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This only holds up to a point. Destiny can get away with saying things in the moment that would torpedo someone else. In part due to having an audience that seems a lot more antifragile and less 'normie' than most. On top of that Destiny has been very careful in selecting who gets to talk to him. And depending on who he is talking to he will drop all pretense of believing anything at all.
His 'debate' with Sean Last was illustrative of that and his inability to argue against 'race'. Prior to that he 'debated' with Mike Enoch where Destiny all but ceded the ground to American white nationalists that pro-white advocacy was valid and needed. Not being able to pinpoint exactly what the problem with something like the American white nationalist project that Mike Enoch was associated with.
Destiny can do that. If things go bad he just rolls with the punches. His audience will stick by him and nothing really happens. It's not like the far right has any platform to advertise their victories on anyways. But if you are a lefty that exists in and relies on a network of media personalities that feed on drama and purity spirals, you can't afford any of that. You really don't have the wiggle room. Not debating the nazis and just doing the mainstream thing of calling them evil and stupid seems a lot more optimal play.
I concur, Destiny doesn't have the best answers in multiple cases. But it's at least doing something. He's showing up and defending the status quo as he typically does. People like Contra and the rest of Breadtube can't even do that much.
Edit: Realized I didn't answer the rebuttal. I don't think many lefties have to rely on the media personality networks. As much as BreadTube is a thing, I'm not aware of people being ostracized from it or similar community for having these kinds of debates. I don't see people, for example, criticize Destiny for having those debates, but rather for disagreeing with them on some point.
People in that sphere primarily catch flak when the debate goes poorly for their side. You can't afford a string of bad debates, so as soon as one goes bad other lefties put the pressure on by asking why the person was platforming nazis in the first place if they couldn't perform.
Destiny gets slightly different kind of flak, for example by inviting Nick Fuentes on and being cordial with Lauren Southern or his most recent appearance with Richard Spencer on 'NoJumper' or whatever. To name a few examples.
I think the big breadtube channels make it seem like there is no specific reliance on networking but you can't really exist without being in the green, so to speak. Outside of channels like Contrapoints and others, that are practically too big too fail, there are plenty of channels that are one scandal away from ostracization. If they don't have friends behind the scenes they are just as likely to be drama fodder for the other channels, since they all partially share the same pool of viewers. Unlike someone like Destiny who kind of has his own dedicated base of hardcore supporters. But even then Destiny felt the squeeze during the whole Rittenhouse thing.
Oh, sure, but there's ample room to start with training wheels. Become a Destiny orbiter if you have to, but learning to do what he does is a matter of personal skill that can be entirely learned.
Right, he gets flak for not debating them. But I was ignoring that because I figured we were restricting ourselves to his debates. Also, I'm not sure where the flak is for appearing with Richard Spencer. Any examples?
I don't recall all the details, but my understanding is he got departnered from Twitch over saying that the rioting had to stop in an incendiary manner. Hardly for simply defending Rittenhouse at all.
The point is there's no reason to start at all. You don't need to debate them when you can just silence them and tell lies about them.
Well, kind of, he gets flak for platforming them and not making them look like they are evil. It's not about 'debate' in that sense. It's just about who the enemy is.
I misremembered, it was the host that got flak.
Destiny had been building on the more lefty viewer pool from debating the nazis. Routinely talking about all the 'tankies' and 'socialists' he had in his chat. He was still a 'liberal' but there was a very clear crossover of viewers. That came crashing down when he did a debate with Vaush on the Rittenhouse stuff. After the pushback he got from that, a lot which coming from 'personalities' he went on a much more direct anti-left thing as a response.
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