Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (14⧸02⧸2016) - Part 2

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Feb. 14, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

12:09

This Week in Stupid (14⧸02⧸2016) - Part 2

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	Just so we know, just so it's clear what has happened and why.
	I'm sure I'm not the only person who hopes he gets well very, very soon, and really don't take what these people say to heart, Professor.
	They are... they're really bad people.
	They're really, really fucking bad people.
	Seriously, when was the last time you heard or saw a feminist do something good or important?
	I mean, this week, Twitter formed a Trust and Safety Council to balance abuse versus free speech, which is actually as Orwellian as it sounds.
	Twitter's latest step in the tricky balancing act of championing free speech without also handing a free pass to orchestrated harassment via its platform is the announcement today that it's formed a trust and safety council comprised of multiple external organizations with various interests in the two issues.
	The company said today that the Twitter Trust and Safety Council will provide input on our safety products, policies and programs.
	Twitter works with safety advocates, academics and researchers, grassroots advocacy organizations that rely on Twitter to build movements, and community groups working to prevent abuse.
	Well that's wonderful.
	I mean given the amount of people I have seen abused on Twitter by, oh I don't know, ideologically motivated activist groups, you would think they'd need to clamp down on that, wouldn't you?
	I wonder who's involved?
	Oh for fuck's sake.
	New Trust and Safety Council is Twitter version of 1984's Ministry of Truth, according to Reason.com, which is a source I trust a lot more than whatever bloody feminist tech blog I've just read.
	So despite the fact that the press release claims that the council will include a diversity of voices, virtually none of the council members are properly classified as free speech organisations.
	Some of the groups, such as Holoback and the Dangerous Speech Project, don't think harassment should be criminalised outright, but the vast majority are certainly more concerned about allowing too much speech rather than too little.
	Notable members include Feminist Frequency, the blog and YouTube channel of anti-gamer activist Anita Sarkeesian.
	What's the matter, Anita?
	Did someone on the internet say that you suck again?
	These are the great struggles of modern-day feminism.
	People say nasty things on the internet.
	If it's not Richard Dawkins tweeting out a video that feminists didn't like, it's Anita Sarkeesian being told by everybody that she's not very good at her job.
	Basically, feminists seem to have a massive problem with free speech.
	People expressing themselves is triggering.
	Take for example the Rutgers students who smeared fake blood on themselves in order to protest Milo Yiannopoulos.
	What was Milo doing that was so wrong?
	He was invited to a university to give a speech.
	Milo appeared at Rutgers as part of his dangerous faggot tour of US colleges.
	Sorry, controversial dangerous faggot tour.
	wouldn't be controversial if feminists weren't creating a controversy about it.
	It's weird, they don't, they're fucking dumb.
	His speech at the public New Jersey University drew about 450 students.
	At least 10 student protesters from the group Are You Speak Out and other campus organizations stood up in the middle of Yiannopoulos' speech after one protester shouted, this man represents hatred.
	The school's official newspaper, the Daily Targum, reported.
	Really?
	Feminists run around pointing the finger screaming that everyone is full of hatred.
	And then when someone points out, well, it kind of seems like all the hatred is coming from you, actually, feminists lose their shit.
	We can agree that the purpose of a university, the reason that we are all here, is to interrogate new ideas, to discover new things about ourselves, to experiment with dangerous ideas, to experiment with new forms of knowledge and to meet new people, to introduce ourselves to new experiences and to learn more about the world around us.
	Up against that mission, up against what ought to be the central purpose of higher education.
	What ought to be the reason we're all here is a culture of safe spaces and trigger warnings, which seeks to insulate people from anything that might traumatise or upset them.
	Of course, they're not really traumatized or upset, they're just upset that someone disagrees with them.
	In my view, anybody who asks for a trigger warning in a safe space should be immediately expelled.
	Demonstrating that they are incapable of fulfilling the requirements of their course.
	They have demonstrated that they are incapable of exposing themselves to new ideas.
	They have demonstrated that they are incapable of engaging in the humble pursuit of knowledge.
	This man represents hatred!
	And there we go.
	Milo is saying, we should just interrogate a diversity of ideas.
	This should be permissible because we might be missing out on some good ideas.
	And to our radical feminist, that is hatred.
	I can think of no greater indicator of a bunch of bigots looking for ideological hegemony than declaring that other ideas are hatred.
	And then it degenerated into them, acting like children.
	Okay, that's as much of that as I can take.
	Just the amateur dramatics from the feminists is cringy.
	The annoying fact that people feel the need to chant Trump in response to that is annoying.
	And the thing is, I don't necessarily blame those people either.
	If they were being interrupted for the goddamn, who knows how many hundredth fucking time of feminists interrupting someone else's rights to hold a conference that isn't for them, you've got to do something.
	I don't blame people for just being like, fucking shut up and get out.
