay cabal. You have 24 hours. Then we come for you.

[@nelsonth]

Teach me your ways, senpai!

[@horricule451]

@@nelsonth you are not worthy

[@horricule451]

@@jamesmccallum8641 I'd like to see you try

[@SmallBeanImperialist]

Reminds me of Celeste meme: is it a story about overcoming hardships and each step you make is towards something big? Fuck no, it's about trans people having the ability to double jump

[@Hawkatana]

3:11 One critique, Lewis has outright said that Aslan isn't an allegory for Jesus. He flat-out *IS* Jesus.

[@isaacp64]

Exactly. Can't be called a heavy-handed hack when you own it and say "yup, this is exactly it"

[@MrNoobomnenie]

"In your world, I have another name. You must learn to know me by it." - from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. To be more exact, Aslan is Narnia's manifestation of the Christian God, like Jesus was on Earth. Being both very religious and into the idea of alien life, Lewis was pretty fascinated with the question "How the God will bring His Word into different worlds?"

[@smileyp4535]

@@MrNoobomnenie that's really interesting I didn't know that

[@abhyudaykrishna9714]

@@MrNoobomnenie wow that's fkn insane lmao

[@bijtmntongaf]

hey, i remember u from the stoneworks server

[@ShouichiSamaXD]

The absolute worst part of the Amon arc, in my opinion, is that it treats the systemic injustice that would absolutely exist within the world of the avatar due to inherent power imbalances between groups of people, like it’s some kind of joke, or that it’s made up by a bunch of over sensitive propagandized snowflakes. It’s akin to the whole „racism doesn’t exist“ argument that you see so frequently today

[@niedude]

This! I watched Korra for the first time last year, and the way the show starts actually makes you think they might do these right! You see nonbender shopkeepers be harassed by a bender mafia and its literally the first thing that Korra gets involved in when she arrives in Republic City. Over the next few episodes we see that the factories that allowed the world to go from late middle ages to nearly fully industrialized are 100% staffed by fire benders, and that the city's power grid is supported by lightning benders. As a child or teenager most won't look into this, but the show sets up that non benders are second class citizens through great soft worldbuilding during the first few episodes, and as Korra shifts over to their side ("you're our avatar too") and even has a scene where the Avatar goes against the police, it seems like Korra S1 was being set up to be a masterpiece in leftist commentary. But no, the show drops the ball real fucking fast on that one, by making Amon be actually be a Bender - a bloodbender that can control people, no less! - marking him as a hypocrite populist that is only faking leftist concerns so he can... take revenge on the exile of his father, or something? something non political and completely detached from the societal criticism the rest of the season was setting up. Korra goes from supporting the oppressed non bender populace to suddenly fighting the Equalists, and the very concept of "equality" is twisted into this "villainistic" trope that portrayed all the equalists as brainwashed idealists. Then Amon is defeated and next season the non-bender community no longer has any issues. All is well! It was all the fault of one single bad guy

[@alyseleem2692]

A gift: Alright. The United Republic . Or as I called it,the United Commonwealth. You see,in this version things went a bit differently in it's foundation. In order to prevent a second War caused by Earth Kingdom- Fire Nation disagreements over the old colonies, the Avatar themselves is chosen as sovereign ruler of these lands, becoming a true neutral ground for all Four Nations. Before, the Avatar had to act as an individual. Now,they have the power of a Nation at their back, so that the Hundred Year War may never happen again! The Council still exists,with each representative standing as both religious and political ambassador of their Nation to the world,as their positions are derived from Aang's own description of a Council of Elders from his time. The Commonwealth itself has been a multicultural area long before it's inception as the Commonwealth. Even before the reign of Sozin,it was a massive trading area between Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation investors and businesses, all the while Water Tribe merchant and pirates hung around in the back,looking for profit,whilst the Air Nomads always flew by to visit the important shrines within the area. They were colonized before the Hundred Year War, becoming the oldest colonies of the Fire Nation. The power dynamic between the denizens of the Commonwealth goes as follows: 1. High level benders: As we said,talent is largely hereditary, and so the high caste of the Commonwealth is composed of the descendants of the noble families of the colonies who managed to adapt to the changes of technology and politics,buying and owning massive lands and factories usually outside the capital. Mostly of Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation descent. 2. Mid and low level benders: Coming from far less fortunate families of benders, this group serves as a general working class within the Commonwealth, having a much greater percentage of immigrants from Nations like the Water Tribe, among others. Life as one of them is deeply excruciating, but they have jobs,at least. Those less fortunate among form the Triads,groups centered around both the protection of the national identity of local benders as well as the running of protection rackets,drug dealing,prostitution and so on. In essence,they're mafia. The older groups include the Red Monsoons,Terra Triad, Agni Kais and so on. Many of them grow big enough to have dealings with the aforementioned high caste. The newest Triad is the Triple Threats. Important for Amon's backstory 3. Nonbenders: they are the lowest class within the Commonwealth, with the highest among them being intermediates between the ruling caste and their factories and lands within the vast countryside of the Commonwealth. Despite ( or rather,because of) this,they're an incredibly creative bunch,inventing several new devices and tools for use by both benders and nonbenders in factories and power plants. Their most recent innovation was that of artificial generation of electricity through either the usual methods of coal or turbines.

[@alyseleem2692]

Part 2: Amon's backstory: Amon,true name unknown, was born in the settlement of Yu Han,a small village lying northwest of the capital in the countryside. It was remarkably close to it compared to most other settlements in the Commonwealth, leading it to become a known center of extortion and Triad violence, as the various gangs worked hard to find the perfect spot; close enough for them to go to without issue,yet far enough for the feds not to come knocking. The death of his parents, however, was the not the result of Triad violence, but a streak of brutal murders and arson caused by a single serial killer known simply as the Dragon. Formerly a member of the Agni Kais,he developed an obsession with his abilities, perfecting them constantly, to the point where he only saw beauty in the destruction he caused. He would disappear for about a couple of decades before re-emerging again,killing Yasuko Sato,wife to Hiroshi Sato,overseer of the main factory in the countryside around the capital. His other victims include the parents of Mako and Bolin,giving the former a crippling fear of his own element. After this,he mysteriously disappeared,before a corpse turned up and witnesses identified him. We're still not at this point yet. Before this,Amon attempted to adapt to his new situation, working at a small bakery in the lower districts of the capital. He's barely a teenager, at this point. Yakone comes for a visit. The kind man who took him in lies on the floor,twisted like a ragdoll. He himself gets a taste of his power when he runs at him with a kitchen knife,getting flung across the shop with remarkable force. Yakone spares him because he doesn't care about witnesses. The man hadn't paid up. That's all there was to it. No one can blood bend without the full moon. At least, that's what they thought. It's precisely at this point that Amon actually starts trying to get in on the action,joining several fighting clubs before meeting a mysterious group who give him the knowledge needed to achieve his goal. Upon learning of their true nature, as well as the fact that many of them are extremely powerful benders, he leaves,promising to one day find a way to defeat them himself. This group would later be revealed to be the Red Lotus. At first,Amon was a simple vigilante,crashing his way against the Triads. He's surprisingly successful, despite being one man. However,that all changes when all of a sudden, a certain waterbender comes along. He suddenly pulls at the air like he's holding strings and just like that,Amon is paralysed, again. Here's the part where some exposition is needed. Do you know why bloodbending is so hard? Because it requires one to essentially play tug of war with another's chi,which has it's own natural pull. The stronger one's chi is,the harder it is to fully bend their blood when they consciously pump it with chi. Which is exactly what Amon did,before going ballistic and killing the boy,crushing his head. Only then does he notice the single tear on the boy's face,how he's far younger than him,and the shouting of the name " NOATAK!" And he realised that he was a murderer. He swore never to let his rage overcome him again, instead opting for his current method, inspired by Avatar Aang. And the Equalists are born. During this time,a man came to him. Hiroshi. He asked him to help protect his daughter, for which he will give all his experience as an investor and inventor. He looks at the small child's eyes,and agrees.

[@roshe7887]

@@niedude The Dark Knight Rises did the same thing with Bane.

[@BobLogical]

@@niedude I actually don't have a gripe about the fact Amon is a bender. As has been pointed out in the first video and lots of other places, a lot of revolutionary leaders and thinkers in real life have come from privileged backgrounds for various reasons. I could even see a justification for him hiding that he's a bender to avoid sowing descent among his followers and so people wouldn't start the rumor that he's only in it to gain power as the last bender left, or something. The problem has a lot more to do with execution than anything else.

[@Itsa-roro]

Honestly I feel like season 1 stumble fucks it's way into to being a much better allegory for fascism than kuvira. A lot of amon's rhetoric and inconsistencies could map into eco's 14 points.

[@KayAndSkittles]

I think you're right! Horseshoe theory strikes again smh

[@Jupiter065]

If so it's a bad one. When making an allegory for fascism, having your fictional society be run by an actual small group of biologically distinct super-powerful elite is a dangerous choice. Why make your fascists right?

[@sonjaskvorc9378]

I saw someone on Tumblr argue, a few years back, that the equalists were actually a fascist allegory and people simply weren't getting it. The post was some 2000 words long and kinda like hfm's video, seemed to almost comically be missing the forest for the trees. Like it argued that "the benders were the subjugated class actually", because "the organized crime syndicates are made of benders and those are usually made up of the disenfranchised, and one of antagonist is a non bender industrialist". This apparently negates the police being all bender, the council running the city being all bender, most "modern" jobs like factory working requiring bending, the 4 district ethnic/cultural groups being tied to bending and the election of a non bender president being treated as the thing that's going to finally end the injustice and bring about equality.

[@USSAnimeNCC-]

I agree it more about fascism just because Stalin was a mad man doesn't mean he a represent communism sure the other leader say Lenin where also mad men but they'll never gone to the extent Stalin went also can you have communism without mad men yes

[@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl]

@@USSAnimeNCC- the fact that so many communist state were so oppressive and produced so many mad men doesn't ring some bells to you

[@funkytikigod7039]

The only time I've seen an overtly communist insurrection group be portrayed as unambiguously protagonists in fiction is the Black Communist Rebellion in Man in the High Castle. They even had a scene where the leaders reject flying the Stars and Stripes. The Vox Populi from Bioshock also started off really cool, but then were ruined by the third act.

[@smuu1996]

The Black Communist Rebellion was cool, same for Horton's group from Wolfenstein The New Colossus. It seems like it's not that hard to properly represent Leftists when it comes to fighting against Nazis.

