The War on Christmas: A Measured Response

ah happy halloween pizzanos buckle up because tonight i'm definitely not gonna get this video finished on time [Music] happy holidays friends enemies frenemies and splenomes paris bomber guy here christmas christmas [Music] christmas okay right i can explain i recorded the halloween segment of that video as a funny joke about how it takes me a while to make videos and then i actually missed last christmas so here we are in the apocalypse let's all watch last year's christmas video this year now that it's done this means i technically got a seasonal video out on time which means i'm good at my job [ __ ] you i'm just chilling out here in my house enjoying the best that the clearance aisle had to offer this fortnight funko pop tower recon specialist okay this tasteful coralline mug you can drink out of coraline's head start off your morning routine with coral uh not dishwasher or microwave safe and this friend's makeup set where every color is a reference to a show that ended 15 years ago fukuyama was right history ended in 2004 when rachel got off the plane and yes i'm actually going to give this as a gift at my family's secret santa this year i guess you know who got you your gift luke i hope you've seen friends i also hope you'll stop being such a ross but the sad thing is when i give my family these gifts which are as good as they deserve on christmas day i won't even be allowed to say merry christmas as i do it because of the liberal communist atheist conspiracy to destroy the christian religion by eroding its traditions political correctness whoever that is literally says it's racist to say christmas now at least that's what i reckon is happening and that's the same thing as checking our culture is being crushed underfoot by radicals who want to destroy polite society to achieve their own ends oh those hecking gosh darned flipping bastards christianity comes under attack there's a war on christmas they outlawed merry christmas a few years ago and you know it christmas becomes ever more about shallow displays of political correctness happy holidays not merry christmas kids no longer have christmas vacation holiday vacation christmas parties holiday parties the war on christmas whoever's watching this right now think of something you love that brings you a sense of peace and decency and they will somehow link it to the patriarchy and the rest of their politically correct nonsense christianity is being bigoted against we're under attack you couldn't even say merry christmas at walmart obama sent merry christmas a few times but he still made sure to neuter the christmas cards and also the christmas decorations at the white house but what we're seeing happening has been a recent phenomenon the war on christmas the war against religious liberty of course it's a war on christmas christmas has lost all meaning thanks to cultural marxism oh it's those bloody cultural marxists ruining everything again that's why society's getting worse it can't possibly be because of the policies of the people who keep getting elected but don't worry peace loving citizens i'm here to lead the charge in fighting back against these imaginary ghosts so grab a slice of anonymous holiday meat and settle into your festive season anderson shelter before the political correctness bombs hit because it's time for the war on christmas oh i won [Applause] [Music] in most western countries the winter season plays host to many religious and cultural traditions some people say the phrase happy holidays exists as a way of trying to be more inclusive to other people's traditions in the modern era but this is inaccurate i did literally five minutes of googling and found happy holidays being used as far back as 1863 and who knows how far back further it would have turned out to have gone if i'd done any more research it turns out that people like to have more than one phrase to say it's why people put season's greetings on stuff this isn't blasphemy it's language did you know we've been writing x-mas instead of christmas for thousands of years the ex isn't trying to secularize the religion by removing the word christ or something it's actually the greek letter kai which has been a christogram an abbreviation of jesus christ for about 1700 years or something i don't know i'm not a religion studier an extremely popular song from 19 theologian that was the word a very popular song from as far back as 1942 was happy holiday you might know the song or at least one of its 65 million covers it was originally sung by bing crosby who was by all accounts a pretty devoted catholic bing was one of the faces of christmas for decades his christmas radio broadcasts were hugely popular that song was the opening and closing theme of his christmas sing with bing program which aired every christmas eve for almost 10 years so sure happy holidays is a useful catch all term since there are a lot of holidays going on makes sense to use it in some contexts but saying it isn't actually a new phenomenon it's been a normal thing for christians to say to each other for many years and that piece of knowledge is one of the finest gifts i can bring parampa pump pum peace order these are all indisputable and quite interesting historical facts but not everyone puts the truth on their christmas list some people want to open their stockings and find an explanation for why they're angry all the time the big originator of the war on christmas theory is bill o'reilly i couldn't find footage of bill's original war on christmas segment but handily the script bill reads from in these segments was posted as an article on fox's website the segment was titled christmas under siege in which he made exaggerated claims about how various holiday parades were doing away with christmas floats new york has a holiday tree instead of a christmas tree and how macy's stopped greeting people with merry christmas they said a different thing o'reilly then went on to fantasize that this was part of a plot to diminish people's faith in religion saying that quote unquote secular progressives wanted to destroy religious oppositions to their policies such as gay marriage abortion and drug legalization and to bring about this horrible nightmare future it was important to destroy religion in the public arena thus christian displays like christmas must be scaled back because the connection with judeo-christian beliefs is bad for the secular agenda ah yes the famously judeo-christian belief in christmas the secular movement has influence in the media among some judges and politicians americans will lose their country if they don't begin to take action any assault on judeo christian philosophy should be fought organizations like thomasmore.org and the alliance defense fund in phoenix are fighting back but need your help the usa cannot defeat terrorism and any other evil without a strong traditional foundation that clearly defines right from wrong the struggle today is not about christmas but about the spirit of our country bill is writing about how macy's say a different thing now it's basically the conservative version of slam poetry take something that technically has happened and then contort it until it's an attack on the very soul of our society and we need to defend ourselves and that's why we need your attention and the money we'll get from our sponsors for getting eyes on their peppermint flavored play-doh or ribbed for her pleasure coffee machines bill's early rhetoric forms the basis for all the madness to come it's always stores not saying christmas as much stuff like that holiday wish list oh no god is dead and we have killed him the other side outnumbers them i mean christian judeo