Jubilee Media debates take the internet by storm
Jubilee Media is a YouTube channel known for its debate-style videos where people from different groups compare views and attempt to find a middle ground. A new video titled “Can 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative?” was released on Sept. 8, followed by “Can 1 Woke Teen Survive 20 Trump Supporters?”, released on Sept. 20. Both of these videos were full-length debates and have raised awareness and brought attention to young people’s opinion of the presidential candidates.
The two highlighted individuals of these videos were Charlie Kirk and Dean Withers. Charlie Kirk is a conservative political activist, best known for founding the organization “Turning Point USA,” which unites many young students in support of Former President Donald Trump and other conservative values. Kirk is well known for attending college campuses and debating students. Withers is a liberal arts college student and political activist, well known for his online debates concerning political and social issues.
In Jubilee’s video with Kirk, he debated twenty-five liberal college students on four topics of his choosing and one of theirs, particularly surrounding commonly debated right-wing topics. The discussed topics were “abortion is murder and should be illegal,” “college is a scam,” “trans women are not women,” “Kamala Harris is a DEI candidate” and “Affirmative Action is constitutional.” Kirk debated for these arguments while students debated against them, except for the last, which was the opposite. The college students were given red flags to raise when they wanted their representative to change, and once over half of the students had their flags raised, the debater would step aside and a new person would go against Kirk. The same process applied to Withers’s video, in which he debated twenty Trump supporters on five topics of his choosing and one of theirs, mostly surrounding Vice President Harris and former president Trump. His topics were “Donald Trump is a racist,” “Donald Trump doesn’t care about the American people,” “Kamala Harris would be a much better president than Donald Trump,” “conservatives don’t actually care about family values,” “Democrats are more patriotic than Republicans,” and “abortion is immoral and not justified,” again with Withers debating for the first five topics and against the last.
These debates took the internet by storm, with people all over YouTube and TikTok posting their own reactions. Although Jubilee provided fact checks for many statements made, many viewers were still commenting on the lack of fact checking for things said by all parties.Many rules were set in place, however many viewers were upset with how the debate style was carried out. In both videos, people were prompted to raise their red flags when they thought the representative was not doing an adequate job or wanted to change people. Viewers and participants say this turned into people simply raising their flags in order to have the chance to speak even though a productive argument was happening. The debates also were unstructured in terms of who and how long someone could speak. For example, Maren Carrere, a student in Kirk’s debates, says, “No, I’m speaking” several times to stop Kirk from talking. A similar thing happened in Withers’s debate where one woman continuously interrupted Withers. This has made many viewers voice their opinions on how professional debates should be carried out, what structure they should follow and why teaching young people to debate is critical.