[@Somajsibere]

@@smuu1996 It is not hard because leftists are usually the first to fight against facism. They are the first to recognize and organize against it.

[@smuu1996]

@@Somajsibere Exactly. This is also why it'd idiotic for conservatives to be insulted when lefitsts call their allies Nazis. If most left-wing people agree that somebody is clearly kinda fascistic, it should be taken seriously.

[@Somajsibere]

@@smuu1996 absolutely true.

[@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl]

@@smuu1996 which is funny because soviet union was a nazi ally during the first part of the war

[@mildlyfeasible]

Wow, Korra hits way worse after realizing it was released during the occupy wallstreet movement. Kinda like if they made subtle all lives matter talking points last year.

[@GroundThing]

Yeah, I tried watching it when it came out, and wasn't even really a socialist at that point (but would still generally lean towards it), and I noped the fuck out after the first couple episodes because of it. It was very clear at the time, intentional or not, that it was basically right-wing propaganda repackaged. I could see it not being their intent; they were tasked with doing a sequel series, after the big bad empire had been taken down, and starring probably the most powerful person in the world, and if you're coming at it from a centrist perspective I could see thinking it would be "apolitical" on par with the first show's antagonists being imperialists being "apolitical"

[@toontrooper4103]

Lol same. I liked Korra when I initially watched it as an uninformed child but now that I have a more firm political consciousness it's gonna be hard going back to it. In fact it's hard going back to a lot of media now if it has anything dealing with political conflict because there's always either a misunderstanding of war, organizations, or ideology.

[@niedude]

@@toontrooper4103 if its any consolation, I first watched Korra during August/September last year and the show is still very, very enjoyable. You will groan at the Amon reveal and the way that the show treats Zaheer and Kuvira, and S2 makes no fucking sense plot wise, but honestly its still very enjoyable. I actually think S1 is the strongest, mostly because of the INCREDIBLE animation and that Amon is a really good villain up until the bloodbending reveal. I'd say go ahead and watch it, you'll groan a few times but the good still outweighs the bad I think

[@gusp8672]

@@toontrooper4103 I think ATLA holds up even in hindsight, mostly cause it is criticizing imperialism from a left leaning perspective, which can still be done well from a liberal pov. I also find that Star Wars the Clone Wars is pretty good as well, it is void of leftist politics but still takes a pretty left leaning stance. I think its also important to remember that expecting leftist perspectives in mainstream media, let alone stories targeted at children, is naive, the best we can really get is progressive stances on social issues which is better then nothing.

[@slimkickens]

@@gusp8672 it's only left in as much as liberalism is left of feudalism. Put Mike and Brian in a semi-modern context, like LoK, and they bleed status quo

[@quailqualia]

22:59 It's insanely hard to explain the underlying ideology to someone who's not aware of being submerged into it and considers it "neutral" or "unbiased". Probably 10x as hard in the case of people who grew up in the US because they were exposed to it much more than anybody else on the planet.

[@younggod5230]

So true. Talking to my brother about media tends to be really weird, almost like we sometimes watched two different things.

[@younggod5230]

@Ulises Leon yes I have considered, I dont think I am though. Doesn't really affect my comment, my brother is just not really even aware of any of these ideologies, or that anyone would think to put them inside a story.

[@TheRenegade...]

@Ulises Leon Maybe neoliberalism/capitalism is an extremist ideology and we just don't think it is because we live in it

[@Lack_Of_Interest]

@@TheRenegade... Gotta love that Overton Window.

[@Poadiup]

I was in highschool when I learned that news media was biased. "Fox news is biased? But its not supposed to be??" type shit. Its a long journey to realize most the world isn't how its supposed to be.

[@janedoe4929]

I found it strange that that Hello Future Me looked at it as one video in isolation rather then as part of a series analyzing a trend but then he would've looked silly once it came to talk Zaheer and Kuvira...

[@Noone-rl8db]

He looks silly talking about Amon lol

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Every villain in TLOK represents some form of fascism. Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. Hiroshi Sato is bourgeois.

[@VoonNBuddies]

Remember that scene in season 3 of ATLA? The one where all the school children are fed lies about their nation and its opponents? The one where pushing back against those lies is shown to be an absolute taboo even when the person doing so is, from an outside perspective, completely correct? Yeah, I'm guessing a significant portion of the fanbase also doesn't think that has any real world parallels either.

[@muffinfighter3680]

Lmao good comparison

[@appleslover]

It's also VERY funny when they talk about it in social media platforms (especially Reddit) and compare it to North Korea, China, the Soviet Union and even nazi Germany but NOT their own nations historically and currently, especially Americans and western Europeans (minus Germans). Their tone seems to be "omg look at those brainwashed people, I kinda feel bad for them sometimes" but when someone tries to say the SLIGHTEST about their country that does not align with their [westerners mostly] national propaganda, they try to dehumanise and humiliate them as much as possible "lol CCP shill" "+100 social credit points" etc. And when confronted with the reality of their nations'past and present "what do you think of the genocide of native Americans and the many military coups and invasions the US did to other countries?!" For example, They'd go "the US might have done SOME bad things but it's literally the greatest thing in human history and in the world right now" that is if they don't outright deny it, justify it or start with the personal insults. And if they're not American their answer would be "every country did bad things thus our actions are justified" Not thinking of how their countries became so empires that came to colonize 94% of the entire planet, as if it was by giving candy to everyone. (Spoiler alert: it wasn't) Like, you need an extremely heavy doses of propaganda to think that colonising 26.5% of the planet was a good thing (the British) or invading other countries is a noble cause to take pride in.

[@unexpected_girl]

@@appleslover Americans love calling the Empire from Star Wars “Space Nazis.” I don’t think they realize George Lucas based the Empire off of the good old US of A.

[@unexpected_girl]

“Growing up, we were taught that the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in history, and somehow, the war was our way of sharing our greatness with the rest of the world. What an amazing lie that was! The people of the world are *terrified* by the Fire Nation, they don’t see our greatness, they hate us, and we deserve it. We have created an era of fear in the world, and if we don’t want the world to destroy itself, then we need to replace it with an era of peace and kindness.” - Zuko Literally just replace “Fire Nation” with “United States” and it still fits perfectly. Americans will literally watch a show where a country that’s the exact same as their country is the bad guy, and they’ll still come out of it supporting their country’s imperialism.

[@zkkitty2436]

@@unexpected_girl I think about this all the time. Word for word, these are the lies Americans are fed constantly, and still shit's not clicking

[@roseclouds5838]

actually this comic isn’t representing the bourgeoisie because I know rich people who don’t wear bowler hats, a monocle, suit and comically large cigar

[@dwc1964]

^more likes for this^

[@tasse0599]

Capitalists aren't even necessarily people. Since they're defined through their ownership of the means of production they can be collections of shareholders

[@brandonlyon730]

@@tasse0599 I mean technically any random person can be a shareholder by just buying some stock from any company. Granted some holders will probably hold a far greater amount of the company or stock and have a lot more say then others in a board of directors, but just owning one single stock still technically makes you a shareholder.

[@tasse0599]

@@brandonlyon730 Yes, everything you said is true. The issue of people equating capitalists with shareholders is something Lenin himself adresses. A worker is someone who lives by selling their work, receiving a wage. The capitalists are those that buy labour and sell the product created with it for a profit and live from their ownership of means of production and not the selling of their labour. There are a lot of people that own stocks, but most of them can't support themselves solely on that. They have to work to be able to survive, making them workers, not capitalists. My knowledge of theory is not profound, but this is the classification as I understand it.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Meanwhile Hiroshi Sato, literal bourgeois... wait let's ignore that...

[@ShadaOfAllThings]

Hot take: the fact that most people who have societal power in the setting aren't benders would have been the best argument against Bending being Capital Accumulation tbh. After all, Capital Accumulation is Capital Accumulation, it can even get you weapons that beat benders. But by acknowledging this you'd also have to acknowledge that more than one form of power can exist in a society, and therefore strengthen the position of modern socialists of all sorts. A version of steampunk Avatarverse where the conflict mostly focused around various forms of power, capital or societal or bending based or w/e, all clashing within the same systems would have been a much better thing at the end of the day than what Korra turned out to be. EDIT: Wait a fucking second, Benders are Bluebloods

[@volodymyrboitchouk]

That would actually ba a cool story, the old bending aristocracy facing down the rising power of the non-bender industrialists. A mirror of the conflict between liberal merchants and conservative aristocrats in our own timeline. In some places the two will reach an accord, as it was in Germany with the alliance if Iron and Rye. In other places the benders will staunchly resist and either succeed (giving you Russia or the Ottoman empire) and in others fail completely (as they eventually did in Russia). Each nation would have an obvious path here, the northern water tribe was cut off from much of its spiritual past and is more likely to be dominated by non-benders. The southern tribes will go the opposite direction. The Fire Nation will probably go the Bismarckian way and have non-bender industrialists working hand in hand with the old bender elite. The Earth nation will probably resist industrialization and the rise of non-benders at first, culminating in a revolution. You could even use this to recreate a sort of believable WWI. The southern water tribe, disgusted by the lack of respect the north now shows for their ancient traditions, invades as they do in the show. In response, fire lord Zuko begins mobilizing his own military and demands an end to the occupation. Still feeling humiliated by the events of the 100 year war, and fearing fire nation militarism, the Earth kingdom begins mobilizing as well. Tensions keep getting higher until a spark sets things off and suddenly the world is split between two warring alliances, each of which can claim to be in the right. That would make for an interesting moral quandary to place an avatar into. Edit: it seems I mixed up the northern and southern water tribes. Basically I'm suggesting the Unaloq plotline from season 2, but actually good this time.

[@OwlPhobe]

@@volodymyrboitchouk That would be quite interesting, and I could definitely see that serving as the overall plot of the series.

[@erdood3235]

@@volodymyrboitchouk how's to Ottoman empire connected here?

[@erdood3235]

@@volodymyrboitchouk maybe the earth kingdom government has another reason to fight with the *northern* water tribe (in the show, it's the southern tribe that's cut off from much of it's spiritual past): resisting industrialization. the north tribe and earth kingdom govs share an ideological affinity in this regard.

