Vaush
Vaush | |||||||
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 Vaush in 2020 | |||||||
| Personal information | |||||||
| Born | February 14, 1994 | ||||||
| YouTube information | |||||||
| Channel | |||||||
| Website | vaush.gg | ||||||
| Subscribers | 373,000 | ||||||
| Total views | 145 million | ||||||
| Associated acts | Destiny | ||||||
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| Updated September 5, 2021 | |||||||
Vaush (born February 14, 1994) is an American left-wing YouTuber and libertarian socialist known for debating politics with other political streamers. Initially a Twitch streamer, he was banned from the website for advocating for the US to invade Israel and was forced to move to YouTube. A controversial figure, Vaush aims his content at mostly young men to prevent them from being radicalized by the online right.
Early life[edit]
Vaush was born on February 14, 1994 in Los Angeles, California. He is of Irish and Polish descent.[1] He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology.[2]
Career[edit]
Vaush is most well known for his live-streamed debates with alt-right figures such as Stefan Molyneux and Sargon of Akkad which have millions of views.[3][4] His first appearances online were in discussions with the political streamer Destiny, and encouraged by Destiny's audience he later began a Twitch channel of his own. Vaush felt that other members of the online left at the time were too academic to reach the demographic of insecure white men that he thought was most susceptible to online radicalization and he opted to instead create loud, angry content that he thought would be more likely to appeal to them.[3] He mimicked the style of right-wing YouTubers and utilized similar video titles so that his videos would be suggested by recommendation algorithms to those at risk of radicalization,[5] a common strategy employed by the left-wing BreadTube community on YouTube.[6][7] He also uses memes and internet slang in his videos to appeal to the audience of primarily young people online.[3] His content features himself discussing news events and contentious issues, and debating other political streamers from the left and right, often in a confrontational style aimed at making his opponent appear unintelligent and often utilising the research skills and knowledge he gained from his degree to back up his arguments.[2][3][4] His channel also features discussions and debates with offline figures, including journalists, radio hosts, and political candidates.[2] Despite appealing to what he calls "masculine tendencies", Vaush has aimed to create an inclusive community and has expressed pride at having comparatively high proportions of women, and gay and trans people in his audience.[3]
Vaush is a controversial figure online.[8] In 2019, he was banned from Twitch for advocating for the US to invade Israel in defense of Palestinians, an incident which he later described as himself "going too far criticising Israeli imperialism". As a result, he transitioned to YouTube as his main platform,[3] after having created his YouTube channel that January.[2] In 2021, controversy on Twitter surrounding Vaush was prompted by the reemergence of videos in which he justified his use of the N-word.[9] Later that year, his arguments that kink should be excluded from pride events for not being family-friendly and for making pride inaccessible to young questioning queer people were met with divided opinions on social media and criticism from writers for Vox, The Mary Sue, and The Bulwark.[8][10][11][12] Also in 2021, Vaush received praise from Kotaku for a charity livestream in which he raised over $200,000 for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund[13] and from The Daily Beast for challenging Tim Pool on the meaning of critical race theory whilst appearing on his podcast Timcast IRL.[14] He was also positively cited by political economist Tanner Mirrlees as an example of a leftist livestreamer who "demolishes [alt-right YouTubers'] bad arguments, even humiliating them in front of like 70,000 viewers in real time"[15] and by sociologist Anthony Knowles for successfully communicating sociological ideas to a large audience outside of the reach of academic sociologists.[2] A debate between Vaush and Charlie Kirk hosted by Tim Pool on August 4, 2021 sparked controversy on the internet forum 4chan due to members of the website's community perceiving Kirk as having had a poor performance in the debate. This led to suggestions that Vaush should debate Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who has previously criticized Kirk for being inadequately conservative.[1]
Political views[edit]
Vaush is a progressive,[5] an anti-fascist,[1] and a democratic[15] and libertarian socialist.[3][9] He has also described himself as a "dirtbag leftist" and "a big fan of democracy".[1][4] In the 2020 United States presidential election, he opposed the "Bernie or Bust" movement and urged people to vote for Joe Biden, calling a refusal to vote "stupid" and motivated by "[an] incredibly narcissistic 'doomerism' that prevents people from engaging in meaningful action".[3] Vaush opposes the United States embargo against Cuba and is in support of the withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan. He also opposed Donald Trump's withdrawal of United States troops from Rojava.[16] Whilst believing that tech companies have too much power, Vaush also felt that Donald Trump being banned from various social media websites was an "unequivocally good thing".[3]
