Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Sickness in the Left： A Discussion

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July 12, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

02:38:02

The Sickness in the Left： A Discussion

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	Hello, everyone.
	I'm having a discussion about what I've termed the sickness with the left with Louis Levay and Nicholas Gorov, people who I think consider themselves to be left-leaning libertarian types and who are concerned about the state of the liber the just probably the term liberal at this point is very much a term that is greatly besmirched by anyone who doesn't consider themselves a liberal.
	And basically, I really think it's something that needs to be discussed.
	So hi, Nick and Louis.
	Would you like to introduce yourselves?
	Nick, first, I suppose.
	Cheers.
	Yeah, I'm Nicholas Garoff.
	You can find me on Twitter at Wizard of Cause.
	I'm a veteran political operative, firstly.
	I spent about ten years in the professional left working.
	I've been a union organizer, community organizer, worked pretty much every election between 2008 and 2012, and plenty of other work before and after then.
	Worked as a progressive journalist for a while, covering issues regarding corporate power, ideological shifts and swings of power and such.
	Now, I blessedly just mainly write about beer at everyjo.com.
	Beer, I love beer.
	Okay, and Louis, do you want to introduce yourself as well, please?
	Yeah, so I'm Louis Laveau at Louis Laveau on Twitter, and I'm really just kind of a no-name YouTuber.
	I think that that is really the long and short of who I am.
	I really don't really have much of a resume.
	I'm just kind of a political junkie that decided to start making YouTube videos based on the fact that there's just a lot that's happening nowadays.
	And in relation to gaming or just in general politics, I think there's a lot to talk about.
	And I decided there's not enough on YouTube discussing these things, so I decided I can just put my opinion out there.
	Okay, that's great.
	That's in fact how I know of you.
	Probably through Game Gate.
	But I watch your videos quite a lot because I'm very concerned about the sort of things that you're very concerned about.
	And I enjoy them because you at least it's it's nice to hear from someone like-minded.
	I very rarely hear from anyone who actually genuinely shares my views.
	And I don't normally request people who share my views so similarly to come and have a conversation with me because generally I think it's a bit boring.
	But in this case, I think it's quite necessary because I'm concerned about the state of the left.
	Very concerned.
	Because I think I'm sure that everyone watching is well aware of what progressivism is.
	Would you, or well, would either of you like to give a quick summary of what you view as the differences between progressivism, the sort of what people would know as social justice and social justice warriors, and what I suppose I would term the classical liberals, who the sort of more rational left.
	I'll take it if you're not eager to jump in, Louis.
	All right.
	Well, I mean, and this is something that I saw both in my work in the field.
	I saw it sort of rowing there, and then I also saw it especially when I began writing.
	The term progressive seems to now it used to be sort of synonymous with liberalism.
	You know, I'm a progressive.
	I want things to move forward, society to move forward.
	But it's increasingly sort of come to define what I see as diff you know, a certain orthodoxy within the political left, within what is generally categorized as liberalism.
	And what it really comes down to right now, its primary focuses do seem to be on identity politics.
	It's this rash orthodoxy which sort of takes on things such as standpoint theory, saying that the most valid perspective on a society and social issues comes from the most marginalized and oppressed.
	Thus do we get the oppression Olympics, where everyone is trying to show off just how marginalized and hurt they are.
	And that sort of seems to feed back into this sort of emotionally rooted philosophy that they adopt or that they grow within themselves, which really determines that how they feel about a thing is as valid as what they might think about a thing, were they to actually give rational, deep thought to that issue.
	And really, what I'm finding in this is that it's an orthodoxy that basically is just working on a political level.
	And they all say the personal is political.
	What it seems to be doing is it seems to be taking their emotions and their sense of self and their sense of identity and meshing that with the righteousness that a political activist feels when they go out to fight for some kind of change.
	So especially these days, these progressives, I call them neo-progressives because they're much akin to the neoconservatives of, let's say, 10 or 15 years ago.
	They have this absolutist orthodoxy that they will not give up.
	And they will push it onto everyone.
	And anybody who refuses to adopt it and accept it are themselves the enemy of progress, the enemy of change, racists, misogynists, etc.
	And where I think it, I have this theory as to where this came from.
	I think it largely has roots in the Cold War.
	Because the Cold War, as it shifted up as the hardliners from what is effectively, we could say, left and right, as the real hardliners took national power and international power and began this long drawn out showdown between the ideas of communal collective benefit and will versus private interests.
	And that, you know, it's often misused, but the term, you know, the sort of neoliberal corporate model of self-interest governs all, if everyone is out for themselves, the whole Adam Smith, if everyone does the best for themselves, the end result is the best result for everyone.
	The showdown which occurred there, the right, in that sense, won.
	The corporate capitalist right wing, as it's referred to, effectively won that Cold War.
	And they've been doing a victory lap ever since, all across the globe.
	And so in terms of ideology, those who, rather than think too complexly, you know, too complicated on any given issues, who just say, I'm a liberal, I'm a leftist, this is what I feel righteous about.
	Well, they kind of scrambled around and tried to search out something that they could claim as a victory.
	Now, the one victory that liberalism could claim in the 20th century was the civil rights movement.
	And so part of me kind of has this theory that much of what we're seeing in this social justice neo-progressive movement is this attempt to sort of create what is in effect a largely artificial civil rights movement based around their own sense of identity and their own sense of being special.
	Because it works on the both ways that in one hand they get to be righteous and fight this big fight against this patriarchy or this capitalist Illuminati or whatever they want to say.
	And at the same time, they also get to reaffirm these notions of how special and beautiful they think they are as people by these really weakly built identities.
	Okay.
	There's quite a lot there to go over, but nothing that you said struck me as wrong specifically.
	Louis, is there anything you'd like to say?
	Yeah, I think that Nick largely covered the real depth of the type of body of people that we're talking about.
	But from my own perspective, or to at least put my own spin on it, I would say that what I see progressivism as, you know, that's whatever you want to refer to it is, whether it's a movement or a body of people, I do think that it does largely have to do with sort of perceived moral sensibilities in we are on the right side of history, the tactics or what we have to do that's necessary in order to further our own goals for what we believe are the right reasons.
	Just jump in there.
	I've heard them specifically describe it as a movement.
	so I'm just saying that sorry, Karen please Yeah, I mean, it's really weird because the act, because when it comes to being a movement, in my mind at least, there are actions that can be taken that can be drastic.
	If you look way back when it came to the unionists and the anarchists back in the late 19th century, there were some extremely drastic and fairly terroristic acts taken in the name of social progress, I guess you could say, or economic equality, or whatever you will.
	But the problem with progressivism now, or this movement that they claim to be a part of, it's just not to put all sort of left-wing actions down, but progressivism in its form now is just lazy couch activism.
	They go online and bitch.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	No, no, I wanted to ask you because this is something that I think, and I actually think the first place I really heard it articulated as such was from Dr. Randon McCam when he says this is what you get when you have the first generation raised in an age of surplus as opposed to an age of scarcity.
	Do you think, and I kind of think that a lot of this has to do with idleness and that they need a sense to feel righteous?
	I suspect that a lot of this is I think Fight Club really had this down when saying we've got no great generational struggle.
	I don't know if that's fair because the issue with this is for me that you're going to see, especially if you watch my videos, you're going to see me say this time and time again, is the fact that there is a working class in this country still.
	There is a large group within this country, within the United States of America specifically.
	I'm only speaking to that.
	It's what I talk about.
	There are many people in this country that have a fairly stable family like my own, in which both members, both parents, including myself, work.
	Everyone in this family works.
	Everyone in this family has always worked.
	It's required.
	It simply isn't a choice.
	It's what's necessary in order to live.
	But progressives do not care about economic issues.
	They do not.
	They fundamentally disregard economic issues, but rather insist that social issues should be at the fore of everything.
	Well, I'd say they kind of try to co-opt them.
	I mean, I spent a year in the field as a labor organizer, and To see, and it was really funny because campaign after campaign, I'd show up at an office, you know, I'd show up at a union hall, I'd meet the staffers.
	Now, most campaign staff split sort of 60, 40 between professional organizers, most of whom were hired fresh out of college with mass communications degrees, political science degrees, and like.
	And then the other half were actually what we call worker organizers, people who were longtime union members who came from the workplaces or similar workplaces and were trained as organizers to go out and help build the union.
	And what I found is that, like, with the worker organizers, those were always my favorite to work with.
	Because, I mean, especially in my case in Philadelphia, for example, I was organizing security guards.
	I was a security guard myself beforehand.
	And so I had an honest chip on my shoulder with that because I knew that this company, for instance, is going to get a contract with a client for a security guard at a given post.
	And that the security guard, for him being there, the company is going to bill out $50 or $100 an hour.
	And the security guard themselves is going to get $9 an hour.
	And so there was a genuine labor struggle going on there.
	But many of these, especially younger, inexperienced, never had a real job outside of maybe being a barista types.
	They came out with gender studies and mass calm and poli-sci degrees.
	And not to knock poli-sci too hard, I did study it myself.
	But they'd show up and they'd have these really broad, and I guess the great term is intersectional ideas about what they were there to do.
	They weren't there to organize unions.
	They weren't there to fight for workers' rights in their minds.
	They were there to help position themselves to advance their agendas.
	And having seen that at the lower end and then seeing at the higher end a lot of these union brass actually putting lots and lots of the union's money and the workers' money into campaigns that have nothing to do with labor rights, outside of some tangential sort of excuse thing like, oh well, we need to fight for this, you know, progressive Democratic candidate, because da da da, da da and the labor movement's been dying and everyone's scratching their heads wondering why.
	I think I think they're trying to tie it in too much is what i'm saying.
	It's not limited to unions, trust me, this is many organizations.
	It's like before we actually went live.
	I mentioned the fact that I recently quit the ACLU and it's based on the fact of how, how much?
	Just the staggering amount of resources that were going into things that had had absolutely nothing to do with American civil liberties nothing, nothing at all.
	And as a person that kind of sat there and said oh, we're winning these victories, in the name of what?
	Not in the name of civil liberties, not in the not when you're giving special privileges to individuals that are not based at all on any any form of egalitarian thought.
	That that isn't at all.
	You know the the thing that i'm contributing towards.
	I shouldn't be paying money towards giving people special privileges when you know all.
	All I want is a more equal system, and that should be the basis.
	Check your fucking mission statement.
	That's what it says.
	I think that's an interesting point you make.
	A more equal system is an interesting way of saying it.
	Because I think to the progressive mind, they're looking at the outcome.
	And I think to the liberal mind, you're looking at the potential.
	Yes.
	I think that's one of the great delineators.
	Now, I'm just trying to find a link someone sent me.
	I don't know what I've done with it, but it was a link to a political science introductory course.
	And I found it very, very interesting.
	I wanted to read it verbatim, but I don't seem to find it.
	But I can remember the gist of it, so I'll paraphrase.
	And it was describing the three ideologies that are predominant these days.
	Sort of classical conservatism, classical liberalism, and I can't remember how they termed it, but it was essentially sort of progressive socialism.
	And the way they described these was very interesting because it almost seemed to be deliberately misleading.
	And I was thinking, well, it's no wonder that a lot of people find themselves becoming progressives if the if, say, for example, conservatism and liberalism are couched in this sort of language.
	For example, the description of classical liberalism was the one that concerned me the most.
	It began with saying about individuality and how the primacy of the individual is the most important thing.
	And I obviously agree with that.
	But then they specifically said the I can't remember exactly how it was phrased, but it was essentially saying that if the market determines that something is good, that it is popular, then it must be good.
	And what bothered me is it became a moral equivalency.
	If it was popular, it was morally acceptable.
	And that really, really annoyed me because by that logic, child porn would be popular.
	It'd be morally acceptable.
	It was to say anything that had a market, had an audience, had a market, was morally acceptable.
	And that's not, I don't think that is a tenet.
	I think that sort of strikes to the central problem, which was, I think, what allowed the social justice warrior class, let's call them, to evolve within liberalism itself.
	Just as the neo-conservative class evolved and the Christian right and all that.
	Any sort of orthodoxy.
	I think what allows orthodoxies to really grow and blossom and poison whatever it is that they're actually trying to work with is laziness, for lack of a better term.
	It's this idea that you have this set it and forget it, you know, ideology by Ronco sort of thing.
	And I don't know if you know that in the UK it's the whole, you know, Richard Chicken, you just set it and forget it, and it'll be perfect.
	I would say I think a lot of it is not just laziness.
	I mean, it is obviously laziness, but I think a lot of it is the assumption of honesty and fair practice on the part of people trusted to do these things.
	Yeah, but true, but I mean, honesty and the truest mark of an actual intellectual is their ability to question their own convictions, to really challenge them, not just in debate with others, but in debate with themselves.
	Maybe laziness is the wrong term, especially these days.
	Complacency, maybe.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I don't even know to that degree because there are quite a few hours being invested by these people in terms of what they do.
	So I don't really see too much of it as pure apathy because if you actually listen to what a lot of these people have to say, I haven't really made a point or I haven't really made this point in my videos as of yet.
	But one of the things that I do think about progressives in this sense of drive, really, is how misanthropic they can be, just how they can assume the worst in every fucking person.
	Well, I think that's a good question.
	I think they make no bones about it.
	I think that the point there, though, is, though, is that they can go to whatever extremes and extents they want to or feel they need to because they've adopted this ideology wholesale, even though it's generally nebulously defined and they have to sort of sort out what it is on the back end.
	But I think what that might come down to, though, is that fact that we as a you notice we're very lacking in our societies in producing the Thomas Paine's and the Jeffersons and name your great thinker, the Voltaire, whoever.
	We don't really have them coming out as much.
	The people that are celebrated in those veins these days are rhetoricians.
	They're not so much deep thinkers as much as people who say things that people nod their heads to and say, yeah, that makes some kind of sense to me.
	I'm going to love it and take it and run with it.
	I think maybe part of that might be due to the fact that just given the nature of our society these days, we're running around.
	We have a million things to do.
	We have a thousand points of contact coming in at us at all times.
	I mean, it's just the whole issue of, for instance, mobile devices.
	The fact that you are constantly connected to 50 to 100.
	I don't even know the statistics, but you are constantly connected to these people who are going to try and communicate with you.
	And for some reason, you feel obligated to communicate with them in real time.
	All of this shit's going on.
	So let's take that and then add that onto what is the average working class person's life, which means I need to work my ass off to make my money.
	I need to make sure all of my bills are in order.
	If I have kids, I need to make sure they're getting to school, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
	All of these things.
	So for somebody who may even be in that situation, yet be intellectually philosophically inclined to ask questions about the nature of society and politics, for them to be able to spend the amount of time it takes to actually come to rational conclusions and questions and then question those conclusions and questions again, it's kind of hard.