[@volodymyrboitchouk]

@@erdood3235 the ottoman empire didnt industrialize as quickly as the other European powers. Where in Germany the old and new elites reached an accord, and in England and France the new overcame the old, in Russia and the Ottoman Empire the old elite resisted more and kept industrial capitalism at bay. Thus the old socioeconomic system was preserved there until the new ways utterly destroyed both in World War 1. For our purposes, I would see the Eww arth kingdom mirroring Russia or China, while the southern water tribe would be more akin to the Ottoman empire (with the strong spiritual element being comparable to the religiosity of the muslims). In the former case it's more about the old aristocracy opposing the rise of the capitalists, while in the latter case religious traditionalism played more of a role.

[@libidinalmaterialist9470]

The "but your brain did" is one of my favorite lines from a video essay

[@appleslover]

Where was it taken from?

[@richardvlasek2445]

@@appleslover mr. plinkett's star wars prequels reviews made by redlettermedia which specific one, i couldn't tell you because each one is like an hour and a half long lol

[@gorimbaud]

"It's not a 1:1 allegory" is a criticism that can only be made by someone who doesn't understand what an allegory is.

[@zioqqr4262]

It's an allegory for an allegory, duh 😒

[@4mazIngxXGamEr]

There is no little man with a small mustache in Star Wars. Therefore the allegory between the Nazis and a speciest Galatic Empire can't be read that way.

[@nicanornunez9787]

You see, that's dude never said he was a communist, in fact, Marx doesn't even exist in that reality therefore, is not a 1:1 allegory.

[@ItWasBetterBefore]

It also kind of seems like allegory is the only literary trope he's familiar with.

[@felizpanda]

Right!? “It’s only allegory if it’s a literal representation of the thing” is a mind-blowing take.

[@SnoFitzroy]

"Hey. It's Kay. And this is Skittles." Me, literally every time: AAAH A BABY!!! *bodyslams the Like button*

[@benzur3503]

It is also possible for people to be so ideologically entrenched to not notice that what they say is mostly based upon ideological pre-suppositions that they don’t see as subject for reasonable doubt/opinionated debate

[@Somajsibere]

That is what I thought.

[@ipsumquaerere6927]

Let's be honest thats true for most of us. To recognize our own biases takes a lot of self awarness and self reflection.

[@elpi2804]

@@ipsumquaerere6927 I don't think that's enough. You may self reflect all you want but not knowing another narrative than the one you already know will not yield you any results. "This is the only thing i've heard from everyone, then maybe its true"

[@ipsumquaerere6927]

@@elpi2804 definitly, but it's a good start. Anyone that claims they aren't baised is either lying or blind to their bais.

[@alexjames7144]

​@@ipsumquaerere6927This is true, but to be fair there is a fundamental difference between being supportive of the current status quo which requires absolutely no questioning of these fundamental assumptions, an support for a radically different state of affairs which fundamentally requires a person to question, challenge and refute the assumptions of society in order to come to their conclusion.

[@appleslover]

If I'll have to summarize Lok in a few words it'd be this: "status quo good, anything else bad, THERE'S NO ALTERNATIVE"

[@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482]

The alternatives are either equally bad or worse. Authoritarian communism killed a lot of people and anarcho-communism only works on small communities and is unsustainable.

[@appleslover]

@@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482 lol no

[@niedude]

Especially weird when they change this around in some seasons and then bringing spirits into this world is good, creating a portal to the spirit world that people can go through is also good, but spreading technology to impoverished communities and connecting rural Earth Kingdom in railways in order to create a united land after the death of an aloof queen is bad because "oh no Kuvira is drafting armies and oh wait we do that too, quick make her create a super lazer death ray made from the literal spiritual energy of the planet so the audience knows she's evil".

[@comradestannis]

TINA strikes again.

[@martinsriber7760]

Avatar keeps regular world and spirit world connected. That is pretty big change.

[@memequern8087]

i understand why this video took the approach it did for the sake of clarity but i can't tell you how many times i have *literally* heard opponents of communism act like wealth distribution is punishing innocent people whose only crime was being born into wealth, a factor they supposedly couldn't control 🙄. Even when it comes to something as fundamentally mailiable as power, the image that comes to a lot of people's minds is the innocent nobles being slaughtered by the vengeful masses for the crime of being born into excess at a time when people were suffering

[@Sephirajo]

Omg yes if you want to puke in your mouth some of the people who left Cuba to Florida during the revolution who werent gay were like "they took all the stuff we stole from the locals! It was tragic! Horrible!"

[@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl]

It is country's with the strongest property rights and economic freedoms that has the highest standards of living genius not one's that redistribute wealth

[@memequern8087]

@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl look, I get that you saw a leftie video and are looking for any excuse to puff up your chest in the comments for attention. I'm a debate club bitch too, I *promise* i get it. And normally I'd be super down to do this but literally what would be the point when you didn't even bother to argue the point i was making, you just saw "wealth distribution" and your brain went on autopilot from there. We *could* go into how economics is more complicated then two factors, I could crack up some history books and studies to explain how things work and have worked in the real world. But literally what would be the point if every time you see a scary word you just stop reading genius?

[@pedrovitor5324]

Yes, people aren't guilty for born in a wealthy family. So yeah, this is a factor that people supposedly can't control. I didn't understand your point here. But besides that, I'll be honest, I've never seen anyone using this argument and I'm one of these people who liikes to criticize comunism and comunists a lot. Maybe it's because I born in a country where, until last election, was just comunism and progressism trying to figure out who would rule the country. Anyway, this is not what matters now I'm more curious about your argument. What I see more commonly (Again, I've never seen any argument like the one you pointed before) when anti comunists talks about wealthy distribution is that it simply doesn't work. There is no way to know for certain how much you need to distribute and when you need to distribute those (I forget the world so I will use another one) things. In order to make a propper distribuition you need to establish what an equal level would be, a level that when hit you can finally say that the people who received those resources are as equal as the others. But then it cames the problems: 1 - You need to consider every individual in your equation and create a system that suppress at least the minimum of their needs. But every individual has their on needs, some need more, another needs less, others simply needs something different than the resource you're offering; 2 - You need to consider that every individual is the same (What, per si, is wrong) and comoletely ignore their needs, dreams, beliefs and what they consiider being wealthy in order to impose what you believe that is whealthy; 3 - What exactly do you mean when you say "being wealthy" and how can you guarantee that everyone thinks the same as you about this concept? Anyway, this wealthy distribution idea brings a lot of discussion and, as I said before, I've never seen anyone making the argument you pointed.

[@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl]

@@memequern8087 my point is that wealth redistribution doesn't even work something that you didn't even argue against just dismissing me

[@CJojo_13_]

I think the fact that something with a poor critique of communism like HotDiggedyDemon's animation, "Isabelle Ruins Everything" can garner over 15 million views with little negative feedback, speaks volumes to how "communism takes away your individuality" is still an assertion that goes widely unchallenged.

[@techissus7449]

Though Max has lately been shown to have a better understanding of it now than before, doesn't change that his criticisms went on to be viewed by millions, but I digress, especially his recent criticisms of Hasan piker, which I believe shows he's been pretty active on a certain side of KZbin during that time

[@CJojo_13_]

@@techissus7449 I don't think that video from Max actually articulates a half decent argument. Its a very superficial argument capitalists make that starts and ends with hypocrisy, with no how or why given. The arguement against Hasan doesn't make capitalists look any more morally virtuous, and often (but not always) highlights how the person making the argument against doesn't remotely understand socialism (just look at Keemstar). A more nuanced criticism might say that Hasan could use his earnings to put more money towards the mouth of socialist ideology. That he has enough money to pay (and collaborate) with people working with him up to some small scale model of what a worker co-op looks like. He's done charity streams, but so have capitalists. That kind of criticism is more constructive and isn't being made in bad faith (usually). This still is an argument I don't care much for since it's built on a pretense of being gatekeepy towards leftism, rather than the barrier to entry being simply believing in left wing modes of economy / social policy.

[@techissus7449]

@@CJojo_13_ yeah I guess you're right, I was taking it in the contexts of the controversies of the time but that explanation puts things into perspective

[@JavierGomezX]

No, it doesn't speak any volumes or whatever... it's a joke video. The fact people don't give negative feedback about the representation of a political view on a JOKE VIDEO does not mean the assertion goes unchallenged. There is plenty of challenge towards the assertion, you are just looking in the wrong places apparently.

[@CJojo_13_]

@PT how does the stripping of individuality overlap to an ideology where the people have a common ownership of the means of production, plus the abolition of social classes, money, and the *state?* Authoritarianism isn't a component of communism just as freedom isn't an inherent part of capitalism (just look at China today).

[@TheAnthery]

HFM said "not a 1 to 1 allegory." I don't think he knows what an allegory is.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

People here don't know how to difference between fascism and communism... so...

[@110000116699]

Just at the start but seems like hello future me doesn't really understand how bad faith criticisms of communism tends to be

[@thomaswhite3059]

Or perhaps HFM's interpretation is a bad faith interpretation itself

[@PS-dm1dq]

@@thomaswhite3059 No, I've watched some of his stuff, he tends to try to do stuff in good faith. If I had to guess I'd say maybe not growing up in the U.S. he doesnt really get what a lot of anti commie propaganda is really like here that we are so steeped in.

[@BobLogical]

The whole time his clip was playing, I was just remembering how that banned episode of Powerpuff Girls had a whole ass song dedicated to how the communist wizard fairy took away everyone's "individuality", and that being basically the sole criticism of his actions. And, wouldn't you know it, he also happened to take away the girls' powers at the start of the episode. Funny.

[@PS-dm1dq]

@@BobLogical Dayum. What episode is this? I dont remember it.

