What do you think of his arguments?

Mr. Terry History is a few steps away from becoming Comrade Terry Dialectical Historical Materialism

Terry radicalization arc coming soon

Mr.Terry will soon gain class consciousness

Now we just need a Yugopnik reaction and the prophesy will be complete

One interesting thing to note that I don't think JT mentioned, on the subject of surveillance, police oppression and suppression of opposing views: After he made a YouTube video where he called the CIA a terrorist organisation, he got a visit from a couple of agents of the Department of Homeland Security who told him they had been informed that he was fostering "anti-American sentiment" in his videos.

the pipeline expands

Down the funnel we go - Yugopnik

I like the fact that he tries to be transparent and clear about what he is saying.

Listening honestly, it is hard not to say "fair point" to a lot of the things he says.

Some of his comments make me respond "well... I'm not so sure I would draw that conclusion". But he provides enough context and details for me to be able to read up about it.

Something important to note about JT/Second Thought. He is an American making content aimed at Americans so alot of his rhetoric and framing is trying to focus on the general american perception of a given topic. That along with the US being the hegemonic power is why he uses the rhetoric he does usually

“Tankie” is a vague term, as others have mentioned it comes from the repression of the Hungarian revolt, but it expands to mean a lot more than that. A lot of the time it refers specifically for people who defend the USSR or similar “authoritarian leftist” countries, and especially if somebody is seen to be sympathetic to figures like Stalin or Mao over figures like Khrushchev, Gorbachev, or Deng. It means different people but generally think of it as “people who identify strongly with/rhetorically defend the USSR”

It is contrasted against other left wing people who are more “”anti-authority”” such as Anarchists, Libertarian Socialists, or even Trotskyists. An example of how this term means different things to different people is a Trotskyist may use the term to demean people they view as “stalinists”, yet to an anarchist, they would view the Trotskyist as a “tankie” as well since Trotskyists consider themselves heirs to the legacy of Lenin (who anarchists view as authoritarian too)

As a Vietnamese, so someone who also live in a country with police system not too different from China, i think one of the main reason why police lethality is so low in china (i doubt it 0) is simply because they don't have as much access to immediate deadly force. Similar to the UK, regular officer don't carry firearms on patrol, at best they carry night stick and maybe taser. In case of a emergency like a suspect having a weapon, some officer might be deployed with firearms located in the police station locker, and in case of a extremely dire situation, the equivalent of swat is deployed. In the case the officer have a gun, rarely do they shoot due to all the complicated procedure the officer have to go through to proof that shooting was the last resort and only available course of action, elsewise risking being charged with murder.

new Second Thought arc lets do this

A note on the whole "regime" vs "government" thing. You mentioned you saw the difference as being less political diversity vs more political diversity, however, there are a few points you may want to consider that show it really is about who's an ally of the United States and who's not.

First, you never hear "Turkish regime", "Saudi regime", or "Israeli regime", and yet the first two are clear dictatorships, and whether it's the labor Zionists or Likoud in charge, it's still a fascist apartheid ethnostate where the oppression and genocide of Palestinians shares wide support and speaking out against it leaves you ostracized in Israeli society, and refusing to join the Israeli Occupation Force gets you sent to jail.

Second, even in liberal so-called democracies (using liberal in the traditional sense, what Americans call conservative are just conservative liberals and the opposite of conservatism is progressivism, not liberalism), the illusion of political diversity is just that, an illusion created by playing tug of war with people's lives in order to keep ideas that might actually threaten the liberal capitalist order out of the political consciousness. For example, in the United States, the republicans and democrats both agree on their jingoistic foreign policy, keeping corporations entrenched in government, holding 'private (not personal) property' as sacred, treating businesses as people with the same rights as anyone, constantly handing more and more government functions over to private corporations, and building up the surveillance and police state that fuels the prison-industrial complex and brutally represses any real threats to their power. The illusion of difference is created by taking "issues" that often shouldn't even be issues in the first place but are safe and don't threaten the underlying system no matter which way they go, and using agitation, astroturfing, scapegoating, and fear-mongering to dial up the contention around these issues to the nth degree. The news media also plays into this since they're owned by the same massive corporations that use their massive wealth to influence and control politics, and can use discretion to only hire journalists that agree with and reinforce the liberal worldview in their reporting. Meanwhile queer people, black and indigenous people, women, and immigrants are all being hurt by increase in bigotry, but the democrats, who play the role of the voice of reason, don't actually care about any of these marginalized people and only give them crumbs and lip service while they fear monger about republicans all to keep marginalized people supporting the democrats instead of looking for options to change the system that constantly fucks them over altogether.

