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Nov. 20, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
28:58
This Week in Stupid (20⧸11⧸2016)
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Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 20th of November 2016.
This week we have effectively returned to the 1930s.
In the wake of Trump's victory the alt-right is on the rise and has actually been garnering mainstream media attention for the things that they're doing such as racist posters promoting alt-right alarm Toronto residents.
A Toronto resident says she was horrified to see a racist poster on a poll while walking her children to school on Monday and is blaming it on Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election.
And that's probably the reason.
The posters were put up on Monday and they begin, hey white person, and invite readers to join the alt-right.
The posters also list websites that provide news from a pro-European perspective.
And if you actually look at the posters, they are very much the sort of the hardcore of the alt-right being advertised.
They say, it is racist.
All cultures should be respected.
That's just the way it is.
I think they're up because of the Trump thing.
I think he's filled everybody's heads with this on immigration.
No, everybody's heads are already filled with immigration because there has been so much of it, and people are concerned about it.
And you literally have people saying, look, you can't have a pro-European perspective, that's racist.
That's what you're saying here.
You are legitimizing what the alt-right say when they say that there is a war on white people or whatever it is, whatever facsimile of that phrase that they use.
You are saying they're not allowed this, and yet you've permitted, not this particular person, but the left in general, has permitted identitarian politics for everyone else other than white people.
It's obvious that the alt-right would end up forming if you do that.
They will consider themselves to be an oppressed group, and they will think that this is completely justified, and this is now what we're seeing.
Police officers and city workers were on scene Monday removing the posters, a task made more difficult because some were glued rather than simply taped to the utility polls.
They have no rights to remove these posters.
These posters are political propaganda.
And like every other party's political propaganda, they have every right to put it up.
I read the poster, it was no more bigoted than anything you see on a daily basis in the mainstream media targeting white people.
You created this monster, now you have to let it live with you, because you don't have the right to make sure it can't.
And I just want to point out that next year the left probably won't have the power to do so either.
The social capital, at least in the United States, but as we can see from this very article, these things do not stay within borders.
This is an example of the waning regressive left exercising their institutional power in order to try and suppress political opponents.
This is an entirely partisan move and it's being done because the left realise that their power is receding and so they're using whatever institutional power they have left to try and silence the alt-right.
And it's not going to work.
It is in fact going to hasten their demise.
Twitter punitively suspending alt-right accounts is another manifestation of the left oppressing the right in order to try and maintain their grasp on power.
And don't get me wrong, they probably always will retain their grasp on Twitter.
But other social media platforms will come up, other examples will happen and Twitter will fade in relevance, as it already is by the numbers.
Twitter suspended high-profile accounts associated with the alt-right.
Among those suspended was Richard Spencer, who runs an alt-right think tank and has a verified account on Twitter.
This is a name that you're going to have to get familiar with, because for some reason the mainstream media want to make him famous.
I'll explain exactly why they're doing this later on in the video.
In what seems to be a slightly mixed metaphor he says, this is corporate Stalinism, an apparent reference to the purge of Nazi leaders in 1934 to consolidate Hitler's power.
He says, I am alive physically, but digitally speaking, there has been execution squads across the alt-right.
There is a great purge going on, and they are purging people based on their views.
As hyperbolic as that sounds, metaphorically speaking, he is right.
They are purging people based on their views, and this is undoubtedly being done behind the scenes in an organised fashion, specifically to try and remove and reduce the social media reach of the alt-right, which is reasonably large.
Especially for what is actually quite a small movement.
I suspect it's not really much significantly bigger than Gamergate.
I think it's probably about 50,000 people who are taking part in this.
The suspended accounts include Paul Towne, Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughan, and John Rivers.
And I just want to point out that I have absolutely no love for any of these people.
I don't really have any animus for them either.
Except for Paul Towne, whom I've had a fun Twitter spat with.
Looks like the Army of Madness is on the march, Paul.
But my point is, I am not in any way in favour of these people, but I am in favour of them being treated fairly and even-handedly by the various institutions under which we all operate.
And Twitter is one of them.
It's a huge social media platform.
People use it to talk to other people.
To censor them from it is actually a mistake for the left, and I'll tell you why.
These people are what Saul Alinsky would have called community organisers.
And if you open up your copy of Rules for Radicals, which I'm sure you all have and have read, and if you haven't, get one and read it, on page 155 he says, jailing the revolutionary leaders and their followers performs three vital functions for the cause of the have-nots, which in this case is the alt-right.
