Posted in
Film & TV, Fascism
Opinion: Jubilee is pathetic and dangerous
Text Hamza Shehryar
A renowned British Muslim journalist with decades of experience sits in the centre of a circle, inside a warehouse, surrounded by twenty far-right Americans. One by one, they spit their “opinions” at him. One proudly declares that he has no problems identifying as a fascist. Another tells him to “go back” to where he came from. One – an Iranian monarchist, no less – justifies the slaughter of Palestinian children.
It’s a scene that should feel like it’s been pulled from a dystopian satire. But it’s not. It’s just another Jubilee video. Uploaded on July 20 and titled 1 Progressive vs 20 Far-Right Conservatives, the video is one in which journalist Mehdi Hasan “debates” the entire spectrum of the American far-right. It has already racked up over 10 million views.
If you’re not well-versed with Jubilee or are not chronically online, this may not raise red flags. It may even seem like a creative attempt at journalism. An exposé of ignorance. An opportunity for a journalist renowned for his debating prowess and academic rigour to dismantle hateful propaganda. But that’s not what this is. Because that’s not what Jubilee is. This isn’t about fostering understanding. It’s about turning hate into monetisable content and letting the algorithm do the rest.
Jubilee wants you to believe it’s a noble project. Its official tagline reads: “Provoke understanding & create human connection.” In interviews, the CEO of Jubilee Media, Jason Y. Lee, has talked about wanting to break echo chambers, foster dialogue, and build a kinder internet. It’s a compelling corporate pitch – one that appeals to audiences fatigued by outrage cycles and craving meaningful conversations. But Jubilee isn’t interested in fostering understanding. It’s interested in manufacturing spectacle at the expense of marginalised people and established truths.
Is It Time to Get Over Slavery? Are Men Superior to Women? Can Trump Supporters and Immigrants See Eye to Eye? Are Periods Essential to Womanhood? These are some of the cutting-edge questions Jubilee poses in its most‑viewed videos. Flat Earthers vs Scientists. Men’s Rights vs Feminism. Fit Men vs Fat Men (with a separate Fit Women vs Fat Women for good measure). There’s even a video, with over 8 million views, titled “Men Rank Themselves by Penile Size”. Is this what a platform seriously committed to fostering empathy, human connection, and understanding looks like?
In Jubilee‘s world, debate isn’t about truth-seeking or interrogating ideas in good faith. It’s about finding the most unhinged voices, throwing them in a room, and watching the chaos unfold. Infotainment without information. The formula is simple: pick a polarising topic, assemble extremists on one end (sometimes both), and package the circus as an “honest conversation” that supposedly fosters empathy. But what actually unfolds is anything but.
The format of Jubilee‘s Surrounded series tells you everything you need to know. One person sits in the middle of a circle, surrounded by twenty opponents. It’s an American reality show masquerading as a discussion. The setup isn’t designed for dialogue, but for performance. And to stay fresh and entertaining, each episode needs to outdo the last – platforming ever more extreme voices, spouting the most anti-intellectual and stomach-churning rhetoric.
Take, for example, the people invited to the recent Mehdi Hasan episode. Connor Estelle was given a platform to praise Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt, downplay the Holocaust, and openly identify as a fascist on camera. Jubilee invited him on, even though he was a groyper, embedded in alt-right fascist groups online with a digital footprint long before the episode was recorded. And this, ostensibly, wasn’t an oversight by the casting team – though even if it were, that wouldn’t be an excuse – because for the same episode, Jubilee also invited Richard Black, a white nativist who was revealed to have helped organise violent far-right protests in Berkeley in 2017, including clashes involving the Proud Boys and Rise Above Movement.
A platform with over 10 million YouTube subscribers, now embedded as a part of the zeitgeist of our digital culture, that either refuses to perform background checks on the people it invites, or simply doesn’t care about what it finds as long as it generates clicks, clips, and controversies. I’m not sure which is worse.
Since this episode aired, Mehdi Hasan has said he was not informed of the scale of the ambush or the extremism of the guests. He walked into a warehouse expecting to debate ordinary Republicans, not self-identified fascists, Holocaust deniers, or people telling him they “don’t want him here” right to his face. If this is what that empathy looks like, it’s a grotesque mockery of the word.
This structure, which flattens serious life‑and‑death issues into “two sides” – where existing as a non-heteronormative person becomes a “position” to defend, and denying Palestinian humanity is framed as a “viewpoint” – is dehumanising and dangerous. This is not a game. There are consequences when you platform bigots to tens of millions. Every upload or clip that goes viral reinforces the myth of a functioning “marketplace of ideas”, when in reality it’s a marketplace of hate where responsibility is deflected by the shield of toothless centrism.
Defenders of the show, or its format, often argue that the absurdity of extremist views speaks for itself. That exposing ignorance is enough to discredit it. But that’s not how digital platforms work. Giving oxygen to vile, anti-intellectual rhetoric, even under the façade of neutral inquiry, doesn’t expose it, but rather normalises it, galvanises the far-right, and shifts the Overton Window.
In the Mehdi Hasan episode, a white participant claimed that he was Native American because his ancestors built the United States. This was met with applause. No fact-check. Jubilee let the statement hang, as if it was just another “opinion”. Unsurprisingly, this claim has since metastasised. In the two weeks since the video was published, this absurd claim – a grotesque redefinition of indigeneity, weaponised to rationalise settler colonialism and ethnic supremacy – has begun to find legitimacy on Twitter and Instagram discussions. This is what happens when you platform hate without accountability.
And Jubilee‘s business model only amplifies this. Outrage drives engagement, and engagement drives monetisation. So, the more hostile and absurd the content, the better it performs. Can Israelis and Palestinians See Eye to Eye? has amassed over 14 million views, yet it serves nothing beyond a hollow spectacle that puts the oppressed on the same moral standing as the oppressor under the guise of “balance”.
Worse, Jubilee isn’t the only platform profiting off this formula; it is seeding an entire ecosystem of imitators. YouTube is now littered with knock-off “debate shows” that replicate Jubilee‘s organised chaos, but push the extremism even further.
For audiences in the Global South, this is especially insidious. Algorithms don’t filter for nuance. In places where media literacy isn’t institutionalised, where Western cultural exports already dominate online ecosystems, videos like Jubilee‘s become dangerous pipelines, smuggling in radical, right-wing narratives under the guise of neutral “discussion”.
Jubilee‘s videos trend in Pakistan, Indonesia, the MENA region, and beyond – the most inflammatory clips stripped of context and reframed as legitimate discourse. For young, impressionable viewers navigating complex identities under global capitalism and cultural imperialism, Jubilee‘s content is poison.
Again, it is necessary to reiterate that the Mehdi Hasan episode is nothing but the inevitable outcome of Jubilee‘s business model. When conflict equals clicks and spectacle feeds algorithms, escalation is the only path forward. What seemed unthinkable just a few years ago – self-proclaimed fascists and monarchists proudly justifying ethnic cleansing on a YouTube debate show – is now the new baseline.
As the US and the world slide deeper into algorithm-driven fascism, Jubilee will go even lower to keep audiences hooked. More marginalised communities will be thrown under the bus, and more impressionable young viewers will be radicalised. Until, or unless, Jubilee is no longer allowed to monetise bigotry.
So we, especially those of us from formerly colonised countries, who understand and experience the cost of dehumanisation, shouldn’t play along. We shouldn’t give this grotesque carnival of “dialogue” the engagement it feeds on because Jubilee is pathetic. And it is dangerous. More than many of us would like to think.