[@BobLogical]

@@PS-dm1dq See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey

[@dr.archaeopteryx5512]

An uncomfortable element to all this is that Amon can be understood really easily as a disability rights advocates who mutilates people into being disabled themselves? Which is, well, also nonsensical, but kinda weirdly ableist if you consider the intersection of abled and disabled people. This is not mutually exclusive to the anti-communist reading, I believe. Let me list some points: 1. Disability is, sociologically, the fact that society is built for abled people, while disabled people are largely disregarded. This holds weirdly true for Avatar, where a bunch of the shown jobs rely on bending instead of using technology, as they would in our world. This is kinda reminiscent of how disabled people are often barred from a bunch of occupations, even if they should technically have no problem engaging in that occupation should adjustments be made for their conditions; and how people really often enjoy arguing that disabled people should be paid below minimum wage, since they are "less productive". 2. Amons ideology of equalizing benders into non-bending is a weird "See, the minorities would do it too" type inversion of how neurodivergencies, especially autism, are often regarded as something undesirable, to be cured, which "lessens" the individual somehow. Well, cured, or "prevented", in the case of anti-vaxxers. Such "The minorities would do it too" type deals happen more commonly in the context of racism followed by queerphobia, but I believe that the principle can be applied here. Obviously, both the underlying principle and the hypothetical inversion are rooted in oppressive rhetoric. 3. Bending being taken is seen as a horrible fate by more or less all characters who discuss the matter. This compares to how many abled people enjoy loudmouthing about how they consider various disabled conditions as fates worse than death, usually without regard for any nearby disabled people. While unlike, say, being queer, disability can come about as a result of tragedy as well as just be an aspect of an individual, and can, in some cases, be assisted with or sometimes even remedied, if the afflicted individual so desires. However, the fact that the inability to walk is seen as abnormal and undesirable, while no such case is made for the inability to breathe underwater or fly, is rather telling about how the downsides of disability are often caused largely by the ways abled people oppress and disregard disabled people. 4. The fact that Amon is actually a Bender also plays into this. "Faking disability" concerns by abled people mean disabled people often need to jump through dozens of bureaucratic hoops before they're afforded the often mediocre but sometimes vastly quality-of-life-improving measures that are afforded and really owed to them. Compare this to wage theft, which people are largely encouraged not to care about. Now, if Amon is a secretly rich person playing communist, his entire movement abandoning him makes little sense, given that communist tend to celebrate first class traitors, who utilize their privilege to further their causes. Oppressed groups, however, tend to reject Oppressor members pretending to be part of them for personal gain. Of course, liberals don't understand leftists, and since fascists will reject leaders who get embarrassed, this one might just be on horseshoe theory originally (not as if Avatar invented the trope, however). 5. The obvious, if shaky and unfair, communist allegories. Oppressed people tend to adopt leftist figures and beliefs more readily, and trend towards associating with other oppressed people. The Equalists never make any points about how other conditions worsen the situations of individual members even compared to other Equalists, or accomodate for members, but I believe that this is largely down to the writers considering the political system in the show as more or less free of major structural faults (which, well, it isn't). Propaganda against one political group is readily recycled for another, up to the point where the legitimate terminology for one group is removed from its real meaning and added to some random buzzwords to create an entirely new issue for detractors to rally against (ex: "Cultural Marxism", which becries womens and minority rights and usually blames those mysterious secret jewish people who are totally actually at fault for everything our governments fucks up). Thus, the anticommunist and anti-disability reading seem to back each other up; especially if you consider that a huge amount of injuries causing disability can be traced to workplace accidents or workplace negligence outside of the control of the affected individuals.

[@daniellewasdelayed8921]

This was a really interesting read. Thanks for writing it.

[@bearVshark100]

You're kind of my hero for writing this.

[@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl]

Society is not made for disabilities IT IS THE WORLD THAT IS NOT MADE FOR DISABILITIES because you are evolved to have these abilities because the world demand it it is our responsibility as I society to accommodate them

[@kbai12]

@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl there are a bunch of videos on the social model of disability on here, please give them a look

[@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl]

@@kbai12 where on this channel?

[@TheMightyGaladan]

I really enjoy most of HFM's content, but I remember seeing that video on my feed and being disappointed in the level of media criticism he was engaged in for its duration. Whether intentionally or not, it seemed to me like he dumbed down his typically spicy literary analysis skills so that he could arrive at a conclusion that defends the show and its ultimately centrist perspective. Don't get me wrong, I like TLOK well enough, I just think the way both the show and HFM approach discussing these ideologies works to stifle critical thought and uphold the dominant power structure in a really unsettling way. And I believe that is worth criticizing.

[@Brisarious]

yeah it's really interesting how quickly people can go from 'insightful media critic' to 'smooth-brain fanboy' when someone calls the thing they like problematic.

[@niedude]

@@Brisarious I think there's a way to articulate what you just said resorting to right wing gamer boy language like that

[@lalas181]

Is this a point good enough to change the number of likes from the funny 69 number to 70? Yes. Yes it is.

[@xtoadsannom6704]

As far as I'm concerned, HFM has clearly made one of the best critiques of the Beginnings 2-parter.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@kleptopolarbear1609]

Hello Future Me is one of those guys whos a genuinely good guy whos great at media analysis in general but politics is not his strong suit in this case

[@lovelambs8870]

those "good guys" are some of the most annoying. they think cuz theyre a good guy and get some things right sometimes that inherently makes their politics well thought out and educated

[@kleptopolarbear1609]

@@lovelambs8870 Honestly, hes just a guy who dearly loves the avatar universe and doesnt see that the creators of the show can be milk toast liberals with mediocre politics. Hes also young and British meaning he does lack alot of the context behind the writing of the first season of Korra. Like He probably only barely knew about occupy and wouldn't really get the full context or importance at the time that he would as an American. His specialty is also fantasy where politics is often shite in that its all just feudalistic divine right of kings bs. So my guess is he really doesnt read to much into politics often. Not that it makes his analysis any better. But I dont think he was being smug or trying to be "a good guy". He just saw a video on the politics on a show he really loved and disagreed.

[@Robb3636]

@@kleptopolarbear1609 *New Zealander, not British. Still agree with your points tho

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Speaking about yourself. Anyway... Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@chriss780]

"this isn't an accurate representation of communist beliefs" i think thats the issue, hfm is genuinely a good dude and is taking the argument in good faith, so when he sees the critiques are incoherent he really thinks "so this can't have much to do with communism", which is where the misunderstanding comes in, he just doesn't know about how dishonest and incoherent anti-communists are in their propaganda

[@daca8395]

Thi I think HFM is a commie himself

[@niedude]

@@daca8395 he's definitely left wing and will make jokes using the soviet anthem and stuff, but I don't know if he's an actual marxist.

[@alyseleem2692]

He's a nice guy. Really.

[@brandonpersaud5634]

@@daca8395 he's definitely not communist or Marxist But I would agree he's left wing, probably anarchist or Social, Democrat

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@ryanratchford2530]

4:30 ALSO the empire are a blatant analogy as seen in the prequels where the republic democracy (Wienmar Republic) democratically gives away its powers into a dictatorship lead my a charismatic figurehead that then performed an inner coup & wiped out all potential challenges to their absolute power.

[@unexpected_girl]

Actually, the Empire isn’t based off the Nazis, as many Americans seem to think. George Lucas explicitly stated the Empire was based off of the United States.

[@cyclic_infinity]

@@unexpected_girl That doesn't matter. If you watched this video, you should have gotten that at least as a take-away message.

[@maxgrozema1093]

The prequels are about Bush Era (elder and younger) America

[@germanscience7246]

​@unexpected_girl while I can definitely see the influence of American imperialism in the empire, their man soldiers are called stormtroopers. So it feels a. Bit disengueous to say that the empire is not at least partially based off nazi Germany.

[@Tacom4ster]

Could you do an essay on the bourgeoisie Liberalism of Steven Universe?

[@horricule451]

The comments would be a fucking warzone

[@janedoe4929]

Oh god

[@KayAndSkittles]

I don't know if I am brave enough to face such darkness.

[@garlgarlic]

That would be like taking a bite out of a hornet’s nest

[@Xitoshi]

I'm out of the loop and I'm not sure I want to be in…

[@WaffletheKodiak]

I'm kinda glad u made this because i dont have the vocabulary skills to really describe why i Really did not vibe with hfm's response video. (haven't finished this video yet so idk if u brought it up but) one thing that actually does link wealth with benders in lok is that there are So Many benders, in the first season specifically, that have power, status and wealth. its kind of hard to ignore that the politicians in republic city, athletes, celebrities, and police force are nearly all benders. it was really weird to me the hfm left that out.

[@janedoe4929]

Don't worry they get a non-bender President Im sure not obama will fix things! (Wait, I just remembered that this season was made during occupy...)

[@DifferentLOL]

Yeah, that quietly implied "most rich and affluent people in lok are also benders" getting brushed off by HFM was weirding me out to. I think he mentioned that some benders are working class people as proof that "bending =/= communism", but that was the extent of it. The story always focused on the already powerful benders in the influencal sphere of republic city: Even the most important non bender character, the “just a human” president, felt unimportant compared to his bending colleagues. He doesn't really do anything notable over the seasons and feels more like a background character, they added late into the story. The writers put their focus clearly on the powerful benders in upper echelons of the respective settings. At least that is what I remember - it's been a while since I’ve seen the series. P.S: Love your avatar! It's good to see some fellow lefty furries :3

[@bearVshark100]

It's like, factories are being worked by lightning benders. How the hell is someone supposed to compete in that job market?

[@quinnguyen3888]

I strongly agree with this point, and it gets to a much deeper criticism I have with the show. Our rotating cast of main characters making the big decisions-they’re all the nobility children of former world leaders from ATLA, top-officials, high-profile benders. Hell, our main character is the Avatar, who has now been re-defined as **the incarnation of Good so everything she determines is essentially Will of God.** And we seldom see the characters interacting with the general population in meaningful ways, and their voices are *never* heard in a way that actually impacts the political decisions around them (the story treats them like a sidepiece and their approval as an afterthought if that). For a show that preaches about democracy and balance, TLOK doesn’t even seem to understand what democracy *is* and winds up with something much closer to an oligarchy-worryingly representative of the United Republic’s real-world cousin. I get that it probably has more to do with Bryke attempting to recapture the old series by connecting everyone to old characters, but the fact Bryke failed to recognize this glaring imbalance and the implications it has and rolled with it is straight-up worrying

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@laurenbastin8849]

the Bioshock Infinite example of progressive politics being secretly evil and insidious is really funny to me because the Daisy Fitzroy child murder reveal did it so badly that the developers had to retcon her intent in the dlc (albeit only to double down and reinforce that centrist message as being so necessary two omnipotent quantum physicists had to blackmail a revolutionary into killing a child to do it, making it possibly the first case of a text making a character an in-universe strawman in support of its messaging lol)

[@ILikedGooglePlus]

+

[@LAZY-RUBY]

Not like the original Bioshock was any better in this regard. "Oh the working class hero Atlas was really an opportunistic douche using you to get rid of Ryan and take control of Rapture!" What a crock of shit.

[@voiceofreason467]

Well, you could also literally take the entire game as "This is what propaganda looks like."

