Ever heard the old saying “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt?” For many social media stars these days, that sentence should serve as a stark warning rather than a proverbial backburner lurking in the deep recesses of their subconscious.
The fact that everyone, regardless of their education and merits, can share their thoughts on social media — and the bigger their following the greater the adverse effects of their rhetoric — is perhaps the biggest downside of platforms like X and Instagram. At first glance, this technology can champion free speech and bestow everyone with the fundamental right to express their opinions. The very notion of democracy is, after all, founded on this little keystone of free will.
But after a while, it dawns on you that not everyone should be given a podium to scream out a falsehood as loud as they possibly can, and reach many more people than they ordinarily would outside this space. That perhaps people who haven’t done their homework would do well to remain quiet on a subject they know nothing about, lest they end up confounding intricate and complex sociopolitical and socioeconomic matters even more.
Take Asmongold, for instance, a top game streamer on Twitch and YouTube. He has his occasional hot takes and his arguments are more than just a few degrees off-center from time to time, but who would’ve thought to hear such blatantly racist remarks from him regarding the issue of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Asmon took it one step too far in of his streaming sessions, regarding Palestinians by saying that he “doesn’t give a f**k, they’re terrible people. It’s not even a question.”
And if you think that’s problematic when discussing the slaughtering of more than 40,000 innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip over the last year, Asmongold makes it even worse by adding: “These people are not your allies, they’re not the same as us. They come from an inferior culture that’s horrible. It kills people for their identity, and it is directly antithetical to everything Western values stand for.”
The video above has around 20 million views on X, and it has sparked quite an outrage as you might expect. People were quick to point out Asmon’s infamous… living conditions.
By the way, this whole talk about cultures being inferior is precisely what the Nazi propaganda said during World War II.
Asmon’s streamer friend, HasanAbi, a progressive leftist who has previously spoken out against Israel’s genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip, held a 3-hour conversation with his friend, which you can check out in full here. Below is a clip of Hasan Piker taking Asmon to school over why his opinion is so thoroughly, as kids these days say, brain-dead.
Not that it did much good. The whole discussion went around in circles, and we’re not entirely sure if Asmon was convinced by the end of it.
The ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine has a long history going back decades, but has become front page news since Oct. 7 last year. Israel’s carpet bombing strategy has been described by humanitarian organizations as genocide and crimes against humanity, with over 42,000 civilians killed, many of whom were women and children. More than 20,000 people are missing, and close to 100,000 have suffered wounds of varying degrees. Despite mediation by international bodies, the prospects of a ceasefire remain, as of yet, elusive.