How Johnny Harris Rewrites History
Wanna watch without ads and see exclusive content? Go to nebula.tv/thepresentpast
As a historian watching the latest Johnny Harris video I was disturbed. Johnny has a laudable goal of wanting to show the origins of European colonialism. But he cuts so many corners, that history is sacrificed on the altar of storytelling. In doing so he presents warped version of what actually happened.
The video in question: • The Origins of Europea...
00:00 - 00:30 - Johnny Harris Lies To You
00:30 - 01:18 - Johnny's Vid
01:18 - 04:32 - Europe as a dark dark place
04:32 - 05:10 - Portugal's Expansion
05:10 - 10:28 - Columbus Didn't Invent Colonialism
10:28 - 11:37 - A Note on Depicting Native peoples
11:37 - 13:07 - A Compliment For Johnny Harris
13:07 - 15:59 - The Limits of Storytelling
15:59 - 16:24 - Acknowledgements
Sources:
Mohamed Adhikari - Europe’s First Settler Colonial Incursion into Africa: The Genocide of Aboriginal Canary Islanders
David Haddock & Lynne Kiesling - The Black Death and Property Rights
Jeffrey Barton Russel - Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians
Government Finance and Imposition of Serfdom after the Black Death
Margaret E. Peters
Carla Phillips and William D. Phillips - The Worlds of Colombus
dhayton.haverford.edu/blog/20...
KZhead:
Why People think the world is flat: • Why People Think the W...
I'm a Journalist Who Hates The News • I'm a Journalist Who H...
Johnny Harris: A Story of KZhead Propaganda • Johnny Harris: A Story... (I used Tom Nichols analysis of JH critique of the media)
Should I Sue Johnny Harris? • Should I Sue Johnny Ha...
Imperial's channel: / imperialyt-1
Faultine's channel: / faultlinevideos
Hi there, my name is Jochem Boodt. I make the show The Present Past, where I show how the present has been influenced by the past. History, but connected to the present and fun!
Every episode I show how history has influenced and made a thing, an idea or event in our present time.
I make different content. You can find me on:
TikTok: / thepresentpast
Instagram / the_presentpast
Twitter : / @thepresent_past
Logo by: / multicolor_junkie
If you have an idea for an episode please fill in this form:
www.dropbox.com/request/nMMMS...
Update: since the release of this video Johnny has contacted me and he has started citing sources. I fact checked his part two and wrote part 3 of this series with him. Go check it out here: kzhead.info/sun/f86ilbOkjoqth68/bejne.html HI everyone! This got a bit out of hand 😮. This video has the same viewcount as the original. Insane. A lot of you have commented on the points I made and so I thought it’s time for some housekeeping. Mistakes Even though I actually have been educated as a historian and do my research, I can and will make mistakes. I don’t have team to check every word I say. So don't take the word of a youtube historian as the absolute end-all truth. You probably shouldn't do that with any (internet) person. If you spot an error, please include the source that backs your claim. - The graphic showing European population 1300 - 1450 is not right. The script is correct. Graphic should say 1000 - 1340. - I said slavery was forbidden in Europe. This not entirely true. In the 17th century 10% of Lisbon’s population consisted of enslaved peoples. Generally seen white slavery was not accepted in Medieval Europe however. Some people talked about slavery in Roman times. That is a different time period. Some mentioned slave trade by the Kievan Rus. Rus is an interesting one. But most enslaved people were sold to Muslim rulers. A lot of people have said Isabella was responsible for giving the gig to Colombus. The source I used says the King Fernando stepped in at the end. archive.org/details/worldsofchristop0000phil/page/132/mode/2up. If you have a different source do share it with me. Omissions/nuance I didn’t mention some things because the video had to be viewable. Some extra pointers: - Yes the Portuguese were expanding along Africa in the 1400s. But they hadn’t made it to India. My point was you can’t alter the dates for storytelling. - Iberian colonial expansion has certainly been influenced by Spanish and Portuguese experience in the Reconquista. Both in colonizing land as in how to rule this land. - One reason Spanish colonialism got such a bad rep is because of the Black Legend. The low countries fighting Spain from 1568 found a text from Bartholomeus de Las Casas describing atrocities in the New World. They and others spread it religiously. Casas his work was overly negative and propaganda for reform. Initial lawlessness in the first 30 years had by then been replaced by a more stable colonial administration. The Spanish did not deliberately cause the catastrophic loss to the population. They wanted a work force. This does not mean Spain should have colonized it in the first place or that no atrocities happened. - Some commenters pointed out how local factions that helped Spanish got titles and lands awarded, so it did work out for them in the end. I’d say that is a small consolation for seeing your entire society disrupted. - Some people thought I was not critical enough of JH and have said some nasty things. Making content is hard and shouting from the sidelines is easy. I still think JH has the best intentions. And I think being critical can be done in a civilized manner. - The flag of Spain doesn't show Aragon. But I think that might've been just a mistake. I do think you can say Spain instead of 'Union of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon' to make the topic more accessible. - Europe is too big of a term. Eastern Europe was mostly colonised instead of a coloniser. But I understand the decision to say this. When discussing these things please keep it civil.
Since when are [pop-]Historians any kind of [natural ]scientists? And yeah.. For that matter, archeology or geography's domains - as well.
So @MajoraZ gave some insight I wanted to share here: So, during the 15th and early 16th century when Europeans were first arriving in the Americas, the region's primary power was the Aztec Empire, centered in the Valley of Mexico in what's now Mexico City. This valley had been a major population center for almost as long as Mesoamerica had civilization: Tlatilco was a major town around 1000BC; Teotihuacan was a massive metropolis, one of the largest cities in the world at the time (and unusually with almost all it's denizens living in palaces + other unique traits) and perhaps conquering Maya cities over 1000km away from 100BC-600AD; etc. The Aztec Empire came into being after nomadic Nahua tribes from Northern Mexico, migrated into Central Mexico and adopted local urban statehood in the centuries before Europeans arrived. Over the course of the 15th and early 16th century, the Aztec Empire had basically expanded to fill up almost all of what's now Mexico City, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Hidalgo, Morelos, the state of Mexico, Veracruz, Guerrero and Oaxaca, with subject states from a variety of cultures, though there were some states which remained unconquered due to either being beneath notice (the Tlapenec kingdom of Yopitzinco, and Otomi kingdom of Metztitlan, etc) or being too tough a nut to crack yet (Tlaxcala & it's allies, who were Nahuas too, and the Mixtec kingdom of Tututepec). To the West, in what's now Michoacan, there was another large empire, the Purepecha Empire, that basically fought the Aztec Empire to a standstill and blocked further westward expansion, and to the east the Aztec Empire only had limited conquests in Chiapas, with much of it, Tabasco, Campeche, Quitana Roo, the Yucatan, and Guatemala and Belize having fragmented Maya polities with some notable city-states and kingdoms. The point being, while Harris frames this as "land for the taking/without resistance", this area very much had armies, cities, resources, etc: By this point the Aztec captial of Tenochtitlan had 200,000 denizens by most estimates, in the same ballpark as European cities like Paris and Constantinople, and was built out of artificial islands with venice like canals, royal gardens, zoos, aquariums, large marketplaces, etc. It and other major cities had trades of spices, jewels, gold, ceramics, feathers, textiles, etc. Down in the Andes, they had their own long history of different city-states, kingdoms, and empires which had culminated in the Inca Empire more or less single-handedly swallowing up all competing states and expanding into the non-urbanized and less densely populated areas around it. But even then, beyond those two centers of urban civilization, other parts of South America; Central America between it and Mesoamerica; and parts of North America, like around and everything east of the Mississippi and the Southwest, still had town building, agricultural societies, even if not "as developed" (as if that's something you can objectively define): Cahokia for example was a city beneath what's now Saint Louis that had 10,000-40,000 denizens..We now know that many parts of the Amazon rainforest had sizable towns and much of it was intentionally cultivated, etc. The fact that this was NOT just unclaimed land with a few primitive tribes on it wasn't lost on Europeans: Spanish explorers and Conquistadors in Mesoamerica clearly made a distinction between the civilizations there and the more scattered villages that had been found in Cuba and the Caribbean. Cortes, Bernal Diaz, etc would compare Mesoamerican cities to the greatest cities in Spain, or beyond and to fairy castles from fantasy stories. Spanish friars talked of them as "civilized pagans", like the Greeks and Romans, while Francisco Hernandez, the personal royal court physician to Philip II, documented Aztec medical and botanical records and admitted they were better then his own sciences. You see similar claims with explorers down in the Andes. Hernando de Soto in his travels through the Southern US and other explorers in the Amazon and Central America reported coming across semi-organized towns and polities which were disregarded for centuries but is now reflected in archeological research. Some Mesoamerican and Andean kings and nobles actually kept their status in the Spanish colonial administration, for a time, gaining heraldry and titles, a explicit acknowledgement by Spain that these were (though now conquered) sovereign nations, in many cases them being appointed governors of their cities or territories. (Likewise, many Mexican states are the rough boundaries and are the political successors to Prehispanic states: Tlaxcala, Michoacan etc) Of course, those awe-inspired or begrudging praise and respect for these civilizations was also paired with the caveat that they were pagan or heathen, and that their conquest was justified. Or more often, that they never had a legal right to independence to begin with, as the Requerimiento, derived from similar justifications used against Muslim states, gave Spain the right to all territories in the name of the Church. The notion of them "not resisting" is likewise moreso a legal justification in many cases more then it was a factual observation: By claiming that a state or a group was pagan and therefore the land was Spain's to begin with; or that they had initially welcomed the explorers peacefully and into their cities and towns and palaces (you know, as you would do to foreign emissaries) and therefore were surrendering their land and belongings to them, those explorers and Conquistadors could then legally justify their wars and conflicts and conquests (which is the "resistance" Harris glosses over) as putting down rebellions or taking what was already theirs, rather then a sovereign state defending it's territory. When diseases caused societies to collapse, in many cases even ahead of Europeans arriving (hence seeing it as "virgin soil" open to the taking: By the time French, British, and American colonists spread across the Eastern US, let alone the Great Plains and the frontier, many of it's sedentary down building cultures had already collapsed and fragmented), it was "divine right/providence". While practices like sacrifices or cannibalism did occur, their scale and brutality got exaggerated to further justify conquests (Colonial accounts say the Aztec sacrificed almost 100,000 people in 4 days in 1487. Excavations of skull racks from that exact period suggests a scale more in the 100s to 1000s a year).
