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Dec. 4, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
26:03
Justifying Hatred
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A new campaign in Brazil is attempting to put racist comments on social media on blast.
Now, the campaign is not identifying the individuals who make the racist comments on Facebook specifically.
However, they're trying to make a point about how this type of racism does have real-life consequences.
Now, the campaign, Virtual Racism, Real Consequences, is using the location tag from Facebook posts to find where the offenders live.
The group is then buying billboard space in their neighborhoods, but blurring out the names and photos of the commenters.
Is it just me, or is this a really dumb idea?
This just strikes me as a method to encourage teenagers to post racist comments on Facebook as publicly as possible with the hopes of getting their comment on a billboard so they can brag to face, oh, look what I've done.
Haha, aren't I awesome?
So, we have one quick example of it for you right now.
Now, of course, this is in Brazil, so it's written in Portuguese, and I'll go ahead and translate it for you.
It says, I got home stinking of black people.
Okay, I'm going to just assume that this comment wasn't a joke, because I really want to know what the young Turks' response to this is going to be.
Because there's a very good chance that the person who wrote this wasn't white.
So, the campaign decided that this was a perfect example of a racist comment, and they put this up.
Now, I'm glad that they didn't actually show Bill O'Reilly's picture there.
I think that it's nice of them to blur it out.
Talk about low-hanging fruit.
Anyway.
So, what do you think about the fact that they're blurring the pictures?
Do you think that's a good way of doing this?
Look, my gut, like my knee-jerk, like I want them to show the people and I want them to put their names, but but what?
You are, what, pro-doxing?
You want these people's information to be on billboards so members of the public can randomly harass them to make themselves feel better.
I harassed the racists today.
Aren't I a good person?
Of course, you can't do that because they're gonna get death threats.
Because no matter what you do on the internet, you will get death threats.
So, that's the only reason.
The harassment would be okay.
The death threats are too far.
But kudos for at least being honest enough to acknowledge that death threats come from almost every quadrant of the internet.
And eventually, there would be violence against one of them.
And we don't want people to be killed or hurt, obviously.
So, as much as I would want that to happen, I don't think you could actually do it.
Okay, so you desperately want them to be doxed.
You want them to be made public so they can be harassed, so they can be socially shamed, but you don't want them to be murdered.
Well, good for you.
Well done.
That's progressive morality for you, I suppose.
Yeah, I think that it's a bad idea to put their pictures up, even though these people are despicable and their comments make me despise them.
Yeah.
Nice virtue signaling there, Anna.
Don't worry, nobody thinks you come home smelling of black people.
Like, people will go, there will be some guy or some girl, and people around them think that they're just great people, and they're in a relationship, and they think that they're great people, and then they go on Reddit and they just fucking say the most horrendous stuff, and it doesn't get tied to them.
They're allowed to be awful.
And so, exactly, what should the punishment for being awful be?
A year in prison?
Ten years in prison?
Public stoning?
What?
What should be the crime of being awful, in your opinion?
I wish people who are awful would suffer for how awful they are, but the way that the internet is constructed, generally they don't.
Jesus Christ, are you listening to yourself?
I wish people would suffer.
Why?
Reasons.
I wish people who are awful would suffer for how awful they are.
Seriously, fucking listen to yourself there.
What you are saying is, I don't like that person.
I don't like what they're saying.
I personally subjectively disapprove.
Based on that, I want them to suffer.
I want to inflict harm and suffering on someone else because they said something I don't like.
Are you fucking mad?
There is something wrong with you.
Good people do not wish for the suffering of others, no matter what the other people have done.
What you are asking for is not justice.
It is not fairness or karma.
What you are asking for is retribution.
Well, the way that I see it is they're likely to already be suffering in one way or another.
I mean, maybe.
Yeah.
Oh, that gives me a lot of comfort.
Maybe, hopefully, these people are already suffering.
Because that's what good people do.
