This doesn't need to be a link to some random dude's video because there's a perfectly fine Wikipedia article about Bertrand Russell and his views.
He held a variety of views and I hope this particular dude doesn't intend to paint Russell as source of truth.
> In 1929, he wrote that people deemed "mentally defective" and "feebleminded" should be sexually sterilised because they "are apt to have enormous numbers of illegitimate children, all, as a rule, wholly useless to the community.
No comment. Now we just need The Authority or a committee to decide who is feebleminded (maybe based on religious belief, why the hell not) and we're good to go. For the good of humanity! 5 years later: no one from the authority or committee member relatives was judged feebleminded, so coincidental.
> On 20 November 1948, in a public speech at Westminster School, addressing a gathering arranged by the New Commonwealth, Russell shocked some observers by suggesting that a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union was justified. Russell argued that war between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed inevitable, so it would be a humanitarian gesture to get it over with quickly and have the United States in the dominant position.
As Russian I'm surprisingly on the fence about this. In hindsight maybe cold war was actually better but considering how it's developing lately...
> In the Middle East, Russell suggested that the West avoid opposing Arab nationalism, and proposed the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force to guard Israel's frontiers to ensure that Israel was prevented from committing aggression and protected from it.
It's interesting how he wants to oppose one people's nationalism and but not another people's nationalism.
> He also suggested Western recognition of the People's Republic of China, and that it be admitted to the UN with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Also tongue in cheek:
> Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression
That guy should read about Muslim conquests circa 600.
He was wrong about some things and right about Zionism. This didn't need to be a random dude's walk through Russell's wikipedia page because there's a perfectly fine link here:
"No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?" -- Russell
I believe people here are capable of finding an article on Wikipedia on their own. I just highlighted that this person had some opinions that are pretty out there and implying "this is true because this guy said so" is not a good logic.
It's telling that a bunch of my comments were flagged. (The guy who pointedly suggested that I must be a Jew to have this view however wasn't.)
Honest question: Were they expelled, or did they flee? Or some of both?
I think the difference matters. "I'm not living with those people in charge" and then fighting for the better part of a century to throw them out, gets less sympathy from me than "they threw me out".
On the other hand, I have some sympathy for Cuban exiles, so maybe I'm inconsistent...
>Honest question: Were they expelled, or did they flee? Or some of both?
Both, the fleeing was a direct result and the very intention of the massacres to achieve the ethnic-cleansing[1] of Palestinians. Those who fled were not only refused back onto their land and homes, but were also shot at and killed when they tried going back into their homes.
BTW, this trend of sharing videos of some rando fluencer reading someone elses article aloud? Almost always they put their own (or worse...) bias into it, hurting the understanding of the naive viewer. You know how to read, just read it yourself first.
People will cut and paste and just take/use the pieces of facts/opinions/history that support their political opinions, and ignore the rest and the whole context.
It happens with dead people as well as with people currently alive. Some get cancelled, some don't.
It's largely arbitrary.
EDIT: i'm not taking sides in this specific topic, just a comment on the pattern of behavior that i see across various discussions.
> People will cut and paste and just take/use the pieces of facts/opinions/history that support their political opinions, and ignore the rest and the whole context.
That was my reaction to the video and why I think posting the Wikipedia page would have been much better.
He held a variety of views and I hope this particular dude doesn't intend to paint Russell as source of truth.
> In 1929, he wrote that people deemed "mentally defective" and "feebleminded" should be sexually sterilised because they "are apt to have enormous numbers of illegitimate children, all, as a rule, wholly useless to the community.
No comment. Now we just need The Authority or a committee to decide who is feebleminded (maybe based on religious belief, why the hell not) and we're good to go. For the good of humanity! 5 years later: no one from the authority or committee member relatives was judged feebleminded, so coincidental.
> On 20 November 1948, in a public speech at Westminster School, addressing a gathering arranged by the New Commonwealth, Russell shocked some observers by suggesting that a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union was justified. Russell argued that war between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed inevitable, so it would be a humanitarian gesture to get it over with quickly and have the United States in the dominant position.
As Russian I'm surprisingly on the fence about this. In hindsight maybe cold war was actually better but considering how it's developing lately...
> In the Middle East, Russell suggested that the West avoid opposing Arab nationalism, and proposed the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force to guard Israel's frontiers to ensure that Israel was prevented from committing aggression and protected from it.
It's interesting how he wants to oppose one people's nationalism and but not another people's nationalism.
> He also suggested Western recognition of the People's Republic of China, and that it be admitted to the UN with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Also tongue in cheek:
> Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression
That guy should read about Muslim conquests circa 600.