And how did these local groups see it? Let's return to the Aztec Empire: today it's downfall is seen as Cortes manipulating local states against one another by preying on existing resentment towards Aztec rule (or even less accurately, "liberating" them from it). In fact, I believe this is something you're referencing at 10:55 in your response to Harris. But it's wrong (sort of): the reality is a lot more complicated and way cooler, as I explain below: Due to the rough geography and a lack of draft animals, large states in Mesoamerica were fairly hands off, without the direct management and administration of subjects, founding of colonies, and instituting of a unified national/cultural identity: Political power was cemented more through fragile tax/tributary and vassal relationships, flaunting your military might, economic success, and ties to other legendary civilizations and kings to get states to align with you and suck up with political marriages, etc. Obviously, Eurasian polities did these too, and there still WAS some examples of more hands on imperalism in Mesoamerica. But hands off and indirect imperalism and methods of establishing political power which much more the norm and were more fundamental in statecraft in the latter then the former. The Aztec Empire was no exception here, and it's primary goal in expansionism was to gain resource rich states as tax-subjects to extract goods and luxuries without expending direct effort, with those states keeping their rulers, laws, and customs and mostly being left alone if they coughed up. Accordingly, what was really going on, as much or more then Cortes manipulating local states, was local kings and officials manipulating Cortes to benefit their own political ambitions: In a political system where subjects mostly stayed independent, they had the motivations and the capacity to secede, backstab, and preform coups opportunistically to sway or cause the house of cards they held up that their capitals rested on to collapse, so they could advance politically. Especially by allying or pledging themselves to another group (since again, as a subject they had little to lose) to then work together to take out existing political rivals or capitals, to then be in a position of higher standing in the aftermath. (The Aztec Empire itself was founded this way in the late 1420s) . For example, the city of Cempoala (and it's king Xicomecoatl), the capital of one of 3 major kingdoms of the Totonac civilization, and a recent conquered subject of the Aztec, lied to Cortes about there being an Aztec fort oppressing them at Tzinpantzinco, which was really a rival Totonaca capital city. They then led the Conquistadors into the territory of Tlaxcala, one of the states in Central Mexico the Aztec hadn't manage to conquer yet, and which the Totonacs were hostile with. When the Tlaxcaltecas and the Conquistadors fought to a standstill and allied with one another (with different Tlaxcalteca officials like Xicotencatl I, Xicotencatl II, disagreeing on what to do, later on Xicotencatl II would end up being executed when a rival Tlaxcalteca politician got Cortes to execute him) en route to Tenochtitlan (as Tlaxcala was an active target of Aztec invasions and DID have resentment towards the Aztec), they stopped in Cholula, where the Tlaxcaltecas fed Cortes rumors of them planning to assassinate the visitors, and it just so happens that the Tlaxcaltecas end up propping up a pro-Tlaxcalteca political faction after they and the Conquistadors sack the city, after Cholula had recently switched from being aligned with Tlaxcala to the Aztec. Finally arriving at Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma II allows them into the city: Cortes claiming he "surrendered" it, but in reality, metaphorically offering one's throne or city to a visiting diplomat in Mesoamerica was standard procedure, and within the political framework I explained, flaunting the grandeur of your city and it's opulence was a common method of courting a foreign state into becoming a vassal or an ally (to say nothing of the princesses they gave to high ranking conquistadors, an attempt at political marriages the Conquistadors mistook as offerings of concubines). When Pánfilo de Narváez arrived, who actually was sent by the governor of Cuba to arrest Cortes as he had been out on his expedition illegally, Narvaez actually worked with Aztec officials to get capture Cortes, since by this point they realized Cortes wasn't a licensed diplomat representing a foreign king. It is only after 1. Cortes panics, Moctezuma II and other Aztec rulers and officials get captured, locked up (Cortes of course claims this happened earlier and he was always in control) and then are killed; 2. the Aztec nobles and elite warriors are killed while unarmed during a religious festival; 3. smallpox broke out, and 4. the Conquistadors and Tlaxcalteca flee back to safety; that then other core-Aztec states inside the valley like Texcoco (the second most powerful Aztec city), Chalco, Xochimilco, Itzpalapan, etc ally with Cortes. Because by then, Tenochtitlan was weak, vulnerable due to it losing it's elite soldiers, its king (always a period in Mesoamerican history where subjects would stop paying taxes and see what they could get away with untill the new ruler re-asserted their military power), and struck by plague. Furthermore, these also made Tenochtitlan unable to project it's power and wield its political authority; and by extension, said core subject states inside the valley didn't benefit as much from the tax influx into the area (which was secured by the threat of retaliation if taxes weren't paid, something currently jeopardized) or their political marriages with Tenochtitlan at the moment, de-valuing their close relationship with it. (Ixtlilxochitl II of Texcoco also had a grudge against the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, as in a recent war of successon after the prior Texcoca king died, the Mexica favored a competing heir as the claimant to the throne, so when the Conquistadors and Tlaxcalteca returned to the valley to siege Tenochtitlan, Ixtlilxochitl II, who had split power with other heirs, sided with Cortes wheras other Texcoca royals sided with Tenochtitlan) I could go on and on about this, but the bottom line here is that these Indigenous rulers, nobles, men, women, etc weren't passive actors, they were key figures who had agency who were actively shaping the events as much as the Europeans involved, variously fighting defending their territory, using Europeans to topple their rivals and advance politically, seeking political marriages to gain status in the ever shifting political situation, etc: But obviously Spain and other Europeans were not playing the same political game, and between that and diseases it backfired. Keep in mind also that the last independent Mesoamerican state didn't fall till 1697, almost two centuries after the Aztec Empire collapsed: This sort of complex political game and conflicts were going on across dozens of other Conquistador campaigns and conflicts for decades.
{1-for-2 updates: }Fascinating insights. No nitpicking about "grammar" or somesuch: One cannot ignore that "Civilised men of God" in "Sons of Europa" come across as very stupid, arrogantly/zealously so( or what would be anachronistically dubbed as catch-all ‘racism’ across the fIrSt World in the contemporary day-&-age). I guess even though I do not believe in this notion that anything non-theoretical across the cosmos, but even the supposedly most-benevolent of Euro Imperialists[ nevermind the fact of "pilgrims" who arrived afterwards to the North] and also the pioneering ones, the Iberians - were quite fanatical, a claim which I do not think should be caveated as "anachronistic" like much of the "one religion is better than the other" or so-called "race war" stuff in the here-&-now or something, as your account does not leave any room for doubt that the Spanish monarch did receive trustworthy dossiers reporting back the presence of "civilised ", their horrors at certain abstracts like harsher criminal-penalties and/or cannibalism as a faith-driven ritual - notwithstanding.
As much as whatever you've tried to produce here, may be well-intentioned, you are effectively whitewashing many of the crimes that were committed by the europeans that had NEVER been committed on that scale before, especially in the early ages. The "black legend" was more based on hypocritical points, NOT nessecarily because it wasn't true!
Great video. I really appreciate the way you approached this and appreciate the amount of work that went into creating this discourse. I'll just say it right away: I accept your points here, and to be candid, the response to this video was a pretty big wake up call for me. The research on this was overly biased towards a simplistic narrative to which most of the facts bent. My hope with this series was to give an highly simplified almost “story book” version of a vastly complicated 500-year history so that those who are not usually interested in history could access the broad arc of European imperialism. I still believe in that goal but missed the mark with this one. So thank you for the compelling dissent. I’ll do some soul searching on how I’ll address this in the channel and series itself. Again. I appreciate the way you approached this critique. Also REALLY great job on the production. new sub here. Oh the Irving analogy at the end was pretty 🔥
Way to step up. Respect.
Woah, you are actually responding to criticism. That is great.
Neat
A real man knows how to take and learn from criticism. Respect!
the downside of simplyfication is that you only get told what the presenter thinks is important disregarding other things and concerns. its a problem in the short attention span era
This is like a KZhead peer review. I can see this having positive effects for the reliability of the platform, especially when it’s responded to with such professionalism as it has been.
you got a great point here
Sadly, it only works if both are promoted via the algorithm, but it truly works well when it actually works :) humanity can be quite beautiful at times
Peer reviews are dope
except that youtube can control what is allowed to be "peer reviewed" in the first place and its all built on subjectivity. KZhead isnt a free space of scientific minded people holding each other to a specific standard. Its a social game where the standards are based on culture which has no scientific merit outside of statistics and history. If you want to speak freely you might want to check who owns the microphone.
Colonialism 2.0: The US, UK and Europe still take what they want from 'lesser powers'. In the name of sanctions, geopolitical interests or the so-called “rules-based order”, colonial powers do what they do best - plunder those they see as weak and insubordinate. Nothing has really changed. You say Tomato, I say Tomato.
Love that KZheadrs are peer reviewing like this. I love Johnny Harris’ content. It keeps KZhead educators in check. It’s important to know whether the information you’re reading is unbiased, and truly just for the purpose of education!
yes this is a good thing this is how it works in academia, people debate every idea
also most people misinformed about indian removal act of 1800s. which is no evidence it was about racism. it was just deporting people who didnt want to identify or become citizens of usa. no evidence it had racial motives it woukd be required to have a country function properly to make people become citizens or they leave. but plenty of historians spin history accusing that act of racism. btw this was 1800s irrelevant to bring it up in 2000s. and people did so. to fight for tribal jurisdiction and unfair tribal laws. also tribal jurisdiction violates constitution which governs law making. america needs to be faur and nothing fair about tribal courts or regions that are impune to regular laws.
