[Debate] Michael Moreno vs Professor Ryan Wash “space is not real” drama, told better
This is just a recap of events for the HobbyDrama audience: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/e0ceu4/debate_michael_moreno_vs_professor_ryan_wash/
All of the formatting is for reddit, so you might as well just hit that link and see it as it’s supposed to be.
I’ve got a few .txt documents with a bunch of stuff written down on this topic, but I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on that is not related to internet drama, so unfortunately it will have to all wait, and is unlikely to ever get done. My overall personal opinion is that the correct move was to learn from Wash, and that despite what Moreno thinks he knows about the intersectional/postmodernist/K arguments, he’s tripping over so much stuff that is definitely SJW 101 material. It’s especially obvious in claims such as “ 25:22 what is the warrant for adding that element of the definition why do we have that criteria they don’t ever give justifications for this they just have asserted it and because it’s academia” from the interview I’m currently watching: https://youtu.be/QBMVZDk9c4s?t=1523 Like, how would you know if you’ve clearly never read any of it? I’m SO new to this stuff, even after years of hanging around in this crowd, and I can point to a specific chapter that explicitly goes through the justifications in “Why are all the Black Kids Sitting together in the Cafeteria”, and it’s like 3 fucking chapters in Bonilla-Silva’s “Racism without Racists”. Bonilla Silva has a paper on why his definition of racism is better than all the others that I can cite RIGHT NOW https://www.jstor.org/stable/2657316?seq=1. That’s literally 2 out of the 3 books on SJWism that I’ve read, that’s how new I am, and frankly it’s embarrassing how bold your claims are when you’re clearly WORSE. You’re just FACTUALLY wrong, Moreno, and it took literally 30 seconds for me to prove it because I did the tiniest bit of homework, and you didn’t.
I just don’t understand how in that same interview he can say “but like they're getting it from academia this definition didn't just come from nowhere it's not like someone just randomly thought okay I'm gonna want to define racism as powerful equivalent or power plus prejudice oh also academia agrees me that's cool it's like no they went to a sociology class and then their professor told them that they're like oh that makes so much I'm gonna take this in the real world and then demonize white people” and have apparently not even bothered to read anything from sociology Also, this is a logical error, because execution of ideas by laypeople that took a class once is completely different than the “actually good” version of the arguments that are set up in the frictionless world of the ivory tower. Why the fuck am I even bothering to argue with Moreno, when I should just be reading Krenshaw, Davis, Collins, DiAngelo, etc. Or, at the very least, reading Douglas Murray’s Madness of Crowds, which apparently also takes the “read their arguments back to them, and ask if they really think that’s a good idea” strat. https://youtu.be/QBMVZDk9c4s?t=1580
Previously poorly told here: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/dzz2s6/debate_debater_that_released_video_last_year_of/ People were very upset with the linkdump. Hopefully this will correct that issue and make it easier to understand.
First, the **Background/Characters**:
Michael Moreno: Moreno went viral at the end of last year when he [made a video about losing a highschool debate for citing Peterson and Shapiro.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IIm2an8QkI) That video was reported on/tweeted out to the massive audiences of both [Shapiro](https://www.dailywire.com/news/high-school-students-disqualified-debate-after-ashe-schow) and Peterson at the time, sending him near 1 million views. In that video, he makes a handful of claims about how the debate space requires free speech and should not become an echochamber, at one point being accused of psychological violence due to the citations. Since then he has been banned from the debate subreddit and discord for either “doxxing” or “being alt-right” or both, which I think is completely ridiculous, but it does go a way towards explaining his perception of being a outcast for his views. He has also graduated highschool and chosen to go to Weber State, the only college in Utah that has “Policy Debate”, the competitive form of academic debate that is our “hobby” for this particular drama.
Professor Ryan Wash: Wash’s legacy on the debate landscape is pretty impressive, as he was one of the leading innovators of the “K” approach. He pioneered a meta-level intersectionality/”Kritikal” theory debate strategy that is now around 60% of the arguments being run at the highest competitive debate level, in large part popularized by Wash’s 2013 wins that “united the crowns” between the CEDA (the more “social justicey” debate arena) and NDT (the more “pinky’s out”/”rigor is everything” debate arena). In 2014, the CEDA winners were a [pair of black women who had a similar strategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmO-ziHU_D8), and their debate went viral on 4chan’s /pol/ and various anti-SJW spaces as a clear indicator of the decline of western values, or whatever. There was later a [radiolab interview](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/debatable) with Wash, describing the runup to his winning strategy. There is some hints of distrust from Wash towards the interviewers, primarily because this conversation took place after the 2014 viral blowup among conservatives and anti-SJWs. If you’re interested in knowing more about Wash and the strategy that took the debate world by storm, and getting more background on how debaters meta’d into “spreading” aka motormouthing, that’s a great place to do so.
**The main event**: At the end of October, Moreno releases [a new YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjvmIFrX1xQ) that opens with “Our argument will be that space is not real” being said by his Professor. This video takes some care to anonymize all characters, but it’s Wash. Moreno had been secretly recording the debate class he was taking with Professor/Coach Wash, and this video presents Moreno’s case that not only is Professor Wash biased with anti-white racist sentiments, but attempts to explain that the “K” type arguments are nothing but empty sophistry. He was prevented from going to competition with a fairly standard “risk minimization” argument that I’ve seen Elon Musk make about becoming an interplanetary species, and also prevented from using some stoicism arguments he wanted to run. As a result of being benched from competitions, Moreno dropped the class, left the team, and made this video to show people what is going on in university and to try to get the professor removed. From a pure drama standpoint, there’s some really amusing parts where one group of students argues that all white people should be rounded up and blasted off into space to rid the planet of whiteness so that everyone else can finally live in peace, and the first counterargument is “But isn’t that space colonialism? Isn’t it unethical to allow white people to subjugate aliens?”