	So ideology and orthodoxy in that sense does sort of seem to offer a very, what I could understand to be a very appealing option.
	Because let's be honest, it does drive you mad when you think about it.
	I mean, from my, you know, in my area, it's very hard to come across someone that is not sort of just a kind of plain spoken working class individual.
	I don't live in a particularly rich area, but I can say that just from the people that I've met in my history, you know, I'm only 25 years old, so I've only had so much time on earth to meet people.
	But I've met more than enough people that are working class, work a day job, and they are a flawed person in a sense, in the same way that everyone is.
	But the problem with politics for them is just it isn't simply just not understanding it.
	It's just a lack or just an unwillingness to actually invest the emotion necessary to really get past so much of the bullshit that exists in terms of misinformation by anyone that's trying to put their opinion out there when it comes to politics.
	And they just get easily frustrated by it, so they don't bother.
	When it comes to people that are progressives, I think that it's really sort of I don't think that with them specifically it's something you can really say it's to do with ignorance or just a lack of effort on their part because I mean I don't want to generalize progressives,
	but I have yet to meet one progressive, one full-throated progressive that was not some bourgeois cunt, not some asshole from a middle-class family that didn't have a fucking job when they were in high school, didn't buy their own fucking car, didn't do anything other than get shit handed to them by their fucking parents.
	Well, isn't that the history of feminism itself, too?
	I couldn't really say.
	I mean, you know, throughout history, like the most strident feminists have been those who, you know, it wasn't that they wanted the equal rights to work in mines.
	It's that they wanted the equal rights to be lawyers and judges and senators like their fathers.
	And, you know, and fair enough to them in that respect.
	But it kind of does come down, I think you kind of struck the nail on the head with that.
	I think it comes down to idleness.
	It's that people are desiring a sense of relevance, a sense of power, especially if they're, you know, and this isn't to even be dismissive of them, to say that, you know, your social justice warrior is intellectually evapid.
	Their arguments are intellectually vapid.
	Their ideology is intellectually vapid.
	They themselves, I don't know them personally, they could hold the potential to be great philosophers and thinkers.
	They just can't get outside the boxes that they put themselves in.
	And I think the reason they put themselves in those boxes is because those boxes are just so comfortable.
	Just to interject here.
	Yeah, I just want to weigh in on this quickly.
	I think there's probably truth on both points here.
	I do think that a lot of people are genuinely very busy people, and they look at the complexity of the political system and various political ideologies and think, well, Jesus Christ.
	They don't know very much about economics.
	I'm not saying that I do.
	I'm just saying they don't as well.
	And they find themselves, I think, looking at a system that's very complicated with very, I think vapid is probably the best word, front men, which in the politicians.
	And they don't like them.
	They don't like what's generally going on.
	And then you've got someone saying, hey, we're going to do, quote, the right thing.
	This is going to make you feel good.
	And a lot of progressivism, the way they win over a lot of people, is in the promise that they're going to do the right thing.
	We're going to help women.
	We're going to help minorities.
	We're going to help everyone you can think of.
	And they never really show them their methods.
	Because as soon as you show them their methods, people recoil in horror.
	And I think a large part of it is they just take them at their word because they seem like good people.
	They seem like they're well-motivated, well-meaning, and I'm sure that they are.
	But the problem, like you say, is that they're in systems that confine them in some sort of strange box.
	And they're encouraged by people who are, I think, well, I don't.
	They're encouraged by people who are quite happy to play up the emotional resonance of what they're doing.
	This makes you feel good.
	And that's really important.
	That's actually partially true.
	I was just going to say, in terms of emotion, one of the podcasts that I would suggest, if you want to listen to have a better understanding of this, is the Best of the Left podcast by Jay Tomilson, I believe his name is.
	And my God, man, is every fucking episode of that podcast just a mixture.
	It's like a roller coaster of emotion.
	Is just a mixture of having victories but not being satisfied by them while also looking at situations and trying to do as much as possible in the way of making it seem more drastically worse and immediate than it actually is.
	And it's literally every episode.
	Every episode is playing that out where there are things that are changing.
	There are things that are becoming better and people are becoming more aware and polls are shifting.
	But that isn't satisfactory.
	That isn't enough.
	It's never enough.
	It's never enough to say that we've reached some moment where we can say, yes, we are actually doing well.
	We actually are doing better than before.
	It's so focused and hyper-focused on the emotion of looking at situations that can be perceivably sad for the individuals involved, but this sort of like attempt to attach what's happening to someone somewhere in the world and put it on you as a person.
	And it's always in the first world, which is one of the reasons why I stopped listening to that fucking podcast.
	That's kind of like the hallmark of modern leftism, unfortunately, is that it's hyper-focused on perceived grievances and injustices within its own sphere of observation.
	So much so that when you attempt to raise questions about wouldn't this same energy and this to be honest with you, I think much of what has happened to the left comes back to feminism.
	Just to jump in there, one of the things that I think it's important to make that distinction perceived.
	That's a very important word because one of the things that really, really bothers me about everything about progressivism really is it's so subjective.
	They do not care.
	Well, it's politically skillful.
	It's politically skillful as well.
	Oh, absolutely.
	It's impersonal as political.
	If you make a subjective issue important politically by raising enough hell and enough voices, then it becomes an issue, even though it's not an issue.
	And let's take that back, though, to the question of idleness, let's say, or in this case, actually, lack of idleness, the busyness of the modern person.
	So, you know, in addition to, I mean, it takes a special kind of wonk, their free time, their recreational time, to sit and ponder on grander issues of political and social questions.
	You know, for the average person, and I think this is also why social justice progressivism and intersectional feminism has been so successful despite the failings you can find if you just scratch at the surface a little bit.
	Because it's simple.
	It's simple.
	That and also because the average person wants, you know, they're told they need to vote.
	They're told they need to think about things.
	They're told they need to watch the news.
	They're told they need to dwell on these issues.
	But they also have work and family and they have social obligations, all this.
	I mean, there's a reason things like NASCAR are as popular as they are.
	There's a reason we have reality TV.
	People are inundated with the horrible, fucked up nature of the world all the time.
	So they love escapism.
	I mean, gamers are no different.
	It's the same thing.
	And gamers, it seems largely, I mean, there's a fight in Gamergate right now over the broader political, social impact and aim of Gamergate between various factions.
	And that's rooted in, you know, also largely a question of how deep do we want to get into this.
	A lot of people do want those easy things.
	So when you have someone come to you and say that I'm fighting for the rights of women and one in four women is raped and we need to put an end to that because it's a rape culture, that sounds so horrible to you that it's something you want to sort of say, yeah, I'm against that.
	That's bad.
	That should not happen.
	And okay, cool, sign up for this newsletter or visit this website or whatever it might be.
	And then the ball just keeps rolling.
	And it's the same thing on the other side, too.
	On the hardcore right wing, the family is crumbling.
	America is in danger.
	Are you a Christian support?
	Yeah, exactly.
	European socialism is encroaching on America.
	Christianity is under attack.
	Do you understand what the fuck is happening to this nation?
	Yeah, I mean, right now, it's two Americans speaking to a Brit, right?
	Now, I myself, as an American liberal, I want single-payer health care.
	I want public health care.
	I want tax dollars to go to that instead of some dumb drug war or something.
	You know, I have a whole list of things I can list off that I'd rather sacrifice in exchange for single-payer health care, which you, lot, have.
	I can't imagine someone going bankrupt over their healthcare.
	I can't imagine it.
	And it's a comedy...
	I mean, that's why...
	I mean, it's why I couldn't finish college.
	I couldn't finish my initial undergrad degree.
	And funny enough, anytime I apply for jobs, I can say that I have a bachelor's degree in political science from ex and such university, and nobody questions it because in conversation, well, of course he does.
	And then also, well, we don't have time to check that.
	But I wasn't able to finish college because I had medical debt, which killed my financial ability to get the loans I needed to complete my degree.
	So I was allowed to get enough of the courses done to where I had a substantial financial burden, but not enough credit to finish it.
	So I'm left with that and without the requisite job, et cetera, et cetera, unable to pay.
	So now I just tell every debt collector except child support services to just get in line.
	But the point being, though, is that when you have these very well-formed arguments, well-marketed, orthodox ideologies that can go out just like religious street preachers.
	And that's another thing I think we should talk about quite in depth, actually.
	Sorry, go on.
	That's really it, though.
	They can count on the fact that most people are too busy and too distracted and have too much going on on their own plates to really give the in-depth thought it needs.
	And then when you come to them and say something like, well, this is something that helps women and women are not in a good position.
	Or that if you just support this, you'll help fight against racism.
	It's like, well, I don't like racism.
	Nobody does.
	Racism is terrible.
	So yeah, if you're against racism, I'll support your side.
	And as it goes, they just keep, you know, it's a sales game.
	It's a marketing game.
	Yeah, that's one thing that actually I definitely want to touch on as well, is the baffle them with bullshit technique that's come out of academia.
	They have spent 30 years perfecting nonsense.
	Sophistry.
	Yeah, sophistry is exactly the worst.
	Could I throw something out just because I saw it mentioned in the comments, sort of?
	Oh, fuck you, Blix Krog.
	I know who you are.
	You can get triggered all day.
	No, the point I was going to say, though, though, is that with those of us who do take the time, you know, it's almost a leisure activity to ponder these deeper questions and to ponder what the nature of policy versus effect versus grander society consideration is.
	I mean, I'm going to guess, I might be wrong, but to my mind, ideology itself, communism, socialism, capitalism, anarcho-capitalism, anarchism, etc., I don't really see them as systems that one must adopt and go wholesale with.
	I see them as toolboxes to pull the right tool from for the right question.
	England and America are completely different countries with completely different issues.
	However, things that work in one place may not work in another.
	However, the simple fact that a proposed policy in America, let's say, that public health care option even, you know, it runs contrary to our post-Cold War anti-collectivist ideals.
	The fact is, if we had that option, let's give it a try.
	And it's just sort of like dropping the orthodoxy, dropping the ideological loyalty and saying, okay, well, let's look at policies and ideas that come from different schools of thought and see how we can integrate them into the system we need that fits us, as opposed to saying we need one system, which is what these social justice warriors do, just as every other orthodox ideological warrior in the past has done.
	Yeah, I guess I just want to finish the point I was making before moving on quickly.
	The issue I think that is really one of the really, really important issues I think needs to be addressed is the and you've got to give them credit.
	It's academic rigor with which they have fortified their position.
	Now, I'm not, like Louis was saying, it's sophistry.
	It's almost all absolute bullshit when you look at it.
	But they have been very, very, very, very dedicated to what they've been doing.
	And they've been doing it for about 30 years.
	They're good at it.
	And yeah, they are good at making up terms.
	cisgendered heteronormative, your average person in the street hears all this shit and they're like...
	Have you heard of homonormative now?
	No, but it wouldn't surprise me.
	The new one.
	The new one.
	So I think that the academic backing that the progressives have is a real issue for people.
	But the thing is, it's actually its own undoing as well, because I do think that these things are done specifically to justify hate by people who are in themselves very hateful.
	And so, I mean, it's, you know, I don't want to talk to stereotypes too much, but a lot of the time it is the butch man-hating lesbian who spent her whole life being an academic feminist gamer, Adrian Shaw.
	You know, so, you know, they consider them going, so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	So it's okay for me to hate white men.
	And people on the outside are like, okay, okay, no.
	So there is a lot of people.
	Well, consider this.
	You talk an individual into going out and fighting a war for you, right?
	Somebody who had no idea.
	And you talk them into it with all of these grand ideas.
	And all of this, this is what we're fighting for, right?
	And they decide to go out and fight that fight.
	Eventually it comes to they're not, you know, especially once the fight gets ugly, they're not going to fight that war on those ideas.
	They're going to fight that war because they hate the enemy.
	You show them the enemy.
	You show them who the enemy is.
	In this case, the misogynists, the racists, etc.
	The people who, in this case, that's probably the enemy of your enemy as well.
	I think there's a very good reason that this has all been paired very deeply, possibly inextricably, with identity politics.
	But sorry, Louis, you were going to say something, really?
	I was just going to say that the issue, and I agree with you, Nick, in terms of the gist of what you were saying of how this really needs to be addressed as a factor of where we are now and where we could possibly be going in the future.
	But I think that we're the issue really lies is how digestible this is going to be for the everyday person because we have the issue of having to refute a lot of what is said on the other side of this, if you can say that it's boiling it down to the other side.
	But they have the same problem because when they use all of these, you know, the Tumblr jargon and that I'm going to tell you, no one under 20 that is not on the internet 24-7 is going to have any fucking idea what they're talking about.
	I mean, I've tried to discuss this with even Gen Xers and they have no fucking idea of this stuff.
	It's I I always find it amusing when the movie Bob talks about any of this stuff because you can tell he doesn't really understand what he's saying.
	Yes, well the the the the real reason why that this isn't caught on to the mainstream, especially if you look at like when I say the working class, it's because the working class is going to be to a degree cynical with a person that's coming towards them.
	I could use the word skeptical, but I do think it's cynicism that's really driving it.
	Coming to them and saying to them, listen, there's people in this country that have it hard up based on the fact that you know some guy on Twitter said the word nigger.
	Like that we need to fucking stop everything and we need to address that.
	Some anonymous guy on the internet says something mean.
	I was playing Dirty Bomb a few minutes before we started this stream.
	I might have said the word rape.
	We need to fucking stop everything.
	We need to address that fact.
	And so you're going to go up to the guy that's working 60 hours a week, 80 hours a week, and you're going to say to him that that's a big deal.
	It's not going to work.
	And that's why none of this has been has become mainstream.
	It's only on the peripheral of politics.
	And it's funny too, you say that, actually, because in my union work, I had plenty, plenty of these young people fresh out of college with these gender studies, mass communication degrees, etc.
	And they would actually try and take that shit into the field.
	They would go to places, in places like Milwaukee, Philadelphia.
	Oh, man.
	Yeah, I mean, and it was, and the sick thing, too, the sick thing was that they would go out.
	They would be shit organizers because they'd be talking to people on their jobs.
	And these people are like, okay, if you're talking to me on the clock, which you're doing, we need to be off-camera, you know, security camera.
	No one can see me talking to you because I'll get fucking fired for it, et cetera, et cetera.
	And then they'd go out and they'd try and be like, you know, well, this is part of a broader fight about gender equality and this and that.
	None of they didn't buy it.
	And the labor movement's been dying for a long time.
	And it's because they had a fight taken of them by the corporate establishment, which is very fucking good.
	I mean, I can't stand union busters, for instance.
	Those are professionals, usually lawyers who are hired to go out and fuck up campaigns.