christian people who believe in that philosophy outnumber the seculars maybe six to seven to one oh my religion has more subscribers than yours by the end of his tenure bill was straight up just saying the names of companies which were trying to slit the throat of christmas barnes and noble best buy foot locker the gap the limited nordstrom shopping on amazon this year's list was handily provided to build by the american family association the afa website is a series of articles about how only the left does violence because they've never heard of mass shooting statistics lgbt people are the real bullies because uh a woman refused to accept her children were trans and they stopped wanting to talk to her hallmark and chick-fil-a are the devil now because they showed a lesbian wedding in a commercial or something and how veggie tales is back oh and also tons of war on christmas [ __ ] verbatim stealing bill's old stick three guys you've never heard of discuss the secular push to scrub away the root word of christ in christmas uh there was a war on christmas we were noticing some people may say well it's not really a big deal is it well we thought it was part of the secularist push to scrub all references to christianity from our culture yeah yeah yeah we've heard all this before the secularists want to destroy christianity and they're doing it by rewording a few things at christmas but the afa unlike fox don't have advertisers they survive through donations and selling things on their website and you bet they've got a way of capitalizing on the war on christmas they want you to buy a button that reminds people that jesus christ exists well it tears the christmas season and uh we've got these buttons that we are offering honestly how can people know you're a real member of the jesus fan club if you aren't repping his holy merch you can get your 10 pack of these buttons for 15 and just go to afa.net visit afa store afa he's the one afa store.net afa store.net which brings us to the afa's yearly naughty or nice list one of the most deludedly self-righteous lists i've ever read and i've read my top 10 games of the decade list both versions of dark souls 2 are on there out of spite [ __ ] you we are not friends click on any naughty company name for details and contact information they want you to send emails to some guy who works at office depot to try to get them to write christmas on things more if a company has items associated with christmas but did not use the word christmas then the company is considered as censoring christmas that's the rubric if you sell me a cracker at christmas but you don't call it a christmas cracker you're a secularist terrorist who's trying to stab the christmas family for many years bill with the help of the afa was the reigning champion of the fight to save christmas he was the only man standing up to defend christian values which are the reason he knows right from wrong so well but then in 2017 he got fired for allegedly sexually harassing at least six of his female co-workers so bill wasn't exactly a great follower of his religious teachings was he it's very clear why the war on christmas argument is so attention-grabbing it's telling people that their religion is under attack and we need those traditional values or our country will fall to terrorism or other evil people will pay attention to your show when you say things like that which leads to increased viewership and higher value of your advertising spots you might even get people to buy a button or get some wealthy cretins to donate comical amounts of money to you however i don't think this alone gets to the true core of why this belief survives so well in the minds of more extreme conservatives so we're gonna have to go deeper and then it says in brackets inception horn noise oh i wasn't supposed to read that maybe to understand this line of thinking further we need to go in search of even more ridiculously false and silly versions and see how it functions there first i want to start off with central theme which is the war on christmas oh hi paul in this classic video from 2017 which is a yearly re-watch for me it's just a hilarious shambles in so many ways paul joseph watson spends 15 minutes of what's left of his life and you only get one life this is it complaining that there's a tesco commercial with too much diversity in it they called it a christmas ad or at least it was supposed to be that didn't have any symbols of christianity in the ad whatsoever it did have a gay couple hijabi muslims all this other goth no actual christian symbol because of course we can't have that anymore can we at least like put a vicar in it or something a cross anything christian it's a christmas app for god's sake all right fine paul i'll see what i can do ah approved for broadcast in infowars land wait paul also stipulated that a religious figure would suffice okay how about this hey guys that was the college of cardinals on the phone i've just been elected pope there is that religious enough for you and if that's not good enough i bet i can undo some more catechisms ah but hang on a second it's easy to make fun of paul he's made sure of that but let's seriously look at the idea there is some kind of manipulation happening with the lack of christian iconography in this commercial because this begs a deeper question which is should christmas commercials prominently display christian stuff like crosses and priests because i haven't seen a convincing argument that the answer to that question is yes because even in commercials long before the supposed war on christmas you can still see a seemingly deliberate choice not to explicitly invoke christianity even when the intended audience would be mostly christian because it turns out christians have been having this exact discussion for a long time now even before anyone knew what political correctness was historically plenty of christians have found that their religion being tied to a product being sold to them is kind of crass and disgusting there's a fox and friends segment from a few years ago that highlights this discrepancy in an amazing way they had a real catholic priest on to discuss the war on christmas but despite how hard they tried to push him he wasn't annoyed that things weren't christian enough you'd be fine if it said merry christmas but it doesn't it says happy holidays or things or things are simply red or green well it's not so much that that bothers me it's more that the the consumerism and the pressure to just shop shop shop he was much more concerned with how consumerism had eroded the religious meaning of the holiday it's it's more the consumerism i think that's a problem for me all right so let's take a look at some of the stores that have taken christmas out of their mottos j crew you can see the fox people had really planned for a very different kind of interview they'd prepared a graphic all about the mottos that didn't say christmas anymore but not everyone is interested in fabricating a culture war for attention some people actually want to think about things i i guess it bothers me that they're using uh sort of uh overtly christian uh tropes and themes like believe and marry and things like that that are associated with christmas but they're using it to just market goods i don't think it's intentional i think it's just a way to appeal to as many people as possible but it really kind of denudes uh the holiday of any sort of religious import and it seems that for many devout christians the concern isn't that commercials aren't christian enough it's the exact opposite that commercials are leaning a bit too heavily on christian ideas and themes in order to sell products but the catholic