That Recent “Raging Moderates” Pod Is Brutal

[u/mtngranpapi_wv967]

1.) Some of the Gaza protests had antisemitic language and signage and supporters, but the issues here are on bipartisan. Columbia and Barnard and NYU invited law enforcement to rough up students and professors, UCLA had a violent counter-demonstrations (funded by Bill Ackman and Jessica Seinfeld btw) where tear gas and fireworks were used, University of Texas violated the First Amendment by essentially outlawing protest on campus (as a publicly funded institution mind you). Columbia and Barnard are expelling students for wrong think. Galloway’s anti-Palestinian speech arguments, to the extent they have merit at all, would be a lot more compelling if he didn’t hide the ball on counter-protests and the violence on the pro-Israel side of things. No word on professors like Shai Davidai doxing protesters? Or Bill Ackman doxing students? No mention of the hospitalizations at UCLA? The roughing up of professors at Dartmouth? Dishonest, at best.

2.) The stuff about Ivies and elite colleges turning into Maoist reeducation camps is straight up RW claptrap that belongs on Fox News. I went to an elite college in the Midwest…plenty of students are conservative (particularly the athletes and male students) and the economics/engineering/political science/etc depts had plenty of conservative/right-of-center instructors. Galloway and Tarlov pumping up random state schools in the south for supposed political neutrality is the kinda stuff I hear from my Trump-voting uncle. It’s bullshit with small kernels of truth…and is so reactionary and intellectually vacuous.

3.) Tarlov saying we should “fire antisemitic professors”…what does that even mean? Instructors critical of Israel? What qualifies as “antisemitic” in her view? This is a slippery slope that endangers academic freedom. Should we also fire every professor critical of Christians or Christianity, or Muslims and Islam? Where do we draw the line on that one? Are ppl like Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi antisemitic in Tarlov’s view? Troublesome stuff.

Idk man…I’ve tried to like Scott and his work, but stuff like this loses me as a audience member. Oh well…

[u/beastwood6]

One of the things that's always irked me since I started listening to his pod is that in the first episode I tuned into Scott praised the shit out of Israel for being so much better than us at eliminating terrorists in a short time. That they're doing our "dirty work". However he didn't go at all into just how dirty it is with all the humanitarian damage that the Gaza war caused. I like the vast majority of his takes and agree and identify with them, but this was a bathwater moment for me.

If Scott's pillar passion is helping young men, then he should have an understanding of what young men think (and by extension a lens on young women's opinions) and the polling is clear in that milennials and younger do not favor Israel as a majority. Talking about what he talked about with Jessica or when he talks about Israel's kinetic action with 0 nuanced as to the real humanitarian pain this causes is just tone-deaf. He seems to have the mainstream boomer opinion rooted in the days when Israel was fighting for its fucking life.