They hope and pray for the suffering of others.
And they take personal solace in the idea that they might already be suffering.
I don't know about you, but I would normally call such people sadists.
So the online anonymity used to bother me a lot because of course a lot of those pretty terrible comments are directed toward me and people on the show.
I mean, it's going to be in the YouTube comments for this very video, right?
Do you think it might be a direct consequence of you guys being completely in favor of doxing and secretly wishing for harm to come on the people with whom you disagree?
I mean, do you think it might be anything to do with that?
No?
Probably not.
You probably don't think so.
But what I realized is those who hide behind the anonymity are cowards.
And instead of feeling upset about it, I feel sorry for them.
Yeah.
Right?
Because we live in this great environment where we show our faces, we have strong opinions, we share our opinions.
They're based on research we've done, on facts.
And I feel proud of what I do, right?
The Young Turks is not famous for their levels of research.
But okay, fine.
You guys can feel proud of what you do.
And what you have done today is support this statement.
I wish people who are awful would suffer for how awful they are.
I wish people who are awful would suffer for how awful they are.
Remember, Anna, that these are people who have not actually broken any rules.
They haven't committed any crimes, but you're on board with them suffering.
I guess that must be the progressive way because most people don't even want murderers and paedophiles to suffer.
Not for any love of the people who have committed these crimes, but because the things you do to others are a reflection of yourself.
Therefore, if you are happy to not only desire someone else's suffering, but also take comfort in that and enjoy it, that means that you are a person with severe psychological issues.
And the thing is, I want to know how far this principle extends for you guys.
Would it extend to a black person saying this?
All white people are racist.
And I generally, me personally, I generally assume that all white people are racist until they prove otherwise to me.
It's been proven that we are living in a racist and also sexist white supremacist society.
You know, this means that every single white person born into said racist white supremacist society is indoctrinated practically, you know, from birth with certain ideas about race.
Through it, you know, be it through, you know, unconscious biases or implicit biases or, you know, outright, you know, just straight up no hold far racism.
And every single white person, even you that thinks you're the cool white person, born into this society holds certain ideas about white supremacy until a certain point in life when they become aware of this and hopefully begin to work to unlearn it.
So that's totally rational.
Basically, this young lady thinks that the United States is effectively run by the Ku Klux Klan in the image of what the Klu Klux Klan would like the United States to look like.
A country with a black president is a white supremacist society.
I mean, next she's going to be telling us that she's not prejudiced against white people.
All of you.
Every single white person.
There are no exceptions, you know?
And that's not prejudice because prejudice by definition is a prejudgment.
Oh yeah.
God forbid that she would make negative prejudgments about white people.
It's not like that could be considered racist or something.
But young Turks guy, what do you think?
Do you think that what should happen to her?
I wish people who are awful would suffer for how awful they are.
You know, or a forming of an opinion before becoming aware of the relevant facts.
All right.
I'm clearly not talking about that.
I have formed my informed opinion.
It is an informed opinion and it is based off of facts.
What I'm saying is fact.
We live in a racist, white supremacist society.
All white people born into that society are a product of their environment.
They are all racist until they reach a certain point where they become aware of this and hopefully work to unlearn it.
That's everyone.
That's all of you.
Every single last one.
So now I know that some of you are going to have this, you know, knee-jerk reaction to the word racism.
Like I'm saying all white people want to like eat black babies and like feed them to alligators, which white people did do.
Please go Google it.
Holy mother of God.
I think we'd better go Google it.
So I mean, I googled it and all I could find was stuff that sounded like complete bollocks.
Like this.
Black babies used as alligator bait in Florida.
This came from a guy in Sanford near Orlando who had apparently heard this story from his grandfather where the slave owners would steal slave babies.
Why they wouldn't just take them as beyond me since they owned them.
But the town that this apparently happened in, the one town this apparently happened in, denied it back in 1923, saying that it was a silly lie, false and absurd.
