WhatifAltHist / Rudyard Lynch - History youtuber, galaxy brained, no credentials and no sex

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herodotus

herodotus

kiwifarms.net
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Mar 27, 2023
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"My son ask for thyself another Kingdom, for that which I leave is too small for thee" - Philip II of Macedon
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WhatifAltHist, also known as Rudyard Lynch, is a YouTuber, self-styled 'public intellectual', and college dropout, specializing in historical and geopolitical content. AltHist, who is now in his early twenties, began his career as a teenager, writing "what if" scenarios on topics that are, in truth, far too broad to speculate on intelligently.
The specifics of Rudyard's teenage catalog are less important than the acclaim his videos have received. For the better part of a decade, WhatifAltHist has been jerked off by his audience, for the depth of his thought, and his keen reading of history at a young age. This incredibly skewed feedback has made Rudyard Lynch completely delusional about his own abilities, reckoning himself a great mind, and indeed, a clairvoyant. After all, who else in 2013 could've predicted war in the Middle East in 2023?
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Lynch steered his channel away from pure alternate history during the late 2010s. His current offerings can only accurately be called right-wing propaganda, as his videos are more concerned with conveying conservative spirit than with being rigorous. Rudyard has attracted criticism for his "vibes based" approach to history, and the lack of citations in his content. Despite claiming to be a historian, Rudyard plays fast and loose with fact, and says dumb, out of pocket shit all the time, without source or citation. Below is a sampler, edited by Sarcasmitron as part of a longer video addressing AltHist.


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Some anti-Rudyard heads like to claim that he refuses to read history written after 1965, because, it's Rudyard's belief that the mid 60s is the era when academia went "woke".

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While, this claim is untrue, a glance at Lynch's Goodreads reveals that most of his modern histories fall within the realm of pop history, or are written by non-historians. As such, AltHist is rarely in contact with works written with concern for current methodology or historiography. He would've had the chance to learn some at university, but apparently he dropped out after realizing that he was already too smart for higher education.
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Rudyard Lynch has claimed more than once to work as a geopolitical consultant, but this shouldn't be taken on its face.
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Obviously, Rudyard "runs" a geopolitical firm because industry standards would require him to hold at least an undergraduate degree to work in that sector for real. Personally, I think that users in this r/WhatifAltHist thread are right in guessing that "consulting" is Rudyard's codeword for... lecturing to YouTube channels with triple digit views.
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Also, nobody serious about geopolitics would say this lol
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Archive
AltHist's career so far has generally been drama free, although he's had a couple of encounters with Vaush that were not consequential.
However, we should consider that, between mounting criticism from fellow YouTubers, and, as hinted at by his manic, Petersonian Twitter feed, the day that Rudyard snaps may not be a question of if but when.

Feel free to post any WhatifAltHist takes that you've found funny, frustrating, or thought provoking.


Update, 12/27/2024

On Christmas morning, Rudyard uploaded 7 hours worth of autobiography titled "Rudyard Lynch's life [season 1] [season 2] across two videos. Less than a day later he released [season 3], totaling almost 12 hours of material.
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Local Archives below for:
season 1, season 2
season 3

He also announced that he'd started a cult (Archive), which he implied to be funded by Peter Thiel. This tweet has since been deleted.

Rudyard has since denied all claims made across the three autography videos, and is calling this series a "social experiment" (Archive). He has privated all three videos on his YouTube channel.



Notable clips

 
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OP is probably aware of this, but we have a long-running thread in the multimedia section about YouTube Historians which has a lot of material on Rudy (both informative and mundane). I recently made some posts showing his descent into a "Zoomer Jordan Peterson" (which needs to be added to the subtitle of this thread). Most of his videos are culture-war related and very rambly but otherwise harmless. I think the thread is more sympathetic to him because in the realm of YouTube pop-historians, Rudy is one of the few right-leaning ones in an ocean of insane leftists (several of which have threads, most recently LazerPig ).

Personally, I don't think he's a lolcow (yet) and I don't think he really lies about his credentials (he constantly talks about being a "well-read" college dropout as a cope-gloat). Honestly, his lack of a college degree may be his saving grace because I don't want to imagine his ego if he had some fluff Ivy-league history degree (we'd be dealing with know-it-all smugness that could melt steal beams).

Feel free to reach out in the thread for more material -- we've been watching Rudy for a while now.
 
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You just know there are people that go through his videos hoping for errors just because he's conservative. Only in that context does arguing over what the Greeks or Romans or whatever did seem to matter.

edit: There's a point 6 min into the posted Sarcasmitron that's a good example where he purposely misunderstands AltHist's point about the sexual revolution causing high male virginity rates. Critiquing Lynch should be a crapshoot but only biased people will bother.

