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Vaush

Ian Kochinski (born February 14, 1994), better known as Vaush, is an American left-wing YouTuber and Twitch streamer who debates and discusses politics online from a libertarian socialist perspective.

Vaush in 2023

Quotes

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  • The problem with Cuties on Netflix isn't that 11 years are going to watch it and feel represented. The problem is that adults if we're being charitable are going to watch it to reflect on their youth, or if we're being uncharitable they're going to watch it while ******* it to the many provocative dance scenes done by minors.
    • 11 September 2020 post on Facebook
  • Social media platforms are terrible at acknowledging context and power relations when it comes to harassment, this is why so many trans people on Twitter get banned for calling their harassers TERFs, which is categorically not a slur. Hasan’s flagrant use of the word forced them to commit to a position. They committed harder than I expected, considering my ban.
    • 16 December 2021 interview with Nathan Grayson of Washington Post
  • People don't like being convinced that they're wrong. In fact, our brains are unmatched in their ability to self-justify, to make us feel that we are right and to shut out any information that contradicts that. On a purely logical level, most people aren't going to be moved on a incorrect belief they have by arguing with them about it.
  • The problem with leftists is that they don't have an example to point to, right? What are you going to point to? China? The Soviet Union? No, no. If you're going to make an argument for anything leftist, you're kind of throwing darts at the wall. Not necessarily a bad dart or a bad wall, but you're having to work from first principles a little bit. This is why a lot of lefties struggle with electoralism, because electoralism is the bridge that exists right now that gets us from A to B and bridge-building is tough, but imagining the other side of the river is easy. In fact, you can see it from here, it's in your head.
  • I do find myself agreeing with liberals on a lot of stuff. Not, mind you, because I don't have better ideas than them -- I do, and I've argued for them -- but because the other ideas that are being thrown their way are so bad that I can't risk the left being pulled down with them. I want you guys to have a better understanding of liberals so you can better critique them. I don't want you to be complacent like the liberal, I want you to know what you're up against.
  • The ideological leftist -- the real leftist -- would be somebody who understands that the state is fundamentally incompatible with the Marxist vision of communism. [...] So the state is, at its best, an inconvenient mechanism for facilitating the transition towards that society, which is something that I believe. I don't think we can just jump into statelessness, but I do think that the state should be treated with a significant degree of, like, scrutiny, you know? Because time and time and time again, we have seen socialist revolutions kind of, like, fall or cut under themselves because the people who ended up in charge just didn't do the socialism, they just empowered and enriched themselves at the expense of the proletariat.
  • One of the most shamelessly predatory, pedophilic ideas I've ever seen taken half-seriously is The Wall. [...] The idea that women become unattractive and lose all sexual value after the age of 30. I know the harm of this specific idea is mostly hypothetical because the median believer in The Wall is, like, a fourteen-year-old boy who doesn't talk to women anyway, but it's still an example of how political ideologies can influence the extent to which predatory attitudes against women are socially normalized. To make a change for the better, y'know, you'd probably have to look into some kind of, uh, I don't know, uh, feminism thing.
  • "Do you believe in unity or only winning?" What unity is there with fascists? What do you mean by that? How do you unify with them? On what issues? If "winning" means, uh, like "everyone supports what I support" and that is unity, then sure, then that, to me, is winning. Right now, unity just means trying to build bridges with fascists.
  • No matter how good you are at debate, you always need both sides to be invested in doing it. Like, if I showed up for a debate and they just made farting noises with their mouth, I can't make a good point in that environment. It requires two people engaging with some standard of mutual competency. It's not even a matter of performing well, it's just unfun. All of the rhetorical skills that I'm interested in? Meaningless. You just scream your soundbites. That's it.
  • People aren't always rational, countries aren't always rational. Fascism is not rational.
  • I do think there is a bit of a glimmer of hope. For one, as I have pointed out [...], there is a global tide of fascism that is creeping up, but if we look at comparable examples of this happening in other countries [...], there seems to be a very pronounced lack of sauce in a lot of these fascist movements -- an inability to fully collapse the liberal democracies they're built off of.
  • People used to be a lot more willing to wish death on others because people used to be a lot less human to each other. I think it's a little bit easier to sympathize with people in an environment where you can pop open Twitter and just see 'The Enemy' be normal.
  • Could they really divide us that well? Could Trump or "The Powers That Be" commit that well to a doctrine of dismantling, not only our democracy, but all of the protections, all of the interconnectedness that queer people, people of different races, whatever, that all of them have managed to build? I don't think so.
  • The main thing you want, if you want to survive difficult times, is know your neighbor. You can get more done as a group than you ever can as an individual, and the last thing that you want during socially difficult times is to not have your neighbor's number.
  • I think that if you ask me right now, why it went down this way? Ballpark answer: Misogyny, weakened rhetoric on immigration -- that is to say, Democrats stopped pushing back against anti-immigrant sentiment and started kind of adopting it themselves -- and a lack of economic populism. They are fighting for procedural institutionalist rhetoric in a world that is populist.
  • I don't know what you should do. I know what processes you should adopt in order to maximize the likelihood of you making it through this. That you should be calm. That you should befriend your neighbors. Develop close relations with the people around you. [...] Familiarize yourself with the laws of your local environment. Honest to God? Familiarize yourself with the parts of it you don't like as much. [...] Get out of your bubble. Be calm. Walk the neighborhood.
  • People who were born in time to serve for World War I died after the moon landing. You've got a lot of time ahead of you.
  • There are lots of people all around the world who endure worse circumstances than you have up to this point, and what you will endure over the next four or however many years. I'm not saying you got it easy; you don't. I'm not saying that you should be "Oh, y'know, because kids in Africa are starving" or whatever. I'm just saying, they do make it work in a lot of cases.
  • You're gonna have to be smart when, in a better world, in a better time, you could've gotten away with being more frivolous. You're going to have to be withdrawn in times when maybe being more open would've been better. It's going to ask a lot-- the world's going to ask a lot of you, and none of it's going to be fair, but you can do it. And like everything else, this will pass. And things will get better. On a long enough time-scale, the "It's So Over" is always followed by the "We're So Fucking Back". It's just math.
  • You can fuckin' support as much genocide as you want or disenfranchise as many people as you want. As long as people are getting cheap personal chauffeurs for their burritos from the local, like, Mexican joint, that's the-- That's their standard for who they're voting for.
  • Doom and gloom doesn't solve our problems, stay strong and weaponize this anger and resentment we've been left with. We must always keep fighting for a better future.
  • "Every day I draw breath is a victory against fascism in my books." Mm-hm! If your life is intolerant to them, then live just to spite them.
  • I think that one of my biggest issues with, like, broader political discourse is that -- especially on the left -- people fixate, like, really, really hard on being a good advocate. God's honest truth is, the first step to winning is being a good person. And I don't just mean good in the sense of, like, being morally good. I mean being good at being a person. Being disciplined and effective. Saving your money when you need to. Being community-oriented. It's not just a matter of being morally correct, it's a matter of being in a position where, if you have the opportunity, you can most effectively advocate for your beliefs. Discipline matters. Community matters. Not just community with other people like you, community with people who you don't like as well. I'm sorry to say, but you gotta know your neighbors. Even if they're Trump supporters, you gotta know your neighbors.
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