	I can't say that I like them, but fuck me, they are good at what they do because they're out there to do the job.
	It's about the game.
	You go out and play the game.
	It's the same thing in the PAC world.
	You go out and play the game.
	And a big reason that the actual genuine left has been losing.
	The only time in this country, for instance, Democrats win is when Republicans fuck up so bad.
	And just as we saw after the Obama election, when Democrats are handed a fantastic victory, they have a phenomenal skill at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory simply because they have to play to all of these uppity whiny bases that really aren't saying anything of worth.
	And it's the same thing in the field.
	And it's the same thing in unionism.
	You get people who join up to be union organizers because they see it as a stepping stool so that they can go out and fight for the rights of whatever particular identity political thing they have.
	And so they go out and they fuck up these really genuinely valuable union campaigns.
	And the sickest thing of it is that because of their zeal and because of their professed leftist progressive ideology, they're the ones who are hired on as full-time union organizing staff.
	And those who are brought on as campaign hands, who are actually going out at 3 a.m. in places like Philadelphia, going north of Spring Garden as the only white guy for two miles around without a weapon, simply to talk to one guy who's riding a bike on a patrol that he shouldn't be doing.
	Putting his life at risk, doing it because the guy who did it before him got stabbed in the fucking hand while he was doing it.
	Going out just to talk to that one guy.
	Those guys get shifted off.
	Just to, yeah, okay.
	I think you brought up another area that I wanted to talk about.
	And one of the things that I find most worrying is the cliqueishness of progressives.
	Now, this is something I just want to have a quick spiel about because I've observed this so many times.
	They absolutely feel like they're on a mission.
	They, in their minds, are definitely emotionally driven with the permissions of their own conscience, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, to continue to do what they do.
	And so they always end up acting as a group, whether they are or aren't.
	They see each other acting.
	They can see from the language that they're using, the agenda that the other person is pushing.
	That's another progressive.
	They're doing something progressive.
	It's the jargon.
	It is absolutely the jargon, which, again, is informed by all of this from academia.
	And they see someone else using it.
	They see someone else pushing the agenda and they just fall into line.
	It's incredible.
	Yes.
	Incredible how accommodating they are.
	And this creates a very, very tight-knit web, which we see in like journalists, Game Journal Pros, in metal.
	In the metal thing, there's one called Met Poll.
	They've got one in there.
	They naturally form these sorts of private networks among progressives because they are all part of the same team.
	They're all working to the same goal.
	And ideologically, it's completely justified, no matter how corrupt it actually is or would appear from the outside.
	And their goal is always, of course, to find offense, to find what's wrong with this thing.
	We will root it out.
	We will find the sin.
	We will find the sin in this center and we will purge it at all costs.
	I don't think that's the goal.
	I think that's the means by which they achieve their goal.
	Their goal is control.
	Yes.
	I was just going to say, bro, it's micromanaging.
	That's the whole fucking premise of everything they do.
	They are such incredible control freaks.
	Well, I was just going to say, I mean, one thing that I have, I called it months ago.
	Well, I was hoping for it months ago.
	But Comedy Gate.
	My God.
	Oh, God, yeah.
	I wanted nothing more than these Cretans, and they're starting to do it now, thankfully.
	Because, I mean, you can go after gamers, and gamers will grind endlessly, endlessly.
	Gamers will not quit.
	And that is admirable.
	But the one thing I can think of off the top of my head that you do not want to do more than fuck with gamers is to try and tell comedians how to be funny.
	Yeah, Seinfeld has really laid the groundwork for this.
	Have you seen Jim Jeffries?
	Not off the top of my head.
	Oh, my God.
	I follow him on Facebook, and it's hilarious.
	He did a show, and some woman, some feminist got up and said, I think you're really funny, but your use of the word cunt is really offensive and triggering.
	You need to replace that.
	Keep in mind, he's Australian.
	Yeah, yeah, he doesn't do that.
	Yeah, they're worse than you.
	You lot.
	And yeah, and his response was, well, fuck you, cunt.
	Please let there be more than that.
	I want to go and start a Tumblr.
	Just like, can you believe all of this offensive comedy stuff that's joking, joking about things like women and people of color and feelings?
	Can you believe it?
	Here are some comedians you should go and harass.
	God, the comedy that would come out of that would be just.
	I honestly think that it's going to be money.
	they're going to hit the wall that is money.
	And I don't know, I can't really speak to what it's going to be, but I think that that's, if it's not going to be something that's just a natural evolution of politics, in my mind it would probably be them attacking something that is very moneyed in terms of having...
	If they were going to attack something that is moneyed, they'd go after Wall Street.
	But they had that opportunity with all that guy.
	And they fucked that up.
	That's not going to happen.
	Fuck that up.
	There's no angle of attack there.
	There's nothing they can do.
	Well, to go out to Wall Street?
	There are plenty of angles of attack.
	Just not an identity attack.
	Derivatives are misogynist.
	Yeah, that's the thing.
	That's the thing.
	Yeah, that's the thing.
	It's just not on an identity basis.
	Yeah, but that's my business.
	They're only methods of attack.
	Yeah, for anyone else, there are plenty of angles of attack.
	For these people, you can't attack derivatives as being misogynist.
	Are you sure?
	Are you sure?
	I'm sure that's not.
	Yeah, no, that's true.
	I'm not going to put anything past them.
	It was a funny sort of thing with Occupy Wall Street.
	I made tours through those camps.
	I'm coming out of New England.
	In New Hampshire here, I organized the mic check of Obama.
	And that was like, holy shit, we made international news.
	I'm like, yeah, isn't that better than bird-dogging a guy who's making one stop in a state?
	Good job, guys.
	But I used to hang out in Boston all the time.
	And it was funny because down there, there were a lot of very hardcore anarchist cliques, both red and black.
	That's how I came to identify them, like the black flag and the red flag.
	Red flag is anarcho-communists, as it was.
	You know how that works.
	How can you be an anarcho-communist?
	I don't know, but they did dishes.
	You know, they did so many dishes, I couldn't fault them.
	But it was funny because you spend a few days, like, you know, you throw up your tent, you spend a few days, you observe.
	And I kind of felt sometimes like Jane Goodall observing the ape.
	And I would spend more time watching, and I'd go and I'd help build a structure.
	I'd pedal the bike to get the power going, or I'd do the dishes just to see what was going on.
	And what I noticed is that the hardcore factions with the defined ideologies that were based around the core principles of Occupy Wall Street, which were corporate money corruption and government, the income inequality.
	Even the people who were like, let's audit the Fed, Ron Paul for president.
	They were the ones who were living there.
	Those are the ones who were doing the work.
	What happened was you'd get these general assemblies, and then you'd get these especially usually feminist groups who would want to do nothing but talk about rape.
	It was all rape all the fucking time.
	And they were the same ones who were in the drum circle tent only for women for drum circles.
	And it was just this utter banality that just blew my fucking mind.
	And now, after the fact, now that the dust is all settled and everyone looks back and sees those videos of let's talk about the progressive stack and all of that, looking at that, I can really see how identity politics in that little sort of microcosm, you know, poison liberalism.
	And it's the same way.
	It was this desperate attempt to take issues which are broader and unattached and then basically attach them to these other issues.
	And I saw that again, too.
	I mean, I've been involved, and I mean, this is my MRA, FRA, father's rights shit talking here.
	But, you know, I've been fighting the family court system for seven years.
	And I've learned so much about what has broken and corrupted it.
	And it's all basically legislation that was passed by hardcore progressive Democrats who took a lot of money from feminist organizations like National Organization for Women and League of Women Voters.
	And they passed these ordinances.
	They passed these policies like the Violence Against Women's Act and Title IV-D, which is what says states get nearly a half a billion dollars a year out of the Social Security Trust Fund if they can show that they are aggressively pursuing paternity and support orders.
	And I've seen all of this.
	And I've brought it up in public and I've brought it up on social media with friends of mine.
	And most of my political friends in social media are my old comrades from the left.
	And so many of them have come back and said that's patriarchy.
	Are you fucking kidding me?
	Patriarchy, really?
	Is that really the actual response?
	I mean, Jesus.
	No, I'm not even joking.
	They have said, yes, they have said, oh, well, I've looked over this law that says we will give you money if you aggressively go after paternity and support.
	Mind you, in this particular provision, Title IX, I'm sorry, Title IV-D IV slash D, it says, you know, aggressively pursuing these.
	It doesn't say what they need to do to prove that they're aggressively supporting it.
	And there's no provisions for oversight or accountability whatsoever.
	They just need to show that they're being really aggressive.
	And I'm told that that is patriarchy.
	I'm told that patriarchy is putting fathers on the till and threatening them with loss of license and jail time, which is the ironic thing too, because the same thing is the one that empowers the state if you fall behind on your child support, which the order they can set however they want.
	It's not based on income.
	It's technically based on income, but then there's discretion-based orders.
	But they can do that however they like.
	And then once you do that, if you fall too behind, they take your driver's license.
	And in the state that I live in, New Hampshire, like if you don't have a driver's license in a car, you are not getting to work.
	There is no public transportation.
	Most of this is rural.
	So they'll take your license to inspire you to make money somehow at the job you can't get to.
	And then once you can't do that, they'll put you in jail and then bill you for the time that you're in jail.
	And if mom has to go on welfare, they're going to bill her entire welfare bill to you.
	And it's just insane.
	And then to have these progressives, oh, honestly, Sargon, if you want to do a stream about family law in America, I'm more than happy.
	That would last hours.
	But to have these progressives who go out there and push for Democrats simply because they say that they are feminists and that they are pro-civil rights, which honestly, if you're not pro-equality these days, then you're living in the fucking 19th century.
	Yeah, I can't imagine meeting someone who really wasn't.
	Yeah, and to hear that that shit is a result of patriarchy.
	So patriarchy, which empowers men over women, this system which empowers men over women happens to also kind of jail men endlessly.
	I'm sorry, progressive left.
	I can't fucking buy it anymore.
	Okay, Let's move on to and Lou, you mentioned this in one of your videos recently, which is one of the reasons that I've specifically brought you on.
	I have been of the opinion now for quite some time, but I've never really gone out of my way to make a big case of it, that progressives are in fact very conservative and they are in no way liberal.
	Yes, absolutely.
	Would you like to since since Nick has been going on for a bit of doing that?
	I mean, it's really simple.
	It comes down to the fact that if you take the position of a classical liberal or someone that it really does come down to, I think, individualism.
	If you look at that kind of perspective based not really on left-wing versus right-wing, but from a perspective in that you think that people should be free to make decisions based on their own accord rather than having some form of authority to dictate to them what they should do.
	I mean, it's and that people are, at least in some sense, autonomous.
	They are not brain dead.
	They have not been brainwashed.
	They have some level of agency to make their own decisions.
	I just think that when I use the word misanthropy, I think that's what really the crux of this is, is that they look at people and they assume the absolute worst in them in that they don't have the intellectual capacity or the agency necessary to actually make decisions for themselves.
	Just make a point here because something springs to mind.
	I mean, Gamergate has really given me the experience of this.
	I think it's because they are, well, bad people.
	And I don't generally like saying, oh, you're a bad person.
	Obviously, what I'm saying by that is they're not very moral, not very upstanding people.
	And I think that they're very ethical.
	Not very ethical, yeah.
	And I think they're constantly looking to prove themselves.
	This is where I think the drive comes, from saying, well, I have to go out and, with the permission of my own conscience, fuck up someone else's day just in such a way that I can say I'm a good person and you're a bad person.
	And the transphobic joke in Pillars of Eternity really sums it up.
	The woman who started that, her tweet was literally, yay, I made change.
	I did something.
	I'm a good person.
	Yeah, that was really weird.
	Go ahead, go ahead.
	No, no, no, you.
	I was just going to say, I really think that when you get down to brass tacks and this issue, that the perspective on this should be, at least on our part, or at least I guess I should say, just speaking for myself, it isn't so much looking at this other person and seeing them attempting to be on some sort of moral high ground or prove themselves as a person or as an agent of liberalism or progressivism or whatever.
	The way that I look at it is you have this foreign agent, and they are coming into gaming, and they are saying to artists, they're saying to developers, they're saying to creative people what their boundaries should be.
	What art is perfectly fine to make.
	That's actually a misnomer.
	There is no perfect art to a progressive.
	The idea is that they are dictating to the artist what they should be doing.
	And I use the word fascist when I do some of my videos because that in my mind, I'm not being histrionic.
	I'm not trying to be hyperbolic in what I'm describing.
	That is a fascist position to hold.
	That makes you a fascist when you're going to an artist and saying to them, take down these different things that you have up on your wall.
	I'm going to an art gallery.
	I'm going to strip away all the degenerate art in this facility.
	I'm going to tell you what it is you should be doing as a creative individual.
	Because that is something that any decent person should be able to digest and say, no, that's wrong.
	That's on his face.
	That is un-American.
	That is something that no person should be in support of.
	Well, this is sort of the thing that...
	Sorry, can I just...
	Sorry.
	Yeah, I don't think I've articulated my point well enough yet.
	This, I think it's their own moral failings that lead them to become censors.
	And I find it very disturbing that anyone would suggest that they should be able to dictate what an artist should do, or what a comedian should joke about, or what a video game should or should not contain.
	To me, these things are works of fiction.
	They're not real.
	They're not serious.
	They're not statements of true intent.
	And it disturbs me greatly that these people think for some reason that they might be, or that they feel that it is acceptable for them to take offense to try and control the situation by taking this offense and by stifling and censoring the person, the creative person in question.
	And again, it feeds into lots of things.
	It's the desire for control.
	It's the desire to, quote, be a good person.
	I mean, I don't want to use the word fascist.
	I think authoritarian, definitely.
	I'm going to say it.
	I think that that is a fascist position to hold because it is looking at something that should exist based on the fact that it's the principle of it.
	I mean, I cannot see.
	I mean, maybe this is just me being the Uber liberal or Uber libertarian or what have you, but I just don't see any kind of artistic expression as something that should in any way be censored.
	I can't think of a single fucking thing that should be censored.
	That's it.
	It's the difference.
	You are a liberal, therefore you don't think censorship is appropriate no matter what it is.
	You think that the individual should be able to make up their own mind as to whether they like it or not.
	Obviously, they're going to be within reason.
	Assuming it's not like child porn or something like that.
	Even on that, even on that, it's an issue of consent.
	Well, no, no, no, no, we'll.
	I'll come out of consent to that sort of thing.
	Well, that's the thing.
	And it's the question of actual harm done.
	I mean, in the past, it was like a question of, like, has actual harm been done to an individual?
	In the case of children, children, by default, must be protected.
	Everyone knows this.