Only this isn't going to be the have-nots for much longer, just so you know.
One, it is an act on the part of the political status quo that itself points up the conflict between the haves and the haves-nots.
It strengthens immeasurably the position of the revolutionary leaders with their people by surrounding the jailed leadership with an aura of martyrdom, which is exactly what Spencer is playing up.
It deepens the identification of the leadership with their people, since the prevalent reaction amongst the have-nots is that their leadership cares so much for them and is so sincerely committed to the issue that it is willing to suffer imprisonment for the cause.
Basically, Saul Lilinsky says that some time in jail for revolutionary leaders is a good thing.
And this is them doing their time in jail.
You are foolish to do this to them.
You are making of them martyrs, and you are making them famous.
And it seems like this will have been orchestrated by, of course, the Southern Poverty Law Center.
They told USA Today that they had asked Twitter to remove more than 100 accounts of white supremacists who violated Twitter's terms of service.
No asking about black supremacists or Islamist supremacists, nothing like that, no, just the white ones.
Because this is a political action.
It's not about enforcing the rules, it's not about fairness, it's not about right or wrong, it's about partisanship.
These left-wing activists are using every piece of institutional power they can get their hands on, and wielding it against the alt-right, because they know come next year, their power, their social capital, will have been spent.
They are targeting Richard Spencer and his think tank because his think tank is going to have a direct line to Donald Trump and will directly influence his social policies.
Inside a Beige meeting room at the Ronald Reagan building, an international trade center, the buttoned-down millennials in their dark suits and ties settled in for the long conference day ahead.
Like countless others who travel to Washington, they had come to position their interests at the forefront of the political agenda.
Their sponsor had a wonky and nondescript name, National Policy Institute.
They cradled cups of morning coffee.
But on closer look, this group Saturday was different.
They were almost entirely young men, many sporting the same haircut of short sides and back with a familiar flop on top.
The agenda topics, Trump and the new white voter, America and the Jewish consciousness, the future of the alt-right.
This was the white nationalist lobby, the alt-right, coming to town for a victory lap after Donald Trump's election, assuming what they see as their rightful place, influencing the new administration.
This is no different to Black Lives Matter, the black lobby, for the black nationalist vote, and black nationalist interests going to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton and doing exactly the same thing.
The left is currently reaping what they have sown, and of course they find it a bitter pill to swallow, but I can't really see myself having much sympathy.
There is no difference between the alt-right and the social justice warriors except the target of their bigotry.
I'm sorry for any alt-right people following me, but I'm not going to pull my punches on this.
You know that you are racial collectivists.
You know my objection to the social justice warriors is that they are racial collectivists.
Anyway, Spencer goes on to say, an awakening amongst everyone has occurred with this Trump election.
We're not quite the establishment now, but I think we should start acting like it.
And he's saying that because they will become the establishment next year.
I just want to point out as well, I hate the hypocrisy with which the left-wing progressive media are addressing the alt-right.
I just, I can't stand it.
I think I might actually have a fucking embolism.
Sitting around conference tables, the formerly dressed men more resembled Washington lobbyists than the robed Ku Klux Klansmen, or skinhead tufts that often represent white supremacists, although they share many similar views.
If you just switched white for black and Ku Klux Klan for Black Lives Matter, you would have just as sensible and informative a statement as you do right here.
Heidi Bayrich, who monitors hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said today's nationalists are picking up where David Duke left off when the former Klan Imperial Wizard shed his robes to enter politics in the early 1980s.
This is how you sneak these ideas into the mainstream.
These guys in the suits are the ones we have to worry about.
Yes, which is why people worry about Anita Sarkeesian.
The smiling, debonair, she's lovely, she's charming.
She also thinks that all white men are the problem, that they're oppressing all women, and she thinks that basically they don't deserve the same rights as women because of this oppression.
I mean, she is literally a female supremacist, and she can get wherever she likes.
So yes, they know that's how you get these ideas in the mainstream.
You tart them up, you dress them up, you put lipstick on the pig, and that's what they're doing, and that's what you did, and so don't even fucking think about telling me how dare they.
Hashtag something must be done.
Listen to this.
Beneath the benign-looking guy and the benign-sounding name, the purpose of the National Policy Institute is to push the idea that all men are created unequal.
Can you even fathom this kind of lack of self-awareness?
Someone from the progressive left, a social fucking justice warrior, would actually turn around and say, you know what, you're acting as if people aren't all created equal.
