#Leeja Miller

[little-desi-historian]

Yes, T.rump is a f.ascist

Also…. f.ascism is not new in America. Washington tried to genocide indigenous people (at least twice) (a colonial project to the core) and Henry Ford was a gross anti semite and racist.

[ladyshinga]

Some of y'all who shriek "[such and such] people shouldn't breed" should watch this and realize who you're agreeing with

[theodditylacey]

What's At Stake Tomorrow

[karanseraph]

To sum up:

Maybe we should agree on the platform or messaging that The Role of Government (tm) should be (at least):

Be democratic (fair voting, accountable to voters)

Provide social services (food, healthcare, rest, safety, warmth, water etc.)

And we should use all of these (following) aspects of society to reinforce that we agree on (at least) that role or function, so we can then figure out the details of actually providing those things (and not being fascist):

Universities

Think Tanks and/or Non-profits

Media

Federal Lawmakers

Local Government

Also, be less afraid of showing "bias", when claims of "left bias" are sometimes used to describe fairly mainstream common-sense not-right concepts. As long as we're still using our critical thinking skills and have integrity, we shouldn't waste time addressing the claims of bias (which everyone has).

Please see the video for more details.

(And I'll add, that if we agree on those basic functions as The Role of Government (tm) then it becomes clear what the role of the government *isn't*: control, punishment, exploitation, censor, etc. )

[onecornerface]

Leeja Miller's video on civil war is irresponsible & ridiculous + red flags

Leftwing Youtuber Leeja Miller’s recent video is mostly a decent video about why civil war is unlikely to happen in the United States despite polarization. However, some aspects of her video are severely irresponsible-- especially one batshit claim she makes within the first 10 seconds. Miller flatly asserts in the first 10 seconds:

“Political violence in the United States is at an all-time high.”

WTF? No it isn't! What do you even mean?? She doesn’t cite this claim with any evidence, and doesn’t clarify it with any metrics. The statement as written is definitely false, and I don't know any reading where it comes out as well-established.

For starters, she must mean only the last several decades-- obviously the American Civil War and much of its aftermath were more violent. I strongly suspect the 1960s-70s were too (at least by some metrics, but I don't know a lot about this). But she doesn’t even clarify this.

I'm going to harp on this statement a lot, because it's such a ridiculous and irresponsible assertion, and it's at the start of the video. She knows full well that most people only watch the first part of almost any video and not the entire thing, so almost all viewers will hear that statement.

I’m not even sure that it’s true within the last few decades. It sounds like the sort of statement she thinks she doesn’t need to earn, because so many people already assume it’s common sense. But a lot of “common sense” (even among progressives)—about topics like polarization, the criminal justice system, and even “misinformation” itself—is either false or highly suspect. Hate crime statistics are controversial, and categories like “terrorism” and “political violence” require a lot of caveats.

One possibility is that she might be implicitly referring to a single chart she later shows at 9:54 in the video, measuring "terrorist attacks" in the United States, which appear to spike in 2016 and remain high thereafter. But this can't justify her opening statement, for several reasons: (1) "terrorist" is of course a contentious category, (2) the start of the video is still uncited and does not clarify if it is referring to the later chart, (3) the chart only goes back to 2000 (so it doesn't support the "all-time high" claim-- and nor does a later terrorism chart starting from 1994), and (4) "terrorism" just is not the same as "political violence."

In several places, Miller cites a 2023 paper called "Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says" by Rachel Kleinfeld. This looks like a probably very good paper. I'll try to read it in full later. The better parts of Miller's video are probably cribbing mainly from this paper. But I looked over the paper, and it only affirms that political violence has increased in recent years-- which is quite bad, but says nothing about it being at an "all-time high."

It’s irresponsible for Miller to say “Political violence in the United States is at an all-time high” at the outset without any clarification, metrics, evidence, or caveats. She delves into a few relevant categories later in the video, but never really backs up the initial assertion. This is a serious omission.

Other Complaints -Imprecision, Bad Citational Practices, Red Flags More broadly, there are a bunch of points in the video that I’d like Miller to include a few more caveats on. For example, she mentions that over the years, a bunch of railroads have been “targeted” by cyber attacks and this seems worrying—but she doesn’t mention what impact these attacks did or didn’t have on railroad operations. So we’re left without any clear picture of how serious or nonserious the problem is. At least she cites a source onscreen here, so the viewer can research it further (albeit inconveniently, since it is not linked). But why not spend a few more seconds in the video to clarify the extent of the damage?

