Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Middle Class Extremists

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May 14, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

27:52

Middle Class Extremists

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	Before I get into the subject of this video, this is a lovely animation that has been done for me by a YouTuber called Red Celt, and I thought it would be absolutely remiss of me if I didn't use it in at least one video.
	So thanks a lot, man.
	This is absolutely gorgeous.
	So on to the video.
	Does anyone remember a lovely lady by the name of Baha Mustafa?
	Well, what about Goldsmiths University?
	Well, I think I can probably trigger some memories.
	Baha Mustafa was the lady who posted the controversial Facebook status for her university event asking for men and or white people, um, just please don't come, because you were born wrong.
	But that's the problem with people who are just born in the wrong skin or to the wrong gender.
	They don't like being told that they have something inherently wrong with them, and so there was quite a lot of backlash against our poor, oppressed gender studies graduate.
	In response to this, Baha went on to say how much she understood the plight of those people being discriminated against based on their race and gender by publicly mocking them, by not giving a shit.
	This is some of that famous feminist empathy that I am sure that you have heard so much about.
	And yes, there really is something rather incongruous about the concept of male tears given how men are socialized not to cry.
	I wonder what kind of salty fluid it is that she's drinking.
	So you might be thinking, well, that's probably where it ended.
	Goldsmiths were like, look, you can't be discriminating against people on the basis of their race and gender in 21st century Britain.
	That's just not acceptable.
	And so we're obviously going to do something about it.
	You'd think Baha Mustafa would be removed from her position as diversity officer for actively discouraging diversity.
	But you'd be wrong.
	What actually happened is that Goldsmiths continued to allow her to remain in this position, but actively gave her a platform from which she was allowed to publicly declare a rationalization for her hate, to tell everyone that it's okay for her to be sexist and racist, apparently, because she is a, quote, ethnic minority woman.
	She released a seven-minute video in which she apparently, quote, refuted any accusation of racism and sexism, claiming that reverse racism and reverse sexism are not real.
	Well, that doesn't refute any claims of racism or sexism.
	That just refutes claims of reverse racism and reverse sexism, which nobody was claiming were real.
	So you know what?
	Let's kick back and watch this video, and maybe we'll do a little bit of heckling along the way.
	20th of April, at 5pm, no more than 12 EME women and non-binary people congregated in the ground floor of the students' union in a room named after formidable black activist and revolutionary communist Angela Davis.
	Never heard of her.
	I'd better rush to Wikipedia and quickly see what the scoop is.
	So Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, scholar and author.
	She emerged as a prominent counter-culture activist and radical in the 1960s as the leader of the Communist Party USA and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the civil rights movement, although she was never a party member.
	Her interests include prisoner rights and she founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison industrial complex.
	Hey, that's actually a really good goal.
	She's a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a former director of the university's feminist studies department.
	I'll try and contain my surprise.
	Oh, and her Wikipedia article is probably riddled with bias.
	So I mean this is pretty much what I expected.
	The nature of the gathering was a political meeting.
	I take it modern students have just given up studying.
	To discuss how we, as BME students, are going to campaign around the issues that have been raised by liberation movements on campus and the most recent occupation.
	What?
	What the fuck?
	Liberation movements?
	What the hell do you think you're going to be liberated from?
	I mean, you do live in a house that costs almost half a million pounds.
	And that is all it was.
	It was not an anti-racism rally, nor was it an event to celebrate the cultural diversity in the institution, and most definitely not an equality protest, as it was dubbed by the media.
	The backlash following on from the original article in the tab was an outrageous distortion of facts and ironically did the opposite of what this meeting was meant to achieve.
	Yeah, maybe you shouldn't have been having a meeting in which you could declare that it was okay to exclude people on the basis of gender and race.
	Idiot.
	The meeting was called for by BME women and non-binary people, which I, as a representative of this community, listened to, fully supported and facilitated space for.
	By the way you're dropping your consonants you sound like a representative of North London.
	Minority peoples organising autonomously is not new and if our right-wing critics put as much time into researching the struggle for the history of our struggles that they do into smearing us all over social media, then they might have seen, they might have not been so outraged by our intimate meeting.
