Mehdi Hasan knew he had gone viral. The broadcaster and author saw the views ticking up on YouTube; his phone was pinging incessantly. But the realisation that things had become, well, really quite surreal came when an older gentleman approached him at an event in Washington and, in Urdu, said: \u201cI watched you with the 20 crazies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man was referring to the British-American commentator\u2019s appearance on Surrounded<\/a>, a gladiatorial one-v-many debate web series, hosted on YouTube by Jubilee Media. During the debate \u2013 billed as \u201c1 Progressive vs 20 Far-Right Conservatives<\/a>\u201d \u2013 Hasan was asked about his \u201cethnic background\u201d, by a man who the Guardian unmasked as the organiser of two violent far-right protests<\/a>. Another debater laughed maniacally to applause while agreeing he was a fascist. He was later sacked and condemned \u2013 and then raised $30,000 (\u00a322,300) from supporters on a Christian crowdfunding site. The video has now been viewed more than 10m times.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw the massive audience it gets with young people. I thought, well, that\u2019s a good place to be,\u201d says Hasan, who launched Zeteo, his own alternative news platform, last year. \u201cBut it\u2019s really cut through in a way even I didn\u2019t imagine \u2013 it\u2019s been phenomenal for both good reasons and bad.\u201d<\/p>\n Hasan\u2019s near two-hour debate \u2013 diced, sliced and repackaged for infinite resharing \u2013 has propelled Jubilee Media into the mainstream consciousness, sparking conversations about the political and societal impact of new media formats, and plenty of existential angst.<\/p>\n Launched in 2017, the rapidly expanding entertainment company has attracted swathes of younger viewers by transforming polarised debate \u2013 never in short supply in Trump\u2019s US \u2013 into eminently clippable content. The company also produces dating and game shows, but Surrounded \u2013 which pits one expert against a greater number of adversaries, who race to a single chair to make their point on a hot political topic \u2013 is its most notorious.<\/p>\n In recent months Surrounded has gone where few traditional broadcasters would care to tread, with titles including \u201cFlat Earthers vs Scientists: Can We Trust Science?\u201d (31m views), or \u201cCan 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative? (Feat. Charlie Kirk)\u201d (30m views). Its 2024 video with Ben Shapiro<\/a> \u2013 in which a trans man tore into the rightwing pundit in a four-minute rant<\/a> \u2013 was the fifth most-watched election-related content on YouTube.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Jubilee\u2019 s 1 Progressive vs 20 Far-Right Conservatives (ft. Mehdi Hasan)<\/p>\n Its founder and chief executive, Jason Y Lee, who started Jubilee as a non-profit in 2010 after a video of him busking for charity went viral<\/a>, told Variety<\/a> that the company wants \u201cto show what discourse can and should look like\u201d. It could become, he argued, the \u201cDisney for empathy\u201d. But how does its performative pugilism sit with its stated aim to \u201cprovoke understanding and create human connection\u201d?<\/p>\n Spencer Kornhaber, who writes about popular culture for the Atlantic, believes the idealism is genuine, if shot through with ambition. \u201cEmpathy, in the Jubilee context, is standing for voyeurism and curiosity about other human beings,\u201d says Kornhaber. \u201cLee didn\u2019t say he wants to be the new UN. He wants to be Disney \u2013 a for-profit entertainment company that is culturally ubiquitous, will merchandise anything and is known for its ability to spin out franchises.\u201d<\/p>\n Jubilee has benefited from the proliferation of free-speech absolutism, as well as the internet\u2019s shift to social and video, says Julia Alexander, a media correspondent for Puck News. But while it may have started with the aim of transforming negative conversations, it has, she claims, \u201csuccumbed to the hateful vitriol that defines a lot of social media\u201d. It never stood a chance against the \u201cunspoken but understood currency of the internet\u201d, she adds: namely, that rage-fuelled and fearful content provokes more engagement than empathy or actually listening.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that they choose to focus on creating positive content for the internet, God knows we can use it,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I worry, because they are a company that is incentivised to continuously scale and perform better each quarter. They\u2019ll have no choice but to continue doing more of these types of videos and just get more extreme.\u201d<\/p>\n Hasan, who is also a Guardian contributor<\/a>, says he understands viewers\u2019 attraction to the more extreme videos Jubilee has produced. He is the author of Win Every Argument, a book about the art of debating, and argues that traditional media deserted the battlefield, allowing platforms such as YouTube \u2013 now the No 1 source of televised entertainment in the US<\/a> \u2013 to commandeer the space.<\/p>\n \u201cMainstream media did such a shit job of facilitating debate and discussion and [giving a platform to] people with unorthodox views,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I do think it\u2019s a balancing act between the two extremes. Between censorship and narrowing of opinion and no standards at all, no guardrails, just put out anything you like on YouTube as long as it gets clicks.\u201d<\/p>\n He also understands \u2013 even agrees with \u2013 some of the criticism he has faced for going on Surrounded. The writer and disability rights advocate Imani Barbarin argued that while clips of Hasan\u2019s takedown of far-right extremists had been shared by progressives trumpeting his \u201cwin\u201d, an equal number had been shared as proof he lost. \u201cWe live in a meme-ified culture of politics,\u201d said Barbarin, in a post on X<\/a>. \u201cThose moments are quite literally being plucked out of space and time [\u2026] the surrounding context of that moment no longer matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Hasan says if he has regrets, it was that he did not find out more about the people he was facing, arguing that he was not aware such extremists would be among them. But whether he regrets taking part overall? The jury is out.<\/p>\n \u201cI stand by what I said. I think I did a fair enough job as a debater,\u201d he says. \u201cThe bigger meta question is whether the format itself is a problem. Is there value in doing these debates? And I don\u2019t know the answer to that: maybe ask me in five years.\u201d<\/p>\n