We need KZheadrs to peer review each other more
I am getting addicted to watching KZhead channel videos no matter who is narrating them. Probably has something to do with how I was coping with COVID-19 rules too which seemed like way too much fun to give up only because the worst of that pandemic is now history? Or is that only because I was while surviving COVID-19 at the time while overlearning how to use KZhead without me having to pay extra for use of it without advertising I did not have to worry about plagiarism while some teacher was watching me in class doing so or they were recording how much time I was taking while their university Moodle page was open for some class?
Then avoid Johnny Harris like the plague.
Glad Johnny came and commented with humility. That’s the way society can thrive. Thanks for constructive criticism. I wouldn’t put it better, I used to be annoyed with him.
He still makes fallacious propaganda videos to 5mn subs.....that's not acting with humility.
Experts have always been the people getting paid the most to lie to the public.
He didnt change tho lmao it's so easy to please people with sucha fake persona right ? just say sorry without actually taking action would regain people respect back for some reason "oh you caught me stealing money from eldery person, i apologize and would never do it again" aaand he still doing it to this very day but he say sorry tho
@@hannasaynwittgenstein-berl6931 You are equating making sensational pop-history entertainment on KZhead to stealing money? :DD At least he now lists his sources, unlike many other pseudo-documentary channels like RealLifeLore. I don't think you fully realize how the entertainment industry and "content creation" industry works... Harris has a channel to operate, and he can't just outright ditch the formula that made him and his brand popular. I mean, you shouldn't base your knowledge to KZhead videos in the first place, especially when you know how many of them hardly dwelve deeper than a Wikipedia article about the subject.
Counts for naught when JH continues to make similar videos. THink of him as a Geopolitical Buzzfeed.
As a viewer of Johnny Harris' channel I am happy to see that this video calls him out and receives great attention for it. This is how discussion on this platform should be.
i what a video criticise this video
Yeah, this video has more views than the one being criticised
@@anshbhagania yeah noticed that too. funny but weird. It’s not like the original was too long and ppl just want a summary. Ppl are just wanted to be spoon fed….I guess.
@@jokedog nah man it ain’t that it’s that I already stopped watching Johnny Harris years ago because of this kinda crap and I want to see someone tell me I’m right again
Test
Excellent video. As an English/History teacher-in-training, this video inspired me to create an assignment where students criticize popular KZhead history videos, finding the perspective of the video, their mistakes and falsehoods, their lack of nuance or oversimplification, as well as their merit. I think it's a great starting point to explore the complicated concept of historical narratives, interpretation, myth and contemporary issues connected to popular retellings of history.
ikr, I hate broad strokes like that. Learning history requires nuance but ppl skip over that part in order to reiterate the common tropes.
Great idea. As someone who has watched many KZhead history video's, don't forget to remind them that historians or sources from the past were often propagandistic and English is not the language most of the world's history has been documented in.
Wow a teacher being influenced to the point they take that influence into their classroom to indoctrinate kids in the teachers personal beliefs? Talk about ignorant & gullible. Honestly just retire, you’d be doing the world & those kids a favor.
That's a good assignment
This is an excellent idea
man, Jonny Harris's responce would almost be respectable, if he still wasnt doing everything the video accused him of lmao
Yeah, his production is good, but maybe he should stick to other topics.
The money is just too good, lol.
Exactly. For example his Israel / Palestine commentary. He knows exactly what he's doing and he just pulls the "I'll do some soul searching" card every single time. He's a sellout.
Colombus is history biggest lier
Not only that, but he is guilty of the exact problematic narrative creation that he correctly accuses the mainstream media of indulging in. It is also amusing to me that he refers to historic Europeans as 'other' as though his ancestors, he himself, isn't genetically European. Even his surname is European. The surname Harris comes from England and Éire.
This guy does buzzfeed style content. It’s so chimey and easy to digest while only covering one aspect or viewpoint.
Exactly! That’s why it’s no surprise that he used to work for VOX
Yep
this is how it should be. you peer reviewed his work and he had the humility to take it to heart. misinformation (intentional or not) is one of the the biggest dangers to society today and we need everyone working together to fight it.
Agreed. I do enjoy Harris videos but don't agree with everything and he does have some bias. Yet it's me the viewer to learn to separate it as he overly simplifies much.
That comment he made could've just been Harris getting ahead of the criticism in order to save face. Thought that could also be me just being cynical.
@Methos if you aren't cynical regarding content creators, you're a fool.
The problem is that Harris has done this repeatedly. He was called out two years ago for producing straight propaganda. He's taking nothing "to heart". He's merely covering his backside and laughing all the way to the bank. kzhead.info/sun/d9mmYMapjpifeq8/bejne.html
Have some more kzhead.info/sun/gdWhZpqAbKqfa40/bejne.html
This is great. I told youtube a long time ago to stop recommending Johnny Harris to me because his videos were very attractive at surface level, but empty and unsatisfying underneath. But real history is so interesting, and it's great that you're able to fill in these gaps.
He has some very good videos, but a lot of them need way more research.
I love how KZhead recommends me both Johnny Harris and videos disproving/ criticising him.
Been following Johnny for a while now and there's huge contrast from the work he used to do on Borders or his channel at about that time. His videos lately have turned aggressive, propagandistic, seems like a totally different content creator. I'm all in for discussing politics and being opinionated but I don't think he's doing in the best way right now
His videos are very well made but shallow, I'm sure that back at Vox he had researchers and producers something he most likely does not have since going independent
@@just1it1moko that's probably solely due to the fact that his name is mentioned in the title
As a recent fan of Johnny's work for his contemporary geopolitical videos and branching into the historical, I was skeptical of the overly simple and often warped views he put forth in the discussed video. I saw this video recommended and must say I truly appreciate your intelligible argument and respectful tone. I am now a subscriber to your channel!
He keeps making terrible mistakes. I don't click on his videos anymore.
He definitely plays to the "just discovering the world" crowd. He reminds me of me at 20, figuring things out, reading a ton, idealistic, surprised by it all, etc. His real talent, or the talent of the production team, is exactly that, the production. The content is so so, and obviously not objective. Says a lot about the value of production.
He’s woke and produces content that the Vox crowd would eat up like 10 years ago. People are growing tired of it now though, thank god.
@@Cosmo87- growing tired? not so much, the vast majority still has some type of complex going on and isn't aware enough or doesn't care for proper truth. I mean people still believe the middle ages were the "dark" ages. myths nowadays are a norm and truth is the exception.. the only difference is that people are more vocal about it
He plays that role good... He used to work for a "think tank" so this guy level 100 snake 🐍
@@Cosmo87- The issue isn't being "woke," it's not fact-checking or citing sources to the degree he should.
@@Persun_McPersonson That's what most people mean when they criticize woke; drawing narratives and conclusions based off emotion and flimsy bias evidence rather than deep nuance fact-checking. Did you not see his ridiculous short trying to claim that lack of media attention to women's soccer is because of misogyny and sexism rather than it just being less popular?
The Johnny Harris debunk hat 🤣Great video man! :)
Didn't expect you to be here lol
Hello there 👋
Only take it out for special occasions 😇
Chill white settlers
Sad to see Johnny Harris forgot the number 1 rule in making a history video: fact checking and source citations
He used to work for Vox so hardly surprising
@@asdf3568 This. They don't give a shit about truth just narrative
I stopped watching him when he said iceland is neutral
@@asdf3568 DAE Vox lefty propaganda?!???!!!?!?!
I also disagree with Harris but actually most big youtubers conceal their sources
2:48: Not only labor was scarse. The plague didn't discriminate, and a lot of landlords died, leaving land up for grabs. Thank you for this video!
Oh my days, this is so refreshing. Well done to both of you. So many people get their knowledge from KZhead now that we need this kind of respectful pursuit of rigor amongst creators.
Oh calm down please. People have been giving erroneous information on You Tube for the past eighty years. Ever since the Pope won the opium wars with Greek fire.
Love this KZhead Academia vibe - its like your a professor responding to the theory of another academic from a different university. This is peak youtube
Ikr. I really hope this is what youtube becomes. Respectful back and forth between ideas until we come to the most plausible conclusion.
Exactly! You put my thoughts into words.
@@stars-and-clouds When KZhead was first founded, this is how it was. There was a huge discourse of ideas because there existed a youtube feature of replying to peoples' videos directly with your own videos. It was something special
you're
🤓
The citing their sources bit is so important. French history video makers get torn appart by the public if the sources are lacking, but for some reason English speaking content creators almost never mention those
Pouvez-vous recommender des youtubeurs d'histoire française?
@@devinmes1868 Herodot'com pour la Première Croisade, les pirates des Caraïbes, et pleins d'autres sujets surtout médiévaux et en lien avec le Moyen-Orient. Nota Bene, malgré toutes les critiques (injustifiées) qu'il subit, comme porte d'entrée pour tout. Ave'Roès pour l'histoire du monde musulman. La Plume et l'Épée pour le Haut Moyen-Âge et les Normands d'Italie. D-Mystif sur l'Inde coloniale française et d'autres sujets. La Porte de l'Afrique pour l'Afrique pré-coloniale.
And not only history btw, all our vulgarisation youtubers have such a rigorous approach.
A big reason to consider is that English is by far the most globally accessible language. If your goal is to make easily profitable content, or to make content without a professional research ethic, an English audience is far more willing to support it mostly because there's just so much more people to show it to If you are French, or are searching for content in French, it is inherently more niche and more limited to a background of historically favored research institutions
@@puppieslovies More niche, yes. Limited to research institutions, hell no. The francophone youtube landscape is vast and really popular with dozens of 1M subscribers channels, and the audience is made of teens and adults of many backgrounds. I guess it's more of a cultural thing, we're much less "narrative-focussed" than Americans.
