How ‘Surrounded' Memeifies Politics

Time​ Magazine

6 days ago

Mehdi Hasan is 'one of the most formidable debaters and interviewers of our times,' the debate-hosting company Intelligence Squared said of the British-American journalist in 2023. Hasan rose to fame on both sides of the Atlantic for his confrontational interviews of politicians and public figures, often advocating a left-of-center view on Al Jazeera, BBC, The Intercept, MSNBC, and now his own Substack site Zeteo.
But the author of a book titled Win Every Argument has also spoken about when not to take part in a debate. 'There are certain people who there is no point arguing with,' he said in 2023, pointing specifically to those who operate in bad faith. 'It's pointless. It doesn't go anywhere.'
The one-versus-many debate web series has repeatedly gone viral since its premiere in September, featuring episodes from 'Can 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative?' to 'Can 1 Woke Teen Survive 20 Trump Supporters?' and 'Can 1 Cop Defend Himself Against 20 Criminals?'
Hasan appeared as the titular progressive in the 100-minute '1 Progressive vs 20 Far-Right Conservatives,' which has garnered more than 3.5 million views and counting on YouTube since it was posted on Sunday and millions more views of clips shared on social media.
But Hasan was the first to admit that he didn't expect what he would encounter.
'You can see my shock when they start expressing their views openly,' Hasan posted on X in response to a critic who suggested he eagerly signed up to debate 'a bunch of nazis.'
According to Zeteo, Jubilee Media 'chose the participants, with Mehdi meeting them for the first time in the studio itself.'
Hasan, whose supporters have showered him with praise for his performance, claimed in the final minutes of the program, during which participants assessed the debate, that he was both taken aback but also unsurprised by the extreme views he met: 'I thought it would be an interesting exercise in trying to understand what genuine far-right conservative folks think. And it was kind of disturbing to see that they think what I thought they think, and they were happy to say it out loud. I am disappointed that I had to sit across from people who believe in white genocide, who believe I'm not a citizen. … The people here today were way beyond conservative.'
While Hasan admitted he likes to debate 'even people I disagree with,' he reiterated that he tries to 'avoid bad faith folks' and said, 'I think some of the folks today were bad faith.' He also seemed to criticize Jubilee's airing of such extreme views, adding: 'Free speech doesn't mean you need to give credibility or oxygen or a platform to people who don't agree in human equality.'
'This is open authoritarianism, and this is what is being normalized and mainstreamed in our country, by people in power, by the media, by people who don't know any better,' Hasan said.
But some observers online have suggested that Hasan himself should have known better about what he signed up for. 'The fix is in'
Jubilee Media says its mission is to 'provoke understanding' and 'create human connection.' And, according to its website, 'We believe discomfort and conflict are pivotal forces in creating human connection.' The company has since 2017 produced a number of web series on dating, identity, politics, and more.
'We want to show what discourse can and should look like. Sometimes it can be unproductive but other times it can be quite productive and empathetic,' founder Jason Y. Lee told Variety in late 2024 for an article about Surrounded , which according to the article has a goal to 'promote open dialogue,' for which Jubilee sees itself as a neutral host. 'We try our best to be as unbiased as possible when it comes to the political sphere,' said Lee.
For the most part, Jubilee's debate series appears to be unmoderated, governed primarily by the participants themselves, with occasional on-screen fact-checks provided by billionaire Joe Ricketts' media startup Straight Arrow News.
But critics have questioned the company's supposedly noble aspirations. 'Jubilee Media mines the nation's deepest disagreements for rowdy viral videos. But is all the arguing changing anyone's mind?' the Atlantic asked in January.
Media reporter Julia Alexander suggested on X that the program's producers are the ones operating in bad faith. 'Jubilee Media's done it again: taking 20 people with extremist views and putting them into a 90 minute video knowing that they'll say extreme things and get an extreme amount of attention,' she posted on Sunday after the Hasan episode. They've figured out, Alexander added, 'how to monetize the very essence of the internet.'
Filmmaker and entrepreneur Minh Do posted that Jubilee's producers 'are mainly interested in clickbait views and incendiary clips that don't lead anyone to think any deeper about these topics' rather than any sense of responsibility to the public. 'Senseless conversation purely for views.'
'It only takes watching a couple clips of these to see that the fix is in,' posted podcaster Alex Goldman.
Writer and disability rights advocate Imani Barbarin, who shared in March that she turned down an invitation from Jubilee to appear in a Surrounded episode about feminism, posted a video Monday in which she decried how she believed the debate-style program was made for viral moments, not serious engagement.
'That very same debate where Mehdi Hasan was standing up to 20 fascists or whatever, where you all think he won, is being cut up and chopped up across the internet to present it as though he lost,' Barbarin said. Indeed, one only needs to scroll through the social media pages of some of the participants to see them taking victory laps and their supporters praising their performances.
'This,' Barbarin emphasized, 'is what the memeification of politics looks like in practice.'