	Just the whole thing infuriates me.
	This is the face of one of those activists who is, you know, smeared with fake blood and holding a fist in solidarity in the air because Milo is asking her to consider a different idea.
	If this isn't the face of madness, I don't know what is.
	I really love the hypocrisy of intersectional feminists as well.
	They're all for gay rights.
	They're all for giving gay people a voice until gay people use that voice and it doesn't agree with intersectional feminism.
	Then they want that gay person no platformed, which is what's happened to Peter Thatchell, a gay rights activist who was due to celebrate 50 years of campaigning for equality, but now he's caught up in a row over no platforming for his fucking wrongthink.
	I'm using The Guardian as the source reporting on this because I particularly enjoy it when The Guardian has to report on intersectional feminists de-platforming various important people because of wrongthink.
	I absolutely adore it because The Guardian, you can tell the writer is squirming as they write it.
	The emails from the officer of the National Union of Students were unequivocal.
	Fran Callan, the union's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender representative, said that she would not share a stage with a man whom she regarded as having been racist and transphobic.
	That man in question is Peter Thatchell, one of the country's best-known gay rights campaigners, who next year celebrates his 50th year as an activist.
	And it's become a mark of how fractured the debate on free speech and sexual politics has become.
	The word you're looking for, Guardian, is oppressive.
	This bit is the best bit though, right?
	The topic of the conversation was going to be re-radicalising queers.
	But Cowlan refuses an invitation to speak unless Thatchell, who has also been invited, does not attend.
	In the emails, she cites Thatchell's signing of an open letter in The Observer last year, which I actually did cover in this week in Stupid, I think, in support of free speech and against the growing trend of universities to no-platform people, such as Jermaine Greer, for holding views with which they disagree.
	Isn't that just the most marvellous fucking irony?
	You signed a letter in favour of free speech and against no platforming, you need to be no-platformed.
	Fuck, you couldn't make this shit up.
	It's unbelievable.
	I mean, you would think at some point these people are going to have to turn around and go, okay, so loads of prestigious, famous academics and activists have signed a letter against us for no platforming.
	Maybe there's a problem with no platforming.
	Maybe there's a problem with us.
	Maybe our intolerance of other ideas, which is the definition of bigotry, is a problem.
	Fuck, I just realised I was calling Tatchell Thatchell, but I really can't be bothered to go back and re-record all that bit, so fuck it.
	But anyway, no platforming is the method by which these brave university students are maintaining their safe spaces.
	And the final thing I'm going to talk about is with regards to these safe spaces.
	They appear to be becoming remarkably anti-Semitic.
	College students have risen up to fight racism on campuses across the country, but it is often those very same students who subject Jewish students to anti-Semitism.
	It's just one more way in which feminists are coming to resemble Islamists.
	So apparently there has been a disquieting yet growing trend of hate speech and crimes directed towards Jewish students within the UC system which spurred these two to go to a conference.
	Their freshman year was punctuated by incidents of anti-Semitism that were both personal and met with national controversy.
	They were shocked during their first quarter in school when students entered the cafe to see the phrase, Hitler did nothing wrong etched into a table.
	Okay, well objectively as a statement of fact that's not correct.
	Hitler did loads of things that were wrong.
	Why would you invade Russia when you have a war on your western flank?
	Idiot.
	But this isn't something progressives have written.
	This is something probably someone from the internet has written.
	However, when a student was temporarily denied a student government leadership position based solely on her Jewish identity, it became an event that made the news nationwide.
	Throughout the year they saw the school's pro-Palestinian group, Students for Justice in Palestine, issue criticism of Israel that overstepped into anti-Semitic rhetoric and hate.
	I am in no way surprised by this.
	Undoubtedly they are looking at this through a Marxist lens thinking, well, Jews are the oppressor in Palestine, therefore Jews must be the oppressor everywhere.
	So one of the students applied to the Students of Colour Conference with the hope of learning more about the experiences of communities of colour at the UC and sharing with those communities these experiences of my own, she told me.
	As an Iranian Jew, she believed her identity as both religious and ethnic minority granted her a place to belong and thrive there.
	However, Rosenberg, who requested the pseudonym so that he could speak freely about campus issues without fear of potential retaliation, which is the stage we are at at this point, said that growing up in the Bay Area had taught him to be an active member of social justice movements and progressive communities.
	I was always encouraged to take the initiative on issues and movements that didn't directly affect me.
	I wanted to learn more about the struggles my fellow students were going through.
	But their experiences as Jewish students of the SOCC would soon inspire a rude awakening.
	The campus progressives who were fighting for justice on college campuses for students of colour weren't only ignoring anti-Semitism and attacks on Jewish identity, they were sometimes the ones perpetuating it.

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