I appreciate how he can provide a constructive critique of Johnny Harris' work to actually help Johnny improve his work.
It's called schooling. 😂
johnny is a journalist whose platform is youtube. not a historian.
A big reason Renaissance happened was the scholars that came from the Byzantine Empire at that time and they brought much knowledge and texts that they actually were aware off. And in general there is a very frequent tendency for historians and people discussing history to refer to Europe and just completely forget about the Eastern Roman Empire and also the Middle East which was actually still very close to the rest of Europe even after Arabs and then Turks conquered these areas. The continent groupings and categorisation are sometimes very wrong.
@@pulse3554 my point is that they are in Europe and not that they should but the main reason of the Renaissance happing was the Byzantine scholars in Italy coming from Venetian colonies and eventually all of the former and present Byzantine Empire, it's unacceptable to not mention it. And many forget of the Roman Empire(former areas and the Eastern Roman Empire) and the Middle East and how they changed the rest of Europe. You point is great, that is the root of many ideas but they were in a totally different area and moved through trade and empires, like many mathematics and of course the decimal system of numbers.
It was actually Italians being very rich and rediscovering the past that led to the Renaissance…….
@@Tommi414 yeah that was part of it. The idea that Europe was intellectually dead until the Renaissance of the 15th century is inaccurate. Medieval historians generally agree there were mini-Renaisances in the 13th and 10th centuries, both involved the rediscovery of ancient texts both within Europe and through cross cultural communication with Islamic scholars. Many of those scholars were based in Iberia and lots of Christian scholars went to study in Cordoba.
@@Tommi414 Arabs preserved ancient greek texts. Aristotle was translated back to greek later from arabic at the time of the renesscaince
@@jeffersonclippership2588 We know about a muslim alchemist here in europe by the name Averroes. Ibn- Rushd
Great great video. For a long time I’ve grown weary of advice regarding creating content emphasising “storytelling” so much. In my area of science exactly the same phenomenon leads to adjusting reality to fit an appealing “narrative”. But as you say, often the truth, while more complex, is often much more interesting than a simplified black and white version. In many ways it’s a problem with KZhead, journalism and so on, and Johnny, as a pre-eminent creator/journalist, simply exemplifies that.
He more a journalist than anything and journalist are know for their biais
I love that as a scientific content creator, you're so interested and educate yourself in a variety of topics, including those not necessarily directly associated with your field of expertise.
Good to see cardio daddy venturing out into the KZhead history world
Ironic.. a video critiquing (sometimes accurately sometimes with flavoured boas) another video for inaccuracy &lack of sources inaccurately attributes flat earth leanings to ONE writer in the 1800's with a book now hat sold to a hundred ppl.. like u really have to laugh.
ariana what're u doing here
Whenever I know something about a topic Johnny covers, his videos strike me as those of a not-very-well-read person reading some headlines about a topic and making a video.
I loved this rebuttal. It was so respectful and thought out. Johnny Harris sounds so intelligent and his videos are so slick and fast paced, I had never really questioned the accuracy of them before. I will still love he's videos but I'll definitely try to be more critical. I'm also really happy he saw and responded to this video in the comments. He seems like a really principled man who accepts criticism 😊
Personally I find that simplified history is actually far less interesting than the full context story. The complex interactions of all kinds of forces that result in an ever increasing chain of cause and effect are so much more fun and interesting to look at than the simplified nonsense they teach at high school. I didn't really like history in high school, but I absolutely loved the courses I did when I went to uni. Sure, I understand why they don't get into to much detail. I mean, they gotta cover ten thousand years of human history in 4-6 years with two hours a week, but I think its a fallacy to think that people will get interested in history if you just give them a broad, simplified story version.
Never u derstood simplified history Why would you try to understand something that wouldn't give you all the informtion youre searching for
I like to think of it like building a house. Learning the sequence of events is like erecting the framing of the house, which is very interesting if my brain was previously an empty lot. Learning the motivations of the major players is like adding the plumbing, electrical and siding. Learning the nuances and humanizing stories is like painting the walls and decorating. Learning new information that changes my perspective is like renovating the house. Global history is like seeing how my house affects my neighbor's house and vice versa.
@@sotch2271 Jhonny did simplify and bend the facts. Yes. Agreed. But as he told in the comment section of this video, he wants to be an interactive way for ppl not interested to listen. I don't care about history, there are tons of media entertainment sources out there for all of us, yet I see Jhonny's vids. Why? Coz it's presented in a way that I don't need to know anything or care much and can casually consume the information given. The course of my life would be no different if I didn't see his videos, but him presenting videos in his style makes me wanna see it. And this is precisely why he's mastered the algorithm. Niche facts that were mention here aren't of my concern coz this dramatized version is better and as he told here "he does it coz U THE VIEWERS like it better" I don't see jhonny's fault at big here.
I found something similar with biographies I have read... Biographies that are extremely long to listen to, I use audiobooks, are far more interesting and engaging than ones that are only say 10 hours. a 50 hour biography is extremely detailed and every story has the time to let you into the moment and give you all the nuance.
I used to think of history as a series of decision points, similar to his example of Columbus. And that's entirely a wrong way to look at it. I see history now as more of a question of who has what, and for how long. It's a system of equilibriums that can never stay in equilibrium because the planet is constantly changing. And we change with it. Everything that looks like a decision is really an outcome forced to some degree by circumstance.
What a respectful, methodical, and informative rebuttal. I wish this sort of dialog existed everywhere
My thoughts exactly. Imma subscribe to this guy.
And Johnny Harris actually listened to his criticism.
Just because it's polite and watered down doesn't mean it better than stern and poignant criticism. Typically the reason it is so stern is because Harris is a capitalist propagandist being paid to intentionally spread misinformation, as stated by others giving far more in-depth analysis with research and knowledge.
Bravo. I so appreciate the very simple "if China had conquered the world, it would have been equally as bad [and deserving of discussion]. But, they just didn't!" Haha
Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because someone else would have unleashed the savagery Europe did doesn't;t absolve us of shame.
@@toi_technocolonization is an inevitability. Many empires besides Europeans participated and some were very successful. Everyone’s ancestors have blood on their hands. Why selectively be outraged about one over the other?
@@protoman1214 Because it’s more recent and indeed people are very angry f all of them.
You both do well teaching subjects. When I watch a Johnny video I keep in mind he has about 1 hour in topics you would take a semester of, or study for years
I’m really glad someone pointed out the errors in that video. It was super oversimplified and portraits the world as if everywhere was amazing until Europe (which had no redeeming features) somehow just conquered the world and everything that’s bad in the world is Europe’s fault. Edit: I’m not trying to defend European imperialism or saying it didn’t have a huge impact on the world because it did and it was bad. What I take issue with is Johnny painting a picture of everyone in like the Tamil kingdoms being covered in gold and no one working while everyone in Europe was a serf. Everywhere in the world was shit it’s not as he makes it seem that everywhere was a paradise until Europeans showed up. Yes european imperialism made a lot of places worse but a lot of people oversimplify how the rest of the world was before Europeans arrived and makes it seem super idealistic.
Everybody seems to do this.
A lot of it is Europe's fault but yeah
@@jeffersonclippership2588 Do non-europeans have absolutely no agency
It is easy to think that though if you've studied 19th century colonialism.
I dont think so.. but if you want to tell story of world conquest in reasonable time, you will not tell political, economical etc. situation of every fk stupid tribe and state in the world. Most of times he is just pointing out problems with borders and how stupid they´re.
This is GREAT!!!! Every one who is an avid historian and journalism enthusiast should do this. Our collective knowledge and instinct are what allows information to become closer to truth, and not just sensationalism. CITING SOURCES IS A MUST.
One historical note. When you mention the propaganda in Johnny Harris not depicting the political division within South America being part of the strategy for Spain taking over vast swaths of the Americas I had a slight epiphany. The fact that when Rome was conquering England they used the same strategy as Spain, yet I doubt people like Johnny Harris would depict Rome’s conquest of England as one sided as they do the conquest of the America’s.
I watched his first Cyprus video a while back and I was floored by the sheer disregard for basic fact checking. It physically hurt reading the comments praising his video where he claimed Rome brought Christianity to Cyprus in 58 BC and that House Lusignan controllled the island in 492 AD.
Being a normal plebeian, I don't know what's lies and what isn't. How do I know I should trust you over him?
@@ghostbear9904 Because you can now go and seek out historical sources for yourself and find out which is true?
@@ghostbear9904 Looking up serious sources aside, the first claim is also easily disproven with pure logic, as long as you know that "BC" means "before christ". So it says that the romans brought christianity to cyprus roughly 6 decades before the inventor of christianity was born, which is on the same level of logic as the joke "Chuck Norris got born in a cottage he built himself".
When you realize he went to a very good university studying international peace and conflict resolution for his master's, it hits even harder
@Dilshad Yeah, those are prestige schools, you go to them for their connections less than the education. In my experience, the schools just below their tier are arguably even better for particular areas of focus because the name alone doesn't suffice and you actually have to know your stuff to be competitive (certainly my experience with differing law-school colleagues). His major is a great one for that school, certainly good enough to make his historical inaccuracies compounded by the fact that he very much should know better.
Good video! One thing I'd like to add is that "Spanish conquest of the Americas was quick" point Harris brings up overlooks that the Spanish spent centuries fighting inidigenous Americans like the Maya.
That...and the bit about Portugal not reaching india until 1498. While it is true...by 1488 the portuguese had gotten to the cape of good hope, which is also why when Columbus went To Lisbon To propose his idea, the Portuguese king basically said "yeah we have already pretty much solved how to get to India"...Thé spanish knew this which is who they took the gamble of saying yes To Columbus
Definitely this
Sure, but it's also true that within one generation, the Spanish destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilisations. Even if that was not the end of it, the first major blow was pretty quick.
