RIP Dave's YouTube

Has "naked Gandhi" shot his last video?

Some lessons you learn the hard way, and some hard ways the lessons learn you.

Okay, that sounded better in my head.

For 14 years I had a perfectly fine little YouTube channel. During my David Stein “Republican Party Animal” years I used it for wholly uninspired rah-rah GOP! viral videos. Crap that would run on the O’Reilly Factor, in The Daily Caller & Newsbusters, etc.

That’s how I racked up millions of views, but for me the channel was always an afterthought.

After I was “outed” as David Cole on April 20^th 2013 – and yes, we’re coming up on the 10^th anniversary, but more on that next week – I started having a bit more fun with my channel. I needed to. My mom was dying and I was her full-time caregiver; making stupid little videos was an emotional release. I started doing “mattress fortified underground bunker” rants while guzzling straight vodka (during that period, I was consuming about two liters a day; I’m a very functional drunk), and while everyone loved the mattress-walled background, truth is, the mattresses weren’t for show but to ensure that my ranting didn’t travel through the house and wake my mom (if anyone’s ever cared for a loved one with Alzheimer’s, you know that the last thing you want to do is disturb their sleep when it finally comes).

Then for a while, 2016 through 2018, I did a vodcast with my friend (and former Takimag editor) Ann Sterzinger and a semi-retarded Russian incel named Edwin who provided the comic relief, always unintentionally (to be fair, I could never be certain if Edwin was a retarded human or an advanced mole rat). We had guests like Jim Goad, Kathy Shaidle, Adam Parfrey, “street artist” Sabo, some death metal musicians, and a few others.

But after that ended, I really started having fun with the channel. By then I had about 6,000 subs, and it was a good group of folks. Highly engaged and interactive. So I began doing totally bare-bones vids where I’d sit in front of my green screen (the joke was that I never put anything on it, but later I relented after a rash of viewer blindness) and I’d field questions. I’d get hundreds of questions every video, covering all my favorite topics: Holocaust history, horror movies, actors and casting, the porn girl I was living with, etc.

I hate to admit it, but I really enjoyed doing those vids. My little group of subscribers got to know me, and I got to know them. Most were funny and smart; a few were batshit insane...there were some hardcore Holocaust deniers who’d chime in every week with the same claim that there could be no Holocaust because the human body doesn’t burn; cremation is a Jewish hoax, and bereaved families get boxes of sand while the funeral homes hide the corpses in a giant storeroom.

Yeah, that’s an actual denier position. The burning of bodies on outdoor pyres in India is also a hoax (paid for by Jews); the “bodies” are mannequins.

That too is an actual denier position.

Because of those people, I did several detailed videos explaining the fallacy of Holocaust denial. Sure, lots of “scholars” have tried that, but I do it better because I know denier arguments front-to-back, and I don’t argue against denial only to then argue in favor of the opposite rigid orthodoxy (“Six Million, not one less!”).

The comment sections of those anti-denial videos were filled with people thanking me for dissuading them from going down the denier path. As I said, lots of YouTubers speak out against denial, but because I’m so often falsely tagged as a denier, and because deniers to this day...

…and…

…uh…

…oh for fuck’s sake…

...cite my work for having “red pilled” them, to hear the case against denial emanate from my mouth makes a bigger, better impact than if it came from the encrusted cat anus that passes for a mouth on Deborah Lipstadt.

But beyond the Holocaust stuff, what I enjoyed most was having fun with my subscribers. Bitching about the plumbing in my house, doing impressions (my “racist Jimmy Stewart” was a particular favorite, and my “naked Gandhi” nauseated many a fair maiden), and talking about horror films.

The videos were stupid and goofy. YouTube was a place for me to be stupid and goofy. And that’s all it was. Me having fun, my subscribers having fun. I’m not Bronze Sargonhammer Moldbug or whoever those monologuing bores are. I don’t wanna talk about weighty matters like some kind of self-important medieval prophet. I just liked having a place to sing and be stupid (sometimes shirtless).

So it never really occurred to me that the channel would be pulled. Post-2013, there was very little politics on it, and what Holocaust there was was anti-denial.

Sure, “racist Jimmy Stewart” would use epithets, but satirically. And part of the fun of naked Gandhi was that I would quote Gandhi’s actual statements about blacks, which were surely unflattering, but they were his words not mine. I always figured that at worst YouTube would pull one or two videos. I never dreamed that my entire channel would be liquidated, as whatever infractions existed were minor.

But three weeks ago I clashed with Media Matters (column here), and after I severely pantsed their head shogun Eric Hananoki, he went running to YouTube and as a result my 14-year-old channel was pulled in its entirety, with no warnings, no strikes, no examples given of content violations, no appeal.

Gone, for good.

People are like, “go to Rumble! Odysee! Bitchute!” But you don’t get it. I don’t care about having the videos up; I miss the folks. That nutty, unique little group of (as of March 2023) 6,600 subscribers who made those Q&A videos so damn fun.

The thing about YouTube is that it isn’t an echo chamber. I don’t want my videos on some “rightist” platform where all I’ll get is “rah rah team!” bullshit. I loved the eclectic nature of my YT followers. Some only wanted to ask questions about movies; my top ten horror films vids were among my most popular.

So I bid a final farewell to that channel; I’ll miss it.

And Eric Hananoki can ban as much content as he likes, but he’ll still look like every extra in every Toho film who screams “Ahhhh! Here comes Godzilla! Run for your rife!”

“Rodan and King Ghidorah come too; let them fight!”

He’ll still be dime-a-dozen, still the guy women never see in a bar, even if he’s sitting right next to them. Even if he’s buying. Even if he’s on fire.

And the irony is, by pulling my channel, YouTube erased the most effective anti-Holocaust denial videos online anywhere. Nice going, assholes.

Mind you, as the small infractions like racist Jimmy Stewart were always buried an hour into my rants, I do love the idea that Hananoki sat through hours of me bitching about my toilet before striking infraction gold.

Now the question is, should I do videos here, on a site where (at least for now) Media Matters holds no sway?

Well, that’s for you, my subscribers (some of whom were part of my YT family), to decide.

Thankfully (and without my knowledge), my entire YT channel was preserved on AltCensored, a site that archives channels in danger of being pulled.

Apparently they, far more than I, knew my eventual fate on that platform.

So take a look at a few of ‘em, if you’re so inclined, or if you have an hour to kill, or if you’re just curious if they’re really as stupid as I make them out to be (they are). On my desktop, AltCensored videos sometimes need to be refreshed when you first click on them (occasionally they’ll say “media can’t be played,” but after a refresh, they’re fine).

For vanity’s sake, I’ll point out that the viewer count on each video reflects the number when AltCensored’s bots imported it, not the eventual tally. Each video I did would end up with about 2,200 views (not counting the old O’Reilly ones that garnered hundreds of thousands).

Honestly, with only 6,600 subs and roughly 2,200 views per video, I kinda thought I’d be able to fly under the radar of YT’s fanatical censors.

But a man like Hananoki, accustomed as he is to shouting about incoming danger, certainly ended that dream.

“Ahhhh! Here come David Core! Run for your rife!”

Here’s the link to the AltCensored archive. The recent vids are better; you go too far back, it’s just warmed-over GOP pap.

Let me know in the comments: should I start doing videos here, or leave that phase to die with my channel?

I will abide by your wishes!

(Dave’s Substack is free and always will be. But you can show your appreciation via Buy Me a Coffee!)