	Well how about this?
	I'm not a right-wing critic and I still think that what you are doing is ridiculous.
	You're 27 years old.
	You have a master's degree in gender studies, which means I think that you probably have never had an actual job.
	And I say this because you sound a lot like my sister who also has a master's degree in gender studies and was also in university when she was coming into her late 20s.
	Basically, nobody wants to hear about the history of your struggles.
	Since the media storm, my position as welfare diversity officer has been called into question.
	Yes, because people don't think it's right for a diversity officer to discriminate on the grounds of race or sex.
	Both times that I run in student elections for this post, I had one on a manifesto which stated that I represent the most traditionally unrepresented.
	Just get to the communism.
	In an unequal society where power relations in the wider world pervade our institutions, how can one possibly represent the needs of all people when people, by virtue of their gender, race and class, have opposing interests?
	Thank you so much for your cooperation.
	But the thing is, how exactly are my interests different to the interests of a black man or an Asian woman?
	I mean, don't we all just want to really just get along in the world, get a good job, earn some money, buy a house, have a family, be happy?
	The only thing that you've said there that really makes any sense is the class differences.
	And I wonder if you emphasise the non-class differences because your parents' house costs more than four times the amount of my parents' house.
	I've said it before and I'll say it again.
	I represent the most marginalised people at Goldsmiths.
	Furthermore, there have been charges made against me that I am racist and sexist to white men.
	Did you hear the little titter there?
	What a ridiculous concept.
	Racist and sexist to white men?
	Wouldn't that rather require them to be human?
	I want to explain why this is false.
	And I will explain why this is not false.
	I, an ethnic minority woman...
	Well, you know, it's a good thing you tell me, because otherwise I might have thought that you were white.
	Can I be racist or sexist towards white men?
	Oh, that's a relief, because everyone thought that you were being racist and sexist.
	But if you tell us that you're not being racist and sexist because you can't be, then that's fine.
	We'll all just pack up and go home.
	You carry on spewing hatred.
	I'll just tell everyone.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Guys!
	Guys!
	No, she says she's not being racist and sexist because she can't be.
	Yeah, she says she's got a good excuse.
	Yeah, yeah, and she's gonna carry on spewing that hatred.
	Yeah, she's gonna carry on discriminating based on race and gender, but it's not racist or sexist because it's happening to white men, so it's okay.
	Because racism and sexism describe structures of privilege based on race and gender.
	Except for when they don't mean that.
	The common English definition of racism is one you're all familiar with.
	This definition of racism is a principle.
	It can be used in the abstract, and it can be applied to anyone who is performing actions that fall into these categories.
	However, our special snowflake is coming from the social sciences echo chamber, and so she is using the sociological definition of racism.
	If you're not familiar with this, and there's no particular reason that you would be, racism refers to a host of practices, beliefs, and social relations and phenomena that work to reproduce a racial hierarchy and social structure that yields superiority and privilege for some and discrimination and oppression for others.
	Racism takes representational, ideological, discursive, interactional, institutional, structural, and systemic forms.
	Basically, the sociological definition is not abstract.
	It is very much real world and it very much applies to institutions.
	Basically, the sociological definition of racism is not racism.
	They need a different word for it.
	It is the suffix of ism that determines this, because ism means you are dealing with something ideological.
	You are dealing with something that is not real and concrete, but in fact, abstract.
	So basically, what I'm saying is that you cannot have racism as a real system.
	You can have a system that is racist, but racist or racism itself is not a physical thing.
	It is a concept.
	And therefore, women of colour and minority genders cannot be racist or sexist, since we do not stand to benefit from such a system.
	That just sounds really, really fucking stupid now, doesn't it?
	In order for our actions to have been deemed racist or sexist.
	All you need to do is have prejudice against people because of their race or sex.
	The current system would have to be one which enables only people of colour and women to benefit economically and socially.
	What absolute twaddle.
	Why would it have to be only women or people of colour?
	We currently live in a system where both men and women, white and non-white, can benefit and economically prosper, and you are calling this white supremacy.
	On such a large scale, and to the systematic exclusion of white men, of white people and men.
	Why is the scale relevant?