Fuck you!
That is your entire ideological position!
Everything you say stems from the idea that white people have it better than black people, that men have it better than women, that cis have it better than trans.
Every fucking justification you have ever uttered is on that basis.
So don't you fucking tell me you think all men are created equal!
You can't think that, because if you think that, that undermines everything you have to say about group fucking rights.
Jesus Christ, I can hardly believe this shit.
This is just insulting our intelligence, you fucking nutsacks.
We know about you.
We know all about you.
We know everything about you because you're fucking everywhere.
You're in the media.
You're in the entertainment.
You're in comic books.
You're in games.
You're in movies.
You're in government.
You're in education.
Where the fuck is social justice absent?
And you think that we don't know what you think by now?
Unfucking believable.
The alt-right are winning their culture war, and the left doubling down on their policies is helping them to do it.
We are the epicenter of the right now in terms of intellect, said 30-year-old Nathan D'Amigo of California.
We're the culture creators of the right.
And he's correct.
Them, in the way they fought this culture war, they are the culture creators of the right, and the culture creators of the left don't know how to handle it.
With Trump preparing for the White House, the National Policy Institute is planning to seize the opening with a series of policy papers on immigration, foreign domestic policy to offer pro-white ideas.
In terms of policy, Trump's movement was a little bit half-baked, Spencer said.
Moving forward, the alt-right as an intellectual vanguard can complete Trump.
They are planning to do to Trump and his campaign what the SJWs have done to Hillary and her campaign.
And they're planning to do this by having the ear of Steve Bannon, the executive chair of Breitbart, who has been appointed to the role of Donald Trump's chief strategist.
I don't actually know very much about Steve Bannon other than what I've heard other people who have worked at Breitbart say about him, and they have said categorically that he is not an anti-Semite.
So the media narrative calling him an anti-Semite just appears to be another example of how the media lies.
Breitbart political writer David Horowitz, who I'm going to assume has some severe echo quotes around his name, and Ben Shapiro, both Jews, both working at Breitbart or ex-Breitbart, Shapiro in the case worked with Bannon for like 10 years and categorically echoed this sentiment.
I can't think of anything stupider than the charge coming from all quarters of the left, including the headline, the pathetically wretched Huffington Post, that Bannon is an anti-Semite.
The source, a one-sentence claim from an angry ex-wife in divorce court no less, that Bannon didn't want their kids to go to school with Jews.
I find that particularly amusing since Bannon wanted to make a film to celebrate this Jew's life.
He's obviously not an anti-Semite.
He's surrounded by too many Jews who have known him for too long.
You're fucking stupid.
You can't discredit him in this way.
It makes you look like liars.
Constant, unremitting liars who just won't stop.
Breitbart has been entirely sympathetic to the alt-right.
In fact, Ben Shapiro quit calling Breitbart Trump's pravda, just a propaganda outlet for Donald Trump.
And they were.
They absolutely were.
And they were because they were fighting a culture war, which they have now won.
It's important for the alt-right to understand now that their job is not to defeat the left.
The left have been defeated.
Their job is to keep Donald Trump on point.
Make him drain the swamp.
Make him pardon the whistleblowers.
Make him hold power and money to account, because if you don't, they will co-opt him.
And you will be in the same position as the social justice warriors supporting Clinton.
You will be propaganda outlets, pumping out half-informed bullshit that will make the general public think you are the liars, in the same way they think Salon and the rest of the regressives at the moment are the liars.
You have to hold him to account.
You can't just follow in this cult of personality.
And I'm telling you, I don't think he's going to be your guy unless you do.
Unless you put some severe pressure on him.
He ain't going to be your man.
He is going to renege on almost everything, as he has already done on almost every issue.
And I know you're thinking, yeah, well, we've got Breitbart, we've got Steve Bannon, he's literally the chief advisor to Donald Trump.
How can we not have influence?
Well, remember that Steve Bannon might not be your guy either.
He is undoubtedly going to temper the alt-right message for the moderates to appeal to the majority of people.
I'm sure that there are many within the alt-right who will find this unacceptable.
So get ready to have this argument.
Get ready for your own personal civil war, because I'm telling you, you're going to have to explain to people how exactly the white supremacists who want to deport or do whatever to black people are supposed to now live in a country with a huge black minority.
And Steve Bannon is doing it by saying that he has zero tolerance for the anti-Semitic or racist elements of the alt-right.