True, but the Aztecs and Incans both had their empires collapse within a few decades which is pretty quick in the grand scheme of things.
The spanish built their first settlement in America in 1493. By 1593, 100 years later, there were spanish cities everywhere from New Mexico to northern Chile and Argentina. Not to mention the Philippines, I'd say that was pretty fast.
To be a historian needs a great humility. Well respected, folks!
Johnny Harris is the epitome of Style over Substance.
‘Constantly in debt to landlords’ is a really weird way to describe feudalism. His whole description of medieval European social conditions is quite anachronistic in addition to being ahistorical. Great video! Glad to have found and subbed to your channel 😁
Will try to make it worth it 🎉
*Bloch has entered the chat*
You making a living off his land and will get killed or kicked off in a year if his knights didn't stop it, I think it's fair to pay like 20 percent of your grain (Is that even so bad? Nowadays we pay 30%, and more when you consider non income tax, PLUS we pay for property tax or rent anyways!)
How is it weird
@@shinrapresident7010 that doesn't mean they're the same thing
11:30 love this point being made. People forget that when the Spanish were conquering the Aztecs, they were heavily heavily heavily assisted by both the outbreak of smallpox & factions that hated the tenochitlan govt.
Indeed, the Tlaxcaltecs were far more responsible for the destruction of Tenochtitlan and the wider Aztec Empire more than the Spaniards were. There were how many... 2,500-3,000 Spaniards? Compare that to 80,000-200,000 Tlaxcaltecs who fought alongside the Spaniards! Smallpox (brought by the Spaniards) did greatly weaken the Aztecs, but the Cocoliztli epidemics were worse in terms of death toll. Scientists still do not have a conclusive answer as to what exactly caused it, but there are many evidence-backed hypotheses.
Yes it's less like direct conquest in the naive sense, and more like instigating civil wars by giving the rebels a surprise advantage in the form of Spanish allies. This was then used in a political long-term strategy of "divide and conquer" over and over until the "winners" of the civil wars could be subjugated by the Spanish. If they didn't submit to the Spanish, the Spanish could always just repeat the cycle with a different group so they knew they had no choice.
@@lekhakaananta5864 The winners weren't even subjugated. Usually the winning tribes were already converted to Christianity and their tribal chieftains sworn allegiance to Spain. It was more like when your small company gets bought out by a bigger company, and now you have to follow the new company's policies and culture. Except a lot more oppressive than timing your bathroom breaks.
@@romxxii "weren't even subjugated" that didn't take long :/
@@Nah_I_Would_Plummet Did you misunderstand me? Seems like you did.
Just found Johnny Harris yesterday and you today ☺ Much respect to you both for good research and journalism ethics, corrections blah blah....It takes genuine teamwork not to ones own glory and prestige but if you're really for truth...then this is what I respect. Genuine corrections and respect publicly made for the betterment of real info. Thank you as well for helping many of us who didn't have enough college data of political systems blah blah due to so and so reasons. Keep the genuinely researched news flowing in 🌏✌
lies
Love these debunking videos - teaches me soo much about the subjects.
As one of the people listed who used Johnny's name to rack up a lot of views (& praise his video structure), I want to thank you for also bringing much-needed critique. What I appreciate most is that, in addition to corrections, you focused on what Johnny can do to better accomplish his goal (engaging a mass audience with history & geopolitics), rather than just slamming him as a fake. Beyond just Johnny, I think what you did in this video is the thing KZhead is largely missing: critical discourse without demonization. An ability to respect what another creator is doing, but also compassionately ask them to do it better. In a way, you're *showing* what it is you're asking Johnny to do better: have a clear message, but don't resort to caricature. not that I think about showing vs telling much... 😛
Saw your vid of course, loved it!
For star comment
This! It wasn’t a Johnny is trash, he’s a liberal SJW, blah blah blah video. It was just an honest critique of substance. That kept me engaged.
Hopefully this will debunk the seemingly prevalent idea that to disagree with you someone, you must also be vitriolic/impolite/rude/etc towards them
@@WanderTheNomad such an anti semantic suggestion.
On his video called "How the US Stole the Philippines" there were some wrong information about our country. One of which is the Kingdom of Ma'i, where Ma'i is just ONE of the many pre-colonial kingdoms in the archipelago (A Filipino Historian Kirby Araullo, made a video pointing out the other wrong information). But Johnny did a great job on pointing out the dark history of Filipino-American relations before the 2nd World War.
I also said this in that Johnn Harris video. He's a stereotypical Vox storyteller. He's click-baiting and over-sensationalizing.
The good thing he opened up about it. The sad part that based on the comment on that video said that a lot of fellow filipinos don't even know about filipino-american war when it was already discussed at school most important key parts of the history.
I mean why I say this because I notice that some or most filipinos don't bother about our history but when a foreigner especially caucasian guy talks about it then everyone suddenly cares.
@@spartan5637 I still find it funny how Filipinos would vividly remember Japanese soldiers bayoneting babies but have zero recollection of the American scorched earth campaigns. The only thing that that brought attention to the Filipino-American war was the Heneral Luna movie and that movie just made Aguinaldo and his cabinet to be even bigger villains than the Americans. It's like we see Americans as these god like saviors when they have screwed us over in the past.
His Philippines video was also bad. I said the following when that one was posted. Bruh. "They (US Territories) don't have trial by jury." What sort of nonsense is this? They have independent judicial systems and as such I can only assume that you are trying to lie to your viewers. There isn't some implied hidden independence movement across them either. You also left out the part where the US guaranteed the Philippines independence in '44 in the Tydings-McDuffie Act, signed in 1934 to replace the Jones Law (c. 1916) which in turn replaced the Philippines Organic Act (c. 1902), with considerations stretching back to ~1899, only a year after they were "stolen" with the formation of a stable and unified government being a prerequisite for independence, because in an age of imperialism a free and weak Philippines would have been conquered the moment the US left. Probably by the Japanese who made a sport out of murder. You also showed your TDS when you blamed Trump for the failings of the Puerto Rican government. Lots of aid just sat in warehouses because of them. I blame the Fed for many a thing but that wasn't one of them. TL;DR it was also shit.
Man you inspire me! Great video and I always had my doubts with Johnny H. I admire how you politely refute him.
He also conveniently ignored the caste systems and mass slavery practiced throughout asia.
You also casually ignored the complexities of the Varna system and not the caste system that Britishers and Mughals enforced.
Honestly, this is good for everyone. Johnny gets recognized for his compelling storytelling, and the information gets corrected. Science education often has similar challenges of losing important details, and it's so important that we have this kind of back and forth between creators about what actually happens, or in this case happened.
He's clueless about things he talks about more than often. But if you like to be lied to, that's your choice.
They should do a collab series! Johnny's vision of a presentable "story book" version of historical topics, with TPP's auditing, would be the ultimate viral education videos. They would be the perfect team and it's clear they want the same thing!
bollocks
@@catchblack455 i dont know how people accept his apology honestly. Dudes been doing this shit ever since he left vox lol
DO better nerd XDDDD
I initially loved Johnny Harris' videos, but after awhile I realized I was watching his own ego-centric storytelling that left me feeling misled when I looked more into the topics myself. He's like a college student who only wants to do the bare minimum of research and then tries to make up for it with confidence and conviction in his thesis argument for his term paper. Not simplified: shallow. Editorial flare over substance. I couldn't trust his hackneyed accounts, and I was tired of his "I'm the smart one uncovering the truth, you're welcome" persona that overwhelmed the transfer of information in his "stories". I stopped watching his stuff some months ago when I compared his takes to other much better done summary videos. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to tell the truth about this one, I feel like his videos do more misinformation harm than good.
That's it! That's what I've been getting from him: not the enthusiastic retelling from someone genuinely interested in the subject, nor even the dry recounting by an academic. He sounds _smug._ He sounds like he's peddling snake oil.
agree w all of this and that’s why i fell off on watching him. i saw a few other people call him out for inaccuracies and then he did a weird biased video that was all secretly an ad snd i felt like swindled haha. not trustin him as much, seeing thr content for what it is. snd i followed him since Vox and loved his content but recently i’ve been feelin misled. his shit about the mexican coke is just not true. go to mexico and get coke, it’s different. every mexican snd or Latinx person i know says so, and they’re right haha. i’m glad he said this was a wake up call. hope future content is better cited snd proofed.
Exactly. Well said. I stopped watching shotly after Vox
I immediately got that impression of him when I realised he puts his face in clear view of every thumbnail.
I kind of assumed that with his professional editing and everything, that he had a team doing research for him as well as every other part of production. So I wonder if he hired some lazy researchers, or just tried to cut corners to get a (biased) video out quickly
Johnny is the most un-biased person you can watch on KZhead. But some people hates what he says when speaks the truth that they don’t like. Period
There are some mistakes in videos
I only just discovered Johnny Harris today, with his talk about being an ex Mormon. Clearly he has gone far beyond what he knows. I am a serious history buff and take your warning with thanks. I won't waste my time with him I still have half of the Harry Potter books to read and gazing into a computer screen is not good for my aging eyes (I am 65) Thanks again
Literally every point you made is what I thought when I saw Johnny Harris’s video. I’m glad someone took the time to adequately respond to his hyperbolic statements. I still think he is an incredibly talented storyteller, which is why citing sources, or even using asterisks at the bottom with disclaimers every time he’s dramatizing something would be helpful.
Unfortunately, this is not johnny harry first time doing such dishonest journalism. Hes been called out many times for other topics but sadly not everytime hes been called out by youtubers who would get it to enough traction for him to even acknowledge, i mean many youtubers have better thing to do. And based on his actions, it seems he is not gonna change his ways for impartial journalism anytime soon.