church is notoriously full of commie scumbags it just hasn't been the same since the byzantine papacy you don't have to get it don't worry sometimes you write jokes just for you now i'm not a fancy big time christian boy but maybe commercializing the religious aspect of christmas in order to sell people things is bad and the more generic holiday themes in stores and commercials is a good way of respecting christians religious traditions and it's been that way since long before 2017 paul's whole narrative here is based on the assumption that commercials loved to invoke christianity until twitter invented social justice but as we've seen this assumption is objectively false and inventing an imaginary past that's been stolen to justify present foolishness is a real racial move regina phalange facts and data are inconvenient for paul so he doesn't like to bring them up but i saw something interesting that i thought was relevant so i'm going to talk about it while i have the chance there's a great paper by the national center for social research which has been gathering data about how people approach their religion for about 35 years now and what they discovered is quite interesting in the last 30 years less and less people identify as christian at least according to the most accurate data this corresponds with an increase in people identifying specifically as unreligious or atheist since the 2010s there's been decisively more non-religious people in britain than christians even most of these people probably still celebrate christian traditions they're a common part of english culture i'm an atheist and i still celebrate christmas but all these folks probably aren't putting crosses anywhere in their houses and really who's to say that that's what christians do not everyone thinks that celebrating their faith requires putting a cross in their house people's relationships with their religion aren't that simple there's no christmas handbook mandating you hang a cross up for the yuletide in fact the actual christian handbook seems to prioritize worshipping in private unlike those darn pagans who love to babble on and on what a weird thing to specify i guess what i'm trying to say is for most people this commercial is an accurate representation of how people behave at christmas it's just not about throwing crosses around you know but while we're on the topic of representation i can't help but notice the specific lack of lightsabers or delicious space milk anywhere in this commercial even though according to census data almost one percent of britain's self-identify as jedi probably not after this christmas though no stop it no paul's rant kind of goes on for a while he doesn't really have a point he's getting to so much as he's mad a commercial has muslims in it for a few seconds he's mad it's a twitter moment and some people are applauding the diversity he's sure that a youtube video being brigaded by his followers and getting a couple of thousand dislikes indicates actually it's very unpopular and so on you can even see in his face that he's struggling to really articulate a decent justification to be angry of course there was a backlash to the backlash which basically uh peaked yesterday with twitter twitter came out and said this was one of their featured stories in their twitter moments which of course is on the home page when anybody goes onto twitter imagine this being your life it's stuff like this that really gives context to tweets where he's mad at black celebrities talking about racism calling them sanctimonious crybabies saying britain still has racism is annoying what's way more important than pressing is the tesco christmas commercial he's also very sure this stuff isn't bill o'reilly nonsense anymore it used to be but it's real now it's no longer some bill o'reilly meme when it's actually happening he keeps saying this over and over it's like boomer dubstep i remember 10 15 years ago this is something that bill o'reilly these are the neocons would constantly bring up people would uh debunk it and say it's a it's a false concern it's being exaggerated there's no war on christmas what are you talking about this is crazy oh fast forward to 2017. everything bill o'reilly said yeah that was crazy but fast forward to the tesco christmas commercial the thing about info wars videos which are recorded live on the actual show the ones where alex is also there and paul's just calling in is that paul is fundamentally not a very good live speaker i'm not saying this because i disagree with his political views or to make fun of him he's a poor public speaker it's just not one of his skills and that's fine some people are just too self-conscious for it that's why he writes his videos in advance and edits them with snappy cuts and always is yelling it makes his work hold people's attention but he just can't maintain that energy in a live setting worse his clear anxieties about what he's doing start to come through when the spotlight's on him too long sometimes he workshops his tweets in the pub with his friends before he posts them no i'm serious he shows the tweet on his phone to his friends and asks is this okay should i post it looking for some kind of approval with an anxious look on his face and it's a tweet petulantly quoting stormzy out of context in order to imply that he hates all white people and his remaining real-life friends nod and go yeah sure man i don't get why it's a big deal to you but i guess it's for your job right and then one of them sends me a message about it later but anyway my point is paul isn't that great at this whole live entertainment thing and there's a reason alex jones uses him as sporadically as he can on his shows he's only got about five things to say and he has to keep saying them over and over so eventually alex realizes he needs to jump in and starts interrupting him with points of his own it's a christmas app for god's sake but here's the kicker it's like having a christmas time where you drag santa claus behind a car yeah they've been newspaper articles about it all week well paul this is cultural appropriation this is what the left's all about is overriding taking control of everything dominating culture all the all the headlines like oh you're so offended at seeing muslims it's like no i'm offended at the facts or i'm perplexed at the fact there's nothing have you had saying this this holiday season support ramadan at your local halal stores and then it showed guys in knight's templar uniforms at the muslim store the muslim store the other big claim he's making in this war on christmas bit also is to do with tesco paul went to a tescos and noticed to his horror that not enough things said christmas so he whipped out his phone and took some pictures to complain about on twitter later there's a funny bit in this video where alex says he should have documented it not realizing paul already had they've got these christmas cards alex they call them they've renamed them they're now called charity cards paul you gotta go back in and get some footage of this well i've got the pictures and i tweeted them but people said just incredibly poor communication going on at infowars the tweets themselves are really something was in tesco earlier their entire i can't do his voice their entire christmas shelf cards wrapping paper confectionery not a single mention of the word christmas not a single one christmas cards are now called charity cards pathetic truly pathetic then he added tesco yeah this is tesco speaking i'm sorry paul we'll put christmas and before all you pointy heads claim they're called charity cards because some proceeds go to charity that's always been the case but they were still called christmas