I’m an admirer of Louis Rossmann and his efforts. In my opinion, he doesn’t deserve this criticism from Drew DeVault:
They (FUTO) push an open-washing narrative and they portray themselves as a grant-making institution when, in truth, they’re passing off a handful of small donations as if they were endorsements from dozens of respectable, high-profile open source projects, in an attempt to legitimize themselves, and, indirectly, legitimize people they platform like Curtis Yarvin.
I suppose Wolf and Rossmann are “no true leftists”, but to tell the truth, I’d love to hear @FUTO@peertube.futo.org 's response to this. For added context, this is what Mr. DeVault claims to be Louis Rossmann’s “milquetoast response” (his words, not mine) to Wolf inviting Rossmann to debate Yarvin:
23:20: I had no idea what this was even about or who curtis was until I got on stage. He was supposed to debate destiny, who is a prominent progressive neo-liberal politics streamer, whose views are the antithesis of curtis yarvin’s in almsot every way.
I’ve spoken to destiny on youtube & in person before. he was supposed to debate yarvin(which is what was up on the screen). He didn’t show up, so someone asked if I wanted to go on stage in his place. I had no idea who any of these people were or what the topic was until about 4 minutes into this.
I believe at one point I had said that I believe that the concept of a monarchy makes no sense because government is a monopoly on force which is why it is NOT analagous to a corporate CEO, who only has a monopoly(until kicked out) on how the company runs. A corporate CEO or the director of a movie has no monopoly on force. I don’t see that here. It also cuts off fairly suddenly & the link to the original is gone. I think the entire monarchy thing is ridiculous & stupid.
I was there because the person who donated a million to my right to repair non-profit asked if I wanted to go to some messily organized event. I thought this was very stupid after seeing a trailor at PGwlAb-rUTE (youtube URL will be censored if I post it here, just put that in the search bar to find it), but showed up since I was asked by Eron. Eron will admit himself this was completely ridiculous.
The person who arranged this entire event was on the left, you’d have to see the original video to get what I’m saying here; he seems like a very nice kind guy but who also seems like he melted his brain on psychedelics. This event was a representation of this. This event was an absolute ridiculous mess that I had no idea what the point even was for it. mutahar did a decent coverage of it with content from the original ridiculous video.
this event had little to no food and mostly alcohol like some weird yuppie startup events, i hadn’t eaten all day and was mostly excited to get out of there. you can probably tell by my foot tapping i was waiting for this to be over & gtfoh.
I’ve been following this FUTO thing tangentially with no real understanding of where the drama is coming from and the players involved. I originally though maybe Rossman was the closet fascist that FUTO was funding, glad to find out it isn’t. I don’t have the fanboi cultist attitude I see surrounding Rossman all the time here, but I also like his stances on digital freedom that I have run across.
Drew seems like a shit-stirrer. Every post of his I’ve seen shared has been inflammatory agitprop. “Get angry because this person / org did something” Constantly on the look out for patterns of things he doesn’t approve of.
Marvin might be a cunt, but I have yet to see Louis Rossman say anything terrible. He hates the fruit store with a passion, is against surveillance, finally stroking his cats and very anti-corporate in general.
The “No True Scotsman”, more technically known as an “Appeal to Purity”, logical fallacy seems to pervade the entirety of political discourse these days.
This has been a common pattern in FUTO’s PR history: Rossmann doing damage control for shitty stuff Eron Wolf did.
I get that he feels kinda obligated because of the funding from Wolf, but at some point he must realize that this is reputation washing and very damaging to himself as a public figure.
I disagree, based on Rossmann’s own comments about Wolf through his YouTube Channel and watching his content for the better part of a decade.
I’m prepared to revise my stance on Louis, but I haven’t seen any evidence for him “going to bat” for authoritarians and techno-feudalists in any tangible sense, ever.
It’s always young people incapable of nuance who are largely unapologetic authoritarians in their own right presenting flimsy “gotchas” that have no ground under scrutiny, such as Louis’ words above.
I never said the latter and how else would you describe him regularly doing YT videos partially walking back or trying to justify shitty things Eron Wolf has said or done?
The 2nd part is indeed what DeVault is claiming, to be clear.
