Hello everyone, welcome to This Week in Stupid for the 22nd of May 2016.
Because the art competition I've been running closes in a week and then I'm going to be replacing the usual video art with art from that, I've decided to move this piece of art to This Week in Stupid because I'm finding the overlay a bit clunkier, the easier for instead of highlighting what I want to talk about, just grabbing the thing and putting it on the screen like usual.
And I really like this picture and I don't want to lose the use of it.
Anyway, let's start with a follow-up to the Humanism Plus video that was the last video I did.
So you'll never guess who wrote a blog post called Humanism Plus, how about just plain humanism?
Don't worry, I won't keep you in suspense.
It was the human walrus known as PZ Myers, one of the people who helped stoke the coals of division in the atheism community for advocating for social justice, although apparently he was never part of Atheism Plus.
So PZ Myers was, you know, I can't say PZ.
It just sounds wrong.
You know, it's PZ.
And that just sounds wrong as well.
So I'm just going to call him P-Dog.
So P-Dog says that people have discovered Sincere Kirabo is the social justice coordinator at the American Humanist Association, and they are freaking out about Humanism Plus.
We'll talk about Sincere Kirabo in a minute, but for now apparently people have been ranting at the P-Dog because he's apparently responsible for this, and I'm sure that he's not responsible for this.
P-Dog continues with, this is nothing new.
Humanism has always been concerned with morality and ethics.
Yes, for everyone.
If you split humanism up into different identitarian categories, you are missing the point that all humans should be treated alike.
But not only that, it's meant to recognise human agency.
And so when P-Dog says, this is precisely within the purview of humanism, and always has been, and it would only be unusual if a humanist organisation rejected the idea of social justice.
Listen, P. Dog, I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but it's really difficult when you seem to be so willfully ignorant.
We all agree that we want to create a world where race and gender don't matter, it's the person's actions, their character that matters.
But there are some of us on the sane side of the fence who don't think that can be achieved by focusing exclusively on race and gender.
But I'm sure from your side of the fence, that just looks crazy.
What we need to do is police everyone's thoughts and actions and speech about race and gender and any other goddamn social justice initiative.
He finishes his blog with this.
At least I like humanism.
If you think you can remake it in the nature of YouTube atheism, I don't think you're going to succeed.
Don't get me wrong, I think you're right.
I don't think I can remake humanism in the nature of YouTube atheism.
I think you can do that.
You and your social justice cronies are going to create something like the new humanists.
People who are deliberately adversarial to this social justice equal outcome bollocks.
And you know why?
Do you know why that's going to happen, P-Dog?
It's going to happen because you people are parasites.
You find something, you infiltrate it, and then you try and destroy it.
And I'll give you an example of that.
This was the first comment on PZ Myers' blog.
Oh, Humanism Plus is the name they gave it.
I originally thought it must have come from within the group.
And I thought, yeah, that's a tactical blooper.
Yeah, it's a bad move.
Because you guys have ruined the Atheism Plus name so thoroughly, even though PZ Myers apparently wasn't a supporter of it, he just thought it was a really good idea.
Then they say, I guess these are the types who say, I'm a humanist, not a feminist, though.
So they probably have the Pat Robinson definition of humanism in mind, rather than the respect for and support of human dignity stuffs.
Weird way of saying anything.
At least, that's how I explain the weird reaction I get when I tell them that my humanism implies feminism.
If that were the case, why are feminists trying to supplant humanism?
Why wouldn't they be happy being under the umbrella term of humanism?
They'd just say, well, yeah, I mean, we're all humanists.
I'm a feminist humanist, or, you know, that's a men's rights advocate humanist.
You know, you would have these subcategories that would live side by side with each other and probably have a great deal of overlap.
Instead, you've got a supremacist ideology that's looking to supplant humanism.
Remember Sincere Kirabo?
You know, that writer, gadfly, humanist, Black Lives Matter, American Humanist Association, social justice coordinator and everyday feminism contributor?
Why is he promoting an article called Against Humanism saying it's time to retire talk of humanism?
How the fuck do you explain this?
How does this look like anything other than an attempt to infiltrate an organization and destroy it?
You know, let's have a look at this article.
