Middle East 201

Bonus Study Question

For those of you in class or following along with this week’s reading, here’s a bonus study question. Actually, this is for everyone.

Please watch the video below, identifying mistakes in fact and interpretation. Categorize your answers using the following labels:

• (O) Outright false.

• (I) True but irrelevant.

• (A) False and irrelevant.

• (L) Lie by omission.

• (H) No serious historian would trust that source.

• (F) Logical fallacy.

• (N) There’s no argument here, just a conspiratorial tone of voice.

• (US) This would make sense if Americans were the only people on the planet with agency.

• (V) Apologetics for the inexcusable.

• (R) Ridiculous generalization.

• (F) Needs footnote.

• (FF) I’d like to see your footnote for that one, buckaroo.

• (D) True, but so decontextualized that viewers are made stupider by hearing it. (If time permits, provide an outline of the context that would be required to make sense of the assertion.)

• (C) That’s actually correct! Bravo!

• (W) That’s just not how any of this works.

• (V) Despite the grave tone of voice, that’s not a good argument. Or an argument at all.

• (S) Why is this guy simping for the Ayatollahs?

• (Y) True, but not exactly news, is it.

• (G) My God, the irony is off the charts.

• (BS) Probably sounds impressive if you’re illiterate, but otherwise it’s meaningless.

• (Z) Nice Russian agitprop buzzword you’ve deployed there.

• (J) Okay, so it’s all the Jews’ fault.

In fact, why don’t we have a contest? The first reader who properly labels every point and provides the most useful annotation will receive this handsome trophy:

Send your entries to me by email with the subject heading, “CG CONTEST.” (That’s important. Otherwise it will get lost.)

Enjoy!

(Here’s a transcript, courtesy of The Singju Post, for those of you who find watching it unbearable.)

TUCKER CARLSON: Scott Horton, thank you. So we appear to be in the middle of a war with Iran. It’s on pause, thank heaven, at the moment. But we are in some sort of conflict with Iran. And whatever you think of that, I think it’s important to know how we got here. And that context is wholly missing from most coverage, which is crazy.

It’s a little bit like assessing a marriage the day the divorce is filed. Like, you can take a side or not, but there’s a story there. And the question is, where do you get the story? And you know, Wikipedia is not a reliable narrator. I know it’s full of historians. You’re someone I think I consider honest and well informed. You’ve written a book on it, Enough Already.