“Regularly doing videos” is too strong; this video and 1 other are the only I’ve personally seen talking about Wolf. This one’s in the comments section. The other one he did address, in video, Wolf’s financial sourcing just before he moved from New York, I believe. Please post more if you know of anymore, but to me, it reads like you’re grasping at anything to find reasons to justify your enmity towards Rossmann.
If you disagree, of course, that’s fine. If you just don’t like Rossmann, sure. We can leave it at that. But I don’t think he’s an “apologist” or “fascist adjacent”, as DeVault describes him.
He also did several videos around licensing of FUTO that were very clearly damage control.
I don’t think Rossmann is a fascist himself, but he clearly got in bed with people that are fascist adjacent and is struggling to clearly distance himself from that, which is not exactly a good look for him and allows others to continue to misuse his relatively good reputation.
I’m an admirer of Louis Rossmann and his efforts. In my opinion, he doesn’t deserve this criticism from Drew DeVault:
I suppose Wolf and Rossmann are “no true leftists”, but to tell the truth, I’d love to hear @FUTO@peertube.futo.org 's response to this. For added context, this is what Mr. DeVault claims to be Louis Rossmann’s “milquetoast response” (his words, not mine) to Wolf inviting Rossmann to debate Yarvin:
I’ve been following this FUTO thing tangentially with no real understanding of where the drama is coming from and the players involved. I originally though maybe Rossman was the closet fascist that FUTO was funding, glad to find out it isn’t. I don’t have the fanboi cultist attitude I see surrounding Rossman all the time here, but I also like his stances on digital freedom that I have run across.
Drew seems like a shit-stirrer. Every post of his I’ve seen shared has been inflammatory agitprop. “Get angry because this person / org did something” Constantly on the look out for patterns of things he doesn’t approve of.
Marvin might be a cunt, but I have yet to see Louis Rossman say anything terrible. He hates the fruit store with a passion, is against surveillance, finally stroking his cats and very anti-corporate in general.
Nuance just seems to be lost on people like Drew.
The “No True Scotsman”, more technically known as an “Appeal to Purity”, logical fallacy seems to pervade the entirety of political discourse these days.
This has been a common pattern in FUTO’s PR history: Rossmann doing damage control for shitty stuff Eron Wolf did.
I get that he feels kinda obligated because of the funding from Wolf, but at some point he must realize that this is reputation washing and very damaging to himself as a public figure.
I disagree, based on Rossmann’s own comments about Wolf through his YouTube Channel and watching his content for the better part of a decade.
I’m prepared to revise my stance on Louis, but I haven’t seen any evidence for him “going to bat” for authoritarians and techno-feudalists in any tangible sense, ever.
It’s always young people incapable of nuance who are largely unapologetic authoritarians in their own right presenting flimsy “gotchas” that have no ground under scrutiny, such as Louis’ words above.
Simply put, for some people, it’s never enough.
How is that a response to what I wrote? It literally has nothing to do with what I wrote 🤦
Responding to this part:
I disagree that it’s “damage control”, or that Rossmann is an authoritarian or techno-feudalist apologist.
I never said the latter and how else would you describe him regularly doing YT videos partially walking back or trying to justify shitty things Eron Wolf has said or done?
The 2nd part is indeed what DeVault is claiming, to be clear.
“Regularly doing videos” is too strong; this video and 1 other are the only I’ve personally seen talking about Wolf. This one’s in the comments section. The other one he did address, in video, Wolf’s financial sourcing just before he moved from New York, I believe. Please post more if you know of anymore, but to me, it reads like you’re grasping at anything to find reasons to justify your enmity towards Rossmann.
If you disagree, of course, that’s fine. If you just don’t like Rossmann, sure. We can leave it at that. But I don’t think he’s an “apologist” or “fascist adjacent”, as DeVault describes him.
He also did several videos around licensing of FUTO that were very clearly damage control.
I don’t think Rossmann is a fascist himself, but he clearly got in bed with people that are fascist adjacent and is struggling to clearly distance himself from that, which is not exactly a good look for him and allows others to continue to misuse his relatively good reputation.
Can you link them (if you have time)?
Are these unapologetically authoritarian young people incapable of nuance in the room with us right now?
Sure.