Film Sessions: Those Darn Gravel Teens

NinaIllingworth September 29, 2020November 5, 2022 absolute boys, Against PragerU, anticapitalism, antifascism, Ayn Rand is an idiot, big government, billionaires fund fascism, blog, Briahna Joy Gray, countering free market propaganda, countering Prager U, debunking, democratic socialism, Dennis Prager is a fascist, digestible ideas, Economics, explainers, Facebook, Facebook Journals, false freedom, fascism, film sessions, freedom propaganda, freedom to sell yourself cheap, how capitalism fails us, Koch Brothers, left wing Youtube, libertarianism, Media Madness, Mike Gravel, MP6, my little leftism, neoliberalism, Nina Illingworth, Offsite Writing, Propaganda, short videos, six minute explainers, social media, Socialism, ST2, teaching leftism, The Gravel Institute, the Gravel teens, the lies wingers tell, think tanks, Video, you love to see it, Youtube, Zephyr Teachout

Editor’s note: after struggling against online censorship and some procrastinating, I’m getting around to reorganizing my website. As part of that process, I’m posting links to older content that I will never find again otherwise.

This activity is beyond tedious, but necessary for my archives. Please bear with me in the meantime and thanks for all your support.

Getting Off the Sidelines

In a recent video review discussion, I briefly talked about the origins of our regular Film Sessions feature here on ninaillingworth.com. Ultimately however, I really only told the part of the story in that space; the part about my fascination with lefty video essayists and the content they produce. Originally, I had actually intended Film Sessions to be two completely different series; created for very different reasons. In the second series, my goal was merely to share relatively short, educational videos presented on YouTube from a left wing perspective; a sort of “hey, I liked this and you might learn something if you check it out” post.

I didn’t review the videos, and if I’m being honest the whole reason I started making these posts was to force myself to log into my Facebook journal, where they were initially posted. Of course, Facebook eventually became quite hostile to anarchist creators and their content, so those posts migrated over to my Media Madness blog in late 2020. Furthermore, at some point I made the decision that I just didn’t want to get out of bed for posts less than about a thousand words long anymore, which naturally pushed me towards analyzing (mostly) longer YouTube videos going forward.

All of which is a very roundabout way of noting that the two posts I’m sharing here are pretty much a relic of an earlier idea about what our Film Sessions feature would become. I’ve lumped them together because both write-ups are very short, and the content is extremely interrelated. Both videos come from the early days of The Gravel Institute’s war on fascist propaganda channel Prager U, and feature popular (to some) hosts who I am in no way endorsing or commenting on by posting these videos.

You can check them out on Media Madness by clicking on the appropriate quotations, headers, or images below:

“The fact is though, this stuff isn’t actually old hat for most Americans/people living in the Pig Empire and a detailed discussion about say, the fascist call to fantasy, can seem on the surface to have no connection to their material existence. There needs to be an entry point, a gateway, a “my little leftism” primer and it needs to be so short that watching it doesn’t feel like work. And you need to be able to save these bursts of educational content to share with people who aren’t plugged in, at a moment’s notice – “hey you got five minutes, this video explains the issue really well.” The Gravel teens have stepped into that void and so far, I really like what I’m seeing.”

“The basic idea here is to create short, interesting and eye-catching educational videos attacking some of the most omnipresent right wing propaganda that underpins our entire society to this day. While a lot of this stuff will certainly seem like an exercise in “My Little Democratic Socialism” to the experienced radical, the simple truth is that you have to start somewhere and what makes the Gravel Institute videos so effective is that they require no prior investment and rarely last longer than six minutes.”

Is Big Government Really the Problem with Briahna Joy Gray

Capitalism Vs. Freedom with Zephyr Teachout

nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

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