	A small system that excluded white men on the basis of their gender and race would still be a racist and sexist system.
	Who for the past 400 years would have had to have been subjected to colonization.
	You see, once you break down the sociological definition of racism, everything that she says is just retard statement after retard statement.
	We do not live in such a system.
	We do not know of such a history.
	Reverse racism and reverse sexism are not real.
	Now, from a sociological perspective, that is actually correct.
	There is no, quote, reverse racist or reverse sexist system because the systems we live in aren't particularly discriminatory in that way.
	But again, she's talking about racism and sexism as if they are not concepts and as if they are real world things.
	As if you could point and say that is a building of racism.
	That is a building of sexism.
	Despite the witch hunt and shameful character assassination the right-wing media have been gleefully whipping up, this isn't about me.
	It is to them, but it's not to you.
	To them, they think that you as an individual are being racist and sexist.
	And you are.
	You think racism and sexism are not concepts, but structures.
	And so, in your mind, it's okay to be prejudiced.
	Which means that you as an individual bear no responsibility for that.
	And despite desperate attempt to humiliate and denigrate 27-year-old women of colour for a working-class immigrant family.
	The definition of working class is also flexible.
	But that's an interesting point, Rennie, and I'm glad she brought it up.
	Have you ever noticed how these hipsters who live with their parents in nice big posh houses are desperate to assume the mantle of the oppressed proletariat?
	It literally is something that they idolise, they romanticise.
	And frankly, as someone who has been on enough council estates, I can tell you that the working class are just regular people like everyone else.
	This isn't about my struggle.
	What, the struggle of trying to find a career when you've got a master's degree in gender studies?
	I'm just one person and there have been many people before me and there'll be many more after me who'll be the targets of racial and gendered abuse.
	Quote-unquote abuse.
	This is only one in a series of attacks upon minority women on campus since the start of the term, which has received national and even international media attention.
	Quote-unquote, attacks.
	And if we consider the recent scandals regarding BME people in positions of power in the UK, it cannot be just a coincidence that this story is gained huge coverage alongside the smearing of a black candidate who ran in the NUS National Conference 2015 for a full-time role.
	These attacks upon people of colour are politically and ideologically driven along racial lines.
	Well, no.
	They are ideologically driven, but that's because everyone is trying to achieve an egalitarian society where everyone is treated as an equal and you are trying to achieve a supremacist society where you are treated as a superior.
	This is why you're complaining about criticism that's been levelled at you and other people by framing it in the terms of them being minorities or you being female.
	You don't want these classes of people to be criticised when it turns out they're not classes of people.
	Nobody really cares about these things.
	They care about the things that you are saying and doing.
	And in your case, they care about you actually being a sexist and racist.
	The thought of people of colour holding positions of power frightens white supremacy.
	Well, it's a good thing we don't have quote white supremacy in this country.
	For example, we have a surprising number of Muslim barons in the UK.
	And they're not just male either before you start waffling on about male supremacy.
	How could a system of white supremacy allow this?
	Why would we have any of this?
	Why would we even have Muslims in the country in the fucking first place?
	A system built on and sustained through the oppression of BME people.
	Minority genders.
	For anyone wondering, BME is black and minority ethnic.
	And holy shit, are you serious?
	You think that the economic system in Britain is sustained on the oppression of black and ethnic minority people, like the slave plantations of the American South around 200 years ago?
	You are a fucking fruit loop who is absolutely divorced from reality.
	I don't know whether you've noticed, but you're on a stage with a lot of BME people who are doing gender studies, which otherwise means nothing fucking productive.
	So believe me when I tell you, no system is being supported by your labour.
	And the cheap labour of immigrants.
	Mostly Polish.
	No, this isn't about me.
	This is about us.
	To you.
	To everyone else, it is about you being a racist and a sexist.
	But instead of taking responsibility for the things that you have said and done, you are going to now externalise responsibility to a wider group so you don't have to do anything.
	This is about our struggle.
	This is about all minorities.
	And this is even about every single person in this room.
	Because in the project for emancipation from all oppressive systems, an injury to one is an injury to all.
	Dah comrade.
