If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. — Sun Tzu,The Art of War
I believe it is important to understood just what we are up against in regards to conservative reactionary propaganda. This is why I suffered through watching the first episode of The Tuttle Twins TV series. I do not recommend anyone watch this. I am going to link it here, but beware that it is absolute brain rot. The quote the average looking white dude in a freedom T-shirt who introduces the live stream, “Imagine a world in ten years from now where 100 million kids have learned the principles of freedom.” This would be great if it wasn’t the version of libertarian Ayn Rand freedom being pushed by this show…anyway, like I said, don’t watch the link, but by all means ratio it. Hit that thumbs down button.
In this first episode of propagandistic madness, the Tuttle Twins travel back in time to meeting Frederic Bastiat. Bastiat wrote The Law, a book defending among other things private property. Of course, the show does not bother to tell the difference between personal and private property, it in fact blurs them into one.
Then they travel to a fantasy Old West setting without a given year where there’s a black sheriff…the whole show seems to be weaponizing identity politics with a diverse cast of cartoon characters including the Hispanic grandmother and a black children in the local neighborhood. The two protagonists, the Tuttle Twins themselves, are very white of course. The government is framed as the enemy for violating the rights of a local rancher and taking her cows in taxes (two cow theory anyone?) but then the Sheriff somehow is the hero, since he decides the change the laws. It’s all very strange and inaccurate. Trust libertarian propaganda to find a way to support the police even when it makes zero sense…
As of the time of writing this, the live stream had only around 21,000 views on YouTube, though it streamed on other platforms as well. These numbers aren’t huge, which is good, but compare it to this William Robinson talk on the Global Police state that only has 2,204 views (and several of those are me) and this is disturbing:
Watch this instead of the Tuttle Twins. The left doesn’t have an animated kids show (that I’m aware of, if you know of one, please tell me!), but it does have brilliant thinkers like William Robinson. The police are not the heroes in this video.
Far right indoctrination is a grave threat today, especially in the United States. Libertarian notions of free market capitalism are extremely dangerous. The fact that parents are forcing this upon kids is something we cannot take lightly. Howard Zinn should be standard reading in schools, but instead we’re getting whitewashed propaganda and myths of freedom and equality. I don’t have a clearly defined strategy to countering the propaganda yet, but it is definitely something that is on my mind. I don’t see the Tuttle Twins going away any time soon…