Of course, if you think all white people are racist and we live in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy with a black president in it, then you might well be inclined to believe that they were obviously trying to cover their tracks after building their hobby on the backs of dead black babies that they had fed to alligators.
I wish people who are awful would suffer for how awful they are.
Does that include people who make up lies about white people feeding black babies to alligators?
Just out of interest.
And does that include the people who then take this as a representation of white people?
Even if it were true?
So, you know, let me, they would start, they would use black babies as alligator bait to catch alligators in Florida.
I'll include a link if you guys want to read it.
They really did do that.
I'm not just saying that.
You know, they really did it.
No, they didn't.
This is what's called confirmation bias.
So I just want to make it crystal clear that I don't think all white people are bad or evil.
I might say all the time, like white people are demons and I fucking hate them and this and that.
And that's normally me speaking out of rage or anger or some type of emotion because of something that has happened.
But I don't think that every single white person on the planet is bad or evil.
I just, that's, no, you know, I just believe that all white people suffer from the disease of racism.
And honestly, that's all of us.
And black people, it manifests a little differently, like with colorism, which I did make my video about last week or whenever that was.
With us, it manifests a little differently with colorism, but with white people, it's like straight up racism.
Like y'all suffer from the disease of racism.
You live in a white supremacist, racist society that instills in you from birth the belief that you're better than everyone else.
And it also, you know, insulates you from race-based stress and provides you, as white people, with a fantasy world to retreat to in order to avoid confronting their own racism.
This is a concept which I've talked about previously that's called white fragility.
And it's a whole society that was created to really perpetuate, you know, the cycles of white supremacy and the idea of white supremacy.
And you guys can just retreat.
You can turn on the TV at any moment and watch an all-white show.
You can go to the movies at any moment and watch an all-white movie.
You can pick up a book and read an all-white book.
Studies have shown that 70 to 80% of white people have an all-white circle, which means they go to all-white schools, which means they work at all-white jobs.
Every person in their family is white, you know.
You can go to certain places in the country and still in 2015 meet white people that have never ever ever met or seen a black person in real life.
Okay.
Our whole society contributes to this concept of white supremacy and white superiority.
And all white people, you know, are a product of this environment, all of you.
I thought I'd just let her talk for an extended period of time just to tell us exactly how people who don't happen to live near black people are racist for not living near black people.
People who read books that don't have any black people in or watch movies that don't even black people in, they're racists.
Black people never get to make their own movies.
It's not like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or Bad Boys or anything like that with, you know, centrally black caste.
It's not like these things exist.
It's all about the fact that white people hate black people and you need to know it.
This is, of course, exactly the same social justice logic that feminists apply to men, which is why she said racist and sexist at the beginning of this thing.
It's intersectional, don't you know?
But it's these kind of Marxist principles that are being applied to all of this.
There are two different classes, whites and blacks, men and women, straights and gays, and one is absolutely oppressing the other by virtue of simply being numerically superior.
So in addition to white fragility, white people also benefit from concepts of, you know, white skin privilege.
Period.
I have people that always want to argue with me about this.
There is no argument.
You don't have a leg to stand on.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, we've already presupposed that every white person is a racist because of the racist society white people live in because of their numerical superiority.
It is a kind of chicken and egg thing, which came first, but we can be safe that this is definitely the result, regardless of which one came first.
White people benefit from white skin privilege.
They're treated better.
They go to better schools.
They eat better food.
They get better jobs and they have disproportionately better wealth and health than black people.
Except for this guy, son of a multi-millionaire.
A man with much more privilege, health, and wealth than 99% of all white people on earth.
Be no white people.
They feed black babies to alligators.
Look it up.
This includes poor whites.
A dirt poor white person.
Studies show that they statistically still have better chances than a rich upper class black person.
Doing what?
Remaining poor and stupid and having a shorter life expectancy?
What the fuck?
Are you serious?