	Parents are no.
	Children must be protected.
	That's what we do.
	Now don't protect them so much that you shelter them that they turn into these histrionic mad people who think that every ounce of offense that they take to a thing that they see equates to a true and defined personal attack.
	But I guess to kind of pivot on this, though, this is what we're seeing here, this has been a radical, very, very quick shift in narrative and in thinking with people.
	It's this defined sort of ideology which has been foisted on everyone, that a fence culture, outrage, I call it outrage porn, is what they live on.
	I'm actually getting, and this is kind of a pivot, but I'm actually given some kind of hope from it because we've been fighting it for, well, I mean, Gamergate has been fighting it for a year.
	I've been fighting it, and those of us who've watched it grow in other sectors have been fighting it for much longer.
	And it's been going on for a very long time.
	It's been very, you know, I tip my hat to them.
	They've been very tactical.
	They've sort of collectively found areas of media and entertainment and areas of society that they can attack and say this is offensive and this is hurting people, even though no one's actually being hurt.
	Maybe their feelings are being a little niffed, but they can still carry on with their day.
	But this is sort of the fact that it's coming to the public eye as clearly as it is now.
	And the fact that people are starting to realize that outrage culture and call-out culture is a bad thing.
	I'm actually sort of, I feel optimistic about it.
	Because one thing, too, on an ideological level, too, and let's take this back to the question of like, where's the left going?
	And let's also take it back to the question of where's the right going.
	When the neoconservative movement, the idea that, hey, let's just invade whatever country we feel like and call it freedom, started to actually get stale in the mouths of those who are conservatives, let's say.
	This libertarian resurgency or insurgency grew.
	Ron Paul has been running for president as a Republican for decades.
	And it has held steady in the U.S. with about 8% of self-identified conservatives saying that they are Ron Paul-style libertarians.
	That has grown, as of at least 2012, to about 14%.
	And clearly we can see the people who say that I'm a conservative, they oftentimes more mean that they're a libertarian.
	They're a leave me the fuck alone.
	Let me do my own thing.
	I'm an adult.
	I can handle my shit.
	Now, in 2010, when the Tea Party got to real prominence, what I noticed, and I pat myself on the back here, I kind of called it, it was rapidly co-opted, as everyone saw, by the mainstream right wing in the U.S. Sarah Palin had the Tea Party Express saying the Tea Party stands for good Christian values and strong national defense and da da da da da, all this neoconservative shit.
	And libertarians, by and large, rejected it.
	And the libertarian identification within the conservative, self-identified conservative set grew.
	Now what we're seeing is, I think, the same thing on the left.
	The left became homogenized, especially during the 90s.
	The 90s was the last wave of outrage culture.
	And then it kind of subsided.
	And now it's come back in this new form thanks to social media.
	And I think what we're seeing is a lot of people who are more or less liberals.
	I mean, I've never in my life felt comfortable saying to someone when I would be accused of being a libertarian, of saying, well, yeah, kind of.
	I do sort of think government and society should leave me mostly the fuck alone.
	They should let me have my opinions.
	They should let me express my opinions how I like.
	They should let me be myself.
	And if my arguments fail under the weight of rational scrutiny in debate, then that will be how they are defeated.
	That would be the ideal.
	I think that's what's happening.
	I think that's what's happening now.
	The thing is, the question is, I'm looking more towards the future, and the problem is, yeah, it is happening now, but in 30 years' time, do you think it will still happen?
	In 30 years' time, I honestly believe that, because let's be honest, I mean, I'm just looking from an American perspective here, but the religious right by almost all popular factions of the body politic is looked at as kind of a joke.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, and I think honestly, that this outrage-porn, hyper-aggressive, super-progressive identity politics set in less than 30 years' time, especially because let's look at social thinking in terms of almost technology.
	Its speed doubles exponentially, especially because it's so tied into.
	Social media, things get old fast.
	Yeah, and I mean, honestly, like, well, for instance, you know, you did a video on Everyday Feminism's article the other day, and I made a comment that the author of that article was one who I'd engaged with.
	This is a trans woman, or I'm sorry, trans man who, in a previous article, decided they were fit to issue parenting advice.
	That's a childless trans man, social justice warrior writing for everyday feminism, who saw fit to issue parenting advice.
	And I'm sorry, like, I'm not an irrational man.
	I'm not by any means an irrational man, and I'm the kind of person who loves to be proven wrong.
	And I challenged those notions.
	And they were not addressed.
	And the fact is, is that the general public is starting to pick up on the fact that this outrage-porn culture is so full of itself and so full of shit that it is no more worth regarding than the histrionic think of the children religious right.
	Yeah, but that's the, yeah, that's true.
	But there are a couple of factors which I find are going to probably throw a spanner in the machine.
	The first is it is a retard industrial complex.
	This is the thing, right?
	The fucking trigger, dude.
	This is where I'm like, look, look, 30 years in the future, right?
	Now, while they have relatively small numbers, they are causing a massive fucking headache, right?
	But the thing that disturbs me is that in the Magic the Gathering community, there has been, obviously, a distinct push towards social justice.
	And I find myself on my personal Facebook because I play a lot of magic and I follow Magic the Gathering pages.
	Oh, I love it.
	But there is a growing amount of younger people who buy into this bullshit.
	And they do it because either they've got people at university, they themselves have been to university, or it's just part of the sort of generational thing.
	I think you're giving it too much credit.
	When I was younger, I I used to be both religious and conservative, and that I was raised Catholic and was Catholic and was practicing, for I prayed practically every day and I went to Mass every single Sunday for how many years, and the rate at which I went, or the rate at which I went from sort of disillusioned Catholic to atheist was very quick.
	And so I don't discount the young for changing their opinions.
	I don't.
	I don't think it's ever too late for anyone to actually change their political opinions, and so the brainwashing or whatever is only the rhetoric, is only so strong.
	Yeah consider, let me just say that to the larger point of this, going into the 30 uh, going into 30 years in the future, and all this.
	There's always going to be sophists, there's always going to be cults, there's always going to be ignorance, there's always going to be chaos, there's always going to be people that are shitty, saying stupid things and basing it on nothing, and for right now, flavor of the month is progressivism.
	It's just whatever, let me.
	Let me finish my point, because I, I we're not dealing with religion.
	That's the, that's the most important thing.
	We kind of make sure, no no no, we're not with the.
	That's the thing right, because the, the very, the fundamental crux the, the achilles heel of religion is that they believe in a god.
	There's no way to prove it or disprove it.
	But these people have, quote social science.
	These people have what they consider, quote proof.
	This is the difference it's and it's not biblical.
	I'm sorry brother no no no, hang on right listen, I i'm not saying that they're right.
	Obviously I know they're right.
	That's not the thing here.
	Go ahead.
	I know, but I don't think that there is any necessary reason that they have to come to the conclusion that their fake studies are wrong.
	I mean, I can see plenty of people going, well, maybe Go doesn't exist, maybe there are lots of contradictions in the Bible, maybe my parents this, my parents that, but I mean, and maybe maybe in like 20 years time, it'll be the, the children of the progressives, that are rebelling, going.
	You know what?
	Yeah, I think you're all wrong.
	I'm going to become a Catholic or something maybe, but I don't think that's, I don't find it a convincing.
	Um, I don't find that convincing.
	And I think that these people, I think they have a particular method of conditioning that is different to the Catholics as well.
	I mean it's, it's not well.
	I mean it's well, it that's, but that's the thing is that the boogeyman can only exist for so long.
	I, I mean, if you have the thing is is that you can only point towards something, especially if it's tangible, if it's something that you can actually point to and say whether the the situation as it exists is or is not the way that they're saying it.
	So if it's something that you can demonstrably prove, there are going to be people that actually do look at the situation and say, I mean, that's how I, you know, I used to be a person that uh, to some degree was, you know, had some uh, leanings towards progressivism, did think that there was an issue with uh, whatever on you know, rape culture on campus in my first Year of fucking college.
	But I mean, all I did was look at the statistics and say, like, okay, this is outrageous.
	Like, these statistics are off the charts.
	And there's fucking 20-something girls in my class.
	Does that mean, like, five of these girls have been fucking raped based on these statistics?
	Like, that's horseshit.
	And the sad thing I'd say with that, too, though, is that, like, the other messages that they try to raise, the other issues that these social justice warriors try to raise, right?
	Are lost.
	Like, the legitimate dynamics of the issue are lost in their rhetoric because they talk about racial privilege and such.
	And they just write it off as white privilege, racial privilege.
	I never hear a social justice warrior discuss housing and urban development.
	Hello?
	We might have lost that.
	The perversely definitively affected the black communities in major metropolitan areas.
	And they moved there for the specific purpose, especially in places like Milwaukee, for the industrial base so that they could get jobs.
	And then those jobs disappeared.
	And there was nothing but poverty.
	And there was no industry to get into in their area outside of drugs.
	And so they got into drugs.
	And then the war on drugs came on.
	Nixon launched the war on drugs.
	His aim was to promote treatment of drug addiction.
	But it became such a hot political issue and so easy to get elected on that it became one about we need to send paramilitary police forces in to raid drug dens, et cetera, et cetera.
	And it was really easy to sell to the electorate because it was like, well, these are just poor minorities you don't care about.
	Now, there are dynamics and nuances to these issues that liberals and progressives ought to be actually addressing.
	But they're not because this social justice scene has just taken over in this pop phenomenon in a way that they can just say, oh, well, the only reason blacks are targeted by police is because police are racist.
	And then I'll ask them, like, well, yeah, I organized with Acorn.
	I went house to house in Anacostia in the southeast area of D.C.
	I was shot at twice.
	And in every home I spoke with, and in every home I met with people and spoke with them, I'd ask them, what do you want to improve your community?
	And they say, I want a police substation.
	And I want a community officer who I know by name and who knows me, whose sole job is to police this community.
	And because that's how it worked when I moved here 40, 50 years ago when things were good.
	Because I knew the police and the police knew me.
	But you don't hear this shit because these people aren't activists.
	And this is the thing that drives me up the fucking wall.
	They say they're activists by tweeting bullshit out on Twitter about all, you know, black lives matter, yes, all women, all this fucking bullshit.
	And I asked them, where the fuck have you organized?
	When have you ever actually gone out and put your fucking neck on the line and gotten shot at and gotten arrested trying to make social change for marginalized communities who are actually facing social issues rooted in public policies that with best or worst intentions failed.
	And you're trying to address them.
	When have you done that?
	And it's like, oh, I'm trying to raise awareness.
	So fuck your awareness, man.
	Fuck you and your raising of awareness.
	You're not doing shit.
	Well, it's because it's about them.
	I mean, it just comes back to that, that, you know, if you are going to speak anything to these kind of people, I mean, I don't really want to generalize on behalf of every one of these type of people, but there are some that really do have sort of this messiah complex going on where they're sitting on the fucking mountain high and they're going to dictate to the masses below of what is sock just for today and all that.
	It's more amusing than anything else if you look at some of these people.
	I know that you can, Nick and personally find it frustrating, but some of these people really, you do really have to laugh at because of the fact that they think they're fucking an authority on anything.
	You ask them about things.
	They say like we want to raise up marginalized communities.
	And you ask them, well, what sort of ideas do you have about community investment and community investment?
	What are your positions on the CZR and HUR zones?
	What do you think about community policing?
	They have nothing to offer.
	Nothing.
	I think my primary concern is I don't think you guys are taking into account the retard factory one enough.
	Seriously, seriously, right?
	We're talking tens of thousands of these people who are being pumped out of universities every year, right?
	And not only that, these people are teaching your children.
	I mean, you know what Common Core is, don't you?
	This is the standard for children going forward in several schools and schools and whatnot.
	For the next few years.
	Well, it's fucking Huxley, dude.
	Pure all Huxley.
	It absolutely is.
	And you guys are not.
	Every fucking administration has a new fucking bullshit bill that they're going to put forth that's going to be some cockamamie scheme to bring in corporate interest in that.
	I really don't think, I mean, I've read a lot of their nonsense.
	People send me the papers and research all the time.
	These people are planning for the future.
	They are planning for what you think is just going to happen.
	So did the rights.
	So did the rights.
	The right people say they don't fucking file.
	We're the world hegemon.
	We're going to be able to run everything.
	It's going to work just fine.
	Neoconservatism today, neoconservatism tomorrow, and neoconservatism forever.
	Can I jump in though?
	Can I jump in, though?
	Because you know what really frightens me?
	It's not so much these social justice Cretons who are poisoning every conversation with their identity politics.
	Because people are already starting, because everything moves faster as we go.
	People are already starting to reject their outrage culture bullshit.
	Even liberal progressive, even people who might be identified as social justice warriors, because I still have a number of them as contacts, former colleagues and shit.
	They're starting to recognize that is a fucking problem.
	What I worry about is the backswing.
	Because one thing I've realized is that the political pendulum that people talk about, people talk about it going back and forth, right to left, right to left.
	And we see that in electoral politics and we see that in popular politics.
	But what we fail to realize is that because it's a metaphorical pendulum, it's not abiding by the laws of physics.
	This is not a pendulum that will eventually gradually make its way to the center and things will be okay.
	This is a pendulum which with each swing seems to swing wider to the opposite end.
	Every time you have this rising of ideological purity, the reaction by the public and by the activists who are activated from that is one which pushes it further off to the other side.
	Now, what yeah, so this is the problem I see, is that like, so all right, we have social justice radicals, and they will at some point probably, and they already have, seated legislative and government bodies so they can make their bullshit half-witch.
	Let me finish making my point, because you guys interrupt me, and I really don't think you quite understand what I'm saying, right?
	What I'm saying is that they are changing the way children learn, the way they think.
	What I'm saying is in future, children will not be able to think like us because they will have been deprived of the intellectual tools needed in their childhood development to be able to achieve what we are doing right now.
	I disagree.
	I know you disagree, but that's okay, fine, disagree, but I don't think you're right.
	And what I'm saying is I think what will come after will have been built on what's happening now.
	What's happening now are the foundations.
	Because fundamentally, I mean, you've got plenty of kids who didn't get the sort of right-wing Catholic education, but you're not going to find very many children outside of this sort of religious right who don't get the crazy progressive education.
	Like I said, I understand what you're saying, and I'm not, I'm, you know, even if I were to just concede everything you've just said, I'm an alarmist.
	Don't get me wrong.
	Maybe I'm not.
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	Don't mistake me for what I'm saying here.
	I'm just saying, let me allow me to concede everything you just said, and I'm going to say again, this is going to last as long that we have the Obama administration.
	Then the very next administration is going to pay.
	I'm not going to say that maybe they'll keep all of that, but they are going to pass a new education bill, a new federal educational standards in the next administration.