@@grapefruitsyrup8185 Wait he said he won an Emmy didn't he? Wouldn't that be impossible if most of his work didn't hold up to scrutiny? Or is it simply his videos on history that are misinformation, he does do other things too that made him get that recognition?
@Ntuthuko Ngcobo why would it be impossible? Is Emmy an integrity and fact checking verification body? Why do you make such a baseless assumption? Even the putlizer prize are given before to journalist with questionable practices and articles that are groundless and speculative, let alone emmy. This blind assumption is honestly disconcerting. In fact the emmy that johnny won is from an *opinion* article him and a co-author published to the NY times in 2021, won under the *opnions* category. So how is this relevant here nor does it prove anything? His long history of dishonest journalism is well document on youtube by other creators as well. Your comment suggest that you did not even watch the video you are commenting on nor did u read my comment which ALREADY addressed what you said. Do your own diligence before making such an ignorant comment.
Johny Harris is a leftist that tries to be neutral. But you see very often the facts are bent towards his political view and opinions. I thank everyone who calls him out. The truth must be heard. Sadly majority of people that watch his videos don’t even know he’s every now and then spreading false things.
@@grapefruitsyrup8185 impartial journalism doesnt exist mate. its a fantasy
The minute Harris started down the whole Dark Ages myth I knew his case was probably going to be a little off base
@@AndRei-yc3ti yeah but that's like half a millennium off
@@AndRei-yc3ti The time period Harris is referring to is one where parts of Europe have re-attained or surpassed the economy and development of the Roman empire. Where-as the so-called 'dark ages' are almost a different millennium entirely.
@@AndRei-yc3ti the Dark Ages are almost totally a myth. Even before the crusades, Europe was hardly ‘dark’. In that time, they had developed three field crop rotation and had founded universities. The high Middle Ages saw the scholastic movement and the beginnings of capitalism and parliamentary government, along with the development of gothic architecture and cathedrals. Dark? I think not.
"dark ages myth"? Sounds like this channel audience have gone down full euro copium.
@@Ravi9A Or don't see history in a romantic 'dark' and 'light' times way.
Yes, I lived somewhere for half my life, and Harris put up a video recently about it. He painted this horrible picture about how the place was at the mercy of the US and how terrible its people were treated. It was full of exaggerations, lies, and oversimplifications. I studied the history under a professor from the place while I lived there, and if that had been the real history, it would have come up in my classes. But it didn't. Instead, he made terrorists appear to be freedom fighters, and the US appear to be a horribly racist and punishing country. I unsubscribed. And then today a friend was watching one of his videos and I explained what I experienced. He shut it off and then I searched to see if my theory was right about Harris. That's how I found this and some other videos exposing Harris. Thanks.
thank you for enlightining me to all these points. Very well made video!
Saying that Europe was nothing before colonialism seems to be a trend among propogandists.
I mean, they're kind of though
I mean it fits into their narrative of rags to riches because of zeal.
tbf Europe has no real reason to have been so successful over China but it was, really just luck
@@DR-54 Europe has europians. It wasnt luck.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 uh
A starving population wouldn't send out expensive expedition with a high chance of it being a failure.
No, but a government that made its wealth by robbing its people to the point of starvation would and did.
shhhhh!!! don't tell him
Were Europeans so poorly nourished that delirium hit them to a point that they formed a collective demand for expensive tropical herbs and spices? And they could pay the Venetians and Ottomans with gold! Talking about priority.
Whaat you mean poor people arent usually centuries ahead in technology? Crazy!
Because it was the starving population and not the nobility that sent them lol
I love Jhonny Harris, he has a beautiful way of storytelling, he touches on very important and misrepresented subjects, and above all, his editing team is just next level But as you said, he's no scientist or historian, he's a good journalist, but he needs someone who's gonna help him with reliable information and resources, so I think it would be a great idea if you guys work together, or at least help him in the history videos where he mentions your contribution of course (like him saying: 'thanks to Jochem from thepresentpast for making this video possiblle' )
Great video. I am interested in more in this format.
That feel when you're a European nation that doesn't really have anything and your population is apparently starving, and yet for some reason there's a multi-continental trade route that specifically pipelines exotic goods to your region, and in spite of all that nothing you have you can still somehow construct and deploy naval fleets of conquest and overwhelming military forces against thriving and wealthy empires and engage in the incredibly expensive project of transporting excess prisoners to the other side of the planet. Man those Europeans sure had a shitty time of things.
@Xi Jingping The Americas actually had agricultural practices that put much of the rest of the world to shame, massive wealth, a lot of knowledge that Europe didn't have (although likely the Middle East and Asia had) and literally the sharpest blades on the planet... they just didn't have horses or guns or significant intercontinental trade routes. So yeah, he kinda insulted everyone.
@@Zahaqiel sure used to enslave people 🙄
How about this yt people do you want privilege or equality simple as that you don't want to own any of your history fine what about your present?
@Xi Jingping lol how to say you were never interested in south american or african history and history
@@sotch2271 Oh yeah that was the same time period as the Mutapa Empire too, and they did use the Portuguese as their go-betweens for trade with India.
John Harris to me is like a pop journalist with his great editing and overly-simplified script that appeals to people who are probably disinterested with history. I view his videos as subjective source of information rather than an objective one. Problem is, there are a lot of nuances in history. Sure it can be simplified, but never "dumbed-down," which I think what he's doing. There's this one on his "How the US stole The Philippines," wherein he claimed that the pre-colonial Philippines was called Ma'i and implied that Filipinos are already united which is blatantly false. Outright pseudo-history. It's like hearing someone say that Kanye sold his soul to the illuminati kinda pseudo. I hope he improves his content, I like his approach of simplifying history for the masses, but not to the point of disrespecting his audience's intellignce. He should also add references or better yet, hire an historian before publishing videos.
I'm not gonna bother giving Johnny an extra view, but he knows Spain conquered the Philippines first, right? And that back then, Spain conquered us by pitting warring tribes against each other and converting the ones that sided with them? And that if anyone obliterated our pre-colonial culture, it was the Spaniards, not the Americans?
The problem with Johny Harris is that he's a modern-liberal and europhobe. All his history content is basically revisionism aimed at degrading European history and making Europeans out to be just a bunch of unhinged, violent barbarians and the rest of the world as being more enlightened, advanced and peaceful. It's political propaganda, nothing more and nothing less.
I mean, the US still did imperialism there so it's not much of saved moment for the US
This dood Johnny is peak youtube in my opinion. His “video essays” are so far up they own ass I think it’s a great reflection of the sites current state
@@Nah_I_Would_Plummet only niggas w issues w that are ppl that wasn’t born in America and whites women bro 😂😂
Thank you for making this video. Definitely learned a lot here. I really enjoy every video that Johnny makes and it makes me sad to see so many people raising concerns that his videos are full of faults or mistakes or fabrications. I’m glad to see Johnny respond with apparent humility and regret that he didn’t do a better job on that video. I believe he is genuine and sincere and just needs the encouragement to stay true to his goal of education and enlightenment.
"His videos are full of faults or mistakes or fabrications". I would add "manipulations". He is a crook. When i hear him talk about my everyday life and have the impression that he is telling me things i hear for the first time... i know that the whole thing is stinky, and this is when normal people start doing their own in-depth research on these topics. And normal people then understand that everythig is BS in his videos. But then there are americans. They don't do their own research. They ask whose lie they should believe. Or... they ask KZhead or Wikipedia... Weirdos.
Wow ! This was a great critique. Most of the criticism I’ve seen of Johnny’s videos were done in an attempt to either absolve European history of the stain of colonialism/slavery or rather to commit the tu quoquo fallacy. You instead not only acknowledge the stain , but actually explain how presenting the facts and timeline accurately will actually enhance the discussion on this…great work.
The ‘backwards Europe’ myth has been disregarded in historical circles since the 1990s. Europe in the High and entering the Late Medieval periods was quite advanced. Cities such as London, Paris, Kyiv, and Venice were booming. Trade and logistics brought the continent closer together and connected to the most of the Old World. People had good sanitary habits. Agricultural practices were more efficient than in Ancient Rome. We take medieval Europe’s advances for granted.
Absolutely, most of such stories were made up by later scholars who wanted to feel superior to their medieval encestors. While culture and science in the Middle East and Asia was on incredibly high level at the time it is not like European states had nothing
@@julianwitkowicz9783 I say the Middle East and Asia in the 1400s were set aback due to how the Mongols griefed everything
@@julianwitkowicz9783 I feel like historians calling medieval Europe shit is to illustrate that Europe was not the center of the world culturally or geopolitically. Since most of us were fed a lot of Eurocentric history in the past. Like the renaissance is not really that groundbreaking in regards to worldwide perspective when the Ottomans and the Ming have already been doing their own thing for years. Especially while knowing that the technology necessary to jump start Western Europe's rise to dominance such as triangle sails, compasses, and gun powder came from the more advanced societies at the time. It also has to do with how Western Europe declined as a society with the fall of Rome while Byzantium didn't.
@@genghiskhan5701 more like the Mongol empire falling apart due to the plague.
@@danster813 obviously. Just as I said in my original comment societies of the East were far more advanced, but we should never put down medieval European's as worthless barbarians same as we do not put down native Americans of the North, Polynesian sailors and other peoples one could view as barbaric and undeveloped Not being the most technologically and culturally advanced and being primitive are two different things And yes, I am pro-teaching less Europocrntric history in schools, bringing more attention to Arabs, China, Axum, Ottomans, Zulus, Aztecs, Incas and Majapahit would certainly help young people understand how vast and fascinating our history is
"The truth is always more nuanced, and there's always nore history to a story." Perfectly said
Sure but Johnny doesn't need to add every detail surrounding the topics of his videos. His videos are very clearly inside the lines of the road towards the point he's trying to make.
