Jubilee Media, a media company known for its politically centered YouTube content, is receiving criticism from viewers who question its ethics after featuring highly conservative and controversial figures like Charlie Kirk and Myron Gaines, according to TikTok users who have taken to the platform to express their concerns. Additionally, North Star Radio Producer Casey Kreie recently created a video analysis accusing Jubilee Media of having an allegiance to right-wing values by inviting participants onto its Middle Ground series who debate and preach these topics as a career, thus putting the opposing party, the left, at an immediate disadvantage.
In Middle Ground, Jubilee invites two groups with opposing opinions on controversial subjects and allows each party to discuss their views to, ideally, achieve a middle ground. Each group is typically four to five people who either agree or disagree with a specific prompt, in which they would step forward and elaborate further with those also in agreeance. Following their discussion, the disagreers join the rest of their party and argue their thoughts. The most successful episode of the series is Flat Earthers vs. Scientists, which garnered over 28 million views. Others include Men’s Rights vs. Feminism, Israelis vs. Palestinians, and Trump Supporters vs. Immigrants.
Kreie’s analysis references a few videos to argue Jubilee’s alleged bias. He stated that in Liberal Lesbians vs. Conservative Lesbians, three of the four conservative women have large social media followings discussing their political values. Therefore, these women are heavily politically involved and, at the very least, debate these issues regularly. Similarly, Liberal Gays vs. Conservative Gays features conservative influencers who have built their platform around their political views, one of which helped to pass a bill banning children from receiving gender-affirming care in Nebraska.
“These people don’t just have opinions; they have scripts,” Kreie stated.
Myron Gaines, a fitness coach and content creator, participated in Jubilee’s Fit vs. Fat episode. Similar to Andrew Tate, Gaines is a highly controversial figure known for promoting male dominance by spewing harmful ideologies.
In the episode, Gaines stated there is no excuse for being overweight, that every “fat person is a piece of shit,” and that society needs to stop coddling people and instead “bring back shaming.”
Jake Bell, a senior journalism student at the University of Central Florida, describes Gaines as “red-pilled,” a slang term commonly associated with the women-degrading culture “manosphere.” Despite Jubilee receiving backlash for further platforming Gaines, Bell believes it’s perfectly fine to have this counterbalance.
“First of all, they’re not a news station. It seems to me that it’s purely entertainment,” Bell said. “I think their responsibility primarily is to prevent people inciting violence.”
Lucas Han Le, a plumbing designer II, believes there’s harm in allowing guests like Gaines to elaborate on their beliefs. According to Le, by debating with these guests, Jubilee normalizes these ideologies, potentially serving as an entry point in radicalizing viewers to the far right.
“You create these platforms where their talking points seem equivalent to a more reasonable perspective,” Le said. “These people speak with conviction, and they speak as if this is truth, and if you don’t have the information to retaliate, well, you become victim to it, which is why education is so important.”
In 1945, Karl Popper wrote the book The Open Society and Its Enemies, exploring the paradox of tolerance. Essentially, he emphasizes that we are not obligated to tolerate hateful speech just as we do not tolerate murder. Popper wrote: “We should, therefore, claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, kidnapping, or the revival of the slave trade as criminal.”
YouTuber Just Jaidyn references this paradox during her critical analysis of Jubilee’s content. She explains that speaking with people who preach harmful rhetoric in the name of “hearing them out” is dangerous.
“They [Jubilee] instill this idea that the oppressed have to relive their traumatic experiences with someone who is a part of the group that hurt them, and not just a part of it, but somebody who believes in it,” Jaidyn said. “These videos do not exist in a vacuum, and real people are living with real consequences in a world filled with biases and hate.”
At the beginning of September, Jubilee released Can 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative? (feat. Charlie Kirk) | Surrounded. The hour-and-a-half video featured Kirk debating prompts with college students, such as abortion is murder, trans women are not women, Kamala Harris is a DEI presidential candidate, etc. It received almost 18 million views.
Kirk has been a conservative activist for nearly a decade. In 2012, he co-founded Turning Point USA, a nonprofit advocating for conservative politics on high school and university campuses. He’s written five books, one of which Donald Trump Jr. wrote the forward for, and has been featured in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and others.
Le expressed frustration with Jubilee over its decision to invite Kirk to its platform. Kirk is a recognized conservative figure, and he’s debating… students?
“He is a media-trained personality. He has all the money, all the talking points, etcetera, behind him, teaching him how to engage with these people, and then Jubilee decides to pit him up against college students,” Le said. “Where are the professors?”
Naima Troutt, the daughter of a law professor specializing in civil rights, was one of those college students. Troutt said that during the application process, Jubilee informed contestants that they would not be told who they were debating, just that it would be someone who was politically involved. Participants were also unaware of what topics they would discuss, so Troutt knew she was going in at a disadvantage.
However, according to Troutt, Jubilee did exceptionally well choosing college-aged kids with solid political backgrounds who could keep up. She describes their success as a “David and Goliath” moment because they were a group of “unlikely little heroes.”
“This guy is, like, one of the Republican party’s golden boys, and I f*cked him up in a debate, that’s pretty cool,” Troutt said. “Don’t be daunted by the Charlie Kirks of the world because they’re not that smart.”
Kirk isn’t just the Republican party’s “golden boy,” but according to NBC News, he’s a Christian nationalist. His Wikipedia page states he is a climate-change denier and believes teaching critical race theory is an “indoctrination of our children.” Le describes him as a “fascist,” and according to Troutt, he told another contestant that she could not speak to him because she didn’t have enough “T”- testosterone.
Ultimately, as Bell stated, it’s entertainment. Jubilee Media is a business that needs engagement to stay afloat like any other, a business whose motto is “radical empathy.” However, at what point do viewers decide that with Jubilee’s political influence, they must be held to a higher standard and acknowledge the potential consequences of allowing these guests on their platform?
According to Le, if Jubilee truly has radical empathy, it will take a firmer stance on its political views. Or, at the very least, ensure competitors level up to each other and have a legitimate political analysis. Le stated:
“Let’s bring people on who can talk about propaganda. What does a liberal talking point look like? What does a conservative talking point look like? What does a progressive talking point look like? Why do they have these talking points? What do these talking points serve? Who do these talking points serve? Do they serve the billionaires, or do they serve communities? Like, if you really want to have dialogue, bring on f*cking union leaders to discuss with people why unionization is so important and why it needs to be a larger part of our economy and culture.”
According to Troutt, Jubliee seems to have cracked the code to running a successful YouTube platform: controversy equals engagement.
“I feel like it’s a classic case of don’t hate the player, hate the game,” Troutt said. “Jubilee is kind of a part of this machine that rewards extremist ideologies.”
Perhaps Jubilee Media reflects where we’re at in our society. Right now, we don’t just tolerate these ideologies; we encourage them. In Just Jaidyn’s video, she states, “Ideas are powerful, sharing ideas is powerful, denouncing ideas right away is powerful.” Until viewers decide their dedication to denouncing hate is more substantial than their engagement, they’ll have to settle for ranting on TikTok to express concerns.