	And when you feign neutrality and watch with lips sealed while a young woman is receiving death threats, sounds like someone's about to open a Patreon account.
	And comments like, that smug self-righteous look makes me just want to prime already back of my hand.
	I don't think you have any idea just how many people feel like that about you.
	It's primarily because you are smug and self-righteous.
	When you should be contrite.
	Then your silence is violence.
	No, it isn't.
	And we wear the scars.
	No, you don't.
	And appeals to, but we're all just human and are rendered hollow and backups when we consider a history of colonization based on the ongoing project to dehumanise us.
	And you're some kind of wacko conspiracy theorist.
	What ongoing project is there to dehumanise you?
	The only ongoing project to dehumanise people I see is coming out of the social sciences.
	We are simply not just individuals and oppression doesn't happen in a vacuum.
	We are yet to agree that you are being oppressed.
	You appear to be so privileged as to have a public stage from which to pronounce your bigotry.
	Social relations are encumbered by power and who holds what power over who is determined by our material conditions.
	Dah comrade.
	But you're acting as if you don't have any power.
	You have the power to tell white people and men not to attend your meetings, which contravenes British laws.
	But more importantly, they offend British morals and principles of equality and egalitarianism.
	This is why the backlash that you've had has come from the working and middle class.
	The difference between the way we experience prejudice and the way a white man might be discriminated against is that our discrimination is always marked by the very fact of our gender and our race in relation to a wider system of domination.
	Complete bollocks.
	Which historically privileges the white male colonizer.
	Yet historically, maybe.
	Modern times, not so much.
	I've yet to see affirmative action and safe spaces for white men, but I've definitely seen them for non-white women.
	Over us whose bodies are colonised.
	How is your body being colonised, you fruitcake?
	This consistently serves us to remind, this consistently serves to remind us that we have no stake in white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
	Yeah, but that's because you're the kind of idiot who does gender studies and then wonders why she's not making lots of money.
	There are plenty of women who have a stake in, quote, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.
	Whereas white supremacy has everything to lose.
	White supremacy isn't a thing with its own goals, you idiot.
	Because white supremacy has everything.
	Because the entire world is a safe space for the white, powerful men.
	Is it though, or is this absurd hyperbole that kind of sounds good on paper, but when you say it out loud and actually think about it, makes you look like a fucking idiot.
	I mean, I notice you use the qualifier powerful, because if you were to say that about your average white man, it definitely wouldn't be true.
	Because people who benefit from white supremacy will never truly understand what it feels like to be reminded of the trauma of their ancestors' oppression.
	But not your oppression.
	And I'm sorry, but you don't know that my ancestors weren't a part of the children's crusade that ended up getting captured in like fucking Libya or something and sold into slavery by Muslim pirates.
	Or the creeping and paralysing sensation of fear when an abusive boyfriend are trying to leave one let you.
	That's rather specific, but again, you don't know that I haven't felt that.
	And you know that two women in the UK are killed by their male partners every week.
	Yes, yes.
	Me and Angry Aussie are still watching Game of Thrones.
	They will never really know what it's like to feel terror at the thought of disclosing to a friend that you were just sexually assaulted.
	Well, if we're talking about men, that's probably true.
	The chances are they'll bottle it up inside until they eventually commit suicide.
	Because you know the society likes to paint women and girls as liars.
	And if you're a woman of colour, the backlash is tenfold.
	And the hyperbole is a hundredfold.
	But this also reminds me that we have everything to gain.
	Women, LGBTQ class, disabled and BME people will never apologise for taking back space.
	You know what, that's fine.
	And maybe you'll extend the courtesy to men if they would say that they want spaces of their own too.
	Especially in the face of a society that directly benefits from our systematic exclusion.
	Are you sure you're not a drama student?
	I mean, honestly, a system that benefits from excluding you.
	What systems are benefiting from your personal fucking exclusion?
	And if there are any, maybe it's not because you are a female who is an ethnic minority, maybe it's because you are a gender studies student.
	To deny the legitimacy of this claim is to commit an act of violence.
	Or maybe it's because you're a fucking moron.
	I am getting really sick of you bullshit artists making up your own definitions for words.