But yeah he's smug as hell, if he goes down the rabbit-hole of doing debates this will be really funny.
 
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Der Eternal Poster said:
rudyard william lynch:
https://www.facebook.com/p/Rudyard-Lynch-100009993211627/ https://ghostarchive.org/archive/eBeV2
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https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/find/person/pxu464lu020n0l89n292n https://archive.ph/MPzyh
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https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlynch/?img_index=1
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https://www.quora.com/profile/Rudyard-Lynch https://ghostarchive.org/archive/AGOik
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https://www.naqt.com/stats/player/index.jsp?contact_id=212156 https://archive.ph/khGLU
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video of rudyard practicing: https://vimeo.com/338919682 https://web.archive.org/web/20210305221019/https://vimeo.com/338919682
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https://ghostarchive.org/archive/pgAdK
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Dox is probably outdated: he has hopped between NYC, Los Angeles, and god knows where else (the last few months of frequent moves seem to have drained a large part of his sanity).
 
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naaaaiiiiillllll!!! said:
Honestly, his lack of a college degree may be his saving grace because I don't want to imagine his ego if he had some fluff Ivy-league history degree (we'd be dealing with know-it-all smugness that could melt steal beams).
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Never heard of this guy, but when I saw the name come up in new threads, I knew I had to check it, and all I gotta say after is "There but for the grace of God go I."
College and grad school can reinforce some people's egos, but for me it was a severe and necessary reality check.

For many autodidacts, it's their first contact with people who know a lot more than they do, and/or have more brain wattage, and it can be quite humiliating, especially when a professor pegs you as someone that needs to get taken down a few notches. I was lucky in that the few times it happened to me, it was by some venerable old hands who used the Socratic method that was more enlightening to my own flaws as a thinker and lacunae in my knowledge base rather than a public humiliation at the seminar table that some receive.

That this guy washed out as an undergrad means that he must have not only been an egotist, but somewhat disruptive to the general classes, as good profs and grad lecturers know that someone in love with your field should be treated with kids gloves unless they constantly interrupt the flow of class with endless questions, discussions and digressions that throw pacing and point of lectures off for everyone else.

In the end, I decided the whole deal was not for me. Not that I couldn't hack it (though my mediocre language skills meant that certain avenues were closed off), but more for personal and political reasons.

Rather sad when someone is a midwit who thinks midwittery is unrecognized brilliance when challenged.
 
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OrangeJuliusEvola said:
Never heard of this guy, but when I saw the name come up in new threads, I knew I had to check it, and all I gotta say after is "There but for the grace of God go I."
College and grad school can reinforce some people's egos, but for me it was a severe and necessary reality check.

For many autodidacts, it's their first contact with people who know a lot more than they do, and/or have more brain wattage, and it can be quite humiliating, especially when a professor pegs you as someone that needs to get taken down a few notches. I was lucky in that the few times it happened to me, it was by some venerable old hands who used the Socratic method that was more enlightening to my own flaws as a thinker and lacunae in my knowledge base rather than a public humiliation at the seminar table that some receive.

That this guy washed out as an undergrad means that he must have not only been an egotist, but somewhat disruptive to the general classes, as good profs and grad lecturers know that someone in love with your field should be treated with kids gloves unless they constantly interrupt the flow of class with endless questions, discussions and digressions that throw pacing and point of lectures off for everyone else.

In the end, I decided the whole deal was not for me. Not that I couldn't hack it (though my mediocre language skills meant that certain avenues were closed off), but more for personal and political reasons.

Rather sad when someone is a midwit who thinks midwittery is unrecognized brilliance when challenged.
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In many ways I agree with you as the same "autodidact meets other smart people in college" thing happened to me as well. In better less-politically-charged times, it was why academia was an ideal place for learning. Unfortunately, I know too many people with advanced educations/degrees (especially in social sciences/humanities) who are glorified yes-men who bleat whatever is the popular academic opinion. If our guy Rudy here somehow stuck with academia, didn't get too much ego-damage, and graduated, his YouTube videos would be otherworldly levels of smug. Hell, we already saw that with so-called "educated" people going full "believe the science" the last 3 years for crying out loud.

My faith in science and academia is at an all-time low (and I'm saying that as someone who has a graduate degree). :(
 
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naaaaiiiiillllll!!! said:
My faith in science and academia is at an all-time low (and I'm saying that as someone who has a graduate degree).
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Preaching to the choir, brother. Out of my grad school cohort, the most successful one wasn't the one with the deepest knowledge, nor with the most penetrating mind. He was a well-spoken black dude who had a knack for picking the most fashionable subjects to present at conferences, all couched in the best pomo bullshit an academic in the soft sciences can muster. Take a little cultural anthropology, mix in some post-structuralism, choose some contempo pop culture piece that requires no deep scholarship and boom, 20 years later tenure track at an Ivy.