Got here after watching his last video about Israel. As someone close to the subject I was honestly so shocked by the amount of inaccuracies and bias, which made be question all his other videos. Thanks for the info , keep the good work!
He reads only headlines of his sources and presents them as deeply researched facts 😂😂. Also like many youtubers he reads the winds and produces what will make the masses happy. This is the age where jew hate is fashionable and he's riding wind
Short answer: do not trust ANYTHING from him. All his videos are the same. Especially, he has something with Europe, for some reason. I am European, and the amount of BS he says not only on my own country, but on some of our historic rivals that i have no reason to protect here... is absolutely baffling. You can cr*p on germans or whatever, i don't care, but at least, do it using accurate facts, not manipulations. Actually, he is probably worse with those countries that are praised in the USA nowadays as "successful and with happy people". Like the Netherlands? The most baffling is how he can lie so much with a straight face and still sleep at night. That takes some lack of conscience.
I think it would be a great idea if you guys team up Jhonny Harris has a beautiful way of storytelling, he touches on very important and misrepresented subjects, and above all, his editing team is just next level But as you said, he's no scientist or historian, he's a good journalist, but he needs someone who's gonna help him with reliable information and resources, so I think it would be a great idea if you guys work together, or at least help him in the history videos where he mentions your contribution of course (like him saying: 'thanks to Jochem from thepresentpast for making this video possiblle' )
As a Chinese American, it would really help if you could also do one about his videos on China, especially the one about China "being so big." Honestly there is so much misinformation in it that he really just comes off as wholly dishonest or completely incapable of research. With zero voice on the internet it's basically impossible for us to even fight back and correct the record.
honestly the philippines video seemed a bit weird
It’s your time to shine. Create a video.
Yeah I hated that one. "China has never been unified! And this area over here? It was never China!" and then his own maps projected on the screen while he's talking show multiple periods in Chinese history where they were really fucking big, controlled areas far away from the North China Plain, and were parts of dynasties that lasted hundreds of years.
Thanks for the suggestion
I agree. China has the longest history of any nation and has spent lots of time as fractured polities and a massive empire. Saying that mistreatment of ethnic minorities is bad shouldn't mean that you have to deny that China was ever there until the 1950s.
How does johnny harris not cite sources, kids in school literally do it thats kinda embarrassing
Because there is no FCC laws against the internet video crowd thanks to the internet
Let me remind you, he went to Brigham Young University...
@@ethancampbell2422 is it a good university?
@@Nadia-yf3gq Not really, it's not bad but it is, above all, a Mormon University. It used to be decent but in the past decades seems to be more and more biased toward the Mormon aspect of thing, to the detriment of the quality and impartiality of the education. Still much better than most US confessional universities, but I'd always keep in mind it's only two steps away from being a diploma-mill for a christian sect.
@@Nadia-yf3gq as said it is Mormon, and certain I heard off Jon Krakauer that this is a religion which has a big problem with allowing it's believers from studying their own history like why they are Utah and who is Brigham Young. They are so a religion who has changed stuff to stop them having trouble with the US Government once they got stuck in Utah
I had no idea harris existed before an hour ago....and appreciative of coming across this post. There should be more of it. Id certainly support it. A key ask from this is for Harris to cite sources....i wonder if hes made that change. Its a dubious act if he hasn't. Theres economic power in his keeping himself as a bottle neck of information for masses of his almost 5 million subscribers.
People think that high production value means news is trustworthy. They’ll call you a whacko for criticizing the narrative and call independent journalists conspiracy theorists. It’s unfortunate.
“Europe is so poor” the Catholic Monarchs financing almost impossible enterprises because they are literally filthy rich: what?
More like peripheral than "poor". It was the contact with the New World and the cope of the Asian trade routes and commerce what gave Europe it's boom.
@@jojodio9851 The most prosperous nation in Europe in terms of GDP per Capita at that time was the Holy Roman Empire, which never participated in colonization due to how much of a mess it was.
Exactly, they still believe the most backward civilization ruled half of world and sailed the entire planet. Castilla was the most advanced Kingdom in Europe at that time.
@Swedish and Nordic. Muricans do that a lot.
Sometime in the last year I got sick of Johnny’s over dramatized narrative and asked the algorithm not to see his videos anymore. Thanks for this essay of exactly what I’d been thinking!
Glad it's not just me 🥲
Johnny Harris might have left Vox, but he is still just as woke.
@@drone6581 what is woke ?? Stop giving people names
Same!
I got sick of Johnny after about the second video I watched of him. I don't like storytellers when it comes to conveyance of factual information. I love stories, when it's Shakespeare or Game of Thrones or Tolkien. But information aren't stories. It's just info. Johnny's dramatic embellishments had the opposite intended effect on me. It turned me off right away. It's also writhe with obvious one sided political undertones.
Ok I subscribed. I think most of us that try to work our way through information on KZhead assume that it’s not all facts…however JH certainly would help us if he cited sources and I will be the first to sign that petition. Well presented points. We need more debate on issues to see other ways of being,not only those that agree with us. Thanks I look forward to more
I’m all for more of these YT peer review videos
His video on China was wild, claiming that China is a modern concept. He cherry picked facts to support an argument that delegitimizes China today despite the complex history of the region.
His video about Panama independence and Felipe Bunau Varilla's involvement was also incredible misleading and disrespectful. Made the whole thing about 1 person and then the US, while ignoring decades of history from the locals point of view that lead to the actual separation. Didn't even mention a war that was going on at the same time.
Yeah, as much as his videos are enjoyable/entertaining, he's fairly anti China and it really does show. And you hit the nail on the head about China being a modern concept - I have a handwritten leather-bound set of books (about 2 big cabinets) that were handed down to me by my mother which is the literal thousands of year history of "China" or Zhong Guo. Yes, the size and borders have changed (hello, complex), but Chinese history is ancient and his video made it sound like all this talk about China is propaganda.
I knew almost nothing about Chinese history before and his video still taught me that Chinese history goes far back, because he clearly stated that in the beginning.
@@SchgurmTewehr If all you know about China is what you got from Harris' video then i'm afraid you now know even less.
If you haven't seen it already, Hakim did a critique video on "why is China so damn big" but replaced it with US.
All of his videos are like this, this one was just particularly egregious. He cares more about how the video looks than the actual content. He does lots of camera cuts and quick successions of pictures, and old soundbites from FDR or somebody, and then the actual content is just like "Russia is like ... really big! And see these people over here? They're not even white? And they live ... in Russia!" and then cuts to an ad break for Better Help.
Lol
that made me chuckle thank you
@@ThePresentPast_ when muller charge manafort for things nothing to do with russia hack but let podesta go for same reason =blackmail dc to support blame russia to cover up fact 2 party system failed since mccain-hillary all did united fruit company scandal 2.0 recall fbi never look at physical evidence just crowdstrike/hillary words, cia break glass 2017 inauguration with media claim russia stolen election 1oo george bush 14y ago said add ukraine to nato foreshadow nuland f eu coup 2014 support = 1. kzhead.info/sun/obiKY6hpmF-gZWg/bejne.html 2001 pentagon memo kill occupy iraq to syria kzhead.info/sun/ktGreraArpSMenA/bejne.html current ukraine gov is proxy since obama drew red line just like did in syria earlier arming rebels telling russia not to interfere while zelensky ethnic cleanse donbass region 7y= 2. kzhead.info/sun/p8VylLuKmnaLg3k/bejne.html 3. kzhead.info/sun/fKaegqZvqYmhknA/bejne.html aware USA can give everyone medicare+lower inflation so wages regain value but need to punish all those whom want to stay in Syria like Schiff/pelosi? they constant print money to occupy iraq-syria oil gold force city to lower inflation to prove daca worth it since for years dc never lower living cost only print dollars to do more refugee crisis
Thank you very much for this! Nowadays, people tend to overlook the idea of a "story within a story." Regardless of whether the history we hear seems unacceptable by today's standards, it occurred in the past, shaping the world we inhabit today. I believe it also signifies the utmost respect and gratitude for our ancestors who navigated through history. This extends beyond acclaiming the "famous" figures to acknowledging the resilience of the "civilian" or "ordinary" class that traversed the trials of the past. We should neither overlook any stories underlying the history nor introduce additional ones. I appreciate this video. thankyou
Thought this was gonna be a hit piece. He’s not being snotty about it. Good video 💯
i was waiting for this. history is so important to get right. no sugar coating or simplifying
*over simplifying, it’s fine to simplify if the content creator lets the audience know that they’re leaving out a whole heap of things for time. So that the information conveyed is accurate and doesn’t mislead or give a false impression of some historical or factual account.
So he just said there was ‘nothing’ in Asia? Indian region was the worlds richest region and the only place where diamond were found before 1800. Best believe they came once and came again and again to rob india of their wealth. £45 trillion in todays money was robbed from Britain. This guy is propaganda as well
It's fine to simplify, not oversimplify and both are ok when done right, oversimplified not the best source for your history but it's very good when you are presenting history to a younger audience or to get interested in a subject.
I LOVE this video. I’m also a historian and while my studies focus elsewhere, I really appreciate your’s and Jonny’s work. I also read your top comment where y’all worked together on the next video for his series. I’m really glad y’all were able to come together to discuss and create better content for the future. You bring up a lot of good points and I appreciate you taking the time to make a whole video explain said points rather than just making another angry vague comment. Keep up the good work!
This is the Johnny Harris' haters club
I watch Johnny Harris alot. So i appreciate the critique from others who know. This is a great video in being able factual and clear 😊
Don't trust any of Johnny videos... You could do this for every one of his videos. If you want to know about History, don't wait for a random KZheadr with a dubious agenda to tell you his lies. Seek knowledge for yourself.
Brilliant video! We need more critical call-outs like this for big content creators like Johnny. Still really informative too, aside from the accurate criticism.