cards it's not just the commercial at tesco has capitulated to politically correct douchebaggery and then there's a picture of some crackers and they're just called crackers you know because that's their name they're not even calling them christmas crackers anymore the war on christmas used to be some far-right evangelical bill o'reilly jesus christ paul we get it you don't have to say it that many times truly saddening after all these years tesco have finally started the war on christmas for real there's no christmas anywhere in tesco anymore not a single one however eagle-eyed viewers well frankly id viewers who take a look at the photograph for more than a nanosecond might start to notice things paul somehow didn't notice when he was literally standing there looking at them for example if you zoom in on one of his own pictures you can actually see merry christmas written on some of the crackers some people went into their local tesco and found that christmas was written everywhere some people pointed out that these charity cards were in a display marked christmas cards and still others looked at packs of these charity cards and found that some of them say merry christmas on them tesco also has christmas all over its website where it happens to refer to the charity cards as charity christmas cards the website also refers to crackers as christmas crackers not a single one these things were mentioned to paul immediately in response to the tweets when he made them a few years ago and good fun was had by all laughing at this sad middle-aged man taking pictures in tesco to whine about by far the funniest bit of this video is when they cut to a feed of paul's tweet thread about the tesco stuff and when they're scrolling down they accidentally scroll to the tweet pointing out christmas is literally on the packaging and then whoever's doing the screen capture panics zooms out and scrolls down one more and it's the one pointing out christmas is on the website and they just have to awkwardly fade back to paul saying it's not all made up this is definitely real now i mean this is not some kind of bill o'reilly meme from the early 2000s anymore this is actually happening no i get it paul it's not just bill o'reilly anymore you made that point already move on this is a deliberate orwellian process of eliminating words changing language for the purposes of some lame nod at political correctness okay some of you might be confused at this point so let's just get this straight the far left who as we all know run tesco are trying to undermine culture because they're worried about sounding racist so they're doing this by not letting stores put christmas anywhere except in the stores the products in the stores and on the website they're sorted you see it's the marxists around it again i went into tesco on saturday went to the christmas section of the store not one mention of christmas they don't even mention the word chris paul of course they did that's how you know it's the christmas section that's why every year i know exactly where the elves are you can't hide from me now there is one minor thing worth talking about here one teensy tiny thing that paul might not have thought about which is that one of the reasons why christmas isn't written on everything is because you already know it's for christmas all the christmas stuff is only in stores in the christmas season for you to buy for christmas they're neatly arranged in special red aisles so you know where to look for the christmas stuff putting christmas on every single thing is just pointless this isn't even to do with political correctness it's just basic store design they don't feel the need to acknowledge christmas on the label because christmas is being acknowledged at every other point in this transaction oh no the label of this wrapping paper doesn't say christmas wrapping paper help i'm being tricked into forgetting my religion exists oh christmas is written all over the [ __ ] wrapping paper oh well i guess i'll celebrate christmas again this year god the cultural marxists had better get their act together if they're going to win this war there that's probably structurally stable right now one might say ah it's not fair to go after an old infowars video what if infowars have spontaneously become smart and rational now and cleverly moved on from a topic that they got obliterated on when people looked at their own photos well yeah they did they dropped the topic and decided to move on to doing real journalism i'm kidding they did another one this year alex jones goes to the texas state capitol to witness the city of austin's christmas tree and expose the anti-christian agenda hidden in plain sight the banner beneath the tree that reads happy holidays merry christmas ladies and gentlemen merry christmas and it's about jesus christ it's not about the big corporations and the chi-com atheist and the globalist i think the existence of videos like this really crystallizes what the war on christmas is actually about [ __ ] artists like infowars have to play a very careful game to survive and make money infowars can't make money as a news website because they don't actually do any journalism so no one comes to them for that and they can't easily sell advertisements on their website or videos because for unknown reasons barely anyone wants to be associated with them it starts out with don't use the n word well i don't use that so okay and then next it's oh don't say merry christmas say happy holidays yeah those are the same thing i never thought of it that way imagine a shoe company looking for somewhere to advertise and seeing one of these videos and it's alex jones going remember when they tricked us into not saying the n word anymore well happy holidays is just like that they're probably gonna say no but alex jones has this problem which is that he really really likes expensive watches he loves to wear rolexes on his show and according to court records he once bought four of them in a single day the cheapest one i could find him wearing cost around 12 000 so obviously he needs a lot of money to live and how's he going to do that why he'd have to develop some kind of business model that revolves around exploiting gullible people so their best bet is to target a very specific demographic in this case conservatives with a conspiratorial streak validate them by telling them that they're right and then going hey if you want to become even more powerful check out our pills also get all you need to completely stuff christmas stockings this year with our christmas mega pack so it starts with don't say merry christmas and it ends with they create an orthodox centralized system as well that is going to be welded into the new fascist left west and out of that marriage you will have the communist socialist system of islam merged with that i mean this sentence doesn't make sense it just doesn't it's a list of key words but just making fun of how dumb this all is would be to ignore why he still does it and why it works on topics like this i find myself constantly coming back to a great paper by colmac hurley a principal researcher at microsoft about nigerian email scams and how they function you know how the nigerian email scams usually have very poor language usage and grammar and even say they're from nigeria even though if you google nigeria one of the first results is email scam and that makes them an obvious scam to most people this is actually part of how the scam works because their targets are the sort of people who won't notice the writing problems because they tend to be the sort of people who end up giving them money if you're smart enough to not fall for that part they don't want you