Third, while liberal democracies purposely create the illusion of political diversity, socialist democratic republics have plenty of political diversity by comparison, but because factionalism is actively avoided, it's not something you can see by taking a quick look at a Wikipedia page to see clearly delineated parties or factions in office. A key concept in Marxism-Leninism is 'democratic centralism', which in short, is plurality in voice, unity in action. First an issue is investigated and discussed as fully and all-sidedly as possible. Not doing so can result in a less complete view of the situation and therefore leading to a less informed decision, and can also result in people feeling sidelined, which breeds factionalism, which results in people not listening to each other and internal sabotage, both of which hurt the socialist democratic process (a bit different from the liberal democratic process on the macro scale, but I'll refrain from getting into that for now for brevity and can get into it in the replies if you wish). Then, after the discussion, a vote is made, and whatever decision is arrived at, the party or government will then take as their mandate and work to fulfill that decision to the best of their ability without sabotaging the process, whether they individually agreed with the decision or not, so that we can continue working to build a better future together. Suppression or purges only come when  people actively sabotage the work already arrived at via the democratic process. While there are times in history where extraneous factors made it necessary to bypass the democratic process, this was never seen as ideal. So if you pay attention to the internal democratic processes of socialist republics, you'll often find even more political diversity in the perspectives, ideas, and strategies presented than you would in a liberal "democracy", but because that diversity isn't the antagonism and tribalism that creates needless gridlock and further tribalism at the expense of marginalized people, and because after a decision is reached, communists act like adults and just get to work enacting that decision, it's not obviously visible at first glance from an outside perspective.

So in all, I wouldn't say it's how much political diversity there is in the government. While you could say there's a correlation between being a liberal 'democracy' and being referred to as a government in western media, and being any other type of government and being referred to as a "regime", even that's still not perfect, and it would be more accurate to say it's the US and its allies that are referred to as "governments" and the US's political rivals and the government's that stand up to US imperialism that are referred to as "regimes".

Here in Brazil it's long gone the feeling that we have a democracy. But sadly, a huge chunk of the population is alienated into either losing hope, or thinking communists are behind it all. While we're been subjects of plantation owners since this was a portuguese colony, and they never lost their properties, rights or power.

25:30  Haven't you ever heard of Qualified Immunity?  The quantity of things that US law enforcement get away with that isn't tolerated in other countries is absolutely terrifying, all in the name of Qualified Immunity.

Yess he reacts to second thought

Anyone remember when Saddam was the "president of Iraq"? That was when he was fighting Iran on our behalf. When he switched to Kuweit, he became "Iraqi Dictator". Also very different photos were used to depict him. 1st class propaganda tactics.

As an Egyptian who witnessed the Arab spring revolutions have counter revolutions and fail one by one I wish the new government was more authoritarian to preserve the revolution coz the regression is way worse than what we had before the revolution

To all the Breadtube bros commenting some variation of "Mr Terry is becoming one of us!" - you should be aware that this guy has reacted to The Fat Electrician, Brandon Herrera, and Metatron. He has also reacted to both PragerU and the Gravel Institute.

He reacts to viewpoints from across the political spectrum and always responds with the same level of open-minded, fair, and neutral comments. One time, someone tried to pin him down on what he believes, and he said, "I believe in pizza on Fridays".

Maybe he's already a socialist, maybe he hates socialism. The fact that I don't know is a deliberate choice on his part, and I appreciate that about him.