[@laurenbastin8849]

@@LAZY-RUBY oh yeah no the original Bioshock is absolutely terrible at critiquing objectivism on any level and the fact the sequel went down the route of critiquing collectivism is telling. There’s actually a great video on the topic by a channel called Good Jam Spite House.

[@laurenbastin8849]

@@voiceofreason467 you could read it that way, just as you could read the original Bioshock as an anticapitalist critique. It’s not invalid, but it’s not exactly held up by the text and definitely wasn’t intended (even though authorial intent does not make a reading superior, it does usually align with how well a reading is supported by the text as the text is more likely to feature evidence in support of that reading if it aligns with the authors intentions)

[@lowfat_mayonnaise]

Really enjoy your LOK political analysis/critiques. It’s so wild to me how ATLA could be so obviously anti imperialist and anti fascist but LOK writing is like a neo liberal fever dream. I mean, the copaganda alone makes me not enjoy the show nearly as much as I would like to.

[@9nidow756]

Literally uses 平 character on Amon's equalist banners, meaning "equality". This is same as second character in Taiping (as in Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Taiping Rebellion), and also the third character in Xi Jinping's name. Coincidence? (probably, but still)

[@saddoro4138]

HFM's arguments are weirdly common for people being defensive about a piece of media they like.

[@cyclic_infinity]

It seems like Belief Perseverance to me. He likes LoK more than this criticism would allow him to, and that's more important to him. This is very common if you have an emotional attachment to a belief or piece of art. It's one of the reasons I've never vibed with fandom.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@thomkuhle6941]

Yeah, I hate to say it, but I think a lot of what HFM is missing here is that he isn't American, so he hasn't grown up with the american conception of communism. It was incredibly obvious that that's what Amon was meant to represent, to me, because I've lived here my entire life and I see it all over. But maybe I'm just making excuses for him, idk

[@PS-dm1dq]

No, it's not just you, I thought that too. HFM seems like a good dude and I like some of his stuff, but yeah, I think not growing up in the US he doesnt get the anti commie propaganda that is so prevalent here.

[@younggriff6026]

I agree but it doesn't necessarily weaken his argument. Not growing up in the US may help understand communism more neutrally in history class, so his argument that the allegory between Equalists and Communism is weak still stands. But we can differentiate the show's intent, which may as well have been to tie Equalists to Communism, and their execution of it.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

​@@younggriff6026If Equalists are communists why are they working with Hiroshi Sato, who is bourgeois?

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

​@@PS-dm1dqIronically US centric statement.

[@horricule451]

I like Hello Future Me but that wasn't his best video. He tends to get pretty defensive about Korra and like, I kinda get wanting to defend something that means a lot to you but also you need to learn to admit something you like has flaws.

[@alyseleem2692]

Well,he does admit it. Sometimes. Like Beginnings. So that kinda counts. And of course,the airbenders.

[@ChoosenOneStudios]

I sincerely hope people can both stop worshiping writers, and also look at responses like this and understand that these situations are more complicated than the response video made it out to be. My best to both of you!

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@daddykarlmarx6183]

I like and respect hello future me a lot but yeah easily his worst video, I said basically the same thing on his channel but basically his argument is "it's not exactly like communism therefore it never was supposed to be communism" when the writers added an anarchist that follows none of the beliefs of anarchists, it's not that the writers were big brain and we can't comprehend their vision, the writers simply didn't have knowledge of one of the key subjects their show was supposed to critique. They had an elementary schoolers first introduction to these ideas, communism means everyone equal, anarchism means literal anarchy, and based on those ideas they took an enlightened centrist view of "all ideologies are bad if taken to far" while accurately showing fascism and capitalism and blatantly misinterpreting leftist ideologies. Honestly though ever since I've actually learned about the ideas and history behind these ideologies, the politics of korra have been my single biggest issue, it makes me die a little watching it lmao, that's why I've watched avatar half a dozen times and korra once

[@otherperson]

To be fair, anarchism does support literal anarchy. Just not literal chaos.

[@jaredmcdaris7370]

Your second point is almost exactly what I commented on HFM’s video back when it came out. Of course Communism is not depicted accurately or consistently; my dude, have you ever seen a stereotype? Accuracy and consistency tend not to be motivating factors. Anyway, great video as always. Was supes-excited when I saw it had dropped.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Are you consider that Equalists could be fascists? Because that would make Hiroshi Sato as bourgeois much more sense to work with Equalists.

[@MandosDestiny]

This is the first video of yours I've seen, and as a longtime HFM fan this was a fantastic, nuanced, good-faith response. That's a sub from me.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Bunch of nonsensical bullshit. Two words, Hiroshi Sato.

[@MagicalMysteryViewer]

For the first time ever, I actually watched the critiqued video before I watched the critique. I was pleasantly surprised that HFM was more intellectually rigorous than I would have guessed from my passing familiarity with his output (please note: "more intellectually rigorous than I would have guessed" is not the same thing as "intellectually rigorous"). He even engaged in some drive-by analysis of a couple philosophies that are worth knowing like Strasserism and Rawlsianism but I did come to the same conclusion as Kay that it was ultimately way too deferential to authorial intent and vastly overestimated how much critique of communist ideology is good faith and well informed. My favorite thing though is that the top comment on HFM's video when I watched it was: "most of these are aesthetic rather than ideological similarities" - there are so many people who can't differentiate between those two things. a comment that was surely meant as a rebuke to Kay's video but which applies just as well to how most ideological criticism actually operates.

[@SomethingWittyRW]

To comment on your aesthetic vs ideological similarities. You here alot of this type of rhetoric by people who obsess over Nazi uniforms and Nazi fashion choices from late 30s to early 40s Germany.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@soulseer5789]

I never understood why people get so defensive over this kind of criticism. I am a massive Korra fan and I think engaging with underlying political critique and messages isn't just important, but damn near necessary. Unpacking how propaganda is baked into so much pop culture in the west, including the media you enjoy, is important for your understanding of the world itself and the ruling class' cultural hegemony

[@ArK047]

Ahhh I'm at the dentist's rn and can't watch

[@KayAndSkittles]

Tell your dentist about my cool channel!

[@ArK047]

@@KayAndSkittles Uhhh he lost interest when I couldn't describe Skittles' dental history.

[@Tacom4ster]

I kept sharing people your Korra essays including on HFM essay

[@MrWiibetrollin]

Capitalism robs one’s individuality

[@RHR199X]

It’s funny how we’re all supposed to be temporarily embarrassed millionaires but also a market commodity, maybe that’s the point

[@atomic.rabbit]

Hey, it's Skittles, and Kay, my human

[@bengallup9321]

One for the algorithm, love your channel

[@lonemotheo1964]

I love that you disliked that video

[@KayAndSkittles]

lol I'm glad somebody caught that. Thought it'd be funny.

[@appleslover]

I dislike most videos I watch

[@kat8559]

It's sad to me that HFM, a self-described writer, doesn't know what an allegory is. Also their points were not backed up whatsoever in that video, all of it was presupposition and speculation. Bad take from them for sure.

[@kat8559]

'Communism is going to take away your individual lifestyle choices' is VERY MUCH anti-communist propaganda, too. 'In communism you wait in line for your rationed potato, while CAPITALISM has ALL THE STUFF!!!!! And communists want to take away your stuff from you!!!'

[@kat8559]

Aka 'communism will strip you of your consumer identity"

[@kat8559]

Also if it's not a class allegory then what tf is the allegory?

[@kat8559]

That pinned comment is so frustratingly vague

[@DanielHernandez-sg9sg]

I like HFM's content in general. My guess is that they just have a blind spot towards this specific topic. Everyone has them. But yes, the video didn't work out.

[@wisdommanari6701]

I've recently started asking people about the stories that inform their beliefs. Why the billionaires should be left alone to spend their money as they should. Why they think universal health care is bad and doomed to fail. When they tell me the source of these beliefs I then ask who told them this story and why was that the lesson they wanted to tell.

[@sasak369]

I kind of hope none of us are getting their politics from fiction, but that might be too optimistic.

[@wisdommanari6701]

@@sasak369 I've been told that doing to much for people is bad and it makes humanity lazy and - I shit you not-they cited a Superman comic.

[@chriss780]

thats a really smart strategy honestly

[@sasak369]

@@wisdommanari6701 i mean I guess that's almost the same as scientific literature

[@pedrovitor5324]

1 - Why they shouldn't? As much as I think "normal people" should be left alone to spend their money as they want I think rich people should be also left alone. If it don't hurt someone's else natural rights for me that's fine. I preffer freedom and I think that trying to control someones life is bad, it doesn't matter if you have good intentions or not. 2 - Because my country has something similar and it sucks. Brazil has a strong public healthcare system because left wingers here (Who dominated the country until last election) did the possible and impossible to make it similar to the Cuba's system propaganda. Here things simply doesn't work! Doctors aren't paid well, the state simply don't kniw how to distribute the healthcare resources within the country because it's simply impossible for the state to knows exactly what each hospital needs/will need. We just use the public healthcare system because the private has to pay so much taxes and stuff on everything about healthcare system that it turns the private option way more expensive. In my country it's not strange to see people having to sleep on the hospital's ground because there's not enough rooms for them, see people having to go to another city with hope that there they will be properly helped and see people dying while are waiting for treatment. It is really despair inducing. 3 - There are a lot of sources, but one of the best ones is how much I already saw about anti capitalism propaganda in my country and how much actually it damaged Brazil.

[@lilytorres646]

So I actually enjoy HFM videos, but his 2 and a half hour cyberpunk 2077 video (which I did in fact watch, mainly because it quotes neon leviathan AND cloud punk in the first 5 min) perfectly encapsulates my issues with his worldview about capitalism. Basically he kinda argues that the individual is powerless in neo liberal dystopias (an by extension , in our present), so we should just "try the make the best out of it" by focussing on our lives and our loved ones' , but he doesn't realize how that outlook in life (which is totally in line with capitalist realism ) is one of the main institutions by which neo liberalism maintains itself. Edit: fixed redaction

[@janedoe4929]

So a guy stuck in capitalist realism tries to debunk a series about a thing that he loves promoting capitalist realism and misses the plot completely. Who would've thought.