You think some fucking redneck has more opportunities than a rich black person?
Okay, because no one knows that the upper class black person is upper class just by looking at them.
Oh yeah, no one's gonna look at that upper class black person getting out of a fucking Mercedes in a $300 suit and then walking into one of the finest stores in the country and think, that guy's clearly not upper class.
He's just an amazing thief.
All they see is black skin and black skin is inherently in this country and in other countries around the world linked to being poor, to being criminal, to all these different stereotypes.
Only in the minds of fucking racists though.
This is the thing, you've convinced yourself everyone in the country is a motherfucking racist and therefore they must think the very worst they can about black people.
Seriously, the sorts of people who genuinely think the color of a person's skin is a good way of assessing the content of their character is not really very well looked up to in society.
And that's why we are calling people like you racists.
Because this is what you are doing.
It's fucking awful.
It's really fucking awful.
I don't want you to suffer though.
I don't work for the Young Turks.
You could have someone that's dirt poor go into, you know, the store in Belgium where Oprah Winfrey tried to buy the bag.
And if they're white and they're dressed a certain way, they're not going to get any pushback.
They could be fucking poor as hell.
Like everything they have on could be stolen, but they're not going to get any pushback because they're white.
Are you fucking serious?
If they're white and dressed a certain way, what's that certain way?
Oh, in a respectable manner.
And yet, they didn't know that those clothes might be stolen.
Of course they fucking didn't.
How would anyone know?
They don't know if a black person has stolen the clothes.
I was fucking joking.
It really doesn't matter what race you are.
If you dress like you are dirt poor and you go into a store that is selling products designed for affluent people, yeah, you're going to be treated like you're not a customer.
Whereas if the same person goes into that same store with all the trappings of wealth about them dressed very nicely, then yeah, they're going to be treated like a potential customer.
I really don't think the store is going to discriminate against that person on the basis of skin color when it seems far more logical that they're going to discriminate them on the basis of wealth.
Meanwhile, you have Oprah, who's a fucking billionaire, who's going to get pushback because she's black.
Are you fucking serious?
You think that world famous celebrity television personality billionaire Oprah Winfrey is walking into any shop on earth and getting pushback because of the colour of her skin?
Are you serious?
White people, excuse me, you have white skin privilege.
This is not debatable.
I'm not debating this with people.
That's because you'd lose that debate because the point you're arguing is clearly nonsense.
People love to argue with me about privilege as if it's debatable, but it's not.
It's a point of faith at this point, isn't it?
Every white person living in a country that has been colonized by white people, where whites are the dominant group, which is a lot of motherfucking countries, y'all all benefit from white skin privilege, but especially here in the United States.
Here in the United States specifically, white people benefit from being white in a society that was built off of slavery and the denigration of one race for the advancement of another.
Okay, but why then say white people instead of European Americans or something like that?
Because saying white people implies that people from Poland and Finland are complicit in this terrible oppression as well.
Okay, you benefit from entire systems created to maintain that sense of superiority.
And there have been countless studies that prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
You think there are countless studies that prove people's state of mind and attitude.
You think there are countless studies that prove that Western society, probably particularly America, is designed to give white people a sense of superiority.
And you think you have countless studies to prove that.
I'm telling you, you do not have any studies that prove that.
See, this is why people don't take social sciences seriously.
You think you have studies that prove how people feel.
You can't prove this.
You can't know this.
This is nonsense.
So to attempt to say otherwise, black people and white people is to just be in a complete state of denial.
You have your heads buried in the sand, your children, you have childish logic, you know, and all you, but I don't have privilege.
I don't have privilege.
I actually had to get a job when I was 15.
I don't have privilege.
All y'all white fellas can just...
If y'all didn't leave when I said you're all racist, y'all can go ahead and dip out now.
Don't let the knob hit your booty when the door close, okay?
So moving on.
Basically, in her lectures, Dr. Joy DeGray asks, what happens to a person that has spent years, you know, essentially, you know, they've been living detached from reality.