wasting their time and they've quite smartly selected you out of the process by writing poorly since gullibility is unobservable the best strategy is to get those who possess this quality to self-identify infowars is following a similar business practice alex jones's objective is to make money to sustain his expensive lifestyle where he eats watches or something and to do that he needs to target an audience who will be fooled into buying his overpriced stuff so by talking absolute nonsense yes jones is turning away everyone with half a brain but people with half a brain generally are quite hard to sell the world's most expensive protein bars ultimate fish oil and uh ultra 12. jones is deliberately laser targeting the kind of people who would hear a phrase like the communist socialist system of islam and think wow that's bad that's really bad that's three bad things i hate how do i stop that thing that must be happening because the man with the nice watch said it was which leaves them open to being sold the idea that keeping infowars afloat by buying their stuff is basically the same as showing you're a hero fighting back against these very real problems and for the people who fall for it it is a real ego boost which creates a loyal fan base full of repeat customers nobody finds these videos convincing but the people there for find them reassuring what you call weird conspiracy theorists who need validation some people call a marketable demographic but to keep this machine going jones has to find increasingly outlandish things to say to hold these people's attention and come up with reasons to keep supporting him and fighting the info war and that means getting more and more ridiculous as the infinite eternal threat only gets even more infinitely threatening not only does this dance get increasingly difficult they've also discovered that you can't just say lies about people it turns out if they say ridiculous [ __ ] about real people they risk being sued for libel or defamation as is the case with the sandy hook parents who are in the process of [ __ ] destroying jones in court for telling his sizable audience that the parents of murdered children are all just paid actors and it was a fake shooting so the war on christmas is a real boon for jones because he can just go hog wild about whatever comes into his head just make up whatever and occasionally cut to footage of a tree being pushed over or some random act of vandalism and explain how they're all connected by a web of destruction by the secret muslim communist anti-family coalition and it's so incomprehensible it can't even be considered defamation of anyone this is the kind of nonsense safe zone infowars has to live in to avoid destroying itself by getting owned in court which is why for legal reasons i'm required to mention that story i told earlier about paul joseph watson is not true i made it up those dms are fake i thought it would be a funny joke to show how shitty it is to make things up about people however even though i made it up it definitely did happen the war on christmas is a safe bet for jones to cover since there's no obvious tangible negative effect on real people except his audience whose minds he is completely ruining but that's their choice as what some french people might call a connoisseur of infowars garbage so i guess it's me whose life they're ruining this is my favorite kind of the schlock they do where alex just grabs a cameraman and goes out in public and just makes a bunch of noise and runs around annoying people and getting to arguments with whoever he can get his soy stained hands on sometimes he forgets that trying to sight data opens him up to being punk'd and accidentally offers statistics that can be easily rebuked with simple explanations and then they have to leave it in because that's the best footage they got that night there is a war on christmas there is a war on christianity did you know that more than half of all religious persecution in the world is against christians i believe it i mean we're the largest groups well so statistically if there's attack con origin there's going to be a lot of attack on christians [Music] once that kid politely shakes his hand and leaves jones starts losing it just screaming merry christmas into the void talking about how free he is from control merry christmas we're not surrendering ladies and gentlemen america and the world is awake freedom is rising and merry christmas from infowars.com [Music] but then he remembers that the point of all this is to push his products so then there's another few minutes where he calms down and talks about the great deals you can get at infowarsstore.com there's a war on christmas there's a war on america there's a war on our free speech there's a war on the family's very existence those very same forces that have it out for christianity have it out for infowars and have it out for you and your family but we need you to go to infowarstour.com this christmas we need you to fund infowars by getting great products you need we've got huge sales going right now and this completes the selection process after spending 15 minutes literally just running around and screaming at people anyone still watching is probably a prime target for his advertising so you get three whole minutes of him explaining to you how cheap the deals are everything's still more expensive than the equivalent you can find at like any other store but that's not the point the point is you're supporting the info war you're saving the world with free speech and fight bad men i'm so glad i can fight back against control and be free by purchasing iodine so we find here that the war on christmas is a decent way of getting very gullible people to pay attention long enough that you can direct sell them diet supplements and we've seen how for people whose business model involves strain close to legal action something ridiculous and silly like the war on christmas is kinda a gimme you can accuse the bad people coalition of secret christmas crimes and you're safe because imaginary people you made up can't sue you however we still haven't fully discovered why the war on christmas specifically has such a strong appeal to the kinds of sad people who make up infowars's customer base or why conservatives see such an appeal in believing christmas is under attack in the first place so to find out more i uh got bored and decided to invent a new recipe for eggnog well there you have it the war on christmas is over and i guess christmas won because it turned out that there never was a war on it oh well i think eggs go bad pretty quick don't they oh my tummy and brain i microwaved this earlier to warm it up but now there's definitely bits of paint loose in it thanks neil i think i'm crossfaded on paint fumes and alcohol oh no it's happening i've lost enough iq points that i think iq is real and that means i'm [ __ ] up enough to watch a prageru video prageru is a youtube channel funded by oil and fracking barons and other related think tanks which likes to masquerade as a university honestly you don't even need to look up the topics they cover if you find a list of their major donors you can pretty easily guess the entirety of their video output they make five minute long videos which feature next to no research or evidence but they have a lot of money to spend on infographics and getting special guests to read their scripts and that's basically the same thing as being true this one on the war on christmas is called just say merry christmas this is the usual stuff we've seen before but presented in a new way i mean literally it's just a repurposed bill o'reilly script complete with an aside about how it's the secularists fault