Tldr (go watch Angela Collier's video on him for the full story), Richard Feynmann was a really good physicist and educator, but his most popular stuff is usually him being a misogynistic asshole [going a strip club and playing bongos, speaking gibberish and saying he was simply speaking a "regional dialect" to foreigners, forcing waitresses to earn their tip by making them answer physics questions in the middle of their shift, etc.].
That really how I feel with Bad Empanada. Because his main channel is good, well sourced and does a good job at educating people on anti imperialist causes.
But I never hear about that really. All I hear from people who like him are all of his really bad takes and his constant brain rot on Twitter and bluesky.
I would much rather hear about his really well researched videos on the Iraq War and Israel's genocide. I don't want to hear about some tirade he made on twitter/Bsky about something or other.
Like, 90% of his videos on his main channel are good, and the ones I criticize are at the very least still professional. But I don't see content from those, I only constantly see content from his live channel and his Twitter. And I'm like...why? Why emphasize this part so much? Sure you can't separate the two, but there's the really, really good part of the person, and then the part where he's an abrasive asshole. Why are you emphasizing on the second part?
Sorry, this isn't some in depth debunking of him on anything. Like I said, I do like what he does and I think he is mostly correct. But for some reason people [who support him and all his views] love emphasizing the bits where he's wrong for some reason. So I just wanted to vent that out.
Edit: There's also the flipside of this, which is Hasan. I think Hasan is very friendly, pretty mature, and someone who is all round respectable. At the same time, I think his actual work is pretty meh at best, detrimental at worst. To go back to my Feynmann analogy, I might think that Neil Degrasse Tyson seems like a pretty okay guy who I would like to have a conversation with, and not as much of an ass as Feynmann. But Feynmann was definitely a much, much better physicist and educator than Tyson
Edit 2: nvm this bit about Hasan was kinda stupid. I haven't changed my opinion really, but the analogy is dumb and forced
he's a petite-bourgois white settler who has been overtly ableist and transphobic on multiple occasions
No he isn't. He is a YouTuber who makes all of his content by himself. That's not petite bourgeois, nor would him being petite bourgeois or white or a settler invalidate a single thing he has ever said
When?
yes it is. the proletariat sell their labor power, he sells the product of his labor which is the petite-bourgeois relation.
if there's no extraction of surplus labour involved, he's not petit bourgeois, he's an artisan (although successful artisans often do become bourgeois)
No it isn't. You fundamentally misunderstand what the term "petite bourgeois" means. Peasants and artisans also sell the product of their labour rather than their labour power, yet they're not considered petite bourgeois. You know why? Because petite bourgeoisie literally means "small capitalists". The petite bourgeoisie are wealthy enough to extract surplus value from others (thus making them bourgeois); but not wealthy enough to subsist entirely off of that surplus (separating them from the haute bourgeoisie, or the big capitalists). BadEmpanada does not hire anyone, so he is not bourgeois. If he's not bourgeois, then he cannot be petite bourgeois.
Both peasants and artisans are petit bourgeois.
No they aren't for the reasons I explained above. They by and large don't extract surplus value, so can't be bourgeois. Peasants and artisans literally pre-date the bourgeoisie by thousands of years.
I'm so tired of people yelling about his supposedly 'transphobic' behaviors. He attacked Viki1999 and Contrapoints for their support of Israel, and was proven right on both counts. They just happen to both be white trans women.
Viki1999 literally said that she supports Israel because supposedly, she believes she would be "thrown off a roof by Hamas in Gaza". BadEmpanada pointed this out, causing others to apply enough backlash for her to quit YouTube. BadEmpanada never supported the dog piling, just pointed out her fucked up beliefs.