A partial debunking of every false claim in fraudulent YouTuber James Somerton’s videos.
Timecodes by user @6ViolinRed
0:00 – Introduction
3:45 – 1. Gay porn invented Skype
4:45 – 2. J.K. Rowling once said you could magically gender-transition at Hogwarts
5:50 – 3. The reason Hitler murdered Ernst Rohm is because he was fat
6:56 – 4. England had a homophobic propaganda campaign against Italian tourism because Italy was turning their kids gay
9:44 – 5. Disney stole from gay charities
10:34 – 6. Marvel Comics writer Allan Heinberg did a PR blitz to force his editors to let him write gay characters
13:22 – Bonus Claim: Michael Bendis also wasn’t allowed to write gay characters
14:51 – 7. Jeffrey Dahmer inspired violent hate mobs
16:47 – 8. The SS was “teeming with homosexuals”
17:19 – Bonus Claim: The Hitler Youth was also run by homosexuals
18:35 – 9. There was a big outrage about the gay sex scenes in “Red, White & Royal Blue”
25:38 – 10. The life and death of gay porn star Joey Stefano
29:54 – 11. Tolkien was “nearly laughed out of” Oxford because LTOR was “soft”
30:58 – 12. The record box office for a recent Chinese blockbuster was obviously faked
33:46 – 13. Disney cynically exploited Howard Ashman’s death
36:46 – 14. “Rocky Horror” saved 20th Century Fox
37:40 – 15. “Legend of Korra” was moved to streaming because it was too gay for television
39:10 – 16. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was controversial because any kissing or touching was taboo lyrical content
40:11 – 17. Weird Dahmer fangirls are shipping him with his first victim
42:20 – 18. Disney CEO Bob Iger has a strong pro-gay rights record
46:12 – Bonus Claim: Bob Iger wouldn’t let Valkyrie be gay in “Thor: Ragnarok”
46:50 – 19. The origin of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s “Good Omens”
48:20 – 20. “Yuri on Ice” was censored because of its time slot
49:35 – 21. The case against lesbian author Radclyffe Hall was thrown out because men were uncomfortable talking about lesbianism
50:24 – 22. The Nazis invented our current body standards
55:49 – Brief tangent about co-writer Nick
59:31 – 23. NAMBLA appropriated images from Disney’s “Aladdin”
1:00:54 – 24. ’90s gay rights activists weren’t fighting against employment discrimination
1:04:29 – 25. China keeps jacking up their cut of the profits from imported Hollywood movies
1:05:49 – 26. Disney princesses are marketed to funerals
1:06:50 – 27. Dying AIDS patients kept a “Beauty and the Beast” rose by their beds
1:08:04 – 28. Bob Iger was working on the DCEU because he hates Bob Chapek
1:09:39 – 29. Major industries spend most of their budget buying and burying new technology
1:10:54 – 30. Pirates were philanthropists
1:14:24 – 31. The gay panic trial of John Parisie
1:18:55 – 32. Stan lee loves this Scarlet Witch moment
1:20:33 – 33. Janelle Monae came out because you didn’t understand “Pynk”
1:25:16 – 34. European peasants were paranoid about their friends and neighbors being vampires
1:29:27 – 35. The Hitchcock Thing
1:32:43 – Bonus Claim A: Katharine Hepburn didn’t believe gay people existed
1:33:53 – Bonus Claim B: There was a deleted dickpic subplot in “Birds of Prey”
1:35:08 – Bonus Claim C: J.K. Rowling says Draco is pro-trans
1:35:42 – Conclusion
source
The Night of Long Knives was the nazis purging any actual socialist rhetoric from the "National Socialist" party, a thing that EVERY leftist should know and reflect on.
The fact James said its cuz the main dude targeted was gay and fat is just….wow….
Im a bisexual woman and I’ve only watched a few of his essays, was never subscribed or a fan. The way he talked about (straight and bisexual) women made me uneasy and I disagreed with a lot of his points. I also was puzzled about his historical takes because not only are they wrong but it seems like he’s purposely making a „how can I make this about me“ argument. Like, the take that Ernst Röhm was killed because he was fat and/or gay seems like a parody of 2016 Buzzfeed political videos. And maybe, while queer history should be told, maybe not everything is about white queer people and fatness and maybe that’s not always what to focus on when talking about literal Nazis?