the opponents of merry christmas and other uses of the word christmas know exactly what they're doing the opponents of christmas what the [ __ ] they're disingenuous when they dismiss defenders of merry christmas as fabricating some quote war on christmas of course it's a war on christmas or more precisely a war on the religious nature of america when i first watched this video this image kept coming back to me of a person who says happy holidays and laughs at people who think the war on christmas is real morphing into an enemy combatant why was this imagery necessary why take people laughing at you for believing a made-up thing accuse them of knowing exactly what they're doing and then reveal them to be trying to destroy america's nature and then i realized that this is the actual core of the whole thing this image actually explains more about the conservative ideology than anything else we've covered here you see dennis prager and ideologues like him have for quite a while been encountering this one small problem which is that their ideas are wrong this is why if you watch any of prageru's other videos they're full of completely hysterical imaginary graphs most of which don't even label their axes what even is this and often they make outright false claims and tell clear lies sometimes they fabricate ridiculous quotes and put quotations around them as if to say look at this ridiculous thing people who disagree with you say but the quote is something they made up no one actually said this they made it up and attributed it to some imaginary enemy to try to convince you that this is what people who aren't like you believe so you must be right this constant lying and misrepresentation of reality makes my point for me to get you to believe what they believe they have to lie because the truth simply isn't enough to support these beliefs the bulk of prageru consists of strategies to get around the fact they don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to the truth and this is where the war on christmas and similar conspiracy theories comes in because when a belief system is on shaky ground when it comes to the truth it needs something else to maintain it extra beliefs and fantasies to prop it all up otherwise doubts and anxieties start to come in what if i'm wrong what if i've missed something what if other people are laughing at me what better way to put a stop to these feelings than to convince yourself your enemies are trying to destroy your culture even your holidays that they're even doing it on purpose and know they're doing it because they're the bad guys and you're the good guys instantly all your doubts and fears that you've missed something all critical thinking can be dismissed life stops being about reason or evidence and starts being about the war to protect your ways from the bad ways right and wrong don't matter anymore they are conspiring to destroy you when you don't say merry christmas you're stealing my holiday from me they even have a little animation where a kid beats up santa claus this is how persecuted the far-right need to convince themselves they are to escape from the much simpler conclusion that some of the things they believe aren't true everyone has to be out to get them even by saying happy holidays you're kicking the [ __ ] out of their dreams imagine something you enjoy something you love the bad guys hate it they'll call it racist and patriarchal and try to destroy it you're smart you think good things their ideas are weird and strange it's okay it's okay you can go back to sleep you don't have to think too hard about the fine details of your beliefs if you also think people are out to get you for believing them you don't have to think about why the evidence or data contradicts you the bad guys are out to destroy your culture so they probably made it all up is that we're so busy in america trying to promote tolerance but this tolerance is entire is tolerating everything except christianity you look at christians as narrow-minded bigots but the opposite is actually true christianity is being bigoted against we're under attack if you're against my intolerance of others you're attacking me conservative christians must be the real victims of bigotry in the world i'm not wrong there's just a war against my beliefs how convenient and it's once again the person of the lord jesus christ that is under attack but the bible says no weapon formed against us shall be able to prosper so we're going to be all right tell that to constantinople baby prager ends his video by summing up his victim complex for me by not wishing me a merry christmas you are not being inclusive you are excluding me from one of my nation's national holidays so please say merry christmas and christmas party and christmas vacation if you don't you're not inclusive you're hurtful private military contractors on the other hand are fine what the [ __ ] ah what a delightfully unbiased video no political agenda here this course was made possible by a generous donation from reagan.com a great example of how this imaginary sense of victimhood excuses flaws in the rest of the belief system is present in this video prager briefly sums up what he calls the inclusiveness argument let's see how he summarizes it that merry christmas or christmas party or christmas vacation is not inclusive now what he's saying kind of makes sense here doesn't it if there's going to be an event during the holiday season that's traditionally called a christmas party but some people who don't celebrate christmas might also be invited to it some people might argue that calling it a holiday party is a more appropriate name than a christmas party now personally i don't think it really matters what you call a party and i also don't really think many non-christians will decide not to go to an event simply because it's called a christmas event but i do see the overall point of the inclusiveness argument it is maybe a little more appropriate to name for a gathering of people and i don't really think there's anything wrong with naming something like that in the hopes it makes some people feel more recognized and included it's just not a big deal the argument seems fairly decent to me so what is dennis's rebuttal to this argument well his problem is he doesn't really have one he simply asks who is really being excluded and uses this to segue into an actually unrelated final point which we'll get to later but his actual rebuttal is provided in how he presents this argument which is that this entire argument is just a trick you shouldn't listen to at all let's look at how he sets up the inclusiveness argument in the video activists on the left will eventually seek to remove christmas as a national holiday now the left doesn't announce that its agenda is to thoroughly secularize american and european societies instead they offer the inclusiveness argument the leftist secularists an all-powerful cult are trying to change the nature of america but they can't just walk around all day saying i'm evil and want to destroy christmas so they came up with this argument instead but it's not their real reason so you should ignore it the argument might sound reasonable but you shouldn't think about it because they're bad and have an evil agenda this masks the actual truth which is that the inclusiveness argument is actually fairly cogent dennis can't give a rebuttal to that because it's a really simple small point that just makes sense but admitting that means conceding that sometimes it's nice to make people feel included which destroys the entire war on christmas argument so instead he reframes the argument as a fake trick by a group of people who want to remove religion from society