Thanks for the kind words ❤️
Agreed! I think the premise of the video is the definition of "biting off more than you can chew" because the topic is so massive, so it was kind of bound to miss the mark.
lol
He's been called out in the past and he's still doing this. This is why people shouldn't get history from some guy who has great video quality lmO
@@ultimateloser3411 True, but this video doesn’t go on a full rage induced rant like some others and actually focuses on key issues that should be addressed by any content creator. Also great quality videos does not mean it will be inaccurate, just take this video as an example 😁
As a history major that had to read a lot about these events, I appreciate the refinements that you identified.
As a maintenance tech with a high school education, I just like cool videos
@@phettywappharmaceuticalsll8842 Aquatic maintenance gofer reporting for duty. o7 (it's a fun gig)
But I think you hit the point. These are refinements. I know the things he’s saying, but for example the claim of Harris of “europe didn’t have abundance of anything” I take it as a simplification of they didn’t have natural resources. My field of research is cosmology, and maybe it’s why I understand how when you try to make a small general explanation without extensive time for refinement you can say things as Harris that. At the end his videos are not an academic paper. They give you the itch to learn more about the topic. They open the door for channels like this one.
@@Temperancefp I feel you can tell a story about history without making up things or skewing the idea of what happend and still keep the video as long. It's a hard task to "learn" something and then, and only if, you decide you want to learn more you have to come accross content that rectifies what you already put in your brain and then double check everything that you thought you knew. And ofc then the biggest problem is that a huge majority will never go down that path but incoporate the information they gained as truth.
@@Temperancefpmisinformation is not the same as simplification of information. You can’t cherrypick or completely understand ignore parts of history for the sake of simplicity lol.
Wow, brother, I'm so glad that not only I see so many flaws in the videos he is making. Thank you for bringing the this out here.
Wow, amazing work! Instant sub
This was wonderful to watch! No dramatization, just coffee shop vibes while I sip this tea and listen to a civil discourse. The only thing is I'd prefer more sources and nuance. Other than that, great! I'd love to watch deep dive videos on lesser known topics from you!
Johnny Harris was applying central conflict theory to history with little regard for factuality, which can be very harmful. Thanks to Hollywood, we are used to being told stories that way: there has to be a hero to root for and a villain to hate. Nevertheless, reality is never that simple. It's so much more interesting!
Who was the hero in Johnny's narrative?
@@AmanYadav-kh4zx The colonised peoples (wealthy and living peacefully until the villains arrived). I am using 'hero' in a broader sense, like Snow White (as opposed to Hercules), because Johnny Harris is painting them as victims, really.
@@lucasribeiro7534 You're not getting the point, the historian in this video didn't claim that Christopher Columbus didn't do atrocities, he just claimed that Columbus wasn't the first. It's true that Johnny might be giving undeserving significance to certain incidents but this doesn't imply that the indigenous people didn't suffer and hence their portrayal as victims is correct, cause they were.
@@AmanYadav-kh4zx I'm not claiming Columbus was an angel either. I'm just saying everyone was commiting atrocities (Africans had slavery, native Americans had human sacrifice and cannibalism, Asians had mass murder...). Moreover, it is very simplistic to say all colonised peoples were victimised when some of them actually benefited from colonialism, by gaining the colonists' favour, subjugating their enemies, and getting rich... Were there innocent people among the victims? Definitely. But would they have lived happily ever after, had the Europeans never 'discovered' them? No, because this world is not a safe place (and it was even worse back then). That's why it is my opinion that historians should stick to relating facts without any moral judgment. When you generalise and say there was a goodie and a baddie in the past, you're pitting people against each other TODAY (who have absolutely nothing to do with what their ancestors did anyway).
@@lucasribeiro7534 I would only disagree about the last part of your statement. We don't know if the colonised would have lived happily ever after because that opportunity of growth as people or nation was robbed because of colonisation. Maybe they would've just imploded with domestic civil wars or maybe they would've had revolution like the French. Rest of it, as you say, is just a product of the times. Individual kingdoms trying to capture lands and resources for the growth of their empire.
Johnny is one of those reasons why I like to do my own research on things. But I also wonder who is fact checking Johnny.
It’s nice to read or watch a variety of sources. Historians don’t always agree. If it’s a subject you’re particularly interested in, then yes, do your own research, but you can’t do that for everything. Even historians specialize in certain areas.
@AnaLucia-wy2ii I'd agree in principle, and that's precisely why I like doing my own research on a variety of things. I would add too that some historians leave out bits and pieces of historical things. Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are both good sources for things as well.
Johnny cited his sources in his video on the War in Afghanistan. It made me hopeful he'd keep it up at the time, but looks like he thought it wasn't worth it in the end
I think he’s gotten a strong response to his last video and is trying to adjust. He’s hiring a new researcher
I think he did really well with his series of Us stealing Middle East, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
@@Kbarz he has been getting criticism since ages ago, but he still hasent made any improvements.
@@Kbarz A bullshitter never stops being a bullshitter. The only thing he's adjusting is the depth of his bullshit.
@@via45 if he Criticize western colonialism ofcourse he will be Criticize by people with colonial mindset
Everytime I see videos like Johnny’s, I like watching more videos about the same historical events because in every video you learn a thing or two and is a good idea to see the video and use it as a reference. Of course, a more reliable source is reading since the information is more complete
Well I'm late to the party, but you've earned a new sub, a year later, with this one. Thanks for helping keep KZhead "historians" honest
Interesting. I just came across Johnny Harris videos and was intrigued to watch one or two of them. So when I saw this video pop up, I figured I had to check it out :) . This is my pre-watch comment. Let's see where this goes! :)
Thank you so much for this video! As a curious mind with a fondness for reading history from a country that has historically been colonized by Spain for around 3 centuries, I was nodding so much especially at the part you mentioned about local alliances with colonial encounters which explains part of why conquest was also possible as it's unfortunately glossed over in many textbooks to perpetuate an oversimplified take on what actually occured (some Philippine school history books have US-favored propaganda in it that highlights Spanish colonialism as bad but glosses over much of what the US had actually done in their own time here onwards). I'm glad that you took the time to debunk the dangerous misinformation that usually happens with dramatized storytelling that tends to oversimplify broader concepts and ideas while losing the substance that makes these ideas worth studying and exploring which is a limitation on the online video essay experience in this day and age. Having an engaging storytelling style is good as is making decent use of effective cinematography techniques but there's a danger to be found in trying to perpetuate an "us versus them" narrative I usually find in some forms of media that glosses over the nuance and care that lie beneath the surfaces of these topics. Someone else in the comments mentioned "central conflict theory" (its a cool idea from a filmmaker as an observation of certain media/ storytelling styles) and I can see further that blind spot across Harris's videos and it's a trap that can mislead more people instead of guiding them to seek more facts for themselves. That's the importance of having historians like you around to check and balance these takes...as well as knowing how to balance grabbing someone's interest while also delivering factual, more objective descriptors when you are trying to educate and motivate an audience along a video journey of delivering an idea. This critique is refreshing to see in this day and age and lots can be gleaned from your video, as well as in leaving footnotes for people to explore on their own, cheers! :>
As someone with a 9th grade history education, that video was actually painful to watch.
I blame youtube culture for this. There's a lot of pressure to put videos out on a schedule as fast as possible and to make the content in said videos as catchy as possible.
Great points here, I like Harris and his content for sure. I don’t think listeners (at least me) take his historical perspective at law but he chooses to focus on some pretty important topics that get me thinking and independently researching. So overall he is doing good in my opinion.
Excellent video! As I watch more "history" content on KZhead, I become more convinced it is headed towards becoming "visual Wikipedia" - with all the negatives that implies. You have a earned a new subscriber! Keep up the great work.
For transparency would you mind telling us what the connection between you, hoog, and into Europe is?
Like the video btw
He’s a eurotuber
Eurotube ftw 💪
They're both Dutch. I can recognize that accent from a mile away.
I know them from the internet, we're all Europeans :)
I havent watched the video yet. Never been on this channel. Just popped up. But I JUST started watching Johnny Harris videos yesterday. So I'ma hold judgment and watch what you have to say
Under what rock have I been living to never have heard of Johnny Harris, after about 13 years on this platform?
As a History Major, Johnny is quite aggravating due to the fact that he never cited his sources or provided a freely accessible list of sources. We’re all held to the same standard of citing your sources in college, what happened to this same standard for people like Johnny? Another thing is that Johnny does not hold any degrees in history so how can we trust him? I watch Mark Felton instead. He’s actually got the degrees and multiple books to back himself up.
I feel like Johnny's sources would have been akin to Steven Pinker or Jared Diamond type sources, the hold that those people have on political history despite their actual sources being very shoddy and the skewed way that they misconstrue the few pieces of legitimate knowledge that they do source is incredibly upsetting. I remember reading Jared Diamond's book Upheaval and thinking there was a lot of validity in it but then feeling disappointed when I went back with a more critical eye the second time. His chapter on Chile is upsetting, especially since his source for people "supporting Pinochet" are his friends which are also likely of high financial status and thus benefitted from Pinochet's economic policies, that's not even including the way he misconstrued the economic situation under Allende. That really pissed me off because learning about Pinochet's rules and how fucked up Chile became was really a big wake-up moment for me.
Mark Felton has the degrees and books but that is also not a foolproof way of determining whether people are trustworthy. Mark Felton is a pretty major plagiarist and made pretty huge mistakes, most famously about a museum in germany. Just google his name and the word plagiarism or controvery and you'll see a lot of discussion. I first noticed the plagirism myself when i went to research a topic of a vid, and essentially found his script verbatim in wikipedia.
"Johnny does not hold any degrees in history so how can we trust him? I" Yeah you gotta fuck off with that take. Trying to gate keep giving info about a historic event. Guess us non historians should read our history literatures and keep the info to ourselves. Cant trust us
Source: I made it up
Why is a degree needed. if you read a whole lot of books over years of time is this not real information because you do not have a degree?