They are going to cry about their movement being co-opted by normies, by the fact that there will be black people in the alt-right or gay Jews in the alt-right.
They will be concerned about all of this.
And Bannon won't be on their side.
There are even rumors that Bannon is some kind of Leninist Bolshevik.
I don't know about the veracity of these rumors, of course, but what I'm saying is just be prepared.
This might not go as you think.
And it's on this note that we now come to the infamous Hamilton appeal, where the cast of a stage play called Hamilton turned around and said this to Mike Pence.
This evening.
There's nothing to move here.
We're all here sharing a story below.
We have a message for you, sir, and we hope that you will hear us out.
And I encourage everybody to pull out your phones and tweet and post because this message is going to be spread far and wide, okay?
Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton and American Music.
We really do.
We, sir, we are the diverse Americans who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us.
Our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir.
But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.
This wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women, of different colors, creeds, and all these things.
There was nothing wrong with that message.
There was nothing offensive about it.
There was nothing illegitimate about what they were asking for.
And given Pence's reputation as a fundamentalist Christian, and especially some of the more radical rumors that are going around about him, that I don't think are really true, but you don't need to make up radical rumors to make it seem to these people that this is something they need to be concerned about.
And they are right.
Trump and Pence are going to be the president and vice president of the United States, regardless if the people who don't like them are holding not my president signs.
They do need to take these people into account.
And it's after this where the entire debacle becomes a total shitshow, with people on both sides that I respect just losing their mind and saying things that are just totally counter to what they actually believe.
I am just staggered in almost every way about...
And again, it's just partisanship.
It's just right.
This supports my side at this point.
So fuck my principles and fuck the other side.
The left-wing media was, if you can believe it, utterly consumed by one of Donald Trump's tweets.
Special snowflake Donald Trump demands safe spaces after people boo Mike Pence.
Trump said, the theatre must always be a safe and special place.
The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence.
Apologize.
Everyone is basically calling Donald Trump a hypocrite for this, although I have to say, I don't think I've ever heard Donald Trump complain about the concept of safe spaces.
Maybe he has and I just haven't seen it, but I just see him railing against political correctness, rather than any specific aspect of it.
But yes, in the grand narrative scheme of things, of the culture war versus the left versus the right, basically anyone supporting or opposing this statement is likely to be a hypocrite.
And just for the record, I am obviously against safe spaces when Donald Trump proposes them, as much as I am when social justice warriors propose them.
There should be no safe spaces.
Anyway, I'm going to have to continue pointing out the further hypocrisy of this story, because that is literally all this story is.
Back in March of this year, Broadway Union takes issue with Hamilton casting call for non-white performers.
The controversy was sparked by a casting notice posted by the producers of Hamilton, which specifically seeks non-white performers.
So they went full BBC on this.
Full identity politics, full quotas for everyone but white people.
And you guys, I mean, I hope there's no one in any doubt as to why the alt-right is doing so well.
Why a pro-white, pro-European message is actually finding a home.
I hope you understand, this is why.
There is no other reason.
This is why the white identity is becoming a thing.
It might well be that the ad violated New York City's human rights law because it's unlawful for any employer because of the actual written or perceived race of any person to discriminate.
Incidentally, the same kind of law we have about this in Britain, but good fucking luck getting that enforced.
So I'm sorry, the left saying anything like, Donald Trump, don't you dare politicise a trip to the theatre, can fuck off, because the people in the theatre politicised it first.
So here's the part where we get to the staggering hypocrisy of people whose work I read and watch.
The first being die-hard socialist Owen Jones, a columnist and author who writes for The Guardian, and generally has sympathy for working class issues.
The second is the self-described contrarian polemicist Paul Joseph Watson, who provides strong counter-narratives to left-wing narratives.
And I'll explain the point of narratives in a different video, but the point is it's necessary for these two things to exist side by side, so someone can watch them both and get a more rounded worldview.
And so to see both Owen and Paul now adopting the opposite position of the one they have held for at least the last year shows that this is nothing but a partisan position.
It is not that they care about in favour of safe spaces in the case of Owen Jones if he's prepared to criticize Trump saying he wants safe spaces and not being against safe spaces in the case of Paul Joseph Watson saying that Trump is correct.
Owen, you can't try and shame Donald Trump by saying, oh look at this pathetic snowflake with a demand for safe spaces because you support the concept of safe spaces.
You don't think needing safe spaces makes you pathetic.
