A Response to the Hasanabi-H3H3 Debate...
“The most unemployed Super Bowl of all time,” as Hasan called it during his Saturday recap of the debate on twitch.
Friday last week, I, along with more than 200,000 other people, got online to watch what I have been calling “the Superbowl for Annoying People” – the long-awaited debate between Hasan Piker (hasanabi) and Ethan Klein (H3H3productions). I watched the live broadcast (through Hasan’s twitch channel, like a person of taste) intermittently, but dedicated myself to the 4-hour 44-minute VOD on YouTube the next day.
Here’s my main takeaway from five hours of two men talking over one another without any clear resolution: both came into the interaction wanting to have different conversations and got upset when the other wouldn’t have their conversation. And the blame for this discrepancy lies in Ethan Klein’s hands.
Hasan wanted to talk about Gaza, the disagreement that triggered the last two years of friendship break-up, and Ethan wanted to talk about Hasan’s role in other people’s criticism of his online behavior. And really, I think I could forgive that they were yelling different conversations at one another if Ethan didn’t come at Hasan with incessant ad hominem attacks and illogical leaps and bounds, all so he can call Hasan a liar and an antisemite.
And Hasan’s resolve through the whole thing was a lesson in patience. I’m not a debater, myself (and neither is Hasan, for that matter, as he very clearly and very often identifies himself as a political commentator), but if I had some guy call me a liar that consistently, I would have snapped much earlier. But eventually there was a turning point, and about three and a half hours in, it devolved into both screaming at one another.
Aside from arguments riddled with fallacies, one of the key issues in Ethan’s approach was that he would not let Hasan speak. Every single topic was Ethan asking a question/making an accusation, Hasan answering/negating, and Ethan cutting him off and calling him a liar. Every time. Everything was “boring,” or “unwatchable,” or “ridiculous,” whenever Hasan responded to something or brought up a new topic.
I think he may have had a point there: the debate was unwatchable but only if you wanted to see Ethan viciously take down Hasan. The whole debate gave, “You don’t need me to make you look stupid, you do that perfectly fine on your own.”
I mean, really, who fucking calls themselves a “legend” unironically?
On Saturday, Hasan recapped the debate and admitted that he let Ethan get away with a lot and should have redirected a lot, and I agree. It made it seem like he was blinded by what the conversation could have been rather than what it inevitably turned out to be.
It would have been fantastic if the debate would have been on their different views of the genocide in Gaza. I think that would have been a much more effective use of 4 hours and 44 minutes of airtime.
I want to use this time to give my perspective on the issue that should have been discussed on Friday.
Israel’s relentless attacks against the Palestinian people are a genocide. The attack on October 7th is not a valid excuse for the carnage the IOF has left in Gaza in the last 18 months. It is also inappropriate to conflate the violent, genocidal acts of the State of Israel with Judaism, and that conflation only exists because the State of Israel wants it to.
The violence and the death that is so easily seen on social media should not be happening. And if you see that and say to yourself, “Well, what if that person killed someone else,” you are the problem. You are comfortable with “the only democracy in the Middle East” killing children.
The history of Israel-Palestine, as it has been called in newspapers and in research, is not complicated. The Western World put a state in the Middle East for financial, political, and military gain, and for the last 75 years has funded it as much as possible in the name of reparations and democracy.
That is ridiculous.
Free Palestine.