	They're going to do that.
	It's been every single presidency that's done that.
	And the Common Core has just been the last thing.
	But what difference do you think it's going to have?
	It depends on who has it in front of them.
	It depends on who's actually writing it or who's actually going to be writing what's done.
	It could be worse than it is now.
	It could be better.
	We don't really know, but I'm just saying that...
	Yeah, that's my point.
	I think...
	I think it's just going to be building on what already exists.
	I don't think they're going to turn around and say, you know what, this isn't critical enough.
	They're not teaching kids critical skills.
	What they need to be doing is throwing up all the social justice nonsense and learning how to think like a proper liberal.
	I don't think they're going to do that.
	I think they're just going to take what's there and say, well, it's already there.
	They may well have been extreme, progressively indoctrinated themselves.
	And it's just going to build.
	I think it's just going to get worse.
	But let's not take a very important factor out of this, right?
	Two of them, actually.
	One is being parents, and the other is being the nature of young people.
	Now, young people have a tendency, and we should all be able to remember this, of just sort of naturally wanting to reject everything we've been taught.
	Now, granted, not all of us are going to do that.
	A whole number of us are going to pick it up and run with it.
	But really, I mean, people, you know, young people love to rebel against systems.
	And if you have a system which is really easy to observe as being full of shit, it's all the much easier for them to rebel against it.
	But the other side to that is parents.
	Now, I don't know about you, Jean, but or Louise, sorry.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I looked at the picture.
	I'm like, Jacques.
	Yeah, I don't know about you, Louise.
	But I mean, I'm a parent.
	I have a seven-year-old daughter.
	Sargon's got a little boy.
	Now, one thing, like, for instance, my ex is bringing her to church.
	Now, she's got this funny notion in her head that the only place my daughter can get morality from is church, which is really ironic because she's an unwed single lesbian mother now, but that's another story.
	The idea being, though, is my daughter asks me, Do you believe in God?
	I say, What do you say?
	And she's like, I don't know.
	I don't think it's real because it sounds made up.
	And out up above the clouds, it's just rocket ships.
	And yeah.
	And so one message I've been giving to her constantly, this is like, this is your dad talking to you.
	What I'm teaching you now is never let anyone else make your mind up for you.
	Always question everything.
	I think that sorry to say, but I or interrupt, I should say, but I was just going to say also, you have to also bear in mind, Sargon, and again, this is not discounting anything you've said, because I haven't seen the things that you've seen based on the research that's been done in Common Core.
	But when it comes down to it, Common Core does not have popular support.
	There are a great many people on the left and the right in this country that fucking hate Common Core.
	I have not met a single teacher that speaks well of it.
	You know, there are full unions throughout New York and elsewhere in the country that they are wholly opposed to it.
	Good, and they should be.
	Because it's really terrifying stuff.
	But I guess what I'm thinking is: look, right, there's no way that, say, the children of progressives are going to turn around and say, you know what, I actually hate black people.
	Or I actually hate women.
	I think that your idea of rebellion, it's true, but it's never going to be so far deviated from the parents' morality.
	No, I don't think it's going to go that far.
	What I'm thinking, though, is that in the youth's attempt, I have faith, you know, I have faith in our children's generation, let's say, in that I think that they will look to what they've been taught.
	They will, as they come into their own, start to embrace the realization that they can think for themselves.
	And they'll start questioning things.
	And they'll do so in a way.
	I mean, I was raised in a liberal house, right?
	I mean, I never went full neo-conservative.
	I mean, yeah, I joined the fucking army in 2003 to invade Iraq, and that was a fantastic decision.
	But what I'm saying is, though, is that, you know, like my faith lies in the next generation because they're going to be, and they're being raised to.
	They're being raised with both of these notions that A, all of the information, both true and false, that you can imagine, is available to you.
	And B, you're being taught things which, to one extent or another, you shouldn't necessarily take automatically.
	I'm having some kind of faith that the next generation of children are going to be raised with critical minds.
	The fear in me comes from the broader social backswing.
	Because the social justice warrior is now recognized as a thing even by people who shouldn't by conventional reason have any clue what they even are.
	But they're recognized.
	The outraged porn addicts or seniors.
	And they're going to be rejected.
	And I kind of worry that the backswing, that the rejection of that will lead to a more hardcore conservative using it loosely, an artistic view.
	I'm not saying that there's no legitimacy to that position, because there absolutely is.
	And you're right, there is a distinct swing, just a reactionary sort of swing away from it.
	But the thing is, has that changed the mind of the progressives in any way?
	Have they decided that they were in the wrong?
	Of course not.
	Some of them, they're starting to eat each other.
	They will adjust their position.
	They won't necessarily change their position, but they will adjust their position accordingly depending on what is happening.
	I've seen this happen enough times where it's very hard for them to stand fast in the way of total opposition.
	They will adjust in order to maintain them.
	There will always be a growing amount of social justice warriors who support them.
	They're eating each other.
	Plus, all you need is enough of the population.
	The idea of social justice warriors and the mockery, the acknowledging of these people as existing and then the mockery of them and their position.
	All you need is for that to go mainstream, and it's over.
	These people are not going to be happy.
	It's in the process of starting to happen.
	I think these people are playing the long game.
	I think they're in it.
	No, I don't disagree.
	And so, yes, while there are people like us, but in 30 years' time, when you've got generation after generation of kids who have been produced in the school systems that these guys have set up, who have been indoctrinated into the sort of mentality that they want, I mean, do you see the right wing or the sort of reasonable types reclaiming the social sciences and academia?
	Eventually, I don't necessarily think it'll happen overnight.
	what I think will happen is that the rejection of this orthodoxy, which is being placed into our public lives, will give birth to a new enlightenment.
	And honestly, that's why I'm...
	I hope so.
	Well, you know, that's...
	That's why I'm up.
	I'm not the ideal thing.
	That would be wonderful.
	So I just mean, is Daniel, when he gets older and he starts going to school, if he's being taught about rape culture in fifth grade, I mean, is he going to just get that and you're going to help him do his homework?
	Or fifth grade, exactly, sorry?
	I can't remember.
	I don't know about the UK, but I'm just saying.
	Let's say he's 12 years old and he's being taught that there's a rape culture out there.
	I mean, and he comes home to do his homework.
	The good parent is going to sit with their kid and help them do their homework.
	You're going to help him.
	Listen to that.
	They're like, yeah, you're like fucking lift shits and stuff.
	It's like my crazy racist family.
	I will say there's no rape culture in the game.
	Of course you would.
	And they're not going to listen.
	Well, I just think that I'm talking about the children.
	They're going to have the same sort of attitude.
	They're going to be told that, hey, I mean, do you think that kids are going to get any less narcissistic and entitled?
	I don't see why they would.
	I don't know.
	I kind of see, especially with the rebellion aspect, which is very appealing to young people, especially if they have any intellectual prowess to them.
	And maybe I'm just speaking from my own perspective.
	I don't know.
	But I could see when this popular sort of narrative comes up about, oh, well, of course you'd say that.
	And the question comes up, well, can you prove your claim?
	Because I can argue mine to the death.
	No, they're not going to win in high school.
	They're going to make some waves in college.
	But what I see happening, though, is that those kids, if this social justice orthodoxy actually takes enough grip and reaps the problems on society that we know that it will have, I think it will be our children who actually lead us out of that.
	I mean, it's grand, you know, broad thinking sort of social evolution.
	Well, I mean, I appreciate your optimism.
	You have to have it.
	Well, I agree with that kind of optimism.
	I do think that, you know, Nick, you do have, I do agree with you in terms of what you're saying, especially you would agree in terms of giving some benefit of the doubt of the next generation in terms of actually moving away from this sort of ideology.
	But I would say to your point, Sargon, never underestimate the incompetence of these people.
	I don't discount the fact that they could at any given time just totally self-destruct.
	Yeah, sorry about talking about something.
	Oh, okay.
	But yeah, I just, if you really look at some of these people, they are very much paper-thin in terms of what they have to come to the floor with and what they're speaking to.
	So I do think that when it comes to actually having influence on the next generation or the public at large, I just don't think they have it in them.
	Because, I mean, a good example, and I hate to bring, I hate to name this name, but Anita Sarkeesian.
	I mean, she bit off more that she could chew at the last D3.
	She started fucking talking about violence.
	And then immediately, people of all of, you know, not just us, not just Gamergate, not just people subscribed to Sargon or whatever.
	It was everybody started saying, like, this bitch is nuts.
	Like, this is fucking, you know, this is not, I forget the name of the.
	Someone say in the chat, what's the name of older dude, lawyer, conservative guy that was in the 90s after us?
	I forget his name.
	Jack Thompson.
	Jack Thompson, thank you.
	You know, this is Jack Thompson all over again.
	This is just the same shit.
	It was literally the same day that she started commenting on Doom that that became a thing.
	People started realizing, like, wow, this is ridiculous.
	Like, her arguments, even from her own fans, were saying that this is totally, this is just a non-argument.
	This is just bogus.
	And I think that you can, maybe I'm speaking specifically, maybe I'm generalizing too much for social justice in general.
	Maybe there are some social justice warriors out there that are committed and competent.
	But I just see this as they are going to trip over their own feet at some point, and it is going to be because they have their nose in the air and they think they can do no wrong.
	And then, you know, boom, they're going to hit the fucking wall, and that's going to be it.
	Well, yeah, they're going to discount themselves or discriminate.
	They're already starting to eat each other, too.
	That's the thing.
	And this is the thing, and maybe my long view of our children fixing this problem is actually short-sighted in that sense, too.
	Because one thing we have to remember, and this is something actually, in a conversation I had recently with a student at Columbia, now this is a died-in-the-wool liberal.
	You know, he lives, you know, in northwest Manhattan, about a block from where the Seinfeld diner is.
	He's been an advocate for youth and student rights for a long time.
	And he went to the same school, and he was basically a classmate, effectively, of Mattress Group.
	And even he, even he, this kid who is probably to the left of me, and I've been described as a socialist by anyone who's not left of center I've met, even he was like, this is outrageous.
	We can't have reasonable conversations because of these people.
	I'm starting to wonder, too, if maybe there's not actually, as Nixon put it, I guess, a silent majority within these graduating classes.
	Because let's be honest, too.
	We see these marches on college campuses, Flay and castrate and crucify the rapist because someone said he was a rapist, all this shit.
	You know, we see these numbers, but that's not necessarily representative of the student body politic itself.
	And then we see things like the fire.
	You know, they go on and they talk about these things with college kids.
	And even they come to questions like, well, maybe that's going too far.
	I'm kind of wondering if perhaps maybe this generation from which these outrage porn heroes are coming from, if maybe that same generation isn't also producing the actual next generation of academics, we're going to come to things with perhaps a liberal perspective, but also a libertarian perspective saying that there are inalienable human rights that need to be addressed.
	Because this censorship on college campuses shit, these secret tribunals, the fact that they're making national and international media as they are.
	But why are you skirting my point, though?
	Why are they making national headlines?
	Why are they making international headlines?
	It's because of the fuck-ups.
	It's because of the Rolling Stone articles.
	It's for shit like that.
	I'm telling you that this is the same thing.
	I don't disagree with the optimism, but it is the ineptitude of these fuckers.
	Yeah, and that's the thing.
	I don't think I'm skirting the point.
	I actually think that perhaps maybe this is just more abject optimism, which for anybody who knows me personally is very outside of my character.
	But maybe these people fucking up and these people eating each other, this is exactly what we need.
	It's the whole Napoleonic never interrupt an enemy when he's doing something wrong thing.
	Yeah, of course.
	But I personally think it's a bit optimistic, but maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic.
	Who knows that?
	My issue is.
	You do the weak and stupid.
	How can you not get it?
	Yeah, I know.
	I was going to say, dude, you saturate yourself in all this fucking shit, so it's not very hard to understand why you look at this and see this barrage of examples of all of this shit going on all at the same time.
	Yeah, but my problem is that there never really seems to be much in the way of come-uppance for these people.
	The worst that happens is like they lose their job at best.
	At best.
	It's like, you know, you think, well, if that was like me or you doing whatever they've done, you know, you'd probably be looking at some legal action against you.
	You know, because people have got a great way of avoiding real punishments and real disincentives from doing what they're doing.
	All they have is a setback.
	That's how their lifestyles have played out, though.
	Yeah, but we're also talking, I mean, and I guess this kind of gets back to the question of what does liberalism really mean?
	Because the people that we're fighting now are the privileged elite.
	And they hide behind this check your privilege bullshit.
	But the reality is that every single one of them, Brianna Wu, Anada Sarkeesian, Mattress Girl, you name it.
	Every single one of them is the definition of a privileged elite.
	And what they keep finding is that it's an unhappy underclass who doesn't, who no less wants to have a fair wage, but also does not want to be told how to think and speak coming up against them.
	I think that is where their comeuppance will come, because I hate to sound like some kind of real radical here, but I feel as though that these people are sort of sort of laying the groundwork for a new enlightenment, a new liberal revolution.
	I think you can't rely on the working class.
	They are too busy trying to get by.
	And with the economic situation getting worse and worse and worse, they're going to be more and more and more.
	You have over 130,000 subscribers.
	What class do you think your subscribers are from?
	A lot of them are probably quite working class, actually.
	Exactly.
	This is the thing.
	I think we are seeing the groundwork.
	And honestly, Sargon, I told you this fucking, I told you this months ago, last conversation.
	You're a fucking talented journalist.
	And you're fucking, you wake people up this shit.
	I mean, you do a brilliant job.
	You do a fucking brilliant job of illuminating what this bullshit that we're dealing with is.
	And in your doing so, your view, your audience keeps growing.
	A person like Milo Yiannopoulos writing for a column like Breitbart would not have as many people who identify as left like I do, waiting for that third edition of the Randy Harper saga to come out if it were not for the fact that the average working class person, liberal or conservative, is growing tired of this new orthodoxy.
	Yeah, I think generally, I do think that this, for right now, is going to be an issue.
	This is something that just every week, Sargon, you are going to continue to get more examples of the absurdity.
	And not just the absurdity, but also what you were speaking to when it came to Common Core, like the actual very serious issues in this, you know, above the, you know, fucking, you know, ban the sick filth or whatever, you know, that sort of thing.
	There are going to be the serious, very, you know, very hardball politics policy issues that do come as a consequence from social justice.
	And, you know, a good example is what's happening on college campuses, not just in terms of what they're teaching, but just, you know, fucking mass hysteria over consent and rape and all this fucking crazy shit.
	And I don't want to use the word persecution of fraternities, but just the deep-seated, unfounded suspicion of every single person that's part of a fraternity, as if they're a walking dog.
	It's Tinderbox.