It's from last month, I think, so sorry it's not this week, but it's pertinent and I'm sure that there is a rock-solid argument within this.
So this article begins by complaining that Meryl Streep said that she's a humanist and not a feminist, presumably because she doesn't hate men.
In a culture navigating through the fraught fields of race, gender and class and power and privilege, Streep has gone out of her way in her capacity as an artist and approximate public intellectual to reject the categories that might seek to divide us.
She prefers to see the world from a loftier view.
Well that does sound like humanism to me.
Avoiding division along arbitrary lines because it serves nobody.
And she isn't the only celebrity using her status as a humanist to explain why she's not an iss of another ilk.
Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?
Because the iss part is the point of contention.
Despite the fact that you can't put feminism above humanism and claim that your feminism is a consequence of your humanism.
Your humanism must be your highest value for you to derive anything from it.
But this is the part I like the most.
Humanism, used as an anti-ism, is a lexical version of all those people who claim as if they are unique in the sentiment, I think all lives matter.
That's why they're trying to end humanism.
To them, it is the equivalent of all lives matter because it does not focus exclusively on a race or a gender or a sexuality.
Because they are the sort of bigots who want to do that.
And the thing is, it gets better.
If transcendence is your aim, if you happen to prefer the soaring over the searing in your rhetoric and in your life, then humanism is the ideal term.
It is also today the stuff of cultural utopianism.
Who wouldn't love a world with which the seams of our great human tapestry are rendered effectively invisible?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
Just not judging people based on their race or their gender or their sexuality or any arbitrary characteristics like this is utopian.
Absolutely ludicrous.
But you come from the camp that wants to end racism, end sexism, and that's not utopian.
I mean, how authoritarian do you have to be to think that it's possible to control human interaction to the extent that you will eradicate racism and sexism?
Bino, no, they're right.
It is utopian to think that we can have a society where your race and gender and sexuality just don't really matter.
Because apparently the media is packed with hipster bigots.
But we haven't even got to the most crazy part of this yet.
Regardless, there are many ironies here.
One of them is that humanism, in all its incarnations, has historically involved a rejection of regressive thinking in favour of something more quote-unquote enlightened, more forward-thinking, more optimistic about what humans can achieve when they strive for something together.
That's true.
Now, are you going to speak directly in opposition to this idea?
Of course you are.
In a time of legitimate struggle and strife, in a time that equates progress with the recognition of social divisions rather than the rejection of them, which I'm- That is the problem.
You are equating this with progress.
It's not, it's regress.
But you can say that Rambling's question is regressive if you want.
It doesn't make it true, it just means you are detached from reality.
And this is the best bit.
It's humanism that is counter to all logic.
on the wrong side of history.
Unfucking believable.
And this is then justified with a tautology that she says, look, I'm going to give you a tautology to justify doing this.
This is just the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
We classify people because, well, we classify people.
Oh yeah, it is because it is.
This must have been written by a fucking moron.
Loftiness is lovely, but humans from our African origins to the present day were made in the end to walk on the ground.
Alright, because we're not there, don't worry about trying to get there.
Just fuck it.
Let's just be a bunch of racist, sexist bigots that divide people on arbitrary characteristics because we're not perfect.
This is the reason we should be rejecting the term humanism.
No, you are rejecting the philosophy of humanism.
The term humanism is still a perfectly good descriptor of what we mean, as you well know.
This author is rejecting the term humanism because they think a utopia is less likely to achieve than a dystopia.
And since we're more likely to achieve the dystopia, that's what we should be trying for.
And we have an example of this from this week.
Because all of this is happening so damn quickly.
A dystopian society would undoubtedly have unjust laws.
Laws that victimized some for the benefit of others.
And that was what was rejected by the American Law Institute when they rejected the affirmative consent standard in defining sexual assault.
You know, the yes means yes law from universities in America.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't know anything about the American Law Institute.
I mean they say on their website that they draft, discuss, revise and publish restatements of the law, model codes and principles of law that are enormously influential in the courts and legislatures as well as in legal scholarship and education.
I mean they're probably an evil creationist right-wing think tank or something.
But the affirmative consent laws were put to them and they struck them down.