Never did I voice that in comments or forums tho, because I didn’t want to burn myself and be labelled homophobic or any other kind of -phobic. I was genuinely concerned that maybe I was wrong and just bigoted. I’m pleased he’s been called out now.
Re: "I Want To Hold Your Hand" being controversial
Look up Shave 'Em Dry
This is the era of everyone learning how to research with having so much information at our fingertips, I am highly impressed that people that don't even specialize in this type of content, are creating it.. because.. "DO BETTER HUMANITY" and I love it. I am all for it, I love everything about it.
Yeah and he's a sexist jerk also. I used to like his content, until I heard some of his little comments about women. I had to stop watching, it pissed me off so much.
What gets me here – especially after the "I'm kinda fucking lazy and don't want to look things up, so I just kinda take something and ruminate about it" quote – I think it explains a lot of his misogyny too. Because that's what all the old school philosophers did. Instead of investigating and thinking clearly about the world around them (Question – "Why can't women read or manage money?" -> Answer: "Because we do not teach them too and refuse to let them out of the house.") ,they would just take their own biases and observations (Bias: Women can't read or manage money!") and make conclusions based on that ("Women are inferior!)
And it seems Somerton operates the same way when it comes to many things – including his misogyny. He DECIDED that "oh, there are all these dumb straight girls shipping male characters in every show!" – so when he reports on something like Dahmer, he doesn't even bother looking up whether this is true – he just says they ship him with his first victim. He has DECIDED that straight women like cheesy gay romance as long as it doesn't have sex in it so he says that (and DECIDES that the author of Love, Simon MUST be a straight woman – either because he didn't bother looking it up or because he thinks she's just lying because another big misogyny thing, the classic: "Women do not have enough of a genuine interior life to genuinely be something on their own, there always needs to be an outside influence pushing them".
I have never heard of Somerton before hbomberguy's video, but I have heard that claim about using magic for gender reassignment in the past. It's wild if this fact factoid originated from him. Though it's also possible that someone else misattributed a fan theory to Rowling and he just took it as gospel. I mean who is going to research and fact check? Certainly not James, he doesn't seem to have any idea what those things even mean…
When Todd In The Shadows has to step away from music to make a video about you – you know you fucked up.
Also another thing about Americans supposedly not being impressed with the Soviets physiques: Even in very unsubtly anti-communist American movies, Russians are seen in very imposing way because how incredibly fit they are. The image of a Soviet agent that it is so well toned that you could grind meat on them is incredibly common in movies, books and games. Compare it to Nazis, you almost never see a muscular Nazi in most movies, especially in Hollywood. How do you, just based on pop-culture alone, come to the conclusion that Americans weren't impressed by Soviet fitness at all?
as someone with a keen interest in history, of pretty much any kind, I think the vague idea of US soldiers being jealous of German soldiers could vaguely be derived from the proliferation and popularisation of gay leather culture, because, from what I know of it, it was HEAVILY influenced by the overly macho culture of the US military, though the popularity of Marlon Brando in the Wild One also factored into it. HOWEVER, the serious proliferation of the hypermasculine gay man can also be observed as a direct reply to the codified camp or feminine gay man.
The connection of buff Nazis to issues with gay body culture is not only strenuous at best, it also ignores the entire timeline of leather culture and the idea of how counter-culture works. Now, I'm not too well read on the specifics of how the militaries of World War 2 were run, but I sincerely doubt that the hierarchy and posturing in the military was somehow not a significant reason for the proliferation of the ideals of masculinity and body image. On top of that, one of the only real times that the US would've seen Somerton's "buff Nazis" en masse would probably have been the 1936 Olympics, because, as Todd rightfully pointed out, Germany, and Europe at large, was not exactly in the right place for soldiers who were well drilled and muscled. Every city and effectively every country from France to Poland and Russia and Finland to Italy would have been varying degrees of wasteland.