	It's suspicion of anybody who has external genitalia swinging between their legs.
	And their fucking female allies.
	They're traitor allies.
	But yeah, I have a friend of mine who's screaming at me or screaming at me on Steam to mention this guy, Harold Ia, who did it.
	He's a comedian from I think it's Norway.
	And he did a documentary.
	I think it was called whatever the word, whatever the Nordish word for brainwash is, I believe that's the name of it.
	And it was about essentially social justice professors and academics that were part of something called the Nordic Council of Ministers and whatever NIKK is, which, oh, it's the Nordic Gender Institute or whatever.
	There was some big established fucking social justice platform for crazy academics.
	And these people were the fucking furthest gone that you could find in terms of social justice types.
	And so this comedian, Harold Ia, did a documentary of sorts just going to these social justice academics, getting their perspective on reality, and then going to the foremost experts in the fields that they were talking about.
	Going to very serious, credible academics in the United States and in the UK and elsewhere in the world and speaking to scientists, speaking to really credible experts on the same topics, and then playing each other's conversations back and forth.
	Like, you know, you, gender activist type, listen to what this scientist has to say.
	And you, the gender activist, you can listen to the scientists and all it back and forth and all that.
	But this guy did this documentary, I think, in 2012.
	And they put it on the main network in Norway.
	And as a result of that, the NCM, or the Nordic Counter of Ministers, basically all the social justice types, the professors, there was a bill passed and they were defunded.
	And so it had a consequence as a result of being exposed as being just totally...
	And the reason why they were exposed and the reason why they were defunded was these scientists would give very credible, very empirical reasons for why they believed what they believed and what their positions were.
	And the gender activists were just, it was like talking to a religious person about believing God.
	It was nuts.
	It comes down to debate.
	And it's kind of ironic, I find, because before Gamergate happened, as I was honestly getting into Sargon's channel by virtue of getting into Dr. Randolph McCamm by virtue of watching Karen Strawn, watching very sound arguments presented, not necessarily those that I even altogether agreed with, but just very reasonably well-made arguments.
	It comes down to debate.
	And the echo chamber.
	And this is what we're missing, is we're missing a debate.
	I mean, before all of that, what I was really, what I kept, you know, what I was addicted to and what I'd watched before I decided to write something was Christopher Hidgens.
	I would watch Hitch in his debates, his debate against Desmond 22 when he had Stephen Fry at his side, his debate against Muslim clerics, Catholic bishops, and all of this.
	And one thing I kept coming to was that he said once, American-style debates aren't really debates.
	They're joint press conferences.
	And I'm like, well, what do you mean by that?
	And I'd watch some of his debates, and what they'd do is they'd pose a question.
	Is religion a force for good in the world?
	And then what I think we really honestly need, and I know a lot of people are looking to the SPJ event with Mark Kern and Oliver Campbell and all of them hoping for that.
	And gods, I hope it happens.
	But what we really need is a series of actual debates.
	And this is maybe, I think, why these social justice Sikesian types are so afraid of it, is because they know that if the question is posed, is social justice warfare, as it's known right now, a force for good in the world?
	And you have an audience of, I guess we'd call them normies, they'd probably answer maybe perhaps at the outset, yes.
	But then after a thorough two-hour debate, moderated debate in which people were able to make points and argue points between each other honestly and openly, I have no doubt in my mind that rational, objective audience members would say, no, this social justice cult is not good for society.
	And as such, even as, and I'm especially hoping here, but I'm actually counting on the fact that as liberals, as liberals, they'd say, no, this is not liberalism.
	Censorship?
	Thought policing?
	No, that's not liberalism.
	That's not what I call myself a liberal for.
	Well, I agree with you, but how on earth are you going to bring them to the table?
	I think, honestly, that's what it is.
	Well, no, I think at this point, you know, their favorite tactic is public shaming.
	I think the central and singular public shaming that ought to be done right now, outside of their stupid statements and their endorsing of doxing and all that, I think the best means to do that would be to call them out consistently.
	Say, join.
	They claim harassment.
	Let them claim harassment.
	They're invited to speak.
	You are invited to speak.
	Sorry, we can't afford your $30,000 ridiculous speaking fee, Sarah Niberg.
	We're sorry about that.
	But if you really believe in what you're saying, come and defend it against our speakers who have shown up here voluntarily.
	Because there's no shortage of them.
	Sargon, I know you would do it.
	I'd jump.
	I would jump to the chance, too.
	I mean, can you imagine being given the opportunity to debate Jonathan McIntosh and he's telling you any of them?
	Could you even do it?
	Have you actually watched Josh's fucking videos?
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	He is, it's not even, and this is what the sort of basis of my videos is.
	I do appreciate your video, Sarragon.
	Believe me, I've watched every single fucking video on your channel, and I adore your videos and all that, just in which how you break down the videos that you cover and the topics that you cover.
	But I think that a lot of what is said specifically to the type of social justice warrior like Jonathan McIntosh, you don't need to go anywhere near as far as to prove any studies wrong when you could just say, listen, what you're saying is totally fucking incoherent.
	What you are saying makes no sense on its face because you aren't actually saying anything.
	You can cite studies, but the argument that you're trying to make doesn't hold up under the bare minimum of scrutiny.
	And that's the way that I like to cover a lot of these videos.
	Absolutely.
	You're right as well.
	You know, like his, well, you know, these games cause aggression.
	Is that what you're saying?
	Exactly.
	Well, what does that do?
	Does it translate to violence?
	but the thing is I'll just say this I'll make this point that I do think that the thing that will break the echo chamber is just enough people, such as any one of us, that will be in the position, hopefully, to say to any one of these individuals, you know, you'd have to get more people that are not hiding behind a pseudonym, at least in my case.
	You would have to have people like us that when we are criticized by feminists or by social justice warriors, it's just, I'll debate you anytime.
	You know, one me, one me in real life, bro.
	Just anytime, I'll go.
	I'll debate you anytime.
	I like that.
	And that's what it is.
	When you say that.
	Someone's going to take the bait.
	Someone's going to take the bait.
	I know.
	Yeah, but that's the thing.
	When you say that, you get blocked.
	But this is the thing.
	These are cowards that we are dealing with.
	To bring it back, to bring it back, honestly, to the point of this, like the sickness in the left, like liberalism itself thrives on debate.
	Every single idea must be questioned, must be challenged.
	That's the only way in which you can determine whether or not it has any merit or validity whatsoever.
	If it's not challenged, then it is purely rhetoric.
	It has to be challenged.
	We challenge each other.
	And honestly, this is one of the things I used to love about liberalism when it came, like, let's go back 10, let's go back 15 or 20 years.
	You know, when you had the rise of the neoconservative movement, the religious right dominating the right side of things.
	What you had is that you had a series of, you know, you could not find two right-wingers who were ardently right-wing who could have an honest debate because they would agree with each other because just like Reagan said, a Republican, you know, that one Republican shall not criticize another one.
	Just to sorry to jump in just quickly.
	I think you've actually hit on the reason that we have to approach the left, the extreme progressives, with different tactics with the right.
	Because the right-wing, the Christians, were foolish enough to debate.
	That's the problem.
	They were happy because they did.
	And to their credit.
	No, absolutely.
	They did it.
	Yeah, full-throated.
	Yeah, they did.
	They absolutely did.
	And they looked like fucking idiots.
	Absolutely fucking hard.
	And they lost.
	And they lost.
	They lost hard.
	And the progressives are not stupid.
	They're not going to look at that and go, well, I'm telling you.
	I'm telling you, if there is this, this arrogance will reach them eventually.
	These individuals will bite off more than they can chew eventually.
	You are going to have figures like Anita Sarkeesian in Other Realms that are going to bite off more than they can chew.
	You are going to say, fucking all right, I'm going to do it.
	You know, I wish that were true, but I honestly don't think that is.
	Because I think fundamentally, they operate on a policy of non-engagement.
	They operate on a policy of, no, anyone criticizing this is a misogynist.
	They're a harasser.
	They are racist.
	They're homophobic.
	They're transphobic.
	They have all of these labels for a reason.
	They're specifically to avoid having to debate with their ideological opponents.
	Prior to the advent of the blockbot, the single most effective means.
	And I've been, you know, I've been following Gamergate and supporting its when it started and I was there.
	You know, the women against feminism, I loved that.
	And the single most effective tool I found to get blocked was saying, well, please make your points and defend them in open debate.
	And it was an immediate block over and over again.
	And this is, and I really do think on an intellectual level, this is, you know, people are always like, oh, you know, especially you see the Gamergate tech, people saying, oh, you know, people bitching about being blocked, this and that, blah, blah, blah.
	It's about ethics and journalism.
	Sure.
	Yes, it's about ethics and journalism.
	But furthermore, there's an underlying issue because the enemy which has approached gaming is the same enemy which has approached every other facet of society you can think of.
	Fiction, law, politics.
	And every single time, the one thing that they need to have done to them is to have someone say, if you are so confident of your ideas, then you are obligated to defend them in an open debate.
	And as soon as you do that, they shut up.
	They shut themselves off into their home.
	No, no, they've got their excuses.
	They say, well, you're a misogynist.
	Well, you're a thing.
	If the Christians had any sense, right, they wouldn't have lost if they'd turned around and gone, no, you're an atheist.
	Or no, you're an atheist.
	They did that.
	They did that.
	I'll agree with that.
	No, no, no, they didn't.
	They didn't do that.
	No, not at all.
	They came to the table and Christopher Hitchens fucking destroyed them.
	That's the problem.
	If they'd gone, no, you're a heretic, you're an infidel, whatever, they would be.
	Or no, I don't, you're opposing my religious liberty and you're an atheist or an anti-theist, so I'm not going to debate you for X, Y, or Z reasons at all.
	Exactly.
	I do agree with you there, Sarion.
	But I do think, but, Sargon, to push back, I do think that, granted, we are still at this point in time where it is bad.
	I'm still saying that.
	My position is that never underestimate hubris.
	Never underestimate someone that steps up and thinks, this is it, baby.
	I'm going to fucking do it.
	My day has arrived.
	I'm getting on stage and I'm going to do this.
	Because I do think eventually you are going to see these people that see themselves as an authority in these matters.
	And they argue about themselves.
	It's all about morality.
	It's all about morality, right?
	They have already decided that because we are not social justice warriors, we are immoral.
	They have decided that we are bad people.
	They have decided that we are not worth their time.
	But I have to wonder.
	Hang on, that's why you get blocked so quickly, right?
	They are never going to come to the table.
	At least no one reputable.
	You'll get idiots who go, the small fry who come along, but they're not good enough.
	We need someone big to come to the table to talk about the bullshit they speak and it's never going to happen.
	You're never going to get...
	What's his name?
	Kent Hovind?
	I can't... I can't... I can't...
	Here's a quick example.
	Here's a quick example.
	If you were to, I mean, I'm not sure you could do it now, obviously, because he left a show, but If we could situate ourselves or if the situation were possible where you could get someone like someone such as Sargon of Akkad to go on a show like the Colbert Report following Anina Sarkeesian at some point in time.
	Obviously, that's a fucking grapple in and of itself, but all you would need to do is have that limited airtime, the same place that you would with Anita being on her show, being on that show and not being able to name fuck all when it came to games, being misogynists or what have you.
	You could have someone more articulate than her on that same program saying she's full of shit.
	She doesn't know what she's talking about, and I will debate her any fucking time.
	That's it.
	This is kind of what I think, though, that then maybe this is just me and Grant standing on a big platform, perhaps.
	I think that really debate ought to be one of the central calls right now.
	Nobody involved in this is unsure of their position.
	There are very few fence sitters.
	And we're talking Gamergate, but we're talking outside of Gamergate, the larger rationalist perspective versus this social justice orthodoxy.
	And even in our discussions, you've mentioned, and you even part of the Facebook group, the rationalists, about rationalism.
	A call for open debate, open, honest debate of the likes of which, I mean, for fuck's sake, if Desmond Tutu will sit down across from fucking Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens with the boldness to defend his position and these people are not willing to, then that is a public shame that ought to be pushed out further.
	For all of the talks of these marginal little drama issues, the weekend Gamergate drama debate, especially as liberals, especially as liberals, as liberals, we should be embracing the concept of debate, saying, please debate me.
	Please argue with me.
	I'm desperate for you to convince me of your side, or at least for me to have the opportunity to go up against you in front of an audience.
	This is the SPJ Airplay.
	I mean, I can't believe they aren't sending a specific delegation to speak to the Society of Professional Journalists.
	Even if they don't.
	Well, I mean, yeah, well, I mean, I looked into it tonight, right?
	I mean, I guess it could be said I'm a professional journalist.
	I've been, you know, for a living.
	I've been writing about, I wrote about politics for three years, for two years.
	Now I write about beer.
	I'm a journalist.
	I looked at the SPJ.
	Now, Brianna Wu joined today, and she sort of gloated online about how all it takes is $75 of membership dues and then whatever, but she doesn't quite understand that she'll actually be held to account to SPJ standards.
	But, you know, if anything, let the SBJ debate or absence of debate, whatever it may be, let that be a beginning.
	Yeah, if we want to talk about ethics and journalism, let's take that to the next level.
	Let's take that question of you have a position, you have a position personally and politically, and you have a position professionally in which you're able to espouse that.
	Now you are obligated to defend both of those positions in the public eye.
	Okay, just again, I need to say things right.
	I would agree with you if it was me and you talking.
	If it was someone who cared about their own personal honor, their own reputation, that would be absolutely correct.
	But again, we're dealing with a different animal here.
	Start.
	They're not fighting a conventional war against us, then they don't need to meet us in battle.
	They are using Fabian tactics.
	They are scorching the earth.
	So, wherever we go, we've already got a terrible reputation and they can already go.
	No no, we're not interested, because they already hold the secure places they are.
	They are the ones who have got the contacts in the media, they are the ones who who are in the institutions we, they do not have to come out and fight us and so they're not going to.
	That's the problem.
	And they have got all manner of names and excuses and labels.
	That means that no one else inside these institutions is going to force them to do it.
	So I don't think that that.
	I mean, I would love, I would love to just be able to just pin them down in an engagement and destroy them.
	That would be amazing.
	All right, so you well you, you reference, you referenced, you referenced an ancient historical war which i'm unfortunately not familiar with, but I, I understand you Handiball's invasion of Italy.
	Uh, there we go, okay.
	Well there, there we go, there we go um, but you know, fuck it.
	Let's, let's make debate sterling bridge, that's the point let's make.
	Let's say okay, go on.
	Where are you going with this?
	Let's okay, yeah.
	And and for those not familiar, and also because it's one of the few historical war things I can kind of flex on, um, you know, Brave Heart, the Battle Of Sterling, where Mel Gibs and all of his friends were very, very brave.