who are only pretending to want people to feel included and this is how persecution complexes function in making people retain their ideas if you make a decent enough argument that they can't give a rebuttal to they can just fantasize about how it's a trick this inclusive argument plays on americans highly developed sense of decency they're just trying to play on your sense of decency as opposed to expecting you to do a really basic decent thing it's all part of the secret secularist plot by the secularists to bring about their state religion secularism most people do not realize that the left believes in secularism as fervently as religious jews and christians believe in the bible i'm sorry what that doesn't make any [ __ ] sense dennis what does that mean who the [ __ ] do secularists pray to [ __ ] aquaman i did it i did the joke i did the thing again do you remember it do you remember [Music] so there we have it i think we figured out the purpose of the war on christmas sometimes it's to grab people's attention either to sell advertising space or to directly sell supplements soy pills and buttons but on a deeper level it's a fantasy of victimhood that helps to support an underlying belief system that doesn't have facts to support it otherwise you're not wrong they're just out to get you who's they it's whoever you want it to be oh and here's one last quick incidental thing that happens to tie all of this together prager's old war on christmas video fills time by talking about how a jewish person wrote white christmas that's why it's not surprising that it was an american jew irving berlin who wrote white christmas one of america's most popular christmas songs in fact according to a jewish musician writing in the new york times almost all the most popular christmas songs were written by jews apparently all these american jews felt quite included by christmas so there we go non-christians will never feel excluded by christmas because 70 years ago a jewish person wrote a song with christmas in it dennis thinks this is a great point and you can tell he thinks it's great because he wrote it into the script for this year's video about christmas as well and in perfect melting pot fashion irving berlin the son of a rabbi wrote the definitive yuletide song white christmas ah it's such a clever point you might as well use it twice unfortunately for dennis irving berlin didn't just write exactly one song about christmas then disappear into the void he actually lived on and wrote a few songs that might even be a bit inconvenient for dennis's argument he also composed a little ditty called happy holiday that's right the same guy behind white christmas also wrote the other incredibly iconic christmas song the one that opened and closed bing crosby's big christmas show for many years apparently irving berlin wrote happy holidays into his lyrics because that's a completely normal thing to say and the use of the phrase has nothing to do with political correctness incidentally white christmas was composed for a film called holiday inn which also has happy holiday on the soundtrack this fact isn't particularly meaningful here but i thought it was funny dennis prager obviously knows all this if he knows about irving berlin he surely knows his other popular songs and their titles he's not stupid he knows it's normal to say happy holidays at christmas it's impossible to miss this fact even if you do basic research hell even one of the articles he cites in the video mentions that white christmas was written for holiday inn but for his videos he performatively pretends these facts don't exist because prageru is a fake university designed to sell a broken belief system so its donors can continue to profit from the status quo and at the end of the day isn't that what christmas is all about no well it shouldn't be but it is wow with motion graphics you can straw man people easily great idea dennis but what are you gonna do if other people start doing it to you oh his mouth fell off merry christmas everyone see i can say it and i'm king of the male feminists so clearly there's no problem here other people do have holidays around now though so happy holidays might be more appropriate in some circumstances anyway if you're angry and you need a reason to be angry to do with christmas go to therapy just go to therapy if you're angry and you think it's because lesbians are in a christmas thing you're not actually angry because people are corrupting christmas or infecting your traditions and culture you're not even angry because of political correctness or leftism you're angry because you feel expected to be because you've built a cage for your mind and the solution to that is to change things about yourself sorry there isn't anything wrong that needs to be fixed with the world that's you i wouldn't be so sure harris fortnight tower recon specialist you're alive yes thanks to the magic of christmas i'm real now and i'm going to take you on an adventure of discovery until you convert to whatever kirk cameron thinks is christianity you know like in reactionary christian movies what is this a nostalgia critic video we're not doing that we're not parodying a whole movie genre now this is the end of the video we're done but movie parodies are automatically funny if you know what they're referencing so it's easy content and you make videos slowly enough already this way half the script writes itself yeah for the first few minutes maybe but i can't sustain a whole you know i'm sick of this bit too we're done that's the end you can't just end a video because you gave up on your own storyline happy winterinemas everybody christmas [Music] well we did it we technically got a seasonal video out on time join me in october 2022 for the release of this year's halloween video but seriously it's christmas time for some classic christmas honesty thanks a lot to everyone who supports me doing this stuff thanks so much to my patrons whose names should be somewhere around here right now for funding this ridiculous thing that i do with my life my patrons have been able to see this video almost a year in advance i put it out when i finished it after christmas so i figured they could see what i was doing patrons normally get to see videos early but usually like a few days in advance not normally that long oh and the names go in the credits like this i also do bonus videos and behind the scenes type stuff i did a really high effort video about the graph that i made for this video which is probably the best video i ever made and barely anyone's going to see it so that's nice it's been kind of amazing being able to spend all day writing and researching videos and editing and googling how to make nice looking graphs and for that to be my job has been kind of amazing i had a really bad year in 2018 i got out of this very long depression spiral and didn't really know what i was going to do with my life after that and i came out in early 2019 to discover that i somehow had this audience of people who thought what i did was was good and meaningful and friends who actually seemed to like me as a person for once and as bad as things have been in the last little while i can't shake that feeling of just being happy to be here so thank you so much i i don't think i'll ever be thankful enough but thank you well that's the christmas video i hope you liked it i mean this video kind of had a weird ending didn't it that slow zoom joke is a bit niche i don't think many people are gonna no wait stop [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow frozen much i know it's cold in here but come on guy now that's what i call [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: hbomberguy