	You cannot, cannot commit violence by mere words.
	It's just not possible.
	To appeal to a liberal interpretation of oppression is oppression and must be resisted.
	What complete and utter horseshit.
	If you're going to change the definition of oppression to mean something it otherwise doesn't mean, then I am going to feel free to ignore the fact that you're claiming to be oppressed because what you are saying isn't accurate.
	What you are saying does not actually meet any real definition of oppression.
	When the positions of the most privileged people in society are threatened by us, they do everything they can to cling on desperately to their power.
	Well, it's nice to see that you admit that this is about power.
	But if the right-wing media and our opponents think they've scared us into silence or distracted us from our struggle, then it is them who should be scared.
	When they locate their sides, they will be, I'm sure.
	Because we are not going down without a fight.
	Simply, we are not going down.
	Women and non-binary people of colour reject any view which suggests that we live in a post-racist, post-sexist society that is uninformed by class relations.
	Well, of course you do.
	Because if you didn't, there would be absolutely no need for this gender-focused Marxist bullshit.
	That is the entire point.
	If all of the things that you are claiming weren't true, you would have nothing.
	All of your education would be for naught.
	All of your fucking attitude and the way you treat other people would come back to slap you in the fucking face.
	Everything about your life hinges on these ridiculous concepts.
	So yes, I completely believe that you will never, ever give these things up in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary.
	You will become irrational and deny reality.
	We reject this view not only ideologically, but because our lived experiences force us to know the facts of our oppression.
	Says the 27-year-old university student who still lives with her parents in a half million pound house in London, one of the richest cities in the world, who has spent her education learning to redefine the word oppression, because otherwise this woo is rather hard to sell.
	We are BME, we are disabled, we are queer, we are angry, and we are organized.
	We will not be silenced.
	We are militant.
	The world is not ready for minorities to challenge the status quo.
	But resistance to our resistance is futile.
	Oh yeah, fight the machine.
	You sound like you are on your way to becoming a middle-class terrorist organization.
	And I'll end with one quote from an old Mexican proverb.
	They tried to bury us.
	They didn't know we were seas.
	Thank you for listening.
	I love the little girly voice at the end there.
	That's very convincing.
	thank you for that pointless and ridiculous diatribe.
	Great, well I'm glad you guys all feel good.
	I'm glad you are all feeling just wonderful.
	Because what you have just done here is going to fit neatly into David Cameron's new draconian laws.
	Seriously, David Cameron thinks Britain is too passively tolerant and should not leave people to live their lives as they please just because they obey the law.
	I know that that sounds like exactly the reason that we should leave people to lead their lives, but his rationale for this is that he thinks that we should crack down on people holding minority extremist views that differed from Britain's consensus.
	For too long we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens, as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.
	It's often meant we have stood neutral between different values and that's helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance.
	And that is exactly what Baha Mustafa from her upper middle class suburbanite lifestyle in London and her insulation in academia has fostered.
	She has exactly done this.
	She has trained herself in these gender studies courses to be a middle class extremist.
	Now, I'm well aware that David Cameron is thinking of Islamic extremists with this legislation.
	But the thing is, it's very broad and quite far-reaching.
	And there is definitely the potential for abuse here.
	I think the worst part about this is that David Cameron isn't even wrong.
	I don't want radical clerics mixing with vulnerable young Muslims.
	But I also don't want the revival of the Snoopers Charter.
	You're probably wondering, well, why don't I spend my time railing against Islam and radical Islam?
	And I guess the answer for that for me is, do I need to?
	This is self-evidently bad.
	This is self-evidently a bad idea.
	And obviously I think people in the UK are going to overwhelmingly reject it.
	Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
	Theresa May has said that these measures will also include other extremist groups, including neo-Nazis.
	And honestly, I think we should encourage them to add neo-communists to that list as well.
	I really, really do think this is a genuine issue because it's insidious.
	That's the problem.
	It's got a pseudo-academic backing that they will use to say, yes, this is absolutely legitimate, but when you go through it with a fine-tooth comb, it falls apart.
	None of their claims make any fucking sense.
	And these are the people who are brainwashing young people en masse.

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