Is This the Craziest 'Debate' Mehdi Has Ever Done?
For the viral YouTube 'Surrounded' series, Zeteo's editor-in-chief goes up against 20 'far-right conservatives' - extremists? fascists? - on Trump, immigration, Gaza, and the US Constitution.
“I’m amazed that Jubilee found some of you guys. How do they find you?”
In most of the debates you’ve seen Mehdi participate in, the numbers are even on both sides, the discussion is, more often than not, civil(ish), and the arguments tend to be (mostly) grounded in reality.
This is not one of those debates.
As part of Jubilee’s online series, ‘Surrounded’, Mehdi was the only progressive pitted against 20 far-right conservatives - perhaps a generous and polite description of their actual political leanings, as you will quickly find out, with one proudly identifying as a fascist, and many of them making openly racist and reactionary remarks.
Each of the far-right conservatives took turns attempting to challenge a set of claims made by Mehdi, and one after another, they simply refused to engage in the logic of his arguments. Instead, they responded to facts about Trump’s extremism with extremism of their own, including calling for Mehdi to “get the hell out” of the US and telling him he’s “not an American."
Throughout this episode, you will hear conservatives say that white people in the US are the real ‘Native Americans,’ that Nazis may not have been that bad, and that ‘white genocide’ is real. One of them even tried to defend and justify Israel’s deliberate killing of children in Gaza.
“The conservatives are liberal to me… that’s how far to the right I am,” one far-right debater told Mehdi early on. Our editor-in-chief, of course, gave as good as he got, and brought a ton of receipts, and yet to most in that circle of conservatives, it seemed that facts don’t matter, immigrants are evil, and, oh, and when in doubt, quote a Nazi theoretician like Carl Schmitt!
This ‘Surrounded’ debate was organized and hosted by Jubilee Media, which chose the participants, with Mehdi meeting them for the first time in the studio itself (he was genuinely not aware of how extreme many of them would be!). Mehdi proposed four claims to be debated for 20 minutes each, and then at the end chose one of the far-right conservatives to come forward, for 10 minutes, and make their own claim for him to rebut. That’s the typical ‘Surrounded’ format.
So, sit yourself down, take a deep breath, and watch the astonishing debate above - and, then, if you’re a paid subscriber, do let us know what you think in the comments below. If you’re not a paid subscriber, do consider taking the next step in supporting the work Mehdi and Zeteo do by becoming one today. An annual subscription costs less than the price of a cup of coffee per month! (Or you can donate to us, too.)
In case you missed them, here are some of our latest stories:
“Conner” offers a chilling portrait of a contemporary religious Nazi, and the enthusiastic applause from the audience in support of Conner was equally revealing. Equally striking was how swiftly the red flags appeared whenever Mehdi delivered another factual blow against Trump—demonstrating a conditioned MAGA reflex. Mehdi’s debate skills and command of facts were impressive, deftly tracking the stream of absurdity and skillfully extracting salient points to underscore the moral contradictions at the core of these young conservatives.
I debated competitively when I was in high school, in fact, won the national high school team championship, hosted by the National Forensic League. Mehdi is one of the best debaters I have ever seen. He stays on topic, he defines terms, he engages in what debaters call “direct clash,“ i.e., directly responding to an argument, not running off on tangents — though I appreciated how he would let the tangents run from time to time, and take pains to show how they were off topic. He is respectful, even when registering his disrespect. All in all, a class act. I am proud to share my citizenship with him. He exemplifies what it means to be a citizen.