I have no idea, but I think that you guys seem particularly well informed on the subject.
I'm guessing through years of direct experience.
So do go on.
And they've been living in a bubble of privilege.
You know, what happens after they spend years and decades and then centuries that way?
They end up electing a black president, apparently.
And her post-traumatic slave syndrome theory posits that, you know, not only are black people essentially dealing with centuries of unhealed trauma from being oppressed, but also that white people are dealing with centuries of unexamined pathology from being the oppressor.
Alright, holy shit, I am done.
I tap out.
Done, you win.
This is too crazy even for me.
Okay, I can't believe you would let someone tell you that you were in fact being oppressed by events that happened over a hundred years ago and now you have to be at odds with an entire race of people in your society because they have a different color skin to you.
If someone tried to persuade me of that, I'd be like, no.
Why?
Because that's insane and I think you're actually a terrible fucking racist.
But you have not only accepted it, but you are now advocating for the person who has done this to you.
Honestly, I think this is a form of abuse.
Taking the burden of the terrible things that happened to individuals hundreds of years ago and placing it on the shoulders of some young woman who has never been anywhere near any kind of situation like this is unconscionable.
How could you do this to someone?
Why would you want to do this?
Why would you want them to be consumed with this kind of hatred and paranoia about their own ancestry?
It's been said before, but it's worth saying again, if we lived in societies that genuinely were not bothered by these concepts, were genuinely accepting of the idea of racism and sexism, then calling someone a racist or a misogynist would have no power.
It wouldn't do anything.
Nobody would be bothered by that.
But you know that these words have power, which is why you use them.
You're doing it to try and get control of the situation.
Your delusions are simply that.
And I just can't imagine turning to another human being and trying to justify my own hatred of them by things that people who looked like them did in the past.
It's just like the guy from the Young Turks.
Why would you want to see people suffer?
Why?
Because it'd make me feel better.
I can't believe that these people can't see that justifying and enjoying their hatred is making them terrible people.
You know, it's making them say terrible things and advocate for terrible things.
I wish these people would suffer.
wish white people whatever this person was fucking i dread to think where this woman is going with her treaties on why she hates whitey but i i didn't even get to the end of it it goes on for like almost an hour and she is just batshit insane 15 minutes into it i can't i can't even i feel like i've been talking to black hitler's wife and you know what it's not even that the racism itself is such a big deal right You know,
you might get people who are unintentionally racist and they see a black guy and they're like, fucking, I'm not hiring a black guy.
And then they might get some, you know, that was wrong.
You know, that was wrong of me to do.
This guy's qualifications are actually good.
I judged him purely on his race, even though I've got no reason necessarily to do that other than maybe a stereotype.
Completely unfair.
If I look at the guy, I interview the guy, he's alright.
I can make amends for my behavior.
But if I act like you, then I can never rectify my mistake.
I can never make this situation any better.
I can never undo the damage that my racist reaction has had.
If you then go, well, now I need a reason to justify my racism.
Oh, and it turns out that black people this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Then I'm never going to rectify my mistake.
It's going to stand.
It's going to become a fact and a part of this guy's life and a part of my life.
And I will know better and yet I will still delude myself into thinking I don't know better.
Seriously, if you need to be taught how you are oppressed, but you are also told that it is acceptable to hate your oppressor and you go for it, then there's something wrong with you.
Paul Ryan is somebody who has supported immigration reform, has worked with somebody like Louis Gutierrez.
Liku Jares is very respectful, thinks highly of Orion.
This is somebody who's trying to govern.
Almondo, I feel you, but I just want to pause on one thing, because I don't disagree with you that I actually think Mr. Ryan is a great choice for this role.
But I want us to be super careful when we use the language hard worker because, I mean, I actually keep an image of folks working in cottonfields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like.
So I feel you that you're a hard worker.
I do.
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