You are trying, we can obviously see, to parody the opinion of the right wing.
But that's their opinion.
They're not going to be swayed by that.
You're preaching to the fucking choir.
And Paul, Trump is not completely correct, mate.
You do not support safe spaces.
It's not up to Trump to try and enforce some kind of code of conduct when he goes to the theater, when pence goes to the theatre.
It's not acceptable to have safe spaces.
I'm sorry, you have to be consistent on these points, chaps.
Again, I watch and read your stuff.
I think you make important content.
But come on, look at yourselves.
And now finally, we come back to why we have arrived back in the 1930s.
Here is a recent speech given by Owen Jones to a crowd.
And Owen, I just want to point out that you are a populist demagogue now.
Instead, we will direct our anger at the bankers, the tax dodgers, the tax dodgers, like Donald Trump himself.
So we have a clear message to the racists and the fascists.
We have defeated you before and we are going to defeat you all over again.
And when we're finished, when we're finished with you, we will toss you onto the scrap heap of history where you will rot until the end of time.
Did that feel good, Owen?
Did it feel good?
Did that give you a fucking hard on?
Do you really think what you are doing is anything other than naked demagoguery?
You are not going to do anything of the sort.
You are in fact going to consign your own social movement to history.
You are making yourself irrelevant.
You are making yourself look like a fucking fool as well.
You know better than this.
This is pure ideological horseshit.
Stop it.
That's what we're going to do.
So friends, have determination.
Have resilience.
That's what we need.
The way we got change every single time wasn't waiting for people over there, the people at the top to wake up and go, I'm feeling generous.
I'll give people some rights for a bit of a laugh.
People are to organise with courage and determination and resilience.
They've attacked our rights and freedoms that people in this country fought for at such cost and such sacrifice.
No more.
We've got to drive them back all over again.
Was that speech to the EDL?
Was it Owen?
Because that's what it fucking sounded like.
Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?
What the fuck do you think you're saying?
You're not going to drive shit.
You've lost.
You sound like you're going to become some kind of terrorist insurgent leader who's going to be committing attacks on the political opposition.
I don't know whether you've noticed, Owen, but that's not how we conduct a democracy.
So we will build a society.
Not a society that scapegoats those at the bottom and scapegoats immigrants.
No, it's going to be a society that scapegoats fascists instead.
Who's a fascist?
Well, you'll be the one to decide, won't you, Owen?
The problem is the scapegoating, not who is being scapegoated.
You unbelievable ideologue.
Just shocking with this, Owen.
Absolute shocking.
We will build a society run in the interests of the majority, with an education system that isn't privatised and fragmented, where we drive, where we throw 11-year-old kids from poorer backgrounds onto the scrap heap.
Instead, we will build an education system that reflects the society we will build.
One running the interests of our needs and aspirations, not of profit for a tiny elite.
Pure demagoguery.
Absolute nonsense.
You don't represent the majority.
The majority have rejected you.
Consistently.
The Conservatives in 2010, Brexit, and now Trump.
And next year, you better fucking believe Le Pen is going to win next year.
And Wilders as well, probably.
You're fucked.
Your political wing is fucked.
Your ideology is going to be consigned to the scrap heap of history until the next time Marxism creeps up in probably around another 80 or 90 years time.
Just like what has happened now.
And I don't want anyone to think that I'm exaggerating this at all.
We have already had this week our very own Battle of Cable Street.
The Battle of Cable Streets took place on Sunday the 4th of October 1936 in Cable Street in the east end of London.
It was a clash between the Metropolitan Police protecting a march by members of the British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, and various anti-fascist demonstrators including local Jewish, Irish, socialist, anarchist and communist groups.
What a fucking surprise.
The majority of both marchers and counter-protesters traveled to this area for this purpose.
Mosley planned to send thousands of marchers dressed in uniforms styled on those black shirts through the East End, which then had a large Jewish population.
And this is what happened this week.
Anti-fascist protesters descend on white nationalist conference in Washington, DC.
I wonder what they look like.
I wonder what these anti-fascist protesters were.
Maybe they were liberals.
Maybe they were Islamists.
Maybe they were, you know, just any other ideology.
I mean, they couldn't possibly have been a bunch of fucking Marxists, could they?
Oh, look at this.
Socialism smashes fascism.
Alt-right means alt-neo-Nazi or whatever.
Fuck you.
Once again, we have two stupid brands of collectivists arguing and fighting in the street about whose brand of collectivism is best.
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