More broadly, Miller’s citations seem shoddy. She does cite various sources in the video itself (not for her opening assertion about "political violence" at an "all-time high", though!!), but there are no sources in the description below it. In this regard, she's even worse than Iilluminaughtii (who at least linked to a disorganized list of citations). I was hoping, in the aftermath of Hbomberguy’s video exposing the misinformation and plagiarism by Iilluminaughtii and James Somerton, that video essayists would start holding themselves and one another to a higher standard of citational rigor, accuracy, clarity, and accessibility. Apparently not! This still needs to happen!

Another red flag: Leeja Miller churns out a LOT of videos on a wide variety of topics on an extremely frequent basis. In light of the above stuff, this is now known to be a red flag that someone may be cutting corners on the research.

To be clear, I don't know who precisely is at fault here. According to the description, the research and writing are done by someone named Victoria Marchiony, so this may be on her. I'm focusing on Leeja Miller here, since she is the speaker and the face & name of the YouTube channel.

Irresponsible Sensationalist Clickbait Title + Thumbnail Finally, I think the title and thumbnail are really bad and reinforce the problem Miller criticizes. The video itself provides some decent reasons to be skeptical of the notion of impending civil war. This is an important topic. Many people are wildly exaggerating the likelihood of civil war, and causing needless fear.

But the question should have been answered in the title & thumbnail. Instead, the title and thumbnail both just provocatively ask “Is Civil War Coming?” without indicating that the answer is “probably not.” Some people will likely see the video’s title & thumbnail without watching it, and think to themselves “Wow, this person takes the idea of civil war seriously—I guess it’s serious” and thus come away increasing their fears of an upcoming civil war. So this kind of title & thumbnail is seriously irresponsible on Miller’s part.

[bunnyhugs22]

The Conservative Plan to Take Over the Country (You Need to Know About This.)

[iwatchvideoessays]

I don't have time to go deep into discussion and recap and review and takeaways rn but I will be sharing the videos anyway

Fuck the Police

Leeja Miller - Why Are US Police So Bad

Length: 23:28

I saw this one a while ago so I don't remember exactly what it went into but I remember it being good. It was also unfortunately heavily censored to please youtube's filters so it might not be very accessible to some folks.

F.D Signifier - F*ck the Police

Length: 1:56:50

Goes into a history of police & prison abolition, copaganda, prison-industrial complex, etc etc. Good stuff from F.D, as always.

veritae et caritas - How police vocabulary justifies violence

Length: 43:23

A breakdown of different tactics & vocabulary that police and the media use to justify or sanitize stories of police violence and brutality, particularly towards protesters, and it discusses the actuality of police crowd control weapons & tactics and how the language and nomenclature around them is decieving. For example, tear gas is a chemical weapon that is banned in war, yet acceptable to use against rowdy civilians.

I'll reblog this with more videos as I see them

[froggybangbang]

The fact that she had to so heavily censor this video on cop violence (just statung facts) to be able to pass *YOUTUBE's* consent is ridiculous, and frankly terrifying.

[neuromangler]

Why Do Conservatives Hate Feminism?

[karanseraph]

The part about The Cabinet being a whole separate thing from the Executive Office of the President (aka the White House Staff) was something, I admit, I didn't really understand before.

So, if someone's looking to have someone in charge of studying efficiency of the government, maybe reduce the Executive Office of the President and return those duties to the various administrative bodies under the Secretaries in The Cabinet??

[ljones41]

Leeja Miller on American Eugenics and Sterilization

Here is a video from Leeja Miller's YouTube channel about the history and current practice of sterilization and Eugenics:

[idek-whatimdoinghere]

Leeja Miller - America's Homelessness Crisis Is Worse Than Ever

[iwatchvideoessays]

Leeja Miller - Unions Will Save America.

Length: 28:33

Leeja explains why currently so many unions are striking, the history of labor organizing in the 20th century, union busting, and her ideas of how unions and labor organizing could unite people across party lines over shared class interests.

[arin-sur]

amazing comment