In a rebuke to a feminist idea that has migrated from college campuses to mainstream culture, an influential legal group overwhelmingly rejected a provision that would have endorsed an affirmative consent standard for the purpose of defining sexual assault.
In a voice vote at the American Law Institute's 93rd annual meeting at the Ritz-Carlton, Washington, DC, the vast majority of an estimated 500 member crowd declined to amend the model penal code to define sexual consent on an affirmative basis.
A group of 120 members wrote a public letter denouncing the proposal, arguing affirmative consent improperly shifts the burden of proof onto the accused when charges of sexual assault are levied, which is what we've been saying since the very beginning.
By forcing the accused to prove the near impossible that a sexual encounter was vocally agreed upon at every stage, affirmative consent standards deny the accused due process rights.
Brookings Institution non-resident senior fellow Stuart Taylor Jr., who attended part of Tuesday's meeting, applauded the ALI's rejection of the affirmative consent standard as resistance to an ideologically driven and unrealistic idea.
I think it's a very encouraging indication that the broad membership of the American Law Institute, which is a pretty elite group, has repudiated a radical expansion of sex crime law that was sought by a powerful faction of people whom I regard as ideologues.
He is of course absolutely correct, as I'm sure that all of us watching this channel know.
These people are ideologues.
They've proven it time and time again, and they have just been rebuffed in their attempts to push dystopian laws on other people.
Let's have a look at another example of the absolutely regressive attitudes on display from the people who are on the right side of history.
This is translated from Swedish.
Police feminist hypothesis.
The asylum seeker rapes are because of the Nordic alcohol culture.
This is amazing.
It may be the Nordic alcohol culture is behind refugee children and asylum seekers sexual abuse against Swedish women.
This is the feminist disclaimer to a police report that was published on Monday.
Sweden is at the top of the new EU statistics on physical and sexual violence against women, sexual harassment and stalking.
The conclusion is that the result is a consequence of the Nordic alcohol culture, but also of non-traditional gender roles.
Translation.
It's Sweden's fault that immigrant men are abusing and raping their women.
It's not the fault of the immigrants committing these crimes, it's Sweden's fault.
I mean, a feminist might call that victim blaming, but God only knows where we are now.
This feminist annex refers in turn to a report prepared by the EU's rights agency.
A report about LGBT rights in society and not somewhere addressing whether alcoholic cultures or that Sweden at the top when it comes to violence against women.
So ran to the police in an annex to the reports.
The current situation of sexual molestation and proposals for action.
The annex is in sharp contrast to the more fact-oriented content of the rest of the report that clearly points out the asylum seeker boys and foreign men as perpetrators in the majority of cases reported.
This does not follow from this.
In fact, the facts suggest against it.
Why this was included is anyone's guess, but my guess is because Sweden is about to collapse under its own ideological detachment from reality.
You can pretend that it's Swedish alcohol culture that's causing this, but the data shows us that it's immigrant men from Muslim countries who don't give a fuck about your values.
But worse than that, think they'll probably get away with raping a white woman because they are brown.
The sort of people who are claiming to be on the right side of history are the sort of people who don't think that brown people or Muslims can be racists or bigots or just bad people in any way.
Let's take another example from this week.
This heroic woman, Zakia Bekari, trolls an anti-Muslim demonstration with selfies and some serious shade.
Oh, isn't she a badass?
What a fucking hashtag hero.
The woman in the photographs has been called a hero, spreading peace and love at the demonstration, which took place in Antwerp this week.
And they're not wrong, this picture was everywhere and everyone's going, oh, look at this hero standing up to these horrible racists who oppose enslaving women.
But once again, the regressives have seen a Muslim woman doing something and thought, yes, hero.
Let's get behind her.
Let's back that horse to the very end.
What do you know about this person?
Absolutely nothing.
Have you asked her about how she feels about the Jews?
No?
Well, why didn't you check her social media?
Because she's got plenty to say about the Jews.
For example, Hitler didn't kill all the Jews, he left some.
So now we know why he was killing them.
Hashtag fuckers.
I see, so the existence of Jews is a good enough reason to kill Jews.
Why don't you just flat out say that you hate the Jews?
Oh there we go.
Fucking Jews, I have so much hatred against them.
Bravo.
I feel like I'm playing a game of Stormfront or SJW.