Guy was an interesting mixture of genuine true believer in the bullshit and cynical careerist. Being that I was the only other non-white non-Asian in the cohort, he said I should stick it out through the Ph.D. I countered I didn't have rich parents like him and my scholarship money wouldn't cover the costs of flying to multiple conferences, and I had no desire to go into debt for what I was losing faith in doing professionally.

Probably stupid of me. I think he was hinting that I would be an affirmative action shoo-in to some sort of higher education sinecure if I stuck it out, even if my favored academic style was out of fashion and my teaching skills low-rated.
 
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Every time I'm told about Rudy, I'm conflicted. He's not wrong asserting that the humanities have been fucked to all hell by western postmodernists since the 60's and 70's but Christ he's obnoxious about it. His politsperging and autistic unwillingness to add method to his historical research really gets in the way of what could've been good (or at least decent) sociological and historical content.

He'd really benefit from spending years as a history undergrad as far as methodology and ego is concerned, but something tells me he wouldn't do that: older history & civilization teachers often single out and destroy dudes with ego, and seeing how he's acting as a "2smart6u" fag, it's really likely the reason why he bailed out of his studies and acts like this. He didn't "leave", he absolutely reeks of a dude filtered out of his field in college, and is MOTI about it.

I don't know all the lore on the guy, so he may just have told this under the veil of "muh leftist academia" in one of his videos.
 
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There is no risk of a person like this ever making it through college tbh. My degree is not related to his but in a similar vein i knew people that were miles ahead of me when I went into college. The big difference was when it got tough I put my big nose in my books and never took it out, while those people much better than me laughed at the idea of me studying because they already knew everything. End of the first year they’d lost their scholarships, and I doubled mine (my professor hinted there was more money available and told me privately to request the bump). Rudy here gives me that vibe.
WTBOnlineFather said:
>I got so much shit for "predicting" things that were already happening
Lol, lmao.
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Weather man says he thinks it will rain while standing in a drizzle.
 
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Dude isn't a lolcow yet but definitely deserves his own thread in Multimedia or Internet Famous. I used to watch his videos a lot (there's not a lot of right-leaning history/politics channels), but he's become more and more irritating as his ego has got out of control. He seems to spend about 1/4 of each video sucking himself off and I just got tired of it. He's basically Moon without the production values. You'd think such a prominent intellectual would know how to edit audio, or at least obtain a microphone that doesn't sound like a walkie-talkie, but clearly he's too busy being a modern-day renaissance man.

He has fucking weird ideas about sex, dating and gender that echo Incel/MRA ideas. I've never heard anyone not following those ideas use the word "hypergamy", and he finds a way to insert it at least once a video. That sort of thing really casts doubt on everything else he says, especially given his unwillingness to cite his sources in many cases. He's revealed that he's a virgin, he's not a bad-looking guy so he must be just as smug and repellent in person as he is online. He's also claimed that he's too busy saving the West to bother with women or something, which is some MGTOW cope if ever I heard it. When your own personal hang-ups start influencing your content like that, it really saps your credibility, especially when your content is meant to be scientific and objective.

He's a smug sperg who thinks he's a lot smarter than he actually is. He was homeschooled and it really fucking shows. He's clearly well-read, but he's also clearly letting his own biases affect what he reads and how he interprets it. And reading lots of books doesn't necessarily make you smart, it just means you read a lot of books. He performs poorly in debates because he doesn't have the academic background to learn how to debate with someone. He's making the classic young, smug intellectual mistakes of gaining a massive ego and having a huge lack of real life experiences affect what he thinks, much like a young Carl Benjamin or someone like that. I was a smug, pseudo-intellectual prick when I was in my early 20s, but real life brings you back to Earth with a bump. That will happen to him sooner or later, he'll meet a challenge he can't deal with. That will either teach him humility, or it will cause him to have a public meltdown because he can't cope with the narcissistic injury. Unlike his dropping out of college, it will happen in public in front of a lot of people, and he could descend into cowdom at that point depending on how he reacts.
 
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Breadbassket said:
Whatifalthist makes some interesting community posts on Youtube.

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He put up something like five in one day for some reason.
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Apparently posting more polls/community stuff makes the algorithm like you more

Edit: lately he's been getting a bit more out there. Like apparently the eucharist was actually psychadellics originally. Jesus wuz shrooms n shiet
 
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This is a lolcow / prospering grounds worthy how exactly? Nothing in your OP stands out. If I take any niche internet celeberity and analyze every single one of their posts I am bound to find something I disagree with or think is bizzare. Why not just post this over in multimedia or something?
 
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