Lindsay Ellis examines how Ms. Rachel indoctrinates kids with dangerous concepts like empathy

For the unaware, Ellis is one of YouTube’s earliest video essayists and remains one of the best on the platform (even if she’s a lot more likely to post on Nebula these days), usually offering film and pop culture analysis. As a relatively new mother, Ellis has been watching a lot of Ms. Rachel and is positioned to go long on this topic. In a new, two-hour-and-twenty-two-minute video uploaded on Tuesday, Ellis weaves together the history of Ms. Rachel, children’s media,  PBS, antisemitism, Zionism, and genocide in a way that makes the fraught topics digestible (if still often horrifying) without condescending. And despite the range of topics presented in the video, it’s an examination of empathy that unites all of them. 

And as good and necessary as discussions of empathy are, the video has already tangibly helped at least a few people. As of this writing, a fundraiser accompanying the video has raised just shy of $500,000 for the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, a fund that has helped kids like Rahaf, a three-year-old double amputee from Gaza who was medically evacuated to the United States earlier this year and has since appeared in some of Ms. Rachel’s videos. Ultimately, both the financial support and the historical context are important tools. “The reason I did this video, beyond trying to raise money and show support for Ms. Rachel and people like her, was because I wanted to understand how this sort of thing happens, from a historical perspective and a sociological one,” Ellis says toward the end of the video. “The reality is that there is not much we can do. But I do not want that to be mistaken for saying that we shouldn’t do what we can.” You can check out the video below.