Views: 1,427,413

Rating: 4.9056096 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: jbZo4x0NbbI

Length: 53min 57sec (3237 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/voice-of-hermes]

Err..wait. So we're NOT fighting a war on Christmas?!

Fuck. I've been doing it wrong.

[u/SlaugtherSam]

I like the argument that a jew wrote white Christmas. Because surly a musician only makes what he believes, not what he's contractually obliged or what makes the most money.

Also I feel like that the fact that a lot of jews made christmas songs would be spun very differently from the 1488 crowd of prageru's fanbase...

[u/sweetaskiwi]

I recognized the reference! He did the Aquaman thing again

[u/camycamera]

Fun video but I feel like this video was from like 2017. I mean his RWBY video was also a mess that you could tell was entirely by him (iirc), and so was this one, but his New Vegas video where he had an editor, even though it was longer, felt far better paced. Although it’s because he made this video a year ago so I guess that makes sense.

I was laughing a lot at the start, idk I just feel like it lost steam at the end and kept going once he made his point, so it felt scatterbrained. I’m sure if I watch his older stuff again though I will think the same, to be fair. But he already took down Paul and the gang in those older videos too, so this one felt like retreading old ground.

I hope if his New Vegas video is any indication it’s more of that quality than this one.

The 2020 bits were hilarious though. It’s great that he’s back!

[u/EclectricOil]

Enjoyed the video, I'm glad he's doing ok mentally. "War on Christmas" seems like a light topic though and anyone that doesn't watch PragerU or Infowars probably knows they are jokes. I did like the breakdown of how Infowars is like the email scams and the parallel to conservative victimization though, that's pretty spot on.

Maybe it's just that I'm part of the choir being preached to, but I was hoping for some of my own ideas to be challenged. This feels pretty close to "punching down" to the people being taken in by Jones and Prager. He attacks the stances that the people saying them (imo) don't believe, which I think only attacks the people that fall for the grift. I say this as a dedicated Knowledge Fight listener so I have no problem with making fun of Alex and his ilk.

I feel like this is a departure from his more grounded science/political content (Flat earth/climate change) or the Sargon-style videos making fun of people that clearly drink their own kool-aid.

[u/RonaldRaygun2024]

I actually feel bad for Paul. He's so bad at everything he does.

It was basically this scene from The Simpsons.

Then I remember he's fash and stop feeling sorry.

[u/mikeydale007]

How the hell do pajama watso and hbomb have mutual friends? He's mentioned it before.

[u/CliffExcellent123]

Another part I love about PJW's nonsense is how his Christmas tweets were posted on the 11th of November so they probably hadn't got all of their Christmas stuff out yet anyway

Tesco hate Christmas so much that they're selling Christmas stuff over a month before Christmas day

[u/BrnoPizzaGuy]

It's funny, when the graph came up showing the decline in religious identity in the UK, I literally thought to myself how cool and well-done it looked visually. Then at the end he's like "I have a patron video on how I made that graph!" lol. I guess it's a sign to pledge.