	The reality is that the Battle Of Sterling took place at the end of a bridge where the English were so foolhardy they allowed themselves to be bottlenecked at the end of this bridge and the Scots just hacked them down as they came.
	Am I correct there?
	Absolutely.
	But how do we get them?
	Where is our bridge and how do we get them to cross it?
	Well, you know what?
	We were so effective in emailing advertisers and getting them to pull ads for that amount of time there is.
	And Gamergate is going to hate to hear this, but Gamergate is itself part of a much bigger thing.
	It's going to have to accept this.
	But the reality is that Gamergate is part of a much bigger thing.
	And if Gamergate and this much bigger thing can dedicate itself to actually calling on an ethical ground for the sake of ethics, to call out these rhetoricians, to engage in open debate and it's funny too, because you can see people.
	Um, Gary fucking can't even think of his name now.
	He's a youtuber philosopher, brilliant guy, Harry Edwards, I think it is.
	Um, he identifies as a feminist.
	He's a.
	He's a left-winger, as left wingers get.
	He even says he's a feminist and yet he's got intersectional feminists coming after him because from his academic, philosophical perspective, their ideas are questionable.
	Yeah, i'm familiar with this is the thing.
	Yeah, you know Gary Edwards.
	Yeah, it's a good channel, it's a fucking brilliant.
	Oh, he's great with this.
	It's one of these things like, call them fucking out, make that a point if we can make, if we can make calling them out into open debate a point, if we can basically make it, so that not only it's ethics and journalism but ethics and rhetoric.
	Are you willing to defend your points in open debate?
	But okay okay I, I love the idea, I absolutely love the idea and the thing is it's it's the sort of thing that would work on me, it would work on you, it would work on Kent Hovind.
	But the thing is, when they turn around and say to you no, because you're a misogynist, what are you going to say?
	You get to say, who would you like to, who would you like to argue against.
	It doesn't matter who.
	They've all got internalized misogyny.
	You're a harassers, you're a hateful thing.
	That's the thing.
	It's still Into a corner.
	They will paint themselves into a corner over and over again.
	It will start out just like Gamergate, just like Gamergate.
	It will start out with, yes, endless amounts of bad press, bad media.
	But what will happen eventually is that it will come to be understood that the ultimate call is: we just want to argue.
	If you can prove me wrong, prove me wrong.
	But the thing is, then Zoe Quinn will be wheeled out.
	She'll start giving a blubby-eyed act.
	And then anyone who is watching will look at you and go, why don't you just leave that poor girl alone?
	Okay, you don't.
	Will that really be the case?
	Absolutely.
	That's exactly been the case over and over and over.
	And that's the problem that we're having.
	I mean, maybe, I mean, I suppose you could do it, maybe to the men, but like with Boovie Bob, I made a categoric case against Movie Bob as a fucking idiot, and everyone knows it.
	100 and what something other thousand people have watched that video and like you know 8,000 advice everyone is yeah that is it I know I did a good job I spent two days doing it right No, I'm just gonna go back to my echo chamber, I'm going to the HUDD box.
	He acted like a prick for a day but you know, nothing happened.
	I can't.
	I can't force him to come and debate with me because there is no one on his side pressuring him to come and debate, because everyone on his side says no, they're misogynists, they're.
	Maybe maybe, maybe.
	That's where the adoption of a public shaming technique should be.
	I mean, Deep Freeze pissed them off so much and that was only based, that was only rooted in in in game journalism, ethical violations now.
	So if, if you know, if it could become a public shaming thing where, like you, are so strident in your beliefs yet you will not defend them against open debate, against somebody who you are clearly, at least by your rhetoric, sure that you are more right, then this is the thing I mean.
	If they're going to continue walling themselves off behind blockbots and walling themselves off behind rhetoric, let them do that and let's, let's feed that in in the most honest way we can in asking them, you know what, if you really truly believe this, I will meet you in open debate and if you have the points and intellect and the truth on your side and you can truly show me that I am on the wrong side of history, then let's demonstrate that in front of a public audience.
	And if they refuse to do so, let that be the point of shame that they have to live with and that they are constantly confronted with.
	Yeah, but they have to see it as a point of shame, and I don't think they're.
	No no no no, no.
	It's just like the debate.
	Just like debate, though.
	It's not about showing them the idea in a debate is not convincing your opponent's wrong.
	It's about convincing the audience and let the audience see that these people are cowards, they won't stand up for their they.
	They lack the courage of their convictions.
	They will not stand up.
	There would have to be, it would have to be a large platform where there is a third-party platform that would agree to host this debate.
	You know, like a TV program or something.
	But they have the like, like Mailtrope is saying in the comments right now, they have the media and they control the narrative.
	So I don't know how we could do that and I don't think it's possible necessarily, or at least if I mean.
	I would love for it to be the case, but I don't think we can get them to do that.
	I would love it if that were the case, but I don't think we can.
	I just think continuing to exist well will probably eventually lead to something that I'm so confident in my wording.
	I think that just continuing to exist would actually will have some effect.
	I think that because one of the things I was going to point out a little while back is that even for you, just you, Sarkon, if you, I mean, how many subscribers did you have on your channel as of August 1st of 2014?
	Probably about 15,000.
	And since that point in time, you've grown greatly.
	And I think that that's simply the real issue here, is that while the social justice warriors are growing in numbers, so are we.
	So are people not just of Gamergate, but people opposed to social justice nonsense.
	We are growing.
	It's going to take longer for us to actually reach any form of credibility because like that person in the comment section said, they pretty much control the media.
	They have all their fucking friends in the media.
	And then they can just write their fucking weepy story about Anita Sarkeesian has received over 10 billion rape threats today and whatever.
	How many people are really going to give a shit?
	It's probably not many.
	But I do think that over time, us being around, us consistently growing, which we are, I think that that is going to eventually have an effect.
	It might not be the situation where YouTuber X steps up and says, fucking debate me.
	And then one of these people steps up and says, okay, finally, I'm going to debate you.
	That may not be the situation that occurs, but I do think that continuing to exist will actually eventually lead to something that gives us more of a position to argue from, from where we are now.
	I agree with you.
	I think the coincidental example of that would be Thunderford.
	Yes.
	In the mainstream, he is insanely credible.
	He's a scientist.
	He's got 300,000 people on his YouTube channel and he is an atheist who has debated with creationists.
	So, you know, he is a fantastic...
	They won't go near him.
	They managed to get...
	They managed to get him fucking banned from Twitter for a period of time.
	Well, I think this kind of comes back to part of what Gamergate's greatest strength is, though, as a movement itself.
	It's about grind.
	It's longevity, yes.
	It's longevity.
	And the thing is, you keep saying it's ethics and journalism.
	Yeah, it's ethics and journalism.
	It's ethics and games journalism.
	Let it be ethics in rhetoric, too.
	Let it be stand behind your fucking fucking claims.
	To the point where, like, if they call them out, I mean, even right now, we've got Oliver Campbell, we've got Mark Kern going to the SPJ panel to debate.
	We've got all these SJWs scrambling right now.
	Right now, the entire concept of an open debate is terrifying them to the point where they are losing their fucking minds.
	And that is new, by the way.
	This is a new principle of actually stepping up and debating this specific issue.
	It is new.
	And I think it is something that is definitely worth focusing on.
	I mean, I had someone in the comments there say that I'm a naive fuck.
	I mean, maybe I am naive, but I also have faith in the community which has spawned out of this.
	And Gamergate has brought people in who aren't even gamers.
	People who are just standing against social justice warriors.
	I mean, shit, I mean, I play games.
	I wouldn't really even say I'm necessarily a gamer, more or less, because I don't have the computer and I can't afford to play the games.
	But I stand by Gamergate for what it stands for.
	And that's part of it.
	And part of the grind and part of the beauty of the thing is that it's calling it out on every rational, logical ground, outside of the shit posting, which is just funny.
	But this is the thing.
	I mean, we've got SPJ now.
	The entire concept of a debate is spinning them into a fucking tizzy.
	That's true.
	No, no, that's true.
	And you did make a good point, and I'll tell you what, I would love, I mean, if what's the, what was the girl, I'm getting a PhD in Gamergate with the basic internet tough girl.
	She was talking to Koretsky, because she was like, yeah, I'll go all brash.
	In fact, there's no point.
	It's exactly the same.
	It's all the bravado.
	But the thing is, I think they've, I doubt she's going to go.
	I think Paul, I don't think she'll go, even if they pay for her to go, because I think they know on a subconscious level, if we can pin them down to a debate, it will be their Battle of Caney.
	They will get fucking wrecked.
	And they know it.
	And it'll discredit the movement.
	And they know it.
	They've seen the creationists.
	And as liberals and as liberals, even, just let's talking with our own circles here.
	Let's talk about us as liberals.
	I kind of feel as though we have an obligation to push that forward, to say, if you have an idea that you stand behind, you should defend it against those who disagree with you.
	Prove me wrong or be proven wrong.
	I do think you've got a moral obligation to do it.
	So it's one of those things.
	Maybe even an ethical obligation.
	Absolutely, of course you do.
	But the difference is whether we can make them agree that they have that as well.
	Whereas they'll throw out all of their defense mechanisms, and they have good defense mechanisms.
	And I don't see any of them appearing at the SPJ to be opposed.
	And the thing is, without them being there, it's kind of a hollow gesture.
	But here's the thing.
	I think both of you, sorry to push the point here, but I do think you guys are missing the fact that when it comes to this issue, I do think that even with this idea of the press not giving or these people not willing to come out from the shadows and actually engage, I do think that even with the press that exists in terms of writing these articles, and trust me, you know, this affects me emotionally because I hate reading any fucking article that's calling me whatever, you know, labeling me as whatever.
	But I do think that seeing article after article talking about, you know, Gamergate is dead, Gamergate's over, like they lost, you know, they're done with.
	And then you see Kotako in action growing by leaps and bounds.
	You had that whole fucking thing go down with Poe from Reddit and all that.
	It's just brilliant because no matter how many fucking articles they write about this, no matter how many fucking things they put out saying like, we're fucking done with throwing the towel, you guys are done, we are unequivocally winning right now.
	I mean, I know that there is some doom and gloom inwards some of this stuff, but we are winning right now.
	I think that's one of the things.
	We're pushing back for sure.
	Let me make a comparison here too.
	And this is going to be a contentious comparison and one which is not universal.
	Yeah, well, it came up in your last talk with Random McAm there.
	The same thing that Gamergate is experiencing right now is something I think the MRM experienced, which is this battle for credibility almost, a battle to be heard.
	Gamergate has struggled through the constant barrage of its misogynist, its racist, etc.
	It comes back with every clever retort it can.
	It does a fine job of defending itself.
	And with the MRM, it was the same thing.
	Now, you even have people like Steve Shives, who, when he's doing his I Hate MRAs video, right?
	Like every one of them now is actually acknowledging the issues which the MRM has brought up.
	Now, I've been hesitant to even call myself an MRA.
	I have to be, I guess, an FRA because I'm caught in the family court system and I'm a father's rights advocate, whatever that might be.
	But I've noticed, like, that began for me seven years ago.
	When that happened, I felt like I was alone in the woods.
	Then I've seen this thing grow, and it's been hated and scorned and beaten down every which way you can, and it's got plenty of problems and plenty of legitimate criticism to go around.
	But the reality is that the central core issues and the questions that it has raised are now being acknowledged by its biggest detractors.
	I think if Gamergate itself, as part of this broader pushback against social justice as this orthodox ideology, can manage to get questions such as ethics and journalism taken seriously as it's starting to get.
	And then further, if it can get debate and defend your positions openly actually established as credible central tenants to its movement to where even its detractors have to admit that there's some validity to it, think that will be the kind of progress that is needed.
	I think the SPJ won't have much of a choice but to turn around and say, well, there are obviously legitimate concerns here.
	I don't think there's any...
	The complaints against the press and the corruption is too categoric.
	They can't just dismiss it.
	I don't think so anyway.
	When you can barely discern salon.com from everyday feminism or Jezebel, there's a fucking polygon.
	You have to be eating paint chips on a daily basis to not see what the problem is there.
	And this is the thing.
	It's a grind.
	You'll be hated the whole time.
	You'll be hated and despised all the way through.
	As long as your central objective of raising the issue is there.
	And this is coming out of my work as an activist, too.
	I've worked in exceedingly right-wing places pushing left-wing agendas.
	If you can get the questions...
	It was interesting.
	Lots of guns have been pulled on me.
	I'll say that much.
	But if you can get those questions raised and you can get those conversations started, then you've won.
	Because all you need is for people to actually engage in those conversations.
	Well, you're not going to be able to hyperbole.
	You win.
	This is why I'm trying to get people to focus on the ethics issue of Gamergate.
	A, we've got the SPJ coming up, so that's what you want people to see people in Gaming Gate talking about.
	It just makes fucking sense.
	And secondly, you are what you repeatedly do.
	That's what people are going to know you for.
	You know, if you're there talking about how much you hate people because they think wrong, it just doesn't look good.
	It's not going to persuade a third party.
	It's a fool's errand.
	It's a silly move.
	It's bad tactics.
	So I really wish people would sit there and go, hey, you know, I could push my agenda.
	Or I could think what, you know, I could think like a leader because I'm supposed to be a leader of Game Gate and I could think like a leader and think, hey, what would be a smart tactical move right now?
	But people that some people are fucking idiots.
	You know, I say that with complete love, but fucking come on, guys.
	You know, be smart.
	Jesus.
	That's the nature of an organic movement.
	Yeah, I know.
	I know.
	I mean, it's, you know, and this is what I love about Gamergate mostly, and this is what I love about gamers, is that notion of grind.
	Like, there is no defeat.
	I mean, for fuck's sake, let's malaise until we win.
	Yeah, well, it's not even malaise.
	It's like, oh, that sucks.
	Let's keep going on what we were doing.
	You know, like, you know, one e-celeb says something incredibly stupid while drunk at a party.
	Well, you know, it's like it's an issue for fucking 45 seconds, then no one cares.
	Yeah.
	Because everyone's like, well, that sucked.
	That was stupid.
	That'll be a pain in the ass to deal with.
	But you know what?
	It has nothing to do with what I'm here for.
	Like the rank and file.
	It's just like any other movement.
	And that's the thing.
	People who are like, Gamergate's not a movie.
	Sorry, it is.
	It is a movement.
	It is.
	And you're part of it.
	And it's bigger.
	It is both focused specifically on this one goal, but it is also touching upon something much broader because of the nature of the enemy that it's fighting.
	The enemy that has come to its doorstep with its demands.
	That same enemy has come many other places before.