[@xRaiofSunshine]

I enjoyed his videos at first, but something always seemed a bit off to me and I couldn’t quite say why. Then he made a 2 hour long video defending one of the most milquetoast games out there made by a guy who denied the racial allegories of his game when it was chock full of them. And that’s not even the most questionable things Cage has done 😐

[@baconboi4482]

@@xRaiofSunshine my biggest issue with him is he sounds like he has a stick up his ass and talks like he’s better then any given viewer and writer

[@inciaradible7144]

Amon falling into the classic ‘bad guy was a liar all along’ trope was such a huge letdown the first time I watched it-I mean, LoK as a whole just makes me lament at what could have been, because there's a solid foundation there. Like, the fact that there'd be inequality between benders and non-benders as society progresses is something that felt very realistic to me; it felt like the show was becoming more mature. However, as I watched more, it became clear to me that LoK really just is a facade; it's not more mature, but it thinks it is by trying to mix in real-world ideologies and attempting to critique them. While I have watched Hello Future Me in the past, I haven't in a long time and can't really believe this reading of the text that is Legend of Korra; a lot of arguments here are very off-base and completely miss what an allegory even is supposed to be. Additionally, losing one's individuality is always one of the major critiques I've heard of Communism; even today, it's something I often hear so not sure where he got that from. That being said, please do keep calling him Jordy Petes; it made my day.

[@niedude]

LoK's BIGGEST problem is how all of its antagonists are actually hypocrites in the end who don't really believe in their stated own villain motivation, and for that to happen there's always a fucking terrible "reveal" that turns the character into a cliched saturday morning cartoon villain. Amon was never about the people's struggle, he was a bloodbender who wanted to take revenge on what was done to his father. Also he's a bloodbender that can bloodbend even without a full moon! This is as close to "actually he's a witch!!!" as this show ever got Season 2 doesn't make any sense and is just "nebulous good vs nebulous evil lazer kaiju battles" so we'll skip that Zaheer is an anarchist, so he wants to take down the oppressive governments around the world. His killing of the Earth queen actually *feels justified* even by the show, it just so happens that it was particularly brutal and cruel of a method of killing her AND we then find out that Zaheer isn't a wise sage; he just wants pure chaos because that's anarchy, actually! We the writers are very smart! Then Kuvira started by wanting to protect the collapsing earth kingdom villages from being defenseless against raiders and was constructing railways so all of the huge and isolated earth kingdom could receive supplies. Actually she's a fascist who uses the most cliched representation of innocent life - spirit roots, because people like magical beings of good and the environment so lets put them together - to create giant death lazer beams equipped to megazords.

[@inciaradible7144]

@@niedude Yeah, it's a major shame because a lot of the ideas raised in this show; its themes, I suppose, have a lot of potential for fun, interesting, thought-provoking, mature storytelling, but I guess that was too much to handle. It results in something that just feels pretentious and not much else. What probably irks me the most is that so many people are just willing to give it a pass because it's tied to another beloved show, has some interesting paratext to it, and has great animation.

[@niedude]

@@inciaradible7144 I'll fully admit I still really like Korra, but I like it for what it is: a cartoon. Its got fun action, some seasons have great animation, and it occasionally goes for ideas that (especially for its time) were pretty rare to see. Its just that it's so fucking neoliberal it gets hard to watch if you focus on the attempt at making the villains believable. If you gloss through that, its still a good show for what it is And tbh, ATLA was also very prone to thiese faulty politics. Its just that ATLA was aimed at a younger audience and wasn't afraid to paint its villains as more cartoonishly evil, and we realized that and cut it much more slack. Korra wanted to be "for grown ups!" and tried to be mature by tackling real world issues, and that's The Boys' biggest weakness.

[@inciaradible7144]

@@niedude ATLA has some similar issues at times, but they are few and far between and aren't a huge problem due to the episodic nature of the show; many of these issues are also in filler episodes, which makes them even less noticeable. Personally, I think the villain in ATLA is just what he should be; him being just a villain and nothing more than that is what he needs to be for the story to work-the more complicated villains are the ones with a change of heart, such as Zuko, Iroh, and Jet. I don't hate Korra; there's a lot of things that I like about it, but I will admit that I like the idea of the show more than the actual execution of it.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@CalebSherriff]

The fact HFM wrote a whole dang book about the formalist elements of storytelling and writing, yet seems to have no clue what those formalist elements could be in the service of, aside from the most basic surface level reading, or even seems to understand what an allegory is or how they function, is just baffling. Like, why put so much thought into how a story is constructed if you don't want to engage with what the story is saying or what ideas it is promoting? Anyway, great video as always, Kay.

[@Psytinker]

Maybe he's just a simp for brown muscle girls, and gets defensive over getting hard to it.

[@horricule451]

@@Psytinker tbf who isn't a simp for brown muscle girls

[@lilytorres646]

Yes , he's kinda prescriptivist (idk if the term applies anywhere outside of linguistics , but I couldn't think of a better word) when it comes to building narratives. Like , of you compare his videos with, for example, Overly Sarcastic Productions trope talk series, you can see, that despite the similarities OPS's (or at least Red's) views make it a lot more clear than they care more about recognizing patters, how they work and why they are so common in a lot of stories than in giving actual concentre advise.

[@muffinfighter3680]

@@horricule451 facts

[@erdood3235]

@@lilytorres646 i don't understand who's approach you think is better, Red's or HFM's?

[@aetherspiralknight]

JKR's hateful rhetoric is shameful. Don't support her. Thanks for the acknowledgement Kay

[@thomaswhite3059]

Fact: Hatsune Miku wrote Harry Potter.

[@Hawkatana]

@@thomaswhite3059 She also made Minecraft.

[@Kassey194]

I view the first season as a centrist position between Ayn Randism and Liberalism. Ayn Randism will pose that there is a set of naturally exceptional people that deserve all the accommodations in society Liberalism will pose that we are all equal and to be exceptional you have to work hard Amon wants to remove the exceptionalism from all these individuals, either directly by physically taking it away from them or indirectly by creating a society in which you need to hide your exceptional nature Tarrlok on the other hand believes that exceptional individuals deserve to rule over everyone else, with non-exceptional people having their rights removed and their humanity questioned. Korra, which is obviously a stand in for the opinions of the writers, comes in and says "No actually, exceptional individuals can peacefully co-exist with the average people". Rejecting both Communism (Amon) and Fascism (Tarrlok). I find it to be a form of moderate Ayn Randism, as in "Naturally superior individuals exist but we should be nice to the average people as well". I think it says more about the underlying assumptions of the writers regarding how the world works instead of their actual ideology.

[@TigerDragon1001]

I used to like HFM, but came to realise his media diet is extremely narrow (mostly kids shows/movies) and he thinks the avatar writers are gods. He mentions avatar as an example in almost every chapter of his world building and writing book. It’s so frustrating seeing him even ADMIT issues with the show but then pivot back round to making it a praise for some reason, like Korra actually proving Amon right by abusing her power. Acknowledging it in the show doesn’t change the deeper message, which is, “and actually it’s totally fine for her to do that bc Amon was the bad guy and he dies and everything gets fixed [non-benders still oppressed] :)”.

[@ThrottleKitty]

I love HFM, but I mean, you can still enjoy a work of media even if you disagree with the bad political takes in it. I am trans, queer, an anarchist, and a communist. If I couldn't learn to enjoy content that is ignorant about me or my beliefs, I wouldn't get to enjoy basically any media at all. It felt like he was trying a little to hard to divorce "The boys" bad political takes from this show. They are good writers, very talented, I like them a lot. But they know communism about as well as the back of their elbow, like most of my fellow Americans.

[@adeptdamage3669]

I honestly don't think Korra had good writing at all.

[@Nemo12417]

The point about Strasserism leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, even absent the Occupy movement, pretty much everyone in America is, superficially anyway, familiar with communism, but you'd have to be a an expert on fascist politics to know what Strasserism even is. On the other hand, I'm glad Hello Future Me brought it up, because Strasserism is in the process of becoming very relevant. Tucker Carlson has the most watched show on cable news, and he is an expert at channeling populist rage and redirecting it from the actual ruling classes to ethnic minorities. I'm pretty sure he'll be reciting the fourteen words verbatim within the year. The only thing I expect him to not do is explicitly say "I hate brown people" or anything against Jews (well, anything that explicitly names Jews), since white evangelicals think of themselves as allies of Jews who need them alive for their plan to summon Jesus and destroy the world. What I'm saying is, we need people to be aware of the "talking left while moving right" phenomenon. Andrew Yang just came out as an example of this, being on Tucker's show as Tucker said he opposes immigration for "cultural reasons".

[@PowersOfDarkness]

strasserism is just an example of how capitalist media combats worker class consciousness and discontent towards some "other" group

[@graukrieg5294]

In France, far-right figures use a political strategy similar to strasserism that we french leftist call "confusionism". It consist of using leftist/socialist buzz words and imagery while keeping confusion about your actual political positions, or pretending to be "above the right-left conflict". They pretend to unite a vague, not clearly define "people" against a vague, not clearly define "elite". But when you scratch the surface, they're just good old nationalist: they say that french workers and french bosses are actually allies and the "people" they pretend to defend the intrest is actually an ethno-nationalist identity, not proletariat. This political strategy is actually very old. Hitler and nazis used it by calling themself "socialist" even though they mass-executed communist partisans and crushed workers mouvements as soon as they got into power. You could even say that Napoleon used it by pretending to keep the best of both the Ancient Regime and the revolutionnary gouvernement and united the "people" under a national identity except his Empire was nothing more than a good old absolute monarchy.

[@ChateauLonLon]

@@graukrieg5294 Would you happen to know of an English name for this phenomenon? Or could you post the French version of the word? I tried looking into it and had trouble finding reading material.

[@lucam1926]

Someone's gotta make Skittles a plaque with all the little titles from Masters of all 4 elements to Event Coordinator Hardest working mustelid on KZbin

[@MistarZtv]

_being gay isn't a mutant power that makes you shoot beams out of your eyes_ but it does give me 15% faster walking speed and an ability to suppress my gag reflex.

[@jerryfeelgood8455]

I don't think young people of today can really understand what anti-communism looked like before the 90s. You can't take today's criticisms and assume they were always like this. It makes a big difference whether you're agitating against an opponent that is still "in the ring" or if it's one that is already dead buried and widely forgotten.

[@PS-dm1dq]

Oh? And in what way is communism "dead"?