Shortly after, Moreno takes a tour of reddit, posting his video [Stoicism](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoicism/comments/dnmbob/racist_professor_says_that_stoicism_only_works/) to the Jordan Peterson sub, where he is quickly [met by Crystal](https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/dnfbqj/racist_professor_recorded_teaching_antiwhite/f5d5l3i/), another coach at Weber State, who gets deep into the weeds with Moreno in a lengthy comment chain, as well as genuinely attempting to explain things to various random people. At the time, this was also linked on [enoughpetersonspam](https://www.reddit.com/r/enoughpetersonspam/comments/dnjqtb/this_lobster_doxxing_his_professor/), and probably a few other places.
Back on his Youtube Channel, Moreno releases several additional videos, clarifying his stance in various ways, push back against some of the common questions and complaints he’d seen on reddit/twitter/etc. There is some press coverage from right wing outlets like Campus Reform, Campus Fix, Hot Air, and **the local news**: https://kutv.com/news/local/weber-state-debate-under-microscope-after-secret-recordings-go-viral?fbclid=IwAR3HbD-o_-ERvRMMQWcl-lVjX6oQHYKcoqhOJzfPGJ_pn7FWys-NDnXrCqw
**Aftermath**: Moreno starts to make the rounds on the Intellecutal Dark Web (IDW) circuit. Most notably [Moreno was interviewed](https://youtu.be/c5UEUdp4Shg) by Benjamin Boyce, who is very close with the Evergreen State College/Bret Weinstein thing. In that, Moreno explicitly says that he doesn’t believe his attempts to get a mob to pressure the university to fire Professor Wash violates academic freedom.
Boyce also interviewed a previous student of Wash’s, [Zachary Baker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INhje-BsPIA), who had a very different view of whether or not Wash was racist. In this, we get a lot more of the background information of how academic debate is this incredibly meta’d game that everyone is just trying to win. In this video, there is mention of direct correspondence with Professor Wash, showing that Boyce had originally attempted to get both sides of the debate straight from the involved players, but Wash was forced to decline due to some of the University’s policies. Baker’s defense in his stead is pretty compelling in my opinion, and well worth the watch.
Also on the IDW circuit are interviews with [PSA_Sitch/Adam Friended](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8jO9V_5HHI), [That’s BS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBMVZDk9c4s), and [SomeBlackGuy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsah75Hk_lo), but only That’s BS is important to our story.
To add on, a different student of Wash’s made his own YouTube series, which is **by far the juiciest**. You see, in the original Moreno video about Wash, he included a dropbox of several documents and the full audio recordings, so that people would be able to confirm that Moreno wasn’t full of shit or taking things out of context. I have absolutely no doubt that Moreno believes Moreno’s interpretation of the events, but one lone hero actually listened to all that shit, and came to a very different conclusion. And, in true debate fashion, he has highlighted and excerpted the best evidence and delivered backbreaking counterarguments for your viewing pleasure. The ABSOLUTE MADLAD even made a teaser trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpM4fZqtqTM Throughout the videos, Moreno has showed up to respond via YouTube comments, which is honestly very commendable. Mostly, Tommy believes, as Baker does, that Professor Wash was wholeheartedly trying to help Moreno win, showing how weak and unfocused Moreno’s arguments were, but Moreno was unable to take the criticism. Tommy believes Moreno’s stubbornness and unwillingness to learn is to blame for the events that culminated in Wash’s refusal to let Moreno take his arguments to tournament, and Moreno’s ultimate dropping of the class, and that the events unfolded much more like any other sports team coach/student dynamic than one predicated on race. **[Tommy also basically calls Moreno a little bitch boy](https://youtu.be/4my0ujFzkS8?list=PL3VY65Flxh7m3ckTrkI52-RA2EMCphO4R&t=979)**, so I was thoroughly entertained.
Tommy had also been waging war for weeks on reddit, Facebook and YouTube, including at [PolicyDebate](https://www.reddit.com/r/policydebate/comments/ds5zqq/weber_state_policy_debaters_being_doxxed_by/), [Debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/Debate/comments/ds663w/weber_state_policy_debaters_being_doxxed_by/) and has a long comment about his experience encountering trolls as a result on a recent [SubRedditDrama thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/dzlcxw/student_records_debate_professor_and_shares/f8amkai/?context=3) related to this drama. Most recently Moreno and Tommy have gone back to [That’s BS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvbPfd8vvJI) to have a head-to-head debate. They will also be having another debate with Benjamin Boyce as the mediator soon.
**Final notes**: I am not from the HobbyDrama or Debate communities and have not listened to the full 12+ hours of recorded audio from Moreno’s debate team (dropbox links are now expired, not sure if there’s a reupload). It’s pretty wild how widely hated my previous post was, hopefully this is easier to understand. I took some cues from other recent posts as an effort to lurk moar before posting this time.