Bel Keari has since gone on a deleting spree and has attempted to rid many of her old anti-Semitic and racist tweets, most of which are now only available on archive, but not for some savvy redditors who wised up to what she was doing and captured the messages.
And who would they be?
Oh, the unsung heroes of Kotaka in action.
Honestly, thank fuck that hub exists.
In the end, she just deleted her whole Twitter account.
I guess because the whole thing was incriminating.
Seriously though, why is it every cause the regressive left banks is full of bad people?
For example, Black Lives Matter leader charged with pimping a 17 year old girl.
Just like with Cologne, where's the feminist outrage?
Where is it?
Where is the outrage that this guy was pimping a 17 year old girl?
A Black Lives Matter activist who operates a social justice charity was arrested last month on charges of sex trafficking in a 17 year old girl.
Charles Wade co-founded Operation Help or Hush in the aftermath of August 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown and Ferguson.
The group claims it helps raise funds for the needy and provide shelter and food for activists.
He was arrested on April 25th at a motel where he resided in College Park ND.
Police say he was using the motel room to pimp a 17 year old girl.
Can anyone name a single prominent member of Black Lives Matter who isn't a complete piece of shit?
I'm serious, and I don't normally say this sort of stuff, because I don't really like calling people pieces of shit.
But for the life of me, I can't think of anyone who I've seen supporting it, who isn't at best an open racist.
And at worst, either a career criminal or a black supremacist, or both.
But not only that, the sort of people who go around espousing feminism and social justice and Black Lives Matter seem to be one moment away from doing something terrible.
I mean, like, these people seem like absolute zealots.
Look at Justin Trudeau in the Canadian Parliament this week.
I've silenced this and slowed it down.
You can see Trudeau get up and just march purposefully over, like he's about to punch someone in the fucking head.
He grabs this guy, elbows that woman on the right in the tit, and forces him, drags him over to do whatever it is he had to do, sit down or sign something or something like that.
Now you would think Canada's feminist Prime Minister would see this as a display of toxic masculinity, especially as he managed to physically injure a woman doing this.
But he clearly doesn't care.
He's clearly fucking furious.
And he was of course forced to apologise.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apologised unreservedly for elbowing a female opposition member of parliament in the chest as he waded through a group of her colleagues.
Ruth Ellen Brousseau said the Frackers forced her to miss a vote in the House of Commons on Wednesday as she had to leave the chamber.
I was elbowed in the chest by the Prime Minister and then had to leave, it's very overwhelming.
I missed the vote because of this.
Opposition leaders have slammed the incident as violent, which it was, branding Trudeau an avid boxer unstatesmanlike.
Reports claim Trudeau shouted, get the fuck out of the way, during the dispute.
The kerfuffle spells a possible blow to Trudeau's image as a modern feminist leader.
No it doesn't.
This just reinforces his image as a modern feminist leader.
This is exactly how I would expect a feminist to act.
Without any respect for anyone else's time or space or personal fucking boundaries.
Why would they care?
The dude had something to do.
He was in a, he was on a time limit or something.
Just get the fuck out of the way.
Do as you're fucking told.
That's the attitude I would expect.
I'm not surprised he lost his fucking rag.
But since you're apologising, Trudeau, why don't you just carry on and apologise for things that A weren't your fault and B have already been apologised for?
And C happened over 100 years ago, such as the Komagata Maru incident.
So Trudeau formally apologised in the House of Commons for a 1914 government decision that barred most of the passengers of a boat from entering Canada.
The vessel was carrying 367 Indian passengers, nearly all of them Sikhs, bound for what they thought would be a new life in Canada, and they were turned away because they were refused entry because it was not a continuous journey from the home country.
Okay, tragic.
Absolutely tragic.
How many people died?
Oh, zero people died.
Right, okay, fine.
But, you know, it terrible.
Terrible thing that happened there, Justin.
Why don't you apologise for it?
Why doesn't the Canadian government apologise for it?
Oh wait, they did.
Trudeau's formal apology is the second from a Canadian Prime Minister.
Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered an apology in 2008.
So your apology is pretty fucking meaningless, isn't it, Justin?
But more to the point, why don't you apologise to the guy you manhandled in Parliament?