Vaush has criticized the online right for creating a "pipeline" that pushes people to radical hard-right views such as ethnic nationalism and de-suffragising women, and for engaging in "absolute abject cruelty to trans people". He has also criticized the online left for "purity politics" and for engaging in actions that create "great content but terrible political advocacy".[3] He believes that the left should engage in online advocacy because the internet allows for their message to reach a wider audience than any other medium and has argued that BreadTube has decreased the amount of people online moving to the right-wing.[16] In May 2021, he opposed Twitch's use of the term "womxn" saying "There is already an inclusive term for trans women and cis women, and it’s women [...] The use of the term womxn implicitly suggests that the term women wasn’t already including everybody. The only reason you would ever believe that is if you don’t believe trans women are women."[17]
Personal life[edit]
Vaush identifies as pansexual.[8]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Cooke, Bruno (2021-08-04). "Vaush and Charlie Kirk's Timcast debate proves divisive on Twitter and 4chan". The Focus. Retrieved 2021-08-08. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Knowles, Anthony (2021). "Sociology as Social System: Luhmann, Enlightenment, and the Gap between "Facts" and "Norms"". In Dahms, Harry F. Society in Flux: Two Centuries of Social Theory. Current Perspectives in Social Theory. 37. Emerald Publishing. pp. 159–192. doi:10.1108/S0278-120420210000037006. ISBN 978-1-80262-242-3. Search this book on
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 Ellingham, Miles (2021-01-17). "The road to BreadTube: The battle for the soul of the internet". The Independent. Retrieved 2021-07-22. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Mirrlees, Tanner (2020). "Socialists on Social Media Platforms: Communicating within and Against Digital Capitalism". In Panitch, Leo; Albo, Greg. Beyond Digital Capitalism: New Ways of Living. Socialist Register 2021. NYU Press. pp. 112–136. ISBN 978-1-58367-883-1. Search this book on
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Mohapatra, Anupras (2021-03-04). "Diving into the rabbit hole". The Daily Cardinal. Retrieved 2021-07-22. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Roose, Kevin (2019-06-08). "The Making of a YouTube Radical". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-10-22.
- ↑ Lee, Alexander Mitchell (2021-03-08). "Meet BreadTube, the YouTube activists trying to beat the far-right at their own game". The Conversation. Retrieved 2021-10-22. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Brandabur, Michelle (2021-05-26). "'Sorry, but f*ck' em': Vaush's controversial 'Kink at Pride' take gets ratioed across Queer Twitter". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2021-07-22. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 9.0 9.1 Thalen, Mikael (2021-03-04). "Popular leftist streamer defends right to say N-word in resurfaced video". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2021-07-22. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Abad-Santos, Alex (2021-06-02). "Can Pride even be radical or kinky if it's sponsored by Target and JPMorgan?". Vox. Retrieved 2021-07-22.
- ↑ Weekes, Princess (2021-05-26). "Pride Is Not a Gay Zoo. It's a Giant-Ass Celebration of a Protest". The Mary Sue. Retrieved 2021-07-22. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Miller, Tim (2021-06-03). "Not My Party: No Cops or Kink at Pride?". The Bulwark. Retrieved 2021-07-26. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Grayson, Nathan (2021-05-18). "As Gaza Burns, Twitch Charity Streams For Palestine Remain Few And Far Between". Kotaku. Retrieved 2021-07-22. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Silverman, Robert (2021-08-01). "How 'Coward and Phony' Tim Pool Became One of the Biggest Political YouTubers on the Planet". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2021-08-21.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Platforms, power, populism panel (Video recording). Communication & Cultural Policy in the Age of the Platform. McMaster University: the Communication Governance Observatory and the Centre for Networked Media and Performance. 2021-05-05. 44:03–44:48. Retrieved 2021-11-18.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Jones, Owen (2021-07-16). "Vaush meets Owen Jones: US imperialism and the left". Retrieved 2021-07-22. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help)- Support of online advocacy and BreadTube: 0:54–4:23.
- Opposition to the US embargo of Cuba: 20:28–21:28.
- Support of US withdrawal from Afghanistan: 31:40–33:50.
- Opposition to US withdrawal from Rojava: 36:33–37:45, 42:29–43:05.
- ↑ López, Oscar (2021-05-26). "Is the move to add "X" to show gender neutrality working? Or does it miss the mark?". AL DÍA News. Retrieved 2021-07-22.
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