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists. You know, fascists. The way how they talk about benders isn't much different than how fascists talk about Jewish people, especially how they want to clean them from their "impurities" Imagine calling someone like Hiroshi Sato, who is a successful bourgeois a communist? Oh wait, they completely ignore him... I wonder why? Because their nonsensical political analysis will collapse into nothing. Or calling Mako and Bolin, poor benders that barely made ends meet an oppressors. Every villain in TLOK is some form of fascism: non-benders supremacists, clero-fascism, anarcho-primitivism, Nazism.

[@-delilahlin-1598]

The “collectivism destroys individuality” claim is such bs. Living in a capitalist “individualist” society requires conformity to survive. Since only a few people are able to thrive, it forces people into conformity else they aren’t given food and shelter. Whereas a collectivist system ensures all people are able to go their own way, because the direction their life takes is not being forced into the mold of the hand that feeds.

[@Zipcole]

I used to watch Hello Future Me back in the day when I wasn't very political, yesterday I rediscovered him in the list of people I am subscribed to and rewatched some of his videos to remind myself of who he was. I didn't seem to agree with many of the points he was making in several of his videos and then I found his response video to you. That is how I found your original video, and I'm glad I did because without being subscribed to him I wouldn't have found you! In the end I ended up unsubscribing from him and subscribing to you. Cheers for some good analyses videos!

[@appleslover]

On Reddit, a video was posted saying "what's one fact people aren't ready to hear? The US is basically today's fire-nation" and the comments section went MAD "BUT THIS IS BASED ON IMPERIAL JAPAN", "omg this is so stupid, fire nation is basically the Nazis" "omg how dare you criticize the US JUST LOOK AT CHAYNAHH" And when I pointed out similarities between the two, they criticized everything and were about complaining that fire nation kids didn't eat McDonalds. I tried to tell them that it was an allegory but the US and the fire nation not being one to one wasn't convincing or satisfactory. But I don't think it was about them not understanding allegory but rather them refusing to accept that the country they're always told that it's the bestest and the ultimate force of good in the world... Is actually not, that there is people in the countries it invades, the effect of dehumanisation of These people is suddenly challenged. It's angered them that a cartoonish evil that is always portrayed as "them" is not actually "them" but .. "us"

[@unexpected_girl]

One thing I’ve noticed about other Americans (I’m American but I try my best to stand against my own country’s imperialism) is that most of them are quite selfish, and they definitely don’t want to see themselves or their country as the bad guys. They only really care about problems that affect America, and the way they relate IRL problems to fiction shows that. Americans are more than willing to compare their country’s wealth inequality to the wealth inequality in Ba Sing Se, because the US’s wealth inequality affects Americans and the government of Ba Sing Se, despite being a *secondary* antagonist, was not the main villain, was not the evil empire. There were “there is no war in Ba Sing Se” inspired memes made about issues that affect Americans, like “there is no police brutality in USA” and “there is no worker mistreatment at Amazon”. Don’t get me wrong, I hate cops and Amazon as much as the next leftist, but it’s not lost on me that some American “leftists” only care about and dedicate their time to issues that affect them. The US isn’t Ba Sing Se. Ba Sing Se and the Earth Kingdom were *imperialized*, while the US is very much *imperialist*. It doesn’t mean there aren’t some similarities, but Americans comparing their country to a fictional colonized country is just so sinister to me. We are not the colonized, we are the colonizers. When people say the US is pretty much the Fire Nation, something any anti-imperialist could easily recognize as they watch the show, they don’t want to hear it, because their country being the Fire Nation means their country is evil, and instead of recognizing that and choosing to fight it, they would rather deny it and pretend like we aren’t conquerors and destroyers to the rest of the world. They watch characters like Zuko, Iroh, Jeong-Jeong, and Piandao recognize their own country’s imperialism and fight it, but they won’t do it themselves. As for the Imperial Japan thing, another common American behavior is to pin everything on other evil countries. When people compare the US to the Fire Nation, they cry “NOO ITS IMPERIAL JAPAN, NOT US.” When people compare the US to the Empire from Star Wars, they cry “NOO ITS THE NAZIS, NOT US,” (which is objectively false, as George Lucas has stated multiple times he based the Empire off of the US). We really, really, do not want to see ourselves as the villains. It’s ironic, the more an American resists seeing their own country as the villains, the more villainous they become, it’s beyond cowardly to intentionally ignore your own country’s wrongdoings because you don’t want to see it as the bad guy. I wish more of us Americans realized that it’s ok, in fact it’s morally correct, to recognize your own country’s imperialism and wrongdoing, and chose to fight it. Then, we could actually make our country better. We could create our own era of peace and kindness. We could stop invading and destroying the rest of the world, we could choose to be good. But it’s never going to happen if we keep ignoring what we do to the rest of the world. It’s only going to happen if we choose to fight for what is right, and we stop being complicit in our government’s wrongdoings.

[@Ash-Winchester]

Well, aCShUllY, the fire nation isn't an allegory for the US and capitalism because the fire lord isn't a pig dressed in a suit and a monocle. Owned. Idiot. /s

[@grmgt]

This was a great responde vid. Keep up the great work ❤

[@RoseSiames]

In a way I think the main disagreement here is what you and HFM are trying to prove, You proposes that Amon is a critique of communism. Which HFM tries to disprove by proving that Amon does not adhere to communist ideology……. which are not really related things. it seems to me that HFM misunderstood the meaning of your original video as Amon IS a communist, and not just a way to critique communism Amon is a critique of communism…. but he is not a communist (which makes him a pretty bad critique if you ask me)

[@ryanratchford2530]

2:15 I know this has nothing to do with the video but fun fact, Aslan isn’t just a Christ analogy. He literally is Jesus & Narnia & Earth, exist only the same multiverse that surrounds Aslan’s country (heaven)

[@naikigutierrez4279]

Yeah, IIRC Aslan straight up tells the Pevensies that in their world they knew Aslan by a different name near the end of one of the books (Either in Prince Caspian or in Voyage of the Dawn Treader).

[@apestogetherstrong341]

If you ever read the manifesto, you'll know communists were actually criticized for "taking away people's fundamental individuality" and the response to that is, well, communists want to take away bourgeois individuality, because for capitalists their capital is exactly what makes them "individuals". It is all part of ideology in general, which Marx and Engels criticized often. So it actually is a really good allegory, bending is seen by the benders like an unalienable part of who they are, just like capitalists see their capital as such. Very based video. Politics should be discussed by everyone, and in that discussion and research people will find the objective laws of societal development, will see how to go forward.

[@tyronechillifoot5573]

Also technically bending isn't purely inherent it's given by lion turtles theoretically any human can have bending unlocked

[@LimeyLassen]

True! It's not even strictly racial. For the first part of the show all the airbenders are descendents of the water tribe.

[@niedude]

@@LimeyLassen meh, that was only true because Tenzen had a water tribe mother and an air nomad father. He was still "ethnically" air nomad. And Korra was the avatar so she bypasses that. Unfortunately Korra and many of the comics do explore racial themes that conflate nationality, ethnicity, and bending heritage to the point we really can't separate bending from ethnicity. To the point that Bolin and Mako being brothers that bend different elements was a new and surprising concept meant to play on the fact they're both mixed heritage. Avatar has weird cultural and ethnic politics when you start to go deeper, because Bending is fully spiritual but also genetic, apparently.

[@f_f_f_8142]

@@niedude The early episode "The Fortune Teller" explicitly tells us that bending is not genetic when it mentions identical twins where one is a bender and one is not. Which makes the world a lot more confusing. Spirituality and culture can not explain that difference either. There is a huge contradiction at the heart of this world: Having different kinds of benders in a group is beneficial for everyone in it, but somehow every society only includes one kind of bender and we don't get good reasons on why that is the case. Even if every single person in this world was bigoted (which is not the case either) the benefits are too huge, pragmatism would basically force societies to intermingle.

[@Galloglaigh.]

I'll be a good goblin I promise.

[@swarmrecord9420]

"That the commies are conformists who oppress people for immutable traits is not and has never been a common critique of communism" is my favorite part as someone who grew up hearing that exact critique from my USSR parents over and over

[@acewmd.]

So the people who experienced it told you what? You’re sentence isn’t well written and can suggest that they told you it does, while also suggesting that they told you it doesn’t. So which is it?

[@tofupowda]

great explanation of thermian arguments. at first, i agreed with HFM's view on it not being a 1:1 allegory, therefore not really holding up as a stand in for communism but you make a really compelling argument that made me change my mind. the minute you brought up structuralism and then the occupy movement, a light bulb went off in my brain. art and everything else not directly to do with production is inseparable from the period it was created.

[@christopherchilton-smith6482]

3:16 - 3:28 While the X-men do provide a good allegory for being gay it was originally imagined as an actual allegory for the civil rights movement with Magneto being Malcom X and Professor X as MLK jr. and it actually works really well that way. I recommend that anyone [edit] *who* loves the X-men as I do to read up on both men and the civil rights era in [edit] -generally- general. It was a lot more combative than is taught in school.

[@KayAndSkittles]

You're right, though I think the same point applies here that there are aspects of that allegory that are not 1:1 in the sense that being black ALSO doesn't mean you shoot beams out of your eyes and have magic powers that ARE a literal threat to society, but that it still functions as that allegory. The moral of the story is just that things can represent other things while having different characteristics.

[@christopherchilton-smith6482]

@@KayAndSkittles LOL. Yes. I agree. :) I subbed and hit the bell at the end of this video and can't wait to see what you've got to say about Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

[@roseclouds5838]

already watched this video at 5x speed. Very good. Pacing was excellent

[@titanuranus3095]

That must have really payed off when you got to the credits, too.

[@grmgt]

Damn i was 13 when the Occupy WS movement was blowing up, no wonder i didn't remember as well and im not even north american hahaha... Thanks for the explanation!

[@quasi8180]

Its even worse cause Korra fights for the status quo considering that she is clearly coded as indiginous. She literally is fighting for inequality and that is just honestly flat out racist on the writers part which is a staunch contrast to the inclusivity of nonbenders who could stand on their own like Sokka Suki Ty Lee and Mai.

[@yabanc_8357]

Your event coordinator is really cute 🥺

[@SongsandActs]

Thinking about how Comrade George Lucas was basically like, "yeah I'd have preferred to work in the Soviet Union than in the States cos I wouldn't be a slave to Capital there." Star Wars is also an excellent example similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers in the way that its politics can be co-opted by Left and Right movements. Lucas insists that the Rebellion are the Viet Cong fighting America, but for many Americans, including Ronald Reagan, it was a story of young American heroes taking on an "Evil Empire": the Soviet Union.