The only thing I can think is that Somerton somehow does not have an understanding of leather culture, even in it's most popular guise in metal music, even though it was Rob Halford, a gay man, who brought that entire type of fashion to metal in the first place.
Somerton is a disgrace for his clear disregard for history, whether of marginalised groups or one of the most influential and devastating periods in the history of the world.
As someone who watched and enjoyed a lot of his videos I just feel so betrayed and also angry with myself that I didn’t pick up on a lot of his misogynistic and transphobic takes. Thank you so much for this video, I had no idea just how much I “learned” from this man.
😮😅😅
I hadn't watched more than like two or three of his vids and subbed for the heck of it to have something on in the background while drawing and such. Watching the clips from you and Harris now I'm like, "My God, how did I not see how irritating this guy is even without knowing all of this shit he pulled?". Lol
I watched several of Somerton's materials because he seemed to approach topics I had yet to consider. He seemed well-spoken on the topics, but I had trouble following him sometimes. I thought I probably misunderstood, with English not being my first language, plus the video was in the background of whatever I was doing, but now I see that those ideas were never his own, just a mix of stolen material. So, of course, they didn't make sense; he never bothered to understand them in the first place, not to mention explain them in detail to us.
Nick's comments def gave me flashbacks to another youtuber's vetting process. If youre presenting your video essay as a source of information, you have a responsibility to make sure it's accurate, you can't just pull it from your butt 😩
I hate the way Somerton talks. I mean like his tone. It's… I'm trying to think of the word. Condescending? Smug? Holier than thou? I can't put my finger on it, but I hate it.
I just love how this video is now flagged as "not appropriate for under 18-year-olds" when the whole spiel is "be critical of consuming your news from online sources with no accountability"…
The Hitchcock thing is probably an extrapolation of his “bomb under the table analogy” (he is wrong though it’s not subtle). It how Hitchcock would build suspense in his movies. Cut to the “bomb under the table” repeatedly during a scene and play with your expectations of when it will “go off”. It still bad analysis to compare it to the other art forms he did.
What really gets me, aside from all the horrific bs, is that like… isn't there enough bigotry and homophobia in the world? why does he feel the need to make up *more*?
1:40:27 I can't exactly say that it's true but it's part of how I realized I am bi
i don't think i will ever trust turtlenecks again knowing what they may be hiding
On the Red, White, and Royal Blue front, I think calling the movie excessively sexually explicit is absolutely absurd. I've seen a lot of queer films/novels in my time, and I really don't feel that it even includes that much sex? The book is far from erotica, and I was actually surprised the film didn't include more sex scenes.
Why is this video age-restricted now? Yeah, the subject matter is sort of grim, but that can't be it, can it be?
"come straigh to italy, leave gay " would be a hell of a tourist manifesto
the part about industries burying new tech makes me think he saw like 10 minutes of "who killed the electric car" and decided that since chevy did it the once it's gotta be happening everyday
The difference in energy between Todd’s and hbomberguy’s videos OML. Harris’ feels like watching a man’s descent into madness, where he starts off as a perturbed and passionate but still reasonable fellow out to right some wrongs, but throughout the video he increasingly has to stop and laugh hysterically because he cannot believe the amount of BS he’s witnessing, growing increasingly furious – still managing to pull it together towards the end, but definitely having taken some psychic damage.
Todd, on the other hand, comes across like a college professor who’s taken it upon himself to fact check the essays of the worst student (students, if we include Nick) he’s ever had. Tries to give ‘em some benefit of the doubt, but yeah, no – the disdain and loathing is clear. But above all, he’s just… tired. SO tired. And left to question… why. Why? Why do it – well, money and a desire for clout, obviously, but beyond that, just… why.
I was originally gonna ask if you could put the links in, but I can just type them lol.
Not to belittle you I just had a joke idea this man isn't low hanging fruit my man is a whole ass bush lol
I don't know but to me this James Somerton guy seems like the greatest comedian on Youtube. Also I'm willing to say that maybe he's claim "That boring gays survived" was meant to be a joke? I mean it sounds like it's suppose to be a joke.