	And it has made many different demands in the same vein.
	And when those in those communities fail to adequately fight back, it has won and it has destroyed whatever it touched.
	And those who fought back suffered greatly for it, but they maintained what they had.
	And that's really that's what game is seeing now.
	And unfortunately for the opposition in this case, gamers are the types who are, well, I know how to weigh losses versus benefits.
	I just think that the real victory or the real side to Gamergate that is, in my opinion, just the real thing that's going to win this is longevity.
	It really is the fact that, you know, we have been around.
	We're not going anywhere.
	People can read all the fucking articles they want.
	And people have said in the chat that this is an issue, that they have won the press.
	But my position is it doesn't matter.
	We're still going to be here, no matter how many fucking articles they put up and no matter what magazine it is or publication, I should say that they're going to put it up in.
	We're still going to be here.
	And the the thing that I can point to that it has amused me because I've been watching the chat for the extent of this since you've gone live and I can just say that there really is something special about Gamergate, the members of Gamergate.
	There really is something special about us because there's been people that have been following us for how long we've been going and since the inception, there have been people mentioning Henatai, attempting to get that meme in the chat there.
	They've been attempting to get it going since the inception of this and they can't do it.
	Yeah, people in the chat have been covering other things, but they can't do it.
	I feel like they still go.
	They don't care.
	They don't care.
	How many people don't find their fucking, their fucking memes funny?
	In terms of Hennetai, they don't give a shit.
	They're gonna keep going and that's that's the beauty of Gamergate, we don't care, we just keep going, no matter what.
	I do feel we should acknowledge some of the really persistent trolls.
	There are somebody like that, they'll post like a variant of the of a thing like every 10, 15 seconds, and nobody cares.
	Oh guys, does nobody care what you're doing?
	That's really sad, you know.
	I hope you're at least interested in what we were talking about, because I mean, otherwise that's a real waste of like three hours of your time.
	It doesn't matter that, that's that's.
	The whole point of this is that I think that that Gamergate really was.
	Gamers really are the worst type of people to really come after, especially if it's these people that spend all day and night on on fucking a Chan or Reddit or whatever, you know, these people have, all they have is time.
	And they're just going to go at it.
	They're just going to do what they will to have fun with the opposition of this.
	And I really do think that for the extent since Gamergate has come about, since the original articles have come out, that it really has been just entertainment to some extent with watching the other side just waffle and flail about as much as possible to try to make this go away.
	And they can't fucking do it.
	So again, you know, fucking the New York Times can write every goddamn article about, you know, how I'm a piece of shit.
	It's not going to do anything to me.
	It's not going to do anything to the people on Kotaku in action.
	It's not going to do anything to anybody.
	We're not going anywhere.
	We don't give a shit what you think.
	And I just think that that is going to be, that is the key to what is going to eventually result in us winning out in this series of events, this whole ordeal.
	And I think that's what's going to be the thing that wins this.
	They can't get rid of us.
	I'd like to say one thing I have absolutely adored about the entire debacle as well has been I'm not a fan of the left-right paradigm.
	To me, you know, political and social thinking exists in this multi-dimensional sort of facet where you can be pro-gun and pro-choice, where you can be anti-tax and pro-I don't know, you know, pro-single payer, whatever.
	Yeah.
	And I've been waiting for something to help break that loggerhead that left and right has had.
	And now we have people like ourselves fans of Breitbart journalists.
	I mean, one of my colleagues at Every Joe is a Christian conservative.
	And if you'd have told me 10 years ago that that would be a colleague of mine, I'd have said you were crazy.
	And now I'll defend him, even though I'll disagree with him.
	I'll defend his right to say what he says against the opposition who used to claim me as their own.
	One thing I find interesting about that as well is I talked to, for example, I had that conversation with Stephen Crowder, and those people were fun because it's a conversation.
	I mean, Jesus, what the hell's wrong with just talking to someone?
	But you get some people who are a bit, I don't know, committed, I guess.
	Who are just, well, I mean, it wasn't even really my subscribers, really.
	I suppose there were a few.
	But I saw, like, you know, someone links me to, like, a game of Ghazi style video.
	And they're like, oh, we hate Salgham Blood.
	He even had a conversation with Stephen Crowder.
	It's like, Chris, isn't he, like, kicked a puppy recently or something?
	I mean, Jesus.
	You know, as far as I'm concerned, he just has different political beliefs to me.
	It's not the end of the world if I have a conversation with him.
	I think Glenn Beck is about as full of shit as a mainstream media personality can get.
	And you know what?
	I would happily sit down and have a conversation with him.
	I just disagree with him on a lot of things, you know?
	Yeah, I mean, that's the fun thing, too.
	I mean, that used to be what was fun about being a liberal was disagreeing.
	That was what looked sad about being a hardcore right-winger is that you had to toe the line, believe in Jesus, oppose abortion, and for remote guns, whatever.
	You know, and as a liberal, you got to just argue.
	I mean, even amongst other liberals, you argue the shit out of things instead of just sitting around.
	And now it's transgressed.
	It's gone beyond that to where, like, being a progressive means that if you're sitting around with a bunch of progressives, you have to spend all your time talking shit about conservatives, not arguing points and defining and redefining ideas.
	Well, they're right-wing, aren't they?
	That makes them bad, you know.
	And the thing is, there are plenty of people on the right and more drifting even further to the right who say exactly the same thing about liberals.
	And it really pisses me off.
	It's like, look, man, I'm a fucking liberal, but I'm not going to stab you in the back.
	I'm not going to fucking go back on my word, for Christ's sake.
	It's just kind of lazy.
	You may have seen it too in the right wing.
	The traditionalist, right-wing evangelical, neoconservative types, they've ended up having endless amounts of arguments with the growing libertarian movement.
	And likewise, it's almost like there's a left, well, there is a left libertarian movement, which is really what could be called a classical liberal, fighting against this new orthodox fringe left.
	And in this little center area here of what is like, you know, I guess libertarian liberalism and conservatism, you've got this great joy because it's like even amongst ourselves, we can say, hey, we could argue endlessly about things.
	And because we are thinking people, that's fun.
	Prove me wrong, or let me prove you wrong.
	And if I prove you wrong and you say, you know what, I've had a change of heart, you're like, fuck yeah, hey, holy shit, that was cool.
	I'm affirmed in my ideals now because somebody else has seen my perspective, or vice versa, if it's like, well, you know, that thing that I'd held as true for so long now is really in question.
	And now I really have to reevaluate.
	People on Twitter have pointed out that, you know, Milo and Adam Baldwin, they put up good money to have Christina Hoff Summers debate with Sarkeesian and whatnot.
	Not even interested.
	So on that point, I'm really sure they'll never do it.
	They know they will lose.
	And they know they will discredit.
	I think that Anita, in some sense, really is kind of a special case in some ways.
	She definitely has a lot going for her.
	And despite that, it doesn't really.
	Going back to not to drudge it up, but the Common Core thing is a more serious policy issue.
	But with someone like Anita Sarkeesian, it is kind of amusing just how little effect she actually has on the community at least.
	I mean, it's debatable when it comes to the industry, but for the community at least, I mean, she can wholly endorse whatever game she wants to.
	It's not going to mean shit.
	Oh, yeah, they don't shift units.
	There's no getting around that.
	The thing is, they don't have to.
	That's the problem.
	I mean, you would think that they would have to, but to get to where they are and to have virtually no fucking sales under their belt is a miracle almost.
	You'd be like, Jesus, how is this even possible?
	And yet, somehow, this is the situation we find ourselves in.
	So social pressure is clearly quite an important thing.
	Market pressure, too.
	And this is another funny thing: as liberals who believe in public services and the welfare state, let's say, we're acknowledging market forces and capitalism as a legitimate force.
	And we're embracing it.
	Here's a question.
	Do you consider many of these progressives or a certain section or subsection of them to be Marxists?
	Oh, loads of them are.
	Well, they are.
	There are loads of them who are, I'd say, and loads of them who think they are.
	They've read the cliffs and Marx and know nothing about angles, for instance.
	Okay, yeah, I should have been more specific.
	There are a lot of people who think that they are Marxists.
	They think they can take the principles of class conflict and apply them to things that are not classes.
	That's what they've done.
	They think women are a class and men are a class.
	It's nonsense.
	And also, I think that they also think that the only way to help the underclasses is to destroy the upper classes.
	They're absolutists.
	They think that, you know, I mean, even reading Marx, I've read Marx.
	I've read him, which most social justice warriors can't say.
	When you read Marx, if you're of a sound intellectual mind of your own, you'll read Marx and kind of nod and say, well, yeah, you make a point here, you make a point there.
	And then you'll say, well, I'm not so sure about that.
	I think it doesn't apply.
	And it comes back to that whole notion of taking ideas and policies or whatever as tools from a toolbox, as opposed to just taking the whole thing.
	Yeah, when I read the Communist Manifesto, and the thing that just overwhelmingly struck me was like, but you don't take into account class movement.
	You don't take into account that people can improve their lot in life.
	They were stuck.
	They were stuck.
	And another funny thing, too, is that people who read the Communist Manifesto forget that that was written also with Engels.
	And between the two of them, I mean, if you look into their lives, the lives of Marx and Engels, like Marx was a miserable man who lived a miserable, very sad life.
	Every one of his loved ones pretty much died in front of him.
	He was raised effectively in some form of poverty.
	He died in poverty in London.
	Yeah, lived in poverty, died in poverty.
	Engels, however, came from privilege.
	And the funny thing was that between the two of them, Marx was the one who was sitting behind the desk writing the manifesto, writing out the theory.
	Engels was the one reporting from the labor lines, getting his head smacked in by police cudgels.
	And Marx's idea was that everyone, and this is coming from a position of his, which is one of suffering and one of desperation, is that everyone should have the bare minimum amount to survive.
	And we should all work together to ensure that everyone just has the bare minimum to survive and that we can all just survive and get along.
	Engels, on the other hand, was known as the great decapitator of wine bottles.
	Engels had this belief that everyone deserved a weekend in the country.
	Everyone should have the chance to eat a good steak.
	Everyone should enjoy the wealth and luxury of surplus.
	And ironically, too, it was also at the same time Engels, who was the one who really pushed the notions of ideological and party purity.
	He was the one who thought that political opposition needed to be rooted out at all costs.
	And so it's one of these things where, you know, from an Engelian point of view, if you're saying, yeah, you know, I do think everyone deserves to live and experience a little bit of the good life while not dying in abject poverty, that's a reasonable kind of argument that you could maybe approach an argument with, but at the same time, saying that all opposition to my ideology must be snuffed out.
	Of course, but not only that, I mean, it goes way too far.
	We're going to abolish private property then.
	Yeah.
	Calm down.
	You lose a lot of people on that note.
	And that's where it comes down to.
	A lot of people say they're Marxists, right?
	Like I like to, you know, I mean, Hitchens, the hero I keep praising, you know, called himself a Trotskyist.
	And now Trotsky largely took a lot of his theory and molded it from the Angelian theory.
	And Trotsky ended up being exiled from countless amounts of countries and then ultimately murdered with an ice pick, I believe, in South America because he came up against Stalin, who Stalin took on the Leninist, who took on the Marxists.
	And this is the thing, the problem comes down to orthodoxy.
	And what we're facing right now with this social justice, cultural authoritarian, but people like to call it cultural Marxism, and that's fine.
	But what we're facing is an orthodoxy.
	We're facing an absolutist orthodoxy, which if you leave it alone for just a few minutes, just as the communist orthodoxy did in the back of the day, they begin to eat each other and want to stab each other with ice picks.
	So this is why I liked, even in the invitation to this, you said we should have a discussion about rational liberalism.
	And that's really what we need right now.
	I believe libertarianism, in America at least, has offered conservatism, which has for a long time been very irrational and very orthodox and very traditional, has offered it a form of rationalism, one which I don't entirely agree with, but it's one which they're willing to argue.
	I think right now...
	It's something to work with at least, you know.
	Exactly.
	And I think right now what we're facing is a left-wing liberal progressive orthodoxy, which needs to be tampered down with rationality and reason.
	Agreed.
	I think I agree.
	I think I find myself dealing with quite a lot of right-leaning libertarians, and I find them so much more palatable than either the neocons or the progressives.
	We've made a lot of those friends recently, haven't we?
	Yeah, we really have, haven't we?
	And they disagree whenever I want to talk about partisan politics, which I don't blame them on.
	But hey, that's why the comments and the voting system's there.
	Okay, I think we'll probably have to call it an end there because it's coming on 4 o'clock in the morning.
	We've had a good run.
	We have.
	It's been interesting, and I think it's something else that we can continue talking about another time, if you guys are interested, and possibly get a few other people on to see what their perspectives are, presuming they've listened to this or whatnot.
	Because obviously, I don't think that this is necessarily the end.
	But the one thing I'm worried about is that you two are slightly more complacent about this than I am.
	And it might be that I'm just mired in this because this is what I do a lot.
	But I'm looking at the fact that these guys get to talk to kids.
	They get to mold it.
	Give me the child until he's seven, you know what I mean?
	And I'll give you the man.
	I'm really worried about that sort of thing.
	Maybe I just have enough beer to deal with it.
	Maybe, maybe.
	But either way, I really want to thank you guys for coming on.
	So I've been meaning to do this for quite some time.
	Because I really think it's an important conversation that needs to be had.
	And I think it needs to be something that needs to be thought about by people on the left who aren't progressives.
	because we've really got to start pulling our fucking heads out of our arses because the progressives have they're not liberals They're just not liberals.
	No, they're just Puritans.
	Exactly.
	Let's take liberal back.
	Exactly.
	That's what I want to do.
	Take Liberal back.
	Because they are not liberals.
	And I'm tired of them being called liberals.
	And you know what, libertarian friends?
	I fucking thank you.
	Honestly, I am really fucking happy.
	I'm happy that all of this happened.
	Because ten years ago, I thought libertarians were full of shit.
	Now I see progress full of shit.
	They are full of plenty of shit.
	No, let's not go too far.
	They are full of plenty of shit.
	But I'm glad to see these walls.
	I'm glad to see this old paradigm crumbling.
	And I'm glad to see people waking up and saying, holy shit, I need to think a bit harder about things.
	So let's continue this conversation, yeah?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	We will definitely have this another time when we've got some more things to talk about.
	But again, I'd really like to thank you guys for joining me.
	I really do appreciate it.
	Yep.
	Thanks to everyone.
	Anyone having us?
	My pleasure.
	Anyone listening, in the description to the video, there are links to their channels.
	Please check them out.
	They're really good.
	Follow them on Twitter or whatnot.
	You know how the game is played.
	And thanks to everyone for joining us.
	Again, it's really been a pleasure.

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