[@chriss780]

his point was based an also correct, soviet creators had to avoid critiquing the party straight on, american creators (of blockbusters that requires millions in funding) had to adhere much more narrowly to a script of what was seen as commercially viable, which was more true at the time he was working with the old school studio system.

[@uanime1]

The Ewoks are far closer to the Viet Cong than the rebellion.

[@chriss780]

@@uanime1 all hail the immortal science of wicket- ho chi minh thought!

[@thomaswhite3059]

Yo George Lucas said what

[@chriss780]

@@thomaswhite3059 heres the interview, and hes right kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYjUp5SDeqt8mqs

[@masaufuku1735]

That first argument is super weird - the idea that communists want to take something away from you is literally one of the most common (and most blatantly false) arguments against communism. My first thought when I saw/heard that argument the first time I'm reminded of easily the worst episode of Girl Meets World titled "Commonism", which is explicit anti-communist propaganda that revolves around the idiotic idea that communists want to eliminate not just economic inequalities caused by capitalism, but eliminating (or nullifying) *everything* that makes people unique, including innate characteristics like intelligence. There's one particularly nonsensical bit where the crew work on a test together and get all the answers right, which Corey insists on giving them all a C for because "communism and averages", two things he (and the writers) apparently doesn't have even the faintest grasp on.

[@TheoV1998]

kay the W youtuber as always

[@Artsyjason]

idk anything about politics and writing, and i also dont have enough knowledge to form solid opinions and criticisms about any form of content, hence why i enjoy everything i consume lmao. but i just love watching y’all content creators talk about various topics, every video is hella interesting and i feel like im gaining more knowledge

[@Eleven-nv5ly]

Man, ideology is difficult to parse out in fiction! Gosh, I sure hope none of those same misrepresentations and lies apply to historical/existing socialist projects and nations!

[@Sephirajo]

I love your korra videos and I couldn't make it more than 2 seconds into HFM's which is odd I normally like their world building stuff but they so so missed the mark here.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Equalists are obviously non-benders supremacists and fascists. Hiroshi Sato is bourgeois who blame Jewish people... I mean benders for death of his wife.

[@xenia_mkII]

what upset me most about HFM's video is the closer: "all of these are critiques of bending in the Avatar world and not wealth in ours. ... there is no real parallel to our world because the issues in a world with bending come from a different place to issues in ours." if art isn't about real things then what's the point of thinking about it anyway? when i was watching his video i was hoping that he would make a case for a better, more fitting or interesting reading of Amon. then after the 11 minute mark i thought it would just be a "you're wrong about this, my interpretation of art is more factually correct" kind of video. but it ended with saying "it's all made up". that felt very cheap

[@grnmjolnir]

Love HFM in general but yeah, boggled on his take in this. Fundamentally flawed at the start. Wonder if it was contrary for the content. Can’t blame him for going for it I suppose Mmm…. Zombie movies are another great example of structural allegory

[@AnansisLibrary]

I’m glad you’re making this bc I watched their video and I had some opinions but I don’t care enough about Korra to correct them, especially when they were using figures like Martin Luther King to make points that re false bout that figure

[@hallowedfool]

Overall I agree with this video wholeheartedly (I wrote a lot of similar points in the comments of that video when it came out!). Another example I think you could have added though is that another common criticism of communism is the idea that leaders of communist movements are hypocrites who don't believe what they're saying and just want power (which Amon fits perfectly). It's once again an idea that doesn't hold up to historical scrutiny very well but like the other points here, it's about what people will read as communist because of everything else they've heard.

[@Salsmachev]

Argument 1 is actually a little more damning than this response suggests. If we actually engage with both the idea that bending represents class AND the idea that bending is an inherent hereditary quality, we arrive at not just any old anticommunist talking points, but specifically talking points associated with fascists, right wing liberals, etc. Arguably, the show is saying that the wealthy are innately better than the poor (naturally harder working, thriftier, more rational, more intelligent, or what have you) and deserve to inherit wealth in the same way they supposedly inherit superior qualities. In this framing, communists, by taking away the means of production, are seen as denying people something that is the direct expression/result of their inborn natural qualities. You can turn your dial as far up as outright eugenics or as far down as uncritical meritocracy run amok, but I think it’s a significant part of the show’s message that demonstrates how liberalism (an ideology the show notably doesn’t spend a season critiquing) frequently slides into fascism or at least fascist talking points.

[@dakotasillyman5495]

Loved the Bioshock Infinite point/clip, loved the game, but rolled my eyes soooo hard art that part.

[@bearVshark100]

Isn't that also the whole deal with every Far Cry game since 3?

[@linkkenni]

I love Hello Future Me's channel and body of work. His discussions on topics ranging from world building to emotional health have been informative and nuanced. I really hope he does not see this as a basic troll response and that it is coming from a place of good faith. These are strong arguments. I saw much the same in Amon and Legend of Korra as you do. I personally feel that Zaheer is the biggest offender in criticisms of different modes of thought as you laid out in your analysis. While a lot of what HFM said does make sense from an analysis standpoint, while the allegory IS iffy it is still an allegory and things are still being said about ideology and politics, even if the message is underwhelmingly simplistic. If the series had not progressed beyond season 1 it would not have been so obvious, but with Zaheer and Kuvira there are obvious allusions to different modes of politics that are reduced to simple cartoon level concents and villianized in an uncritical way. Comparing anarchy, with thoughts of not accepting illegitimate power structures and how they reach those conclusions, to simple chaos was a big one for me.

[@bearVshark100]

I think the problem is he assumed the writers actually know what socialism is. I's a good faith defense of a bad faith argument.

[@DANiel25178]

I liked the term "Thermian argument". I wish there were a place to learn a lot of words like this, to systemate bad logic of arguments or smth

[@LimeyLassen]

"Watson vs Doyle" is a term with similar meaning

[@appleslover]

To anyone reading this: is there a place to learn terminology of this "stuff"? Like a place to begin with to articulate your thoughts without stammering for two hours then to discover that there's a hypothesis, term, ideology or Theory covering all of what you were trying to say? I hated korra for a lot of reasons one of which "there's no alternative, status quo good, anything else bad" and their strawman-of-a-real-world-ideology villians, heck, even the very idea of them trying to appear more mature by talking about 20th ideologies and politics from their very American world view "hmmm so we succeeded at portraying Asian cultures and showing that war and genocide are bad, what should we do next?!! 'MURICA!!! let's also set it in the 20s US because that's the most romanticised period in our history.. lol we're so smart" but I was never able to articulate these points like this channel did. I feel like I have a lot to say but my mouth is paralyzed

[@sandyree1957]

@@appleslover idk if this is a bad take, but I kinda wonder if they were set on the 20's aesthetic and some of the "cool" things in the show before they formulated any degree of plot or villan, causing a lot of confusion and inconsistency later on. I think I heard somewhere that one or both of the Boys liked steampunk or futuristic fiction before ATLA, and that the first version of Momo was a robot or something, lol. A lot of people in these comments are like, "um, the lightning bender power plant jobs seem pretty exclusive, how is that not addressed by the show and its defenders?" I can't help but wonder if, early on in development, one of Bryke thought, "OMG, lightning benders work at power plants, SO COOL!" without considering how that would affect the bender-privilege aspect when they were actually writing the plot. And again with the homeless in Republic City, there is a throwaway line said by Korra about it, but it is handled very strangely, as if the writers never intended it to be interwoven with the highly political plot, and they just thought drawing steampunk hobos was cool... Idk how well this follows your comment lol, bit I've been thinkin bout it

[@iggsolo]

2021 and people still haven't grasped "death of the author"

[@rockjianrock]

Barthes by way of Korra

[@brandonlyon730]

While I say death of the author is still a factor to consider. But we should not be putting words into the authors mouths because we think they are saying something when it's not really there.

[@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm]

The Church of the Algorithm gives this video its blessing, and must it stay clear of the blasphemers from The First Algorithmic Temple (and the many people impersonating their members).

[@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm]

I get being defensive for creators of heavily criticized media: Because Bad Faith Complainers (They're not critics because critics has some actual criticism) tend to be rather merciless in their bad faith.

[@frazonedracaoo6981]

I've always hated the argument "it wasn't intended that way". Becouse it dousent matter. What matters is what the audience takes away from it. It dousnt matter if the creator trully didn't intend a peice to propaganda against something if the audience comes away feeling more negative towards that thing.

[@barzombi7043]

God (or can I call you Kay?), I was REALLY hoping you would make a response to HFM video. I usually like his videos a lot, but his response to your video on Amon really felt weird. Thanks for giving a response of your own!

[@erdood3235]

I've read all of the comments. This is a wonderful comments section

[@homieknightskerk3800]

Commenting to help the KZbin algorithm

[@Sashin9000]

Found you on the Deprogam and have been binging your videos all day, this whole channel is great. Scratches the itch I had waiting on @leftonreplay to upload something!

[@awesomepossumdude]

dude can you stop making videos that are so thorough while also being succinct and entertaining? Its starting to get on my nerves, no one is supposed to be this good at this format.

[@muha0644]

up until 12:30 i was not sure if you're a Marxist or not. Now I'm 100% sure. Also the rest of your videos kinda gave it away tbh, especially the Disco Elysium one (masterpiece, btw)

[@Nofixdahdress]

19:29 The world becomes a little less magical every day 😔

[@phangkuanhoong7967]

i really wish the entire Korra series to have just focused on Amon and his group as an overarching antagonist.

[@zioqqr4262]

Honestly woulda been so much more interesting than just have them leave it as "evil man gone uwu"

[@phangkuanhoong7967]

@@zioqqr4262 YUP.

[@atomic.rabbit]

Or the anarchists, or what happened with the fire nation after the war, or...

[@zioqqr4262]

@@atomic.rabbit Didnt the post war stuff happen during Aangs time though?

[@janedoe4929]

@@zioqqr4262 In a better story he would've turned around and revealed this himself and instantly become basically worshiped as some sort of Anti-Avatar (no not that one) it would be a genius plot twist when everyone supports him harder because it would be subverting a boring stereotype and Korra would be forced to actually deal with this problem instead of pulling a game of thrones season 8 and just moving on.

[@AbMaSync]

I once saw an interview with John Lennon's son saying that Imagine is not political. IMAGINE. The song about no countries and no heaven, sung by a person that did more activism in his later